Rolling Philosophy

ick

The discussion has been fueled partly by Mr. McGinn’s own blog, where his use of the cryptic language of analytic philosophy in attempts to defend himself seems to have backfired.

lol

Basically he's a reddit MRA bro

It's hard to separate out the schadenfreude from the general ickiness of it all.

re: notions of decision and performativity upthread, I was reading Lacan's "Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty" and it seems apropos, particularly the idea of an "assertive logic" as founded on prior exclusion ("apodosis") and hypothesis. Not sure yet why this needs to be tied to a "subjective assertion" yet tho.

also I can imagine the notion of an act which "anticipates its own certainty" is something Zizek must talk about somewhere.

Basically he's a reddit MRA bro

posted without comment:

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/dynamic/00361/STN0403PIC1_361399k.jpg

This paper should be interesting: A New Argument Against Compatibilism

Thinking of beginning what will probably be a long argument with my (experimental psych) supervisor about making my final piece of coursework a seminar in philosophy of mind that will cover perception, singular thought and ontology. The focus would be on three books: Susanna S1egel’s *The Contents of Visual Experience*, Franco1s Recanat1’s *Mental Files*, and Matthew S0teriou’s *The Mind’s Construction*.

might pull the trigger on this: http://www.amazon.com/Inquiry-into-Modes-Existence-Anthropology/dp/0674724992/

look at how cheap it is!

Rec4nat1 is a bro

does any of latour's newer theory stuff demonstrate that he's actually doing any research at all anymore? i get his theory is all about actual research methodologies. but is he actually employing those to study actual things, or just pontificating on them these days?

that's what you do once you're eminent, i thought, you shoot eminent rays out at things in order to unify them under one field of eminence

I've been reading Plato's Parmenides at bedtime this week. I'm loving it, but not sure how wise my timing is. I'm waking up exhausted in the morning, having the spent the night in impossibly convoluted dreams (the One eating itself and so on....)

i was just thinking of reading that. been pondering NEGATION, figured it was time.

epictetus, ench. c. 2:

do not be joyful about any superiority that is not your own. if the horse were to say joyfully, "i am beautiful," one could put up with it. but certainly you, when you say joyfully, "i have a beautiful horse," are joyful about the good of the horse. what, then, is your own? your way of dealing with appearances. so whenever you are in accord with nature in your way of dealing with appearances, then be joyful, since then you are joyful about a good of your own.

i think i'm gonna jump into after finitude again soon. i've been in there before. i might've even finished it at least once? don't have a good memory. but i got the kindle version a little while back and i'm thinking of starting it up.

at some point i should probably read harman's meillassoux book too. esp. for the interview. wonder if they're ever gonna publish the divine inexistence in english.

my goddamn laruelle hasn't even shipped yet. currently reading Martin Jay's "Marxism and Totality" in its stead.

let us know how the laruelle goes.

i should probably see if there's been any good secondary literature on him that's out yet too. although the way in might just be something primary, even if it's in translation and harder going than having it explained clearly to you. if you take the secondary lit first approach it may color -- probably will inevitably color -- your own interpretation, which might not be the way to start out.

there's a lot to read.

might fuck w/ a lil seneca soon too -- "on the shortness of life"

https://twitter.com/AcademeSeinfeld

btw marks, there's a Rocco Gangle introduction to Philosophies of Difference that I understand is quite good. Anthony Paul Smith also did a series of video lectures which I think should still be available somewhere, can't locate them just now but I'll try to find em and get back to you.

maybe not online anywhere actually, can't find anything after this announcement http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/laruelle-e-seminar/ but you could email Anthony about them.

i was thinking i'd get the "Dictionary of Non-Philosophy" as well (which sounds tremendously interesting in and of itself, as a kind of philosophical project) but i've bought way too many books this month. maybe once i've gotten some way into Principles.

xpost thank you! i was in a reading group that was supposed to go through gangle's translation of philosophies of difference, but we gave up on it quickly, like after one meeting or whatever quickly, and i can't remember how much of it i read, but i don't think it was very much. i think gangle teaches at a college pretty close to my house, incidentally.

i think i have that blog in my rss reader, along with some others.

gangle has a really interesting article on peirce, deleuze, and self-organization a la stuart kauffman. i've always been looking for more stuff from him since that sorta thing is exactly what I'm interested in--turns out he's been working on Laruelle!

there's some analytic stuff i'd like to read eventually, like patricia churchland's new one and some jesse prinz

xpost kauffman's been on my radar before. maybe via ray brassier?

that would make sense, i think. i ran into him via luhmann.

one reason peirce is so interesting to me is that you could argue he's a central figure in or originator of three (maybe 4) very different traditions:

1) american semiotics a la thomas sebeok
2) contintental philosophy of both derridean and deleuzean stripes.
3) 20th century analytic philosophy
4) systems theory (originating from cybernetics)

of course when you devote your life to writing volume upon volume of impenetrable and brilliant stuff there's gonna be a lot of strands for people to take hold of and develop (or not).

wait, you think derrida comes out of peirce?

well there's been a lot written on that--but derrida himself says (in a note to Of Grammatology) that Peirce "goes very far in the direction of a deconstruction of the signifier." or something like that.

ah sorry messed up my terms. it's "Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified..."

basically pages 48-50 in Of Grammatology are about Peirce.

ah cool! i don't know much about him

speaking of derrida, have you read the peters bio ryan?

i have not! looks good though.

yeah i'd like to get a copy at some point.

ditto paul churchland's "plato's camera" and a bunch of other stuff (adrian johnston, patricia churchland, brassier, less than nothing)

been working through both Ecrits (an essay a day!) and Reinhart Koselleck's Critique and Crisis (which seems really interesting, though i can imagine some may take issue with it). Principles of Non-Philosophy is on the way and I hope to make slow and steady progress with it when it arrives. I noted a local bookstore has Laruelle's "Dictionary" so maybe I'll pick that up as a companion piece.

i was really interested in Nihil Unbound until i read an interview that Brassier sorta disowned it? hard to work up the commitment to engage with a new thinker when he's already moved on!

also Luhmann's Theory of Society, Volume 2 is on my shelf staring back at me.

alright, got a churchland book in my room now:

http://i.imgur.com/86GW6dp.jpg

i plan on starting it tonight so i might be back eventually w/ followup

actually, maybe i'll wait until tomorrow or another day

i read the translators preface to "Principles of Non-Philosophy" today. They remarked that Derrida famously called Laruelle a "terrorist within philosophy." Finding that pretty striking considering who said it, I did some googling and found this debate between Derrida and Laruelle, which I haven't had a chance to read closely yet:

http://pervegalit.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/laruelle-derrida.pdf

Worth pointing out as well that this debate precedes the publication of "Principles" by about ten years (I think).

I hope the formatting works out here:

Am I practicing terror? There are two readings of my text, obviously. There is a philosophical reading, one in which I do practice terror. And there is a non-philosophical reading, which is obviously my reading. And from the latter point of view, I am reluctant to concede that I am practicing terror. I would like to suggest to you why not. I was very careful to say that terror is bound up with overturning. I only used the word "terror" in contexts that related it to overturning.

So, are the relations I have described between science and philosophy relations of overturning?

Absolutely not. The whole problem for me, having studied your work along with that of other contemporary philosophers, lies in defining a point of view that would not be acquired philosophically; which is to say, a point of view that would not be acquired via philosophical operations, be they those of doubt, controversy, or overturning as principal philosophical operation, and even displacement insofar as it is of a piece with overturning. From science to philosophy, because I return to this point – and it is this direction that governs everything I write – there is no overturning. There is merely a elimitation but one that does not take the form of an overturning. However, maybe it should be made more explicit, there is a limitation of philosophy by science, that is all.

But above all I do not overturn philosophy; were I claiming to overthrow it, then that would be pointless gesture, a zero-sum game. The entire enterprise would then be contradictory.

Jacques Derrida:

When you say that you are calling into question the sufficiency of philosophy, in what way is this gesture different from a host of others, mine among them? Why erase the latter gesture and consign it to the realm of sufficiency?

François Laruelle:

You often say that I conjoing ontology and deconstruction. Obviously I only conjoin them under certain conditions, I do not put conflate them in general terms, and I have sufficiently emphasized in other works how seriously I take the difference between certain forms of metaphysics and your work on and in metaphysics. But if I allow myself to conjoin them, it is in the name of the struggle against the Principle of sufficient philosophy, and in that regard alone. What is more, I do call any philosophy into question, since I posit the equivalence of all philosophical decisions.

What is probably wounding for philosophers is the fact that, from the point of view I have adopted, I am obliged to posit that there is no principle of choice between a classical type of ontology and the deconstruction of that ontology. There is no reason to choose one rather than the other. This is a problem that I have discussed at great length in my work (Les philosophies de la dif érence), whether there can be a principle of choice between philosophies. Ultimately, it is the problem of the philosophical decision. And I sought a point of view – one can query the manner in which I arrived at it, or constituted it – which implies the equivalence of all philosophical decisions, or in other words, what I call democracy and peace.