IT’S SPRING WHEN I REALIZE that I may never have children, and around that time the thirteen-year cicadas return, burrowing out of neat, round holes in the ground to shed their larval shells, sprout wings, and fly to the treetops, filling the air with the sound of their singular purpose: reproduction. In the woods where I live, an area mostly protected from habitat destruction, the males’ mating song, a vibrating, whooshing, endless hum, a sound at once faraway and up-close, makes me feel like I am living inside a seashell.
Near the river, where the song is louder, their discarded larval shells—translucent amber bodies, weightless and eerie—crunch underfoot on my daily walks. Across the river, in a nest constructed near the top of a tall, spindly pine, bald eagles take turns caring for two new eaglets. Baby turtles, baby snakes, and ducklings appear on the water. Under my parents’ porch, three feral cats give birth in quick succession. And on the news, a miracle pregnancy: Jamani, an eleven-year-old female gorilla at the North Carolina Zoo, is expecting, the first gorilla pregnancy there in twenty-two years.
I visit my reproductive endocrinologist’s office in May and notice, in the air surrounding the concrete and steel hospital complex, a strange absence of sound. There are no tall trees to catch the wind or harbor the now incessant cicadas, and on the pedestrian bridge from the parking deck everyone walks quickly, head down, intent on making their appointments. In the waiting room, I test the leaf surface of a potted ficus with my fingernail and am reassured to find that it is real: green, living.
Excerpt from “The Art of Waiting” by Belle Boggs on Orion. Read HERE
What happens when mixing the well recorded voice of Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and music by the Cinematic Orchestra feat. Patrick Watson? Well, you get the video above. Indeed, this is probably one of the most astounding empowering facts about our existence. However, it is always important to address and thank the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Taoists, the Hindus, and the long list of philosophies and other disciplines that have allow us to revere the Universe, and therefore ourselves. Now, I should probably thank Wikipedia, and all its contributors.
Naturalistic Pantheism
John Cage answers 19 questions on a variety of subjects using chance operations to determine the duration of his answers. From the film ‘From zero’, by Frank Scheffer.
What is the future of humanity? What limits should we impose on our biotechnological and other scientific developments – what will happen when we don’t? Grant Bartley from Philosophy Now asks Debra Shaw from the University of East London, Blay Whitby from the University of Sussex, and David Gamez from Imperial College London, for answers. With live music from Bucky Muttel on the Chapman Stick. First broadcast on 14 February 2012 on Resonance FM.
Transcendenz offers to connect our everyday life to an invisible reality, the one of ideas, concepts and philosophical questionings which the world is full of but that our eyes cant’ see. By bringing together the concepts of augmented/altered reality, Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and social networks, Transcendenz offers to live immersive philosophical experiences.
Transcendenz is the outcome of Michaël Harboun’s thesis project at Strate College. He started from a single, inspirational word: Invisible. He says: “After analysing what was invisible to our eyes and our minds, I realized there was something tending to disappear in our fast-paced, information-saturated societies…”
“The idea of Transcendenz came from a personal “design reaction” to the world in which we are living. By observing our modern societies, a certain paradox caught my interest. This paradox concerns the way we behave in time.
On one hand we are constantly trying to be efficient, organized and quick. As time is money, no time should be lost unnecessarily. We try to save every single minute and be as productive as possible, which makes us busy people.
On the other hand, in our free time, we suddenly have so much time for ourselves that we don’t know what to do with it anymore. Not knowing where to invest our time, most of us will consume it throughout technological mediums. Social networks, TV or videogames are some perfect examples. These information technologies put us in a time of connection, interaction and distraction, hence separating us from the empty time.”
Upress: Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, animals, and artificial intelligence. Yet the vast majority of the stuff in our universe, and even in our lives, remains beyond serious philosophical concern.
In Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing, Ian Bogost develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things at the center of being—a philosophy in which nothing exists any more or less than anything else, in which humans are elements but not the sole or even primary elements of philosophical interest. And unlike experimental phenomenology or the philosophy of technology, Bogost’s alien phenomenology takes for granted that all beings interact with and perceive one another. This experience, however, withdraws from human comprehension and becomes accessible only through a speculative philosophy based on metaphor.
Providing a new approach for understanding the experience of things as things, Bogost also calls on philosophers to rethink their craft. Drawing on his own background as a videogame designer, Bogost encourages professional thinkers to become makers as well, engineers who construct things as much as they think and write about them.
Ian Bogost is professor of digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His most recent book is How to Do Things with Videogames (Minnesota, 2011).
Kyle Munkittrick: Mass Effect is epic. It’s the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more with a protagonist who could be the love-child of Picard, Skywalker, and Starbuck. It’s one of the most important pieces of science fiction narrative of our generation. Mass Effect goes so far beyond other fictional universes in ways that you may not have yet realized. It is cosmic in scope and scale.
Sci-fi nerds have long debated over which fictional universe is the best. The Star Trek vs Star Wars contest is infamous into banality, with lesser skirmishes among fans of shows and books like Battlestar Galactica, Enders Game, Xenogenesis, Farscape, Dune, Firefly, Stargate, and others fleshing out the field. Don’t mistake this piece as another pointless kerfuffle among obsessive basement dwellers. Mass Effect matters because of its ability to reflect on our society as a whole.
Science fiction is one of the best forms of social satire and critique. Want to sneak in some absolutely scandalous social more, like, say, oh, I don’t know, a black woman into a position of power in the ‘60s? Put her on a starship command deck.
Most science fiction, even the epic universes in Star Wars and Star Trek, pick only two or three issues to investigate in depth. Sure, an episode here or a character there might nod to other concepts worthy of investigation, but the scope of the series often prevents the narrative from mining the idea for what it’s worth.
Mass Effect can and does take ideas to a new plane of existence. Think of the Big Issues in your favorite series. Whether it is realistic science explaining humanoid life throughout the galaxy, or dealing with FTL travel, or the ethical ambiguity of progress, or even the very purpose of the human race in our universe, Mass Effect has got it. By virtue of three simple traits – its medium, its message, and its philosophy – Mass Effect eclipses and engulfs all of science fiction’s greatest universes. Let me show you how.
A paper by Adrian J. Ivakhiv for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. Here is his original conference abstract:
Ecocinema has tended to be defined thematically as “cinema with ecological themes,” i.e., as “environmental films,” or formally as (something like) “cinema that takes ecology seriously.” Following these two trends, good ecocinema might be defined either as cinema that successfully promotes ecological themes or cinema that has ecologically beneficial effects, or that at least minimizes its ecologically harmful effects. But these two approaches neither take cinema nor ecology seriously enough.
This paper argues on behalf of an engagement with philosophy, including both film-philosophy and ecophilosophy. It insists that eco-film critics need to think through both the film/cinema object (what is cinema and how is it changing in the digital era?) and the eco-subject (what is ecology, and how can both films and their viewers be considered ecological and ecologically?). Proposing that a genuine “ecocinema” requires an engagement with eco/cinema philosophy, it asks what kinds of films might result from such an engagement. It compares James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), Hubert Sauper’s Darwin’s Nightmare (2004), and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2010) in light of these concerns.
Johan Bergstrom: The work Pagan Postcards takes the ideologies of Norwegian black metal as its starting point. In a series of images fragments of lyrics are taken out of their context to be projected on norwegian scenery, the same scenery that served as inspiration for a new wave of black metal. Instead of embracing the characteristic dark and symbolic visual codes of black metal, the sceneries here are displayed in the manner of Romanticism and influenced by Norwegian romanticist painters like Johan Christian Dahl, Hans Gude and August Cappelen. Many of the ideas that defined Romanticism could two hundred years later be found in the manifestoes of Black Metal. For all of its violence and misanthropy, black metal is a deeply romantic movement and this is nowhere more evident that in their hymns to nature.
This underground music scene became worldwide notorious through sensationalized media reports on a series of symbolic acts of violence. The second wave of Black Metal, emerging in Norway in the early 1990s, gave expression to a more aggressive and incarnated satanic or heathen ideology than their predecessors. Bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Ensalved and Thorns came to define what soon would be labeled as True Norwegian Black Metal. The scene´s quest for authenticity triggered an arms race that ended up in suicide, murders and church burnings. All in favor of appearing as the most evil, or the most “true”. Besides the anti-Christian mindset and an opposition to modern society in general, black metal is fixated with notions of a idealized pre-Christian past. It desires a transformation of the self into a new/old version of humanity that back metalers believe is empowered, violent and inseparably linked to the harshness and amorality of nature. By placing almost exclusive emphasis on emotion, sensory experience and mysticism, black metal rejects the basic tenets of the Enlightenment.
In less extreme, still resembling philosophy, the Romanticism movement celebrated independence of human spirit and the supremacy of feeling. Romanticist artists investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the mysterious, the occult, the diseased and the satanic. In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation and awe—especially that which was experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities.
Through sampling and remixing the work Pagan Postcards takes an open-ended and ambiguous shape, on the one hand hinting an approaching apocalypse and on the other hand celebrating the grandeur of nature. It gives a voice to the gloomy moods of contemporary society in the wake of financial crises, natural disasters, wars and acts of terror as well as to a rising back-to-nature movement.
The following is an exploration of the relationship shared between space, relationality, and virtuality as it comes to bear on a particular genre of revolutionary expression: the manifesto. My argument here is in opposition to thinkers like Naomi Klein who have asserted the virtual power of the internet and social media to be the end of the manifesto genre; something like, we have twitter, we have Facebook, therefore manifestos are obsolete. Rather, my argument is in favor of a metamorphosis where the genre is concerned and where revolutionary expression is evolving. To put it another way, I am interested in thinking a politics of the manifesto genre that exceeds its own instrumentality. So the manifesto is being treated here as a provocation toward thinking the shape and character of a radical politics. By way of a brief and somewhat simplified characterization of the genre, I want to think in opposition to, or beyond, two primary problems where the genre is concerned. First, I want to think the function of the manifesto against an ought or revolutionary telos that would name its future and provide the political program to manifest it. Second, I want to problematize the Schmittian character of the genre, the bi-partisan, “friend” vs. “enemy” relation that is so often asserted where the manifesto names a revolutionary telos.
This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
This conference takes up the “nonhuman turn” that has been emerging in the arts, humanities, and social sciences over the past few decades. Intensifying in the 21st century, this nonhuman turn can be traced to a variety of different intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the 20th century:
actor-network theory, particularly Bruno Latour’s career-long project to articulate technical mediation, nonhuman agency, and the politics of things
affect theory, both in its philosophical and psychological manifestations and as it has been mobilized by queer theory
animal studies, as developed in the work of Donna Haraway, projects for animal rights, and a more general critique of speciesism
the assemblage theory of Gilles Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda, Latour, and others
new brain sciences like neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence
new media theory, especially as it has paid close attention to technical networks, material interfaces, and computational analysis
the new materialism in feminism, philosophy, and marxism
varieties of speculative realism like object-oriented philosophy, vitalism, and panpsychism
and systems theory in its social, technical, and ecological manifestations
Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their aims, objects, and methodologies. But they are all of a piece in taking up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of 21st century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Invited speakers (to date) include:
Jane Bennett (Political Science, Johns Hopkins)
Ian Bogost (Literature, Communication, Culture, Georgia Tech)
Wendy Chun (Media and Modern Culture, Brown)
Mark Hansen (Literature, Duke)
Erin Manning (Philosophy/Dance, Concordia University, Montreal)
Brian Massumi (Philosophy, University of Montreal)
Tim Morton (English, UC-Davis)
Steven Shaviro (English, Wayne State)
In 1876, the first issue of the Revue historique was published in Paris. The birth of the journal is commonly seen as a founding moment. History was now defined as a professional discipline, with explicit scientific and more precise methodological requirements, with specific and codified forms of training and a strong sense of academic community. There is nothing here that is specific to France: actually, the German model of historical erudition had inspired a number of national communities in Europe and outside Europe. On the occasion of the first issue of the new Revue, one of the directors, Gabriel Monod, a leading figure of the time, addressed future contributors. In his editorial, he recommended “avoiding contemporary controversies, addressing the subjects of their studies with the methodological rigor and absence of bias required by science, and not seeking arguments for or against any theory involved indirectly only.” Monod then explained the insufficient progress of the discipline in France as resulting from “political and religious passions” which, “in the absence of scientific tradition” had not been curbed. Hence the utmost restraint was called for. A new time was open to science, method and objectivity after decades of tense, dense, and exhausting ideological conflicts on the French Revolution, the absolute monarchy and the conflicting relations between Church and State over centuries. Historians would better choose to cool their objects of study down and avoid contemporary topics. Distancing the past now was a pressing requirement.
The Antipode Foundation, Antipode’s new companion website/blog. Rather than a repository for so many addenda, or somewhere to send material which can’t ‘cut it’ in the pages of the journal, we want this to be something with a point, something of significance, working to create and support a radical geography community. Rather than a cynical exercise in advertising, or some modish initiative launched unthinkingly, we want this to be something with as much purpose and direction, substance and quality, and vitality and energy as its parent journal. With all this firmly in mind, we’ll be extending some already existing projects as well as launching some new ones.
Since August 1969 Antipode has published peer-reviewed papers which offer a radical (Marxist/socialist/anarchist/anti-racist/feminist/queer/green) analysis of geographical issues and whose intent is to engender the development of a new and better society. Now appearing five times a year and published by Wiley-Blackwell, Antipode continues to publish some of the best and most provocative radical geographical work available today; work from both geographers and their fellow travellers; from scholars both eminent and emerging.
Antipode sponsors two keynote lectures each year; one at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting and one at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) annual conference. We invite presenters who represent both the political commitment and intellectual integrity that characterize a radical journal of geography.
Beyond the Neoliberal Zombieland. Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia, Canada. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), August 2011
And the social science — not a “gay science,” but a rueful –which finds the secret of this universe in “supply and demand,” and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a “gay science,” I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.” Thomas Carlyle.
“Economics is a serious subject” Joan Robinson.
“And ‘when laughter and gaiety are found, thinking is good for nothing’- that is the prejudice of this serious beast against all ‘gay science’” Friedrich Nietzsche.
“The less education a man has, or in other words, the less he knows of the specific connection of the objects to which he directs his observations, the greater is his tendency to launch out into all sorts of empty possibilities. An instance of this habit in the political sphere is seen in the pot-house politician.” (G.W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences)
Established in 2006,PARRHESIA: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY is dedicated to publishing the latest work on continental philosophy, along with new translations and interviews with contemporary thinkers.
All pieces published in the essay section of PARRHESIA are double blind peer-reviewed.
PARRHESIA is affiliated with the Schools of Philosophy and English at the University of Melbourne, and the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy.
How can objects sometimes be vibrant things with an effective presence independent of the words, images, and feelings they may provoke in humans? This question is posed by Political theorist Jane Bennett delivers the inaugural lecture as the Vera List Center for Art and Politics embarks on a two-year exploration of “Thingness,” the nature of matter. In the face of virtual realities, social media and disembodied existences, the center’s programs will focus on the material conditions of our lives. Jane Bennet is a professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University. In her latest book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke, 2010), she asks how our politics might approach public concerns were we to seriously consider not just our human experience of things but the things themselves. How is it that things can elide their status as possessions, tools, or aesthetic objects and manifest traces of independence and vitality? Following the tangled threads that link vibrant materialities, human selves, and the “agentic assemblages” they form, Bennett examines what hoarders, people who are preternaturally attuned to “things,” can teach us about the agency, causality, and artistry in a world overflowing with stuff. Professor Bennet is a founding member of the journal Theory & Event, and is currently working on a project on over-consumption, new ecologies, and Walt Whitman’s materialism.
Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.
This book is what he found. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits—folklore and pop culture, family traditions and national myth, apparent facts and inherent fictions—and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.
Marked by Foer’s moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the humor and style that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Foer’s latest tour de force informs and delights, challenging us to explore what is too often conveniently brushed aside. A celebration and a reckoning, Eating Animals is a story about the stories we’ve told—and the stories we now need to tell.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His work has received numerous awards and been translated into thirty-six languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Jim Moran explains why saving the planet will be an uphill struggle.
The recent development of the branch of philosophy called ‘environmental philosophy’, or as it is sometimes referred to, ‘environmental ethics’, has been characterized by a variety of theoretical disputes about the best way to provide a philosophical basis for engagement with the environmental problems facing us, now and in the future. Many of the early writers hoped that a new environmental ethics would emerge, embodying a set of principles that could help us deal with our relation to animals and the natural world in a way that traditional ethical theories seemed to have overlooked.
One of the early contributors to this project was Aldo Leopold, who was not a philosopher but a professor of forestry and land management. His famous essay ‘The Land Ethic’, found in his 1949 book The Sand County Almanac, has stimulated a great deal of discussion about the kind of principles we need to guide us on environmental issues. Leopold argued for the extension of what we see as worthy of our respect from the human community to include animals and the natural world, or what he referred to as ‘the biotic community’. His famous principle, briefly expressed, was, ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’.
Leopold carried forward a discussion by nineteenth century conservationists about whether nature should be preserved only because of its economic and practical benefits for humans or because it provides value beyond merely supplying natural resources. He mentioned the songs of birds and the beauty of flowers as being part of nature’s bounty. He also brought into focus the importance of the interconnection of things in nature, defending the kind of holistic perspective which has since played such a crucial role in scientific ecology. He insisted that environmental ethics should focus on systems and not just on individual things. Our human dependence on nature cannot be understood without a deep ecological study of the interconnectedness of life. Rachel Carson’s famous 1962 book Silent Spring, which was so important in stimulating environmental awareness, is a good example of this approach to conservation.
Art Institutions and the Feminist Dialectic aims to explore the unique challenges and opportunities presented by the exhibition, acquisition and preservation of feminist artwork by Ontario’s public art galleries. In December 2008, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG), in collaboration with Carla Garnet, organized a symposium that invited women curators, museum professionals and artists to bring attention to this topic, “Art Institutions and the Feminist Dialectic.” Nine Canadian women visual art professionals were invited to speak at the symposium.
An additional presentation from Carmen Mörsch, an international arts educator and researcher, is also included, presented in February 2010. The purpose of this website is to publish the transcripts, video and audio recordings of this symposium online, making them publicly available to engage a wider audience. We encourage visitors to engage with these critical practices and important presentations, as well as the additional resources and links provided by the presenters.
Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that’s what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever met.
Most of the four million slaves shipped from Africa to Brazil were sold in Salvador, the first residence of Portugal’s colonial rulers. It’s still Brazil’s blackest city. In Ribeiro’s neighborhood, children play football or do capoeira, pray in Pentecostal Churches or worship African gods. Many are involved with drugs; “every year we lose students to crack,” she tells me. And they study philosophy two hours each week because of a 2008 law that mandates philosophy instruction in all Brazilian high schools. Nine million teenagers now take philosophy classes for three years.
“But seeing things as they really are isn’t enough,” Ribeiro insists. As in Plato’s parable in The Republic, the students must go back to the cave and apply what they’ve learned. Their lives give them rich opportunities for such application. The contrast between the new luxury hotels along the beach and Itapuã’s overcrowded streets gives rise to questions about equality and justice. Children kicking around a can introduce a discussion about democracy: football is one of the few truly democratic practices here; success depends on merit, not class privilege. Moving between philosophy and practice, the students can revise their views in light of what Plato, Hobbes, or Locke had to say about equality, justice, and democracy and discuss their own roles as political agents.
Written by Carlos Fraenkel, Boston Review. Continue HERE
Once upon a time there was a primitive tribe that hunted and gathered in a verdant forest in a temperate clime.
I call them a “tribe” but that name may mislead if it suggests some rigorous form of social organization. In fact, the group was about as un-organized as it is possible for people to be. There were among them no elders, chiefs, shamans or any other kind of leader with authority over his fellows. With one exception– which we will soon discuss — there were no laws, rules or taboos that were obeyed or enforced among them and no judges or police to enforce them.
This lack of norms was reflected in their language which (luckily for our narrative purposes) was much like modern English but which lacked any moral or legal vocabulary. The natives never spoke of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘legal’ or ‘law’. They had no words for ‘promise’, or ‘contract’ and none for ‘property’ or ‘ownership’.
Even so, as I just averred, there was one rule that the natives generally acknowledged and mostly conformed to. They called it “The Rule”.
The Rule: No Bullying!
By ‘bullying’ the natives seem to have meant, roughly, hurting other people or using force or the threat of force to compel others to do what they would otherwise not do. But not every use of force or infliction of harm was regarded as bullying.
It was, for example, not considered bullying to use force or its threat to defend oneself or someone else against a bully. The Rule permitted self-defense and “other defense” and this had important consequences for all of tribal life.
Writing in the New York Times, Peter Singer and Agata Sagan ask “Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?” I dunno. Why?
The infamous Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments showed that given the right circumstances, most of us act monstrously. Indeed, given pretty mundane circumstances, most of us will act pretty callously, hustling past people in urgent need in simply to avoid the hassle. But not all of us do this. Some folks do the right thing anyway, even when it’s not easy. Singer and Sagan speculate that something special must be going on in those peoples’ brains. So maybe we can figure out what that is and put it in a pill!
If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a “morality pill” — a drug that makes us more likely to help?
The answer is: no. And I think the question invites confusion. Morality is not exhausted by helping. Anyway, help do what?
Singer is perhaps the world’s most famous utilitarian, so maybe he’s got “help people feel more pleasure and less pain” in mind. Since utilitarianism is monomaniacally focused on how people feel, it can be tempting for utilitarians to see sympathy and the drive to ease suffering as the principal moral sentiments. But utilitarianism does not actually prescribe that we should be motivated to minimize suffering and maximize happiness. It tells us to do whatever minimizes suffering and maximizes happiness. It’s possible that wanting to help and trying to help doesn’t much help in this sense.
Written by Will Wilkinson, Big Think. ContinueHERE
Dan Fessler: As an undergraduate, most of the professors in the Anthropology Department at my university practiced psychological anthropology, a subfield of sociocultural anthropology that combines theories from various branches of psychology with the study of culture. I decided that I was going to be a psychological anthropologist, and I continued on at the same university, with the same professors, for my graduate degrees. Although I was confident that, to understand human behavior, it was necessary to investigate the interaction of mind and culture, I nevertheless became increasingly dissatisfied with psychological anthropology, which lacks an overarching theory from which to derive hypotheses, and which often eschews hypothesis testing in favor of description and interpretation. Anthropologists usually emphasize the differences between people in different societies, yet, during my doctoral field research, I was impressed by the underlying universalities in human emotions. I began thinking more about human evolution, and, with guidance from several primatologists, I gradually began to invent my own version of evolutionary psychology. I was unaware that such a discipline was already emerging – indeed, many of my ‘new’ ideas had already been formulated more clearly by others. It was a revelation when I attended my first meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and discovered a whole field devoted to my area of interest.
Via The International Cognition & Culture Institute’s Blog. Continue HERE
A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.”
The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play about artificial factory workers rising against their human overlords. Just 22 years later, Isaac Asimov invented the “Three Laws of Robotics” to serve as a hierarchical ethical code for the robots in his stories: first, never harm a human being through action or inaction; second, obey human orders; last, protect oneself. From the first story in which the laws appeared, Asimov explored their inherent contradictions. Great fiction, but unworkable theory.
The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word “robot” is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent “technological singularity” in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. Many Singularitarians assume a lot, not the least of which is that intelligence is fundamentally a computational process. The techno-optimists among them also believe that such machines will be essentially friendly to human beings. I am skeptical about the Singularity, and even if “artificial intelligence” is not an oxymoron, “friendly A.I.” will require considerable scientific progress on a number of fronts.
You are special. Don’t worry, this is not the start of yet another Joel Osteen sermon. I mean only that your existence, itself a wildly improbable fact, increasingly seems to be the only peg on which cosmologists can hang the existence of our Universe.
Oh, and not just you, by the way. I’m special, too. All of us observers capable of wondering why we are here are special, because we contribute to what is known as the Anthropic Principle. Here’s the nub of it, given by Stephen Hawking and a colleague in 1973: “The answer to the question ‘why is the universe [the way it is]?’ is ‘because we are here.’”
There’s something odd about that. As the cosmologist George F.R. Ellis notes, the Anthropic Principle sends the arrow of causation winging, feathers first, back to the bow. It declares, to paraphrase DesCartes, “I think, therefore the Multiverse.”
Written by Clay Farris Naff at the Huffington Post. Continue HERE
What existed before the big bang? What is the nature of time? Is our universe one of many? On the big questions science cannot (yet?) answer, a new crop of philosophers are trying to provide answers.
Last May, Stephen Hawking gave a talk at Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in which he declared philosophy to be dead. In his book The Grand Design, Hawking went even further. “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Traditionally these were questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” Hawking wrote. “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”
In December, a group of professors from America’s top philosophy departments, including Columbia, Yale, and NYU, set out to establish the philosophy of cosmology as a new field of study within the philosophy of physics. The group aims to bring a philosophical approach to the basic questions at the heart of physics, including those concerning the nature, age and fate of the universe. This past week, a second group of scholars from Oxford and Cambridge announced their intention to launch a similar project in the United Kingdom.
One of the founding members of the American group, Tim Maudlin, was recently hired by New York University, the top ranked philosophy department in the English-speaking world. Maudlin is a philosopher of physics whose interests range from the foundations of physics, to topics more firmly within the domain of philosophy, like metaphysics and logic.
Yesterday I spoke with Maudlin by phone about cosmology, multiple universes, the nature of time, the odds of extraterrestrial life, and why Stephen Hawking is wrong about philosophy.
Written by Ross Andersen. Interview with Tim Maudlin HERE
The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture 2010, given by Professor Bruno Latour: “May Nature Be Recomposed? A Few Questions of Cosmopolitics”.
Location: Nobel Museum, Svenska Akademiens Börssal, May 11 2010. The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture is given every spring at the Nobel Museum by an international scholar of excellence.
In 1889, when Friedrich Nietzsche suffered the mental collapse that ended his career, he was virtually unknown. Yet by the time of his death in 1900 at the age of 55, he had become the philosophical celebrity of his age. From Russia to America, admirers echoed his estimation of himself as a titanic figure who could alter the course of history: “I am by far the most terrible human being that has existed so far; this does not preclude the possibility that I shall be the most beneficial.” His origins were humble for the role. The son of a small-town Lutheran minister, he steeped himself in classical literature while growing up in eastern Germany. When he was 24, he secured a professorship in Basel, Switzerland, and a few years later published his first book, “The Birth of Tragedy.” Against the common view of the ancient Greeks as the epitome of serene equipoise, Nietzsche emphasized the “Dionysian” excess and frenzy that complemented the “Apollonian” virtues of clarity and repose. The book’s success was limited, and its author was mocked by one leading classicist as an atavist run amok who should “gather tigers and panthers about his knees, but not the youth of Germany.”
Written by ALEXANDER STAR at The New York Times. Continue HERE
The idea of happiness has changed. It has emerged as a measurable, autonomous, manageable, psychological variable in the global middle-class culture. The self-conscious, determined search for happiness has gradually transformed the idea of happiness from a mental state to an objectified quality of life that can be attained the way an athlete after training under specialists and going through a strict regimen of exercises and diet wins a medal in a track meet. Might it be that the sense of well-being of a mentally healthy person shows its robustness by being able to live with some amount of unhappiness and what is commonly seen as ill-health?
This is based on the 13th Kappen Memorial Lecture, delivered at Bangalore on 22 September 2011.
It has grown out of a trialogue among Tamotsu Aoki, Nur Yalman, and the author, organised some years ago by Iwanami Shoten at Tokyo. The discussion spilled into a conference on “Culture and Hegemony: Politics of Culture in the Age of Globalisation”, organised by GRIPS project of the University of Tokyo and by the Institut fur Ethnologie, Ruprecht-Karls-Universit, Heidelberg, and into a small article published in Spanish in an Yearbook.
Ashis Nandy is with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
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In 2007, one of Britain’s leading schools, Wellington College at Crowthorne, announced that it would offer classes on happiness to combat materialism and celebrity obsession.1 The following year, New Scientist summarised the results of a 65-country survey to show that the highest proportion of happy persons lived in, of all places, Nigeria, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. It is true that happiness surveys differ in their findings. According to some, happiness has much to do with prosperity, levels of development and healthcare; according to others, these things do not matter. It is the second set that has produced countries like Vanuatu, a former happiest country in the world that most have not heard of, and last year’s world champion in happiness, Bangladesh, which many believe could well qualify as one of the world’s unhappiest countries.2 In comparison, some of the richest nations languish near the bottom of the list.
However, I am not concerned here with comparative happiness or the methodology of studying happiness. I am concerned with the emergence of happiness as a measurable, autonomous, manageable, psychological variable in the global middle-class culture. And the two events can be read as parts of the same story. If the first factoid – discovery of happiness as a teachable discipline – suggests that in some parts of the world happiness is becoming a realm of training, guidance and expertise, the second reaffirms the ancient “self-consoling” “naïve” belief that you cannot always be happy just by virtue of being wealthy, secure or occupied. You have to learn to be happy.
Together they partly explain why clenched-teeth pursuit of happiness has become a major feature and a discovery of our times. The other explanations possibly are the growing confidence in some sections of the globe in the power of human volition and the developing technology of human self-engineering as by-products of the ideology of individualism. These changes have pushed many to believe that it is up to them, individually, to do something about their happiness, that happiness cannot happen, nor can it be given. It has to be earned or acquired. This self-conscious, determined search for happiness has gradually transformed the idea of happiness from a mental state to an objectified quality of life that can be attained the way an athlete – after training under specialists and going through a strict regimen of exercises and diet – wins a medal in a track meet.
Beyond the Neoliberal Zombieland. Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia, Canada. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), August 2011
Leif Parsons
Multiverse by BellaCielo
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