Rolling Philosophy

_Veblen in Plain English_ has been interesting and very readable

http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2009/02/veblen-in-plain-english.html?m=1

i tried a few episodes of partially examined life and i'm not a huge fan. very simplified and very general conversation about the most obvious ideas in the works. does anyone have something they can recommend that's maybe a little more... idk incisive?

What about the UnMute Podcast?

http://www.unmutepodcast.co/

i'll check it out. it's not philosophy but i'm digging Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast atm.

hey btw thx to j. for recommending Gary Gutting 'What Philosophers Know' I was delighted to read about Gettier counterexamples, exactly the kind of puzzle/result I was looking for

That was me, and you're welcome. A lot of people dismiss the Gettier stuff but I think it's fun and worthwhile.

If your appetite for that stuff isn't sated yet, you might like "On the Gettier Problem Problem" by William Lycan, which was originally for some edited volume or other and is now on his website.

(Another popular sneer of the period was, ‘Why don’t you go publish a little note in Analysis?’)

Wouldn't that just burn you up

That was me, and you're welcome. A lot of people dismiss the Gettier stuff but I think it's fun and worthwhile.

― JRN, Wednesday, December 7, 2016 11:40 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry!! got my j.'s mixed up!

it is certainly FUN

it might be FUN---not sure but I'll be teaching it again in my grad seminar on epistemology this spring---but it leads to FUN in a hamster wheel when you read some little note in Analysis on it where the author gives a counterexample to a condition on knowledge added by another author, then adds her own new condition...which is then itself refuted in another little note in Analysis a few months later.

indeed! beautiful passage in the Gutting expressing just that:

The increasing complexity of fourth-condition proposals and their apparently inevitable vulnerability to counterexamples have left little reason to think that trying to solve the Gettier problem by adding further conditions will ever move beyond the rococo futility in which it has been immersed for so long.

i love that, "rococo futility"

the `fun` part of it, to me, and which suggested some meta- negative result that maybe no one has proved yet(?) was how the extra conditions keep popping up new counterexamples until you over-strengthen and then the original Gettier counterexample is back to being knowledge

I only skimmed the beginning and end of the Lycan piece, but this popped out as interesting.

This sort of dialect difference is less rare than one might think. It can lurk unsuspected for decades or whole lifetimes, because it is slight and the sort of hypothetical case that would bring it out is unusual. Here is an example from my own experience. Sartre bemoans the fact that we have no simple expression for the following situation:

A believes that not-p, but for selfish reasons wants B to believe that p. In a persuasive manner, A tells B that p: ‘p, B; trust me, old friend, would I ever lie to you?’ Now in fact, A is mistaken, and it is true that p. A has tried to lie to B, and A’s character is that of a liar. But what A said was true, so it cannot be called a lie.

On many occasions I have mentioned this in my undergraduate classes, and every time, about 40% of the students balk at Sartre’s judgment, and say they have no difficulty in calling A a liar. When I protest that a lie cannot be true, they say, ‘Sure it can’; all that matters to them is the intent to deceive. On the basis of induction, I predict that 40% of my readers will likewise have rejected Sartre’s complaint.

There is no substantive issue here. Neither I nor the 40% are right to the exclusion of the other. It is simply a dialect difference -- one that I did not discover until I was in my 40s.[22]

It's like the "true lie" scenario comes up so seldom in practice that there's no pressure on the concept to determinately include or exclude it.

There's an appeal to objectivity in that argument that feels dishonest to me

Posted on the Twitter thread, but this is the best philosophy joke I've encountered this week and best twitter handle in quite some time:

https://mobile.twitter.com/hegelfan1

http://www.logicmatters.net/2016/12/30/the-material-conditional-and-the-logic-textbooks-2/

RIP Parfit

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/tibetan-monks-found-chanting-text-oxford-philosopher/

I informed Derek Parfit of this when I returned; he seemed pleased.

been reading Michel Henry's "I Am the Truth" for research purposes and it's really...something.

not terribly well versed in phenomenology but the early chapters are kind of a tour de force.

I'd seen references to Henry before and been curious when I'd been more interested in more theologically inflected phenomenology (of which I'm also not especially well versed). What is it about the book/first chapters that you're finding so striking?

On a somewhat related note (at least inasmuch as he's explicitly critical of the religious "return" in contemporary continental philosophy), I found an inexpensive copy of Meillasoux's After Finitude at a used book store and decided to pick it up. It's my first foray into speculative realism (materialism?/whatever one wants to call it) and I'm still reading it, so will withhold any substantive comments until I finish reading and get my bearings. I've seen there's been some discussion upthread, so am curious what anyone still checking here/posting has made of it.

One thing I'm wondering, at first blush, is how his thinking (or at least critique of the philosophical tradition) differs from Derrida, for example? Would he be a 'correlationist' in his terms? I've read he's influenced by Badiou so can infer something of an answer (or at least guess at what's to come in the book), but that has been confusing me a bit...

the Henry presents a really compelling account of Christianity that's of particular interest to me because it runs counter to what I think of the Weberian "disenchantment" thesis of Christianity. and the first few chapters, I'm thinking in particular perhaps of "The Truth of the World," present a really coherent account of a Heideggerian "disclosedness" account of truth. There's a really interesting bit later on about how Heidegger's account of Being more or less remains too "Greek" (and thus ontological) in implicit contrast to the true phenomenological essence of Christianity. as a whole the book gets rather repetitive (which can help because the core concepts are necessarily slippery) but it has some really great stuff if you find this topic interesting.

I picked this book up because Jean Luc Nancy recounts in a footnote to his "Dis-enclosure" how Henry approached him after a lecture and told him he was totally wrong about Christianity.

next up is Werner Jaeger's "Early Christianity and Greek Paideia"

in fact if anyone knows any books under the broad umbrella of "Christianity and Modernity" I'd love to hear about them...(not exactly philosophy i know but i will always abuse this thread)

broken record here but Charles Taylor's A Catholic Modernity and The Varieties of Religion Today, and the (much) longer book from which those are both taken, A Secular Age. I've taught the 2nd and 3rd of these in philosophy of religion courses, the 2nd at the introductory level, even.

some examples:
Michael Allen Gillespie - The Theological Origins of Modernity
Marcel Gauchet - The Disenchantment of the World
Hans Blumenberg - The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
Max Weber - Sociology of Religion and The Protestant Ethic (obv)

xp i was about to list the Taylor! have not read yet but it's on deck as well. thanks for the further recommendations as well.

Taylor's introduction to the Gauchet is really interesting.

another one i need to read: Karl Lowith's "Meaning in History"

have u seen dulles' models of revelation? it's been years since i read it but i remember it was v good

I should read that! xp Gauchet

As ever, Macintyre should be on your list, though he exemplifies a modernist Christianity more than writes "about" modernism and Christianity. though he does that too. Three Rival Versions is always where it's at.
I was thinking of reading God, Philosophy, Universities, but really I should just read Newman.

a secular age provides many springboards for further reading too, i think i have like an entire shelf of books suggested (explicitly or not) by taylor

Cool, that sounds interesting (and the Nancy anecdote is pretty good - I appreciate him mentioning it in a footnote :)) - just looking a little more into Henry online and I think I can get a sense of the different approach from Weber with his idea of revelation/incarnation and becoming "flesh".

You may already be familiar with them, but in addition to Charles Taylor, I'd also recommend Hans Joas and Robert Bellah. Apparently Habermas has been rumoured to be working on completing a major work on religion, as well - though it may have been sidetracked over the past few years with his focus shifting to the Eurozone crisis.

There's so much more in that phenomenological tradition (loosely) that I've also been meaning to read myself for a long time (my MA thesis advisor worked in this area and I'm still, years later, trying to find time to get further into it - so I find the Henry recommendation welcome). In particular, I've been interested in (and they may be of interest to you!) Simone Weil, Jean Luc Marion, Hent de Vries, Gillian Rose, and some Agamben.

Another book I've been wanting to read that the Henry called to mind and which was highly recommended (it's unfortunately out of print, however) is Agape and Eros by a Swedish theologian, Anders Nygren. May be of relevance or interest? A brief summary on it - https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-canon-agape-and-eros-by-anders-nygren/413560.article

xpost on the entire shelves of books suggested by footnotes. My groaning shelves and I feel you....

One thing I'm wondering, at first blush, is how his thinking (or at least critique of the philosophical tradition) differs from Derrida, for example? Would he be a 'correlationist' in his terms?

the fun thing about being anti-correlationist is that it's very easy to accuse anybody you don't like of being a correlationist. Meillassoux's project is interesting and his selectiveness makes it interesting, but I think the broad strokes with which he often paints the people he's opposing himself to should make us ask some questions of it. e.g. if After Finitude had a serious critical engagement with Kant rather than opening with a page stating that Kant is a correlationist, would it have ended up in the same place?

re Derrida, I know that Graham Harman will often go on about how speculative realism was a necessary antidote to deconstruction's dominance over continental philosophy, allowing us to get away from trifling deconstructionist concerns with things like books and ethics and so on, and that's probably a common position. But there is also work on Derrida that has intersected with speculative realist concerns, e.g. Martin Hagglund's http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=16169. I think the general pattern is that when philosophers are saying just how different their work is from everybody else's they're probably obscuring some of the similarities and points of connection in there.

Yes, good point, it's a classic move. AF is, indeed, very selective - the fact that these can't be blind spots on his part is I guess what I find frustrating, but I guess that fluid/loose definition of correlationism is part of his project, as are the ways he sets up the terms and positions he opposes, as you note.

Still not sure what to make of it but I find it fascinating, even if it's recasting older critiques or points in a new vocabulary. Has anyone read his book on Mallarme? From what I've read so far from AF, I have an idea of how it may be and how it may more clearly articulate his project.

Hm, didn't realize that was Harman's position and didn't know the Hagglund book either, I'm curious to read more.

almost done with Gauchet so I ordered Taylor's "A Secular Age." very excited to finally read it.

I've come across a few other books that look intriguing. Karl Jasper's "The Origin and Goal of History," for one, and Gregg Lambert's "Return Statements" (a new book) for another. but I'm most curious about Alain Badiou's "Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism." I'm not well versed in Badiou, and I don't really know what to make of him. Has anyone read this book?

A Secular Age has the breadth and depth that I expected, but I didn't expect that it would be as relevant for my own concerns as it is. and yeah I think i've discovered about a half dozen other books through it. I think the way Talyor uses Victor Turner's "The Ritual Process" is especially cool and interesting and something that is now bouncing around obsessively in my own mind.

Has anybody checked out any of the Squashed Philosophers summaries? The idea looks good, I'm wondering about the execution.

http://sqapo.com/index.htm

Oh, neat, an Austin lecture. Strange that it took so long to surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXo0YNZ3WsE

strange that it took so long for any to surface, or this one in particular?

This one in particular, I guess. It just got uploaded to Youtube yesterday. Given that a recording of an Austin lecture existed, I was curious where it had been sitting all these years. But looking around, it appears that a tape of the recording has been in the British Library for a long time. http://allbutthedissertation.blogspot.ca/2005/11/listening-to-jl-austins-1959.html

ryan I'm glad A Secular Age is interesting you! the book is kind of a mess, too much repetition, but it's so big that some readers probably need that. for me Part V, and in particular the two Dilemmas chapters, are the richest parts, as in 10 years later I'm still trying to follow them through. it'll probably take 30 more years to even begin doing that.

Badiou's book on St Paul is a bit odd, but interesting and provocative. It was the first thing of his I'd read a while ago and I found it to be a good introduction to his system (for lack of a better word), or at least I found the story of Paul allows him to clearly and attractively illustrate it through the historical account of Paul.

That said, he does submit it to the machinery of his philosophical method and, in doing so, kind of recasts Marx/Lenin into the Jesus/Paul relationship which, yeah, well there are some issues there. I guess it can be productively placed within the line of misprision/deliberate mis- or re-interpretation that runs through so much of 20th century French philosophy/theory.

I still do want to get around to A Secular Age sometime...

Took a break from "A Secular Age" (finished part 1) to read Peter Berger's "The Sacred Canopy." I liked it quite a bit--especially the chapters on alienation and legitimation--in that way you appreciate a book that helps you find tune your disagreements with it. Might have to read his new-ish book on religious pluralism.

Has anyone read Sloterdijk's "In the Shadow of Mount Sinai"?

Just finishing up Martin Jay's latest book, Reason After Its Eclipse, which I quite enjoyed. It's a brief review of how reason has been theorized, with a longer excursus on the Frankfurt School (his book, referencing Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason), before surveying the second and third generation Frankfurt School attempts to move beyond it. Essentially, the last half of the book is on Habermas, providing a nice reconstruction of his oeuvre (which was more varied than I had thought) as well as a nice survey of recent critical engagements with it.

https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5488.htm

It was also based on a series of lectures he gave, which I believe are on Youtube (I can post links if anyone is at all interested...)

I definitely need to read that.

i'd be interested in the lectures. i heard him lecture at cardozo years ago on the topic of benjamin + adorno.

So i've recently read Nancy's "Adoration," Sloterdijk's "In the Shadow of Mount Sinai," and, uh, Freud's "Moses and Monotheism." And part 3 of "A Secular Age." Now working on Weber's "Sociology of Religion" but I also got Badiou's book on Paul as well as one by Jacob Taubes called "The Political Theology of Paul" and im hoping the Schmitt call back in the title is intended. I should probably check out Sloterdijk's "God's Zeal" at some point.

are you out of work

how can you tell???