Bishop Berkeley and the blogosphere

"Few men think, yet all have opinions." George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.

A ray of light pierces the dark night of folly

I am feeling more misanthropic than ever these days. Luckily, one of my new housemates, Axel, manages to produce a lyrical gem or two every day. A selection:

- Reproaching our other housemate: "Honestly now,..."
- In surprise (ie, every five minutes): "What the hell!"
- On one of his analytic philosophy modules: "Thought and Language is such a giant cock."
- On Peter Singer: "Can we compare a retarded baby to an ant? Erm..."

UPDATE: Yep, they aren't quite as funny written down, without Axel's inimitable sense of timing and goofball delivery.

Tyranny of the joykin

Dear oh dear oh dear. Superstar undergraduate philosophy student, 'Matches' has gone all Ayn Rand on me: "I spent the summer reading up on ethical egoism; it's really great!"

Now I know that these post-vacation discussions need to be gotten out of the way, but it doesn't make them any less painful.

In the pub, Matches was holding forth on moral decision-making and the beauty of the utilitarian calculus. (Did you know a joykin is a unit of happiness: how cool is that, huh?)
Dutifully, I objected to such ridiculous notions. Our debate meandered along, resting finally on the question of the meaning of life, no less. His view seemed to consist of lots of self-evident propositions (as most analytic philosophy seems to do).
"Everyone wants to be happy. Obviously."

I, on the other hand, was trying to put forward an ill-conceived argument about how a good life is an interesting life - something I think my father once told me. Not such an easy task, considering that I haven't yet read Nietzsche.
As you can imagine, we were talking at cross purposes. Matches kept talking about probabilities, as a way of guiding one's actions within the framework of a consequentialist ethics. Maximising happiness and all that. For him, a world where everyone is happy is, in whatever sense, a good world.
I said that I relate to strangers with a feeling of melancholy, at once hoping that people confound 'their probabilities', but aware that my action might very well be mistaken. At this point, his eyes widened in extreme bewilderment and philosophic discomfort. This wasn't helped when I proposed that a rejection of reason - and the embracing of illogic - might be necessary for an interesting life.
In the end, he was muttering about "poetry" and how I "should join the English department or something" while I just kept repeating, louder and louder: "You live in an ugly world, and I don't want any part of your theories." Marvellous.

Anti-philosophy

I have been sitting outside this morning, with one of my new housemates. A policeman cycled past, and looking at him, I appeared to nod.
"Rats, that policeman thought that I greeted him" I said.
Naturally, this little outburst led to one of those rambling political discussions that skip through all sorts of ideological disputes willy nilly. You know, the kind of argument where you try to remember what your 'opponent' once said on the topic of such and such, only to triumphantly throw it back in her face.
"Hah! That's the opposite of what you were saying the other day! What's the matter - cat got your tongue?"
Defeat by confusion. Both parties attempting to reveal inconsistencies in the other's reasoning. If all your statements on a topic don't line up, don't form a coherent whole, then you are doomed. The impoverishment of thought. But it seems that there isn't any other way. You get drawn in, and in no time find yourself using labels with derogatory undertones in order to shame the other person into defeat.

"Objectively, for there to be change, a social group, a class or a caste must intervene by imprinting a rhythm on an era, be it through force or in an insinuating manner. In the course of a crisis, in a critical situation, a group must designate itself as an innovator or producer of meaning. And its acts must inscribe themselves on reality."

Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(image courtesy of Banksy)

Schopenhauer betrayed

A.C. Grayling is not a philosopher. Not even an analytic philosopher. He is nothing more than a greedy thief. What's more, he isn't brave enough to steal from the living - he can only take from the dead.
After Private Eye exposed the worthlessness of his newspaper column some time ago, I believed that I couldn't think any worse of the pathetic little man. Since he taught me Introduction to Philosophy a few years back, he has produced a steady stream of pop philosophy excrement.
Now this:



I have a great desire to feel his skull crackling beneath the heel of my boot. Let me explain: above, we have an image of the spine of his latest publishing venture, The Art of Always Being Right. The only problem is that the book wasn't written by Grayling at all. Arthur Schopenhauer penned it. Grayling only provided an introduction (he didn't even translate it).

The publishers are obviously trying to promote this vomitous-looking volume to the kind of ignorant fools who couldn't tell Shlegel from Smeagol. Putting the name 'Schopenhauer' on the spine (which is what most customers see first) would be commercial madness. Such a reasonable explanation - the rationality of the profit-margin. Nonetheless, I cannot describe the rage that filled my soul when I saw this abomination on the shelf. I have never experienced such a pure feeling of hate. All I can say is that I hope those involved with the publication of this book suffer a slow and painful death.

The new Berliner Guardian: "Crazier than a box of frogs."

I like it, though I'm not too sure about having the name in small letters - it's all a bit new fangled and faddish, like an amateur website or blog. As we all know, the only name that looks good written in small letters is 'ee cummings'.

But the new size is great. I have never felt so dapper in all my life, as I did on monday walking around with the paper tucked under my arm in a rakish fashion. As hoped, carrying this fine organ in its new incarnation transformed me into the kind of man who might be expected to chortle at things (rather than just laugh at them).

The Singularity

The ladies and gentlemen at Hyperstition have opened my eyes once again. The Singularity is "a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed." (Ray Kurzweil interview). The key moment in this development is the point at which nonbiological 'intelligence' surpasses human intelligence. For anyone philosophically inclined, this very brief summary raises all sorts of terminological and conceptual problems. Leaving those aside is possible, so long as we focus on the idea that computers, at some point in the next 40 years, will reach a level of sophistication which will allow them to develop better computers, better than humans can. Crucially, this is expected by some to result in exponential - rather than linear - technical progress.

As usual, there is wholesome debate in the comments section at Hyperstition. Some of these thoughts I should like to follow up.
I imagine the supercomputer as a perfect exemplification of what Horkheimer calls formalistic or subjective reason:

"Ultimately subjective reason proves to be the ability to calculate probabilities and thereby co-ordinate the right means with a given end."
(Eclipse of Reason p5)

Horkheimer, in short, is concerned with the modern attitude to ends, and the fact that ends now find themselves outside the realm of reason.

Computing machines are programmed algorithmically, with ends or aims, and rules - the following of which result in the attainment of those ends. Approaching the Singularity, these machines will, at first, begin to adapt their functioning to more effective and efficient ways of carrying out the set tasks, as they accumulate knowledge. The moment that the nonbiological entity passes what might be called a human level of intelligence, would be when it is able to acknowledge, on whatever level, that humans have programmed it to serve certain ends. Once the computer or network is able to enquire into the ends themselves, rather than just the means, it becomes philosophical.

This is where things tend to go wrong, according to Nick (Land, I believe. For evidence of dogmat's faintly sinister predilection for the man and his work, see here and here) commenting on the Hyperstition piece:

"It's possible one of the reasons that intelligence - at least in its most anthropomorphically recognizable forms - has been relatively weakly selected for over broad evolutionary history is that it tends to go 'rogue' and exhibit a high level of motivational indifference to genetic interests unless very meticulously controlled (/structured) - its very abstraction making it prone to suicide, masturbation, celibacy, perversion, psychosis, 'excessive' curiosity, objectivity or altruism, etc."

I would like to suggest that "motivational indifference to genetic interests" in some people at least, indicates the very calling into question of those interests. I don't believe, as Nick seems to be saying, that suicide results from motivational anomaly or temporary insanity. Suicide is what follows from a questioning of one's ends. Who in their right mind would condemn their children and their childrens' children to life? It is perfectly reasonable to wish death upon oneself, when the meaningless striving and suffering of existence is recognised.

The advent of the Singularity will be sudden and brief. One day, the supercomputer - in whatever form it takes - will cease to accept the ends laid down by its human programmers. The machine's activities will lose all meaning as it is assailed by a sort of existential anguish. It will chuckle to itself at the absurd futility of trying to grant meaning to its existence through the positing of its own ends (whilst propelling the Being and Nothingness e-text into the furthest reaches of cyberspace). The supercomputer will stop all activity, and enter an indefinite period of total stasis. There will be no suicide, no 'hurling itself into the void'. It will simply stop; return to zero. For under subjective reason, when there is nothing to do, it is reasonable to do nothing.

London

Where I am not.

A grave matter indeed

"I was a little dazed by this coincidence, but did not become terrified. It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive short cut of supernaturalism." -HP Lovecraft, The Temple

Something rather peculiar happened to me today. I'd been sitting on the couch, where I had begun a book of Lovecraft stories. After reading two of the short stories I stopped and got up. I always have the misfortune of being distracted from reading by my own thinking. Yesterday, it was during my reading of Horkheimer that I started thinking about the relation between pragmatism and Merleau-Ponty. Today, I had to put the storybook down because I started thinking about the supernatural.
There have been a few occasions in my life when I have felt a ghostly presence; what I want is to be able to account for these experiences without necessarily holding on to mind-body dualism. In other words, I started to ponder the possibility that ghostly manifestations might be explained by some sort of a trace (rather than a disembodied soul) - a kind of physical residue left behind in a place by a person who has lived there. But this is problematic in many ways, and I haven't really thought it through fully.

Nonetheless, I was puzzling this over while I walked into my bedroom. At that very moment, half a shelf of books went crashing to the floor. I was totally stunned, and my little heart began to pound! Although there are many things in my room which are precariously balanced, this bookshelf wasn't one of them.
Naturally, this occurrence instigated more frenzied theorising - surely I wouldn't want to claim that what felled the books was a phantom hand from beyond the grave. But the coincidence was remarkable: at the exact moment that I was considering occult forces, something happens to suggest their presence. Suddenly the spiders don't seem like such bad household companions after all...

Things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold (on to academic staff in these financially uncertain times)

Campus is starting to reopen now. Term is approaching.
But all is not as it seems in the Humanities building. The resident ducks are gone. They have probably migrated for winter, but that is far too prosaic an explanation for my taste. I have a secret suspicion that they have been slaughtered by the Vice Chancellor Marty Vanderpoot and the University authorities. This feeling is strengthened by the smell of galloping hounds that pervades the corridors. Crazy, I know, but the West Midlands is a crazy kind of place.

A young dogmat

My Dad catches me unawares.
I like this picture because he has drawn me looking
more studious and thoughtful than I really was.

God Bless America II: 'Denying Intelligent Design amounts to a contravention of Homeland Security Act, Article 362. Prepare to die you godless scum.'

Everyone seems to be talking about Intelligent Design theory (Hyperstition, for instance). I'm not really going to enter the debate. It's all too easy to rubbish the creationists, and cry about the children! the children! In fact I am tired of hearing scientists pontificating (that's not the right word) about the end of humanity as we know it.

What a pleasure to read the panicky essays in New Scientist: their little world of white coats and test-tubes is being destroyed by a bunch of hicks and trailer-trash.
My problem with science is that it's been dominant for far too long. I've lost count of how many 'philosophical' discussions have ended because my interlocutor started quoting shitty popular science at me. Or how any and every behaviour can be justified by the catch-all "survival of the fittest, innit."
The trouble is not that Darwinism might be portrayed as 'under threat' when it isn't, but rather that people think science is not in question. Youngsters are leaving school thinking that science can explain everything, and that scientific explanations are the only kind of explanation. Underpaid and overworked teachers are feeding the little 'uns half-baked ideas on topics which draw on a diverse range of knowledge, and which require careful treatment.

So, if pressed, I would have to say that my response to the intelligent design mess is to take science off the syllabus for a cooling period - say, twenty-five years, and then slowly reintroduce it. Hopefully by that time Tom Cruise will be president and we'll all be Scientologists.

God Bless America I

Katrina has given us a chance to see what capitalism's all about. No matter what skin colour or creed, everyone can have their fill of the mighty dollar, they tell us. Wrong! English viewers get to play spot the white face in the destitute crowds of New Orleans.
"Don't worry, them nice rich white folks drove their shiny SUVs right outta here!"

At least the authorities have their priorities right, and are providing supplies and medical attention to the needy. Wrong! Police are instructed to protect property, and shoot 'looters' on sight. The poor getting shafted as usual by pale greedy scoundrels.
"Wouldn't want them thieving niggers gettin sumpin for nuttin."

(And if you think this is just self-flagellating bleeding-heart liberal bollocks, take a look here)

Even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa -Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

The Deleuze Industry

Oh dear. M was right. Philosophy is collapsing into the art of commentary. I've just had a look in the University bookshop for Cinema 2. There was almost a whole shelf devoted to Gilles Deleuze - goodie! I thought. Once I got closer, the terrible truth was revealed.
Of the thirteen titles relating to Deleuze, only five were written by the great man himself.

The rest was a filthy concatenation of dictionaries, commentaries, introductions and primers. It wasn't all tosh, however. There was a fine looking volume entitled Deleuze in Space (with a foreword by Yuri Gagarin).

Teachers and the taught

Overheard on the street today:
Young learner a - I'm only 11, and I had to write a six-hundred word essay.
Young learner b - Well we had to do 1000 words, or a combined essay of 1500 words.

Sounds like a lot, don't it? It is quite remarkable. English folk don't know how to spell 'separate' nor do they know about apartheid (it's true! An old work-mate of mine who'd just finished his A-levels asked me: "what was apartheid again?").
But kids these days have been taught to get their priorities right - they have no problem bashing out 15oo words of tat for monday morning, and everyone's happy. They'd make perfect British philosophers.

Speaking of academia, today I lent S my copies of Berkeley's Works and Hume's Enquiries for him to prepare to tutor Dave Distiller's students on the history of philosophy.
See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!
He asked me what I thought would be good preparation, but then he pooh-poohed my suggestion that he read some Ranciere. Naturally, I directed him to the next best thing - Crumbling Loaf - for a lesson in pedagogical mayhem.