tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85442619872991970602024-03-05T06:46:30.805+00:00The British Personalist ForumDr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-74557341460628856612021-08-22T11:39:00.002+01:002021-08-22T11:39:33.144+01:00Back to the Future: The Cartesian Impasse, Neuroethics, and the Return of Scholastic Theory<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by Denis Larrivee</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Ethics is a
pragmatic science. It asks questions such as ‘What should I do’ and ‘How do I
know what I should do’ or even ‘Why ought I do what I should do’. It is
apparent from such questions that they are dependent on their context and that
addressing them is therefore shaped by an information content that affects this
contextual relationship. Because these are normative questions, information
reflecting on value appraisal can be expected to mould the ethical praxis these
questions are intended to address.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In bioethics,
and particularly in neuroethics, this information content falls outside the domain of external behaviours and is often understood to entail questions about
the physical reality of or the physical effects mediated on the body. Accordingly,
how we appraise value for addressing neuroethical questions is closely related
to the physical and material aspects of the body; that is, a determination of
bodily value is dependent upon our understanding of its physical reality.
Hence, the type of information needed for shaping value originates in an appeal
to a physical dimension that is constitutive of the body as<i> a specific locus
of value appraisal. </i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For this
appeal, it is manifestly evident that the body is a contingent reality; that
is, existentially, its form and operation depend on physical aspects of reality
independent of itself, but which nonetheless underlie their emergence.
Understanding physical contingency, therefore, is fundamental to ascertaining
bodily value. This understanding is a domain that has involved a lengthy
intellectual investment by science and engendered an even longer philosophical
heritage in religion. The conception of contingency in both has shaped the
value content that accrues to the body, affecting the ethical theory and praxis
of each domain.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Neuroethics,
for example, has been defined by the International Neuroethics Society as “...
a field that studies the implications of neuroscience for human
self-understanding, ethics, and policy.” By this definition, neuroscience lays claim to an epistemological
content that guides neuroethical theory and praxis. Neuroethics considers, for
example, the brain-related dimensions of normative work at the intersection of
neuroscience or the medical ethics of clinical therapy. In laying claim
to the epistemological content of neuroscience neuroethics thus conceives of
value shaping through neuroscience’s specific capacity to address physical
aspects of the neural complexity of the brain and nervous system. Because the
interpretation of these findings is influenced by the manner in which physical
reality is conceived, what is also implicit in recourse to such findings is the
effect on value of the <i>manner of understanding</i> that reality <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In the epistemological claim of neuroscience, there is, for instance, a latent presupposition that neural operation is contingent on a mechanistic
understanding, which identifies efficient causal relations as primary aspects
of nature – here understood as meta features – that has shaped the conception
of what is valued in human cognition. In adopting this presupposition – its general application generally traced to Descartes – neuroscience premises its
understanding on the accumulation of facts assembled according to the empirical,
hypothetico-deductive method, which is designed to identify causal
relationships that ‘explain’ features of natural reality from an extrinsic
causal, and which, therefore, serve to validate a mechanist contingency.
Scientific facts are thus taken to be truth ‘qualifiers’, i.e., information
which makes a proposition true. Truth statements in science have thereby been
delimited by that which is ‘constructed’ by human beings rather than by that
‘which is’, a revised understanding of the Aristotelian correspondence notion
of truth, a philosophical revision that can be traced to Giambattista Vico. Because
‘facta’ in the Viconian interpretation are conceived as elements of a whole
that can be assembled by the mind, Hume regarded them as independent of a
specific value content; hence, for cognition and brain operation
neuroscientific ‘facts’, which specify elements or processes in the brain, lack
value and it is therefore necessary to confer it in normative determinations,
with accounting made for how the neuroscientific facts are used to interpret
cognitive operation. Thus, neuroscientific facts isolate value from the body,
brain, and processes of cognition and must be conferred from outside the body
by an extrinsic construal. The adoption of the hypothetico-deductive method for
interrogating the physical contingency of the body and cognition has thus served
as an epistemological verification of the independence of value from cognitive neuroscience,
which underwrites Hume’s fallacy principle, also designated the naturalistic
fallacy or Hume’s Law. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">The a-normative
posture of Hume’s Law, however, which posits that values and facts are
irreconcilable, poses a specific quandary for how value and physical reality
are related, a relationship essential for bioethics. Because value is conferred
extrinsically, its conferral is necessarily conditional, being either relative
– here modulated by ‘truth qualifiers’ - or potentially arbitrary. Indeed, the
need to confer value is itself indicative of an absence of intrinsic worth.
Hence, there is a question of whether value can in fact be imputed to the
material world, specifically to the human body and brain.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The tension
introduced between the sense of an inherent value attributable to the physical
reality of the body and the denial of this presence that is exemplified by
Hume’s Law, has been the subject of considerable conjecture by those concerned
with the implications of its absence in nature, the latter characterized by
science’s understanding of the body’s
contingency on meta features of physical reality. Hans Jonas, for example,
identifies in the lack of value an estrangement between man and the natural
world.</p><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i>There is no overlooking one cardinal
difference between the gnostic and the existentialist dualism: Gnostic man is
thrown into an antagonistic, anti-divine, and therefore anti-human nature,
modern man into an indifferent one. Only the latter case represents the
absolute vacuum, the really bottomless pit. In the gnostic conception the
hostile, the demonic, is still anthropomorphic, familiar even in its
foreignness, and the contrast itself gives direction to existence…Not even this
antagonistic quality is granted to the indifferent nature of modern science,
and from that nature no direction at all can be elicited. This makes modern
nihilism infinitely more radical and more desperate than gnostic nihilism could
ever be for all its panic terror of the world (Jonas 1966).<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In Jonas’ view,
therefore, what is specifically introduced by such value neutrality is a division
between nature, conceived as that which comprises the essence of physical
reality, and the individual (person), who is composed from this reality - which
at its bottom reflects a carefully redacted metaphysical conception of
contingency, a circumscription that has given rise to existentialist thinking
and its nihilistic implications. The notion of a contingency that separates the
individual, who is constituted by his body, from his worth has been of specific
interest to Christian religious thinking. Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II),
for example, has expressed sentiments similar to those of Jonas and developed a
strikingly similar line of thought.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><i>The human
family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeism, in which body and spirit
are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit,
and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person
and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary,
he becomes merely an object. Religion, particularly the Christian religion,
opposes this radical separation of the material world and the value laden world
of the spirit.</i></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By grounding value in the physical
properties of the human body, Christian religion in the words of the Pope thus introduces
a challenge to the widely accepted Hume fallacy principle, which separates
normative praxis from an epistemological approach described by facts and their
associated mechanist interpretation. Hence, Christian religion presupposes an
understanding of physical contingency that is distinguished from that of
neuroscience.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Nonetheless, this distinctive
understanding is not predicated on a thorough dismissal of the epistemological
content of neuroethics. For example, both share a common recognition of the
validity of the methodological approach pursued by neuroscience in their common
recognition of the causal associations endorsed by science, which underpin
numerous observable phenomena. However, it is also apparent that the
explanatory utility of these meta features alone - the causal modes
constitutive of (neuro)scientific accounts that emerge from
hypothetico-deductive, experimental reasoning - is insufficient to account for
all physical phenomena. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This
insufficiency has led, for example, to the contemporary attempts in philosophy
of science to fill lacunae in causality accounts with so called deductive
nomological (DN) explanations, which have sought to ‘cover’ non-efficient,
physical occurrences by addressing the question of why phenomena occur. The DN
model holds to a view of scientific explanation whose conditions of adequacy
are derivability, law-likeness, and empirical content and has, together with
Hempel’s inductive statistical model constituted scientific explanation’s
covering law model. Braillard (2010), for example, cites Design Principle as an
a priori, formal state required for the extrinsic causal interactions within
the bacterial flagellar motor to occur. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Described by
Hempel and Oppenheim (1948), these explanatory accounts reintroduce analogous
Greek and Scholastic metaphysical causal accounts of form and teleology but
comprise a lower level of abstraction due to their attempt to fulfill the
adequacy conditions of the covering law. Broadly, these seek to account for
physical phenomena precisely through the physical contingency of natural
phenomena on meta features of physical reality often regarded as intrinsic or
relational and that address a why interrogative as to the contingent relation,
as, for example, formal and teleological causality. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The need to
provide explanatory sufficiency for the occurrence of physical events is
therefore indicative of a contingency relation between the events and an
explanatory premise that is resident in natural reality but not accounted for
by asymmetric and temporally successive, extrinsic interactions. That is, the
insufficiency of the mechanistic account springs from an absence of grounding
metaphysical features or regularities that undergird the physical world, as for
example, a principle of individuation and/or relations between entities, which
are incorporated within neo-Aristotelian metaphysical descriptions. <i>Hence,
the need to posit additional explanatory accounts implicates additional
metafeatures on which the physical world is contingent.</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The
understanding that has evolved in Western Christianity situates physical
contingency within this broader framework. In contrast to the Viconian
conception of truth, which coincides with the ‘facta’ accumulated by the
scientific method, physical contingency is here understood to be existentially
grounded, where truth is coincident with that ‘which is’ - at times taken to
approximate operational holisms - an encapsulation of the Aristotelian and Scholastic
correspondence notion of truth. In the physical order this framework
specifically embraces an asymmetric causal dependency that originates <i>within</i>
the personal subject, who is regarded as occupying the apex of an ontological
hierarchy emerging from meta features of reality and who comprises an
explanatory locus for teleological orientation and value origin. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Conceived as a
unified, i.e., holistic, self-directed, causal origin the personal subject
recapitulates the radical contingency of physical reality on a personal causal
origin constituted by order, rationality, and value, which is the ground of
existence itself; that is, a self-contained subject, whose relations penetrate
the world of physical reality, identified as God. By contrast, the mechanist
understanding that has evolved in neuroscience excludes a physical contingency
grounded on a metaphysics of agency that is associated with a personal causal
origin. Hence, by extension, its endorsement of the Viconian factual truth
notion similarly excludes a resident value in the personal subject; that is, it
excludes a value intrinsicity that is constitutive of the subject who is
identified with the reality of his body.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The value
neutrality that characterizes scientific understanding, indeed, the precluding
of an <i>intrinsic</i> bodily value, has notably stimulated some scientific
efforts that have sought to identify supplementary metaphysical features in
which to anchor the body’s value. This pursuit has chiefly emphasized a
retrieval of the Kantian notion of autonomy, with its focus on a metaphysical
causal origin that is sited within the subject. The intrinsicity of autonomy,
for instance, has served in bioethics to anchor the rights of the subject; that
is, the capacity for autonomy is currently regarded as a value content capable
of grounding rights entitlement.<i> </i>The identification of the autonomous
subject who emerges from the respective contingent metaphysical reality thus
marks a common conceptual pathway for religion and science in the evolution of
a theory of bodily value.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">What is perhaps
of interest in all of this is the reversal of endorsement lobbied for by these
two traditional adversaries. In a Christian understanding bodily value originates
in an appeal to the physical, that is to a contingency made apparent by the material
reality of an external world. In the scientific understanding, by contrast, the
reality of the physical world is minimized so as to appeal to an evanescent
interior. The new endorsements, accordingly, are not only indicative of the
fashionableness of intellectual trends, but of the limits of the tepid in its
encounter with ‘that which is’.<o:p></o:p></p></div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-44002703625928963572021-03-14T09:39:00.000+00:002021-03-14T09:39:25.195+00:00From the Ereignis Center: a New Podcast!<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Ereignis
Podcast</span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dear friends:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">These are indeed
strange and unusual times we live in. While many of our activities are
curtailed Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts is not succumbing to
defeatism. Instead, we are launching a new initiative: the </span><a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/ereignis/Pod/">EreignisPodcast</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, or, simply, the ePod, a
brief, monthly instalment of news and interviews from the Center.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In our first edition, Stefan Chazbijewicz brings to our attention what he
refers to as a form of “chemical persuasion” inherent in the official rhetoric
on the pandemic. Also in the podcast Chazbijewicz, an acclaimed director and
artist, elaborates on his visual philosophy. A selection of Chazbijewicz’s
artworks can be viewed in the </span><a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/ereignis/Gallery/">Ereignis Gallery</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The first instalment of our podcast is available on the Ereignis </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUpwE6qFHRA">YouTube</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/ereignis-center-for-philosophy-and-the-arts" target="_blank">SoundCloud</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> channels. Comments and questions are
welcome: we love to hear from you!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What else is going on at the Center?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">On June 11 (mark the day in your calendar) we are hosting our first
conference, <i>Being and Event, </i>online. The event is free for the
first 100 participants: </span><a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/event-and-becoming-the-inaugural-ereignis-conference-tickets-133843520573" target="_blank">sign up for a seat here</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">. We accept submissions for papers until
April 15. For more information visit our </span><a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/ereignis/School/2021conference.html" target="_blank">conference page</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts is reorganising as a
voluntary organisation. Get in touch for more information on how to become a member!<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc31gFwF7giXqifBq0gnU5HUfR1Nf4cIEW-1E3a-1Ahnv-AMQ/viewform" target="_blank">Join the Ereignis Center</a></span></div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-15144934753384609742021-01-26T10:37:00.000+00:002021-01-26T10:37:26.655+00:00Conference Announcement and Call for Papers<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Ereignis</i> Conference</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Event and Becoming</span></i></b></div></b><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The first <i>Ereignis</i>
conference will be free for up to 100 participants. </span>Mark the date in your
calendar: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">June 11, 2021</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large; text-align: justify;">Submission
deadline: 15 April, 2021</span></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">How does the event
puncture the smooth flow of becoming? And what is it like, the event in which
we become ourselves?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">These are among our
key questions in this first, inaugural <i>Ereignis</i> conference, to be held
online <b>Friday, June 11, 2021</b>. Hosted by the </span><a href="https://ereignis.no/Index/index.html" target="_blank">Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts</a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, and headlined by internationally acclaimed
speakers on appropriation and becoming, this conference seeks to merge profound
and innovative thought with practical approaches to becoming. How do we come into our own?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">When philosophy in
the 20th Century took a renewed interest in the concept of <i>event</i> it was
with a critique of the classical notion of substance and its modern heir,
subject. Accordingly, what we find is a body of thought in which the
ontological affirmation of pure becoming as the ground of the genesis of
objects reflects the epistemological and ethical priority of events over
subjective ideas or concepts. On this basis, the conference aims to provide a
platform for conversations between different figures who, each in a way, belong
to this body, from Henry Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, and Martin Heidegger
to Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Alain Badiou.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Prioritizing the
event involves emphasizing existence and experience as well as Being. Here it
might be relevant to cast a brief glance at Søren Kierkegaard’s concept, or
rather non-concept, of <i>mellemværende</i>. The English translation
‘being-between’ unfortunately misses the additional connotation of the Danish
word which implies accountability, or, to settle an account. This ethical
demand involves the positing of the subject in a state of relationality.
Existence and experience is a continuous process that precipitates the subject
into a direct confrontation with reality and with others. This confrontation is
on-going and cannot be resolved by thought; rather, the subject must choose
her/his existence, or better the manner of her/his existence. The necessity of
choice is highlighted in times of social, political and cultural crises where
the deeper resources of the mind are evoked.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">You are invited to
participate with a paper/presentation under one of these main conference
rubrics:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Being/s:</b> We seek
contributions that interrogate Being and being/s in their singularity and
multitude. We are particularly interested in interventions that break open the
deadlock between sacred and secular thought.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">How is thinking about Being or being/s relevant in our time?</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Have we lost touch with our being, or should we take up the tasks of
guardians and carers for B/being?</li></ul><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Event/s:</b> This
conference will further a view of society, technology and personal histories
that goes beyond the static and spatial. We are looking for papers that espouse
the event as a moment of appropriation and becoming.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">How do we think about events in their relation to our personal sense of
being?</li><li style="text-align: justify;">How can a thinking about events enable us to go from a static view of
technology to an approach that is dynamic and freed from anthropomorphism?</li></ul><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Practice/s:</b> This
inaugural <i>Ereignis</i> conference seeks to not only prepare the ground for
novel thinking about Being, being/s, and events, but also to show and
experiment with formats that combine rigorous thinking with creative and
interactive practice. We therefore invite talks, presentations and interactive
paedagogical interventions that challenge us to rethink the format of the
traditional conference paper. We invite artists, teachers and activists to
experiment and engage listeners and viewers in new ways: arts presentations,
scripted discussion groups, small workshops.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">How can the thought of <i>Ereignis</i>, the event of becoming, enable us
to find new forms of interaction set in a video conference?</li></ul><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The conference will
be held on the Zoom videoconferencing platform, and is free of charge for up to
100 participants. Registration will be required on the <a href="http://eventbrite.co.uk/">eventbrite.co.uk/</a> platform.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Invitation</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We invite papers that address any of the topics and formats above.
Submissions under the <b>Being/s</b> and <b>Event/s</b> headers should be
structured, well-argued, and show evidence of rigorous scholarship. For the <b>Practice/s</b>
section we seek interventions that challenge the traditional academic
conference format, establish new ground, and open up for new ways of thinking
and being together. Submissions should include an abstracts (max. 300 words)
and a short author bio (max. 50 words), including the authors current affiliation
and interest.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Send proposals/abstracts via e-mail by <b>April 15, 2021</b> to <a href="mailto:ereignis@tankebanen.no">ereignis@tankebanen.no</a>. We will return by the end of April with a
notification on acceptance.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">All presentations
will be considered for publication either in a themed issue of <i><a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions" target="_blank">Inscriptions</a></i> or in a dedicated volume of Conference
Proceeding on <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/" target="_blank">Tankebanen forlag</a>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Keynote Speakers</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">James Bahoh,
Professor at the University of Memphis;<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Jørgen Veisland,
Professor at the University of Gdańsk, Poland: “The Appropriation of Being.
Dismantling totalitarianism in <i>Unto Madness, Unto Death</i> by Kirsten
Thorup”;<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Mehdi Parsa,
University of Bonn, Germany: “Ethics of Psychosynthesis: Desiring the Event”;<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sharif Abdunnur,
Yeditepe University, Turkey: “Think existentially, act on your personal
mythology: an interactive workshop.”<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: right;">Yours sincerely,</div><div style="text-align: right;">Dr. Torgeir Fjeld</div><div style="text-align: right;">Editor-in-Chief, Inscriptions</div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><i><span style="font-size: large;"></span></i></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-54386204983533074912020-12-20T10:12:00.000+00:002020-12-20T10:12:01.884+00:00Life in the Plague Times Still More IV: Personas of Pessimism and Optimism<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by Simon Smith</span> </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Looking back at what Agamben has
said and what has been said here about it, there seems to be a disconnect. Things
aren’t adding up. Agamben’s fears are both legitimate and reasonable and yet
the reality of the situation hasn’t entirely borne them out. Perhaps his mistake
was to suppose that governments still seek to control their citizens’ movements
and their ability to foregather. In truth, governments are more preoccupied
with The Economy<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> and
rightly so, from their perspective, since economic control is all the control
they need. It separates us far more effectively, by making competition our (dis)organising
principle and individualism our foundational (anti)social condition. It mollifies
social, political, and intellectual desire with a cornucopia of consumables,
both literally and figuratively sugar-coated. It obviates our capacity to think
and act humanly by entrapping us within a usurious system that forces us to
service <i>its</i> requirements, to sustain <i>it</i>, rather than one another.
By comparison, the idea that a government might simply stop people doing things
sounds almost quaint. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">This may
explain the superficial similarity between Agamben’s views and those UK Tories/American
Republicans who (claim to) believe that we have surrendered too much to precaution and to
the virus itself. The cure, we are told by people who have access to the very
best in medical care, cannot be worse than the disease. Indeed, and the fact
that US infection rates appear to have topped 125,000 per day while their mortality rates
are, we are told, averaging a comparatively meagre 1000 per day suggests that
this is, indeed, so. Whatever the cure may be, short of complete extinction, it
is unlikely to be worse than the disease. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Whilst
arguments from the political right <i>are</i> sometimes framed in terms similar
to Agamben’s, the differences are important and revealing. What is particularly
evident is, as already noted, their concern for and interest in The Economy.
Here, in fact, is where I find myself disagreeing, respectfully, with Agamben.
For him, the problem is the sanctification of Risk and the new religion, the
only ‘true religion of our time,’ that is science. He is likely correct about Risk,
but not about the rest. The golden calf before which all others, even the
Church, even science, must bow down is The Economy. It directs our lives,
conditions our work, sets the terms of our society. It is of supreme and
absolute importance and we must be prepared to make every sacrifice to sustain
it. That those who are sacrificed are always the most vulnerable, often Black,
Asian, and other ethnic communities, is unfortunate but apparently unavoidable.
That, it seems, is the great god of Europe and America, that and no other. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The situation
is not new. We in the west have never really cared very much about those who
had to suffer that we might buy. Way, way back in the ancient days of the 1990s,
Peter Singer was calling our attention to WHO statistics showing that 75% of
the world’s food resources are consumed by the wealthiest 20% of the world’s
population, while the poorest 20% receive just 15% of those resources.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Things have changed very little since then. It’s just that, whereas those who
are suffering have traditionally been very far away, and therefore easier to
ignore, they are now far, far closer. Right on our own doorstep, in fact. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">That said, I
am not as pessimistic as Agamben, either about covid-present or
covid-future. Gloomy, perhaps, but not pessimistic. This is because I am
convinced, for reasons philosophical and historical, that it is perfectly
possible for people to transcend their circumstances and themselves. We <i>are </i>capable
of being better than we are, of recognising the ways in which our actions
affect one another, of caring about those affects, and of doing something about
it. Human beings are also capable of changing the world for the better. It’s
been done before. This capacity for transcendence is what it means to <i>be</i>
human. We become ourselves by overcoming ourselves, to coin a phrase. So much, both
Farrer and Feuerbach, among others, tell us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">And in case
anyone is wondering, self-overcoming or self-transcendence <i>is </i>entirely
compatible with Camus views on the Sisyphean nature of existence. To face the
absurdity of the universe, to live cheerfully on the edge of the precipice,
does not entail nor even tend to suggest that we must surrender our <i>becoming</i>
to mere <i>being</i>. Indeed, acceptance of the truth is an essential component
of transcendence; how can I strive for better if I do not clearly and honestly
recognise the reality of myself and my situation? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">In sum, I cannot
agree with Agamben that ‘the threshold that separates humanity from barbarism
has been crossed.’ The threshold that separates humanity from arseholery has
been crossed and re-crossed many times. Indeed, it seems that some people are
enthusiastically trying to eradicate that line altogether. It’s called ‘history.’
But humanity is alive and relatively well in the real world, beyond computer
screens and quiet, bookish rooms. Human contact is surviving too, though at a
distance, obviously; being mostly masked, humanity goes back to its Latin
roots, personalising itself with an exaggerated persona.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
We do what we must to make ourselves understood, to be our understanding selves.
More importantly, perhaps, anyone who ventures outside quickly finds themselves
paying more attention, looking harder at people, making, in short, more effort
to interact. What’s more, it seems we may not be as afraid <i>of</i> others as
Agamben supposes. The consensus appears to have coalesced around the idea that
wearing a facemask does not protect the wearer <i>per se</i>, it protects
others from any infection he or she may be carrying. And if we both wear masks,
as many people are willing to do, we protect one another. Not afraid <i>of</i>
others, then; afraid <i>for </i>them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Perhaps such a
sunny view of human nature is not to everyone’s taste. Bringing all this to
some sort of conclusion, then, one last point. I have, as I say, some sympathy
for both Agamben and his critics in all this. It is important to keep in mind
that these are strange days indeed. Reading Agamben’s essays, both in <i>Inscriptions
</i>and the <i>EJP</i>, it seems clear that he is not enjoining us to rush into
the street, there to cough into one another’s faces. However, he is, I think,
pointing out some things that ought to genuinely concern if not appal us,
perhaps even more than the rampant spread of this plague. Leaving aside the
socio-political dangers and the dangers of isolation and separation, we should
be horrified that people have been left to die alone in the midst of all this;
we should be horrified to learn that our most ancient duties and obligations,
those which stand at the very foundation of our distinctly human existence,
have been compromised, even abandoned, that ‘cadavers should be burned without
a funeral.’ The dead are dead, but we are not, not yet; and Agamben is correct
to see this as a sign of barbarism, of inhumanity. We might also point to the
hoarding of food and other essentials, the mindless manufacturing of shortages
in a crisis, both by those who enthusiastically stampeded into it and those who
profited from it. Could we, as a society, as a species, have behaved more
shamefully or more foolishly? Almost certainly, ‘yes’; and no doubt we will, given
time. Can we, will we, behave better? I should think so, given time.</p><div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
A reified construction that has become so familiar that we frequently forget
how little it really means: people buying things they don’t really need in
order to ensure that more things no one really needs can be manufactured from
the resources of far poorer countries populated by far poorer people for whom ‘the
economy,’ if it means anything at all, means ‘getting enough money to buy food.’
<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Peter
Singer <i>Practical Ethics</i>, (Cambridge:
CUP, 1993), 220.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Because
the Latin root of ‘person’ is ‘persona’, which means ‘mask’, geddit?.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-87788795612379035152020-12-12T11:36:00.000+00:002020-12-13T12:28:10.431+00:00Life in the Plague Times More IV: Agamben's Split and Aristotelian Face-Lickers<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><a name="_Hlk56949659"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by Simon Smith</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Being in the UK, I am, naturally,
entitled to the moral high ground when it comes to all the sorts of political oppression
and corruption and such like shenanigoats noted last time. After all, I
live under a government that would never attempt to bypass democratic
institutions in the name of reclaiming power for those institutions from
invented oppression by a ‘foreign power’ which has been characterised by the
liberal, or rather neo-liberal, application of ersatz Churchillian rhetoric. Or
mislead the electorate about: a) £350 million a week for the NHS; and b) the
“oven ready deal” that would secure those millions. Or seek enact domestic
legislation designed to simultaneously override and undermine international
law. Or attempt to bully its nearest neighbour into accepting deeply disadvantageous
terms in order to bolster its own position while preparing to take a massive
dump on an historic peace accord which itself was necessitated by a
conveniently forgotten colonial past, a past which, although consigned to
ancient history by some, to others is very much alive.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Quite so. How
thankful I am to live in a country in which such low blackguardism is entirely
alien, or should we say </span><i style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">foreign</i><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">. Let joy be unconfined.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Having ventilated, let us return to Agamben at the plague hospital. He is, I think, correct to remind us that ‘fear is a poor advisor’ – no irony intended here – and that nothing generates fear more efficiently than a perceived threat to one’s survival. Indeed? Not quite. In fact, the underlying point is that the greatest fear arises from a perceived threat to our most cherished and deeply held convictions. Naturally so, since those are the convictions which, most often, form the constitutive layers of one’s identity. Agamben’s point here is that those convictions – formerly social, moral, political, etc. – have been abandoned in favour of a commitment to survival alone or, as he terms it, ‘bare life.’ Blind fingers grab in panic for ‘bare life;’ frantic with fear and, worse, overwhelmed by base desire: to live and nothing more is mere instinct, the desire of beasts and broccoli, not human beings. ‘Bare life’ and the fear of losing it threatens to isolate us from one another as we begin to regard one another, not as human beings but as disease vectors. Shivering tentacles of terror clutch and drag us down, silencing conscience and consciousness as we gladly acquiesce in the dark depths of instinct and animal existence. That, as Austin Farrer averred, is virtually a definition of sin.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">[1]</a></p> <span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">This risk, if
real, is far greater than that, of course. Isolated, we begin to lose our humanity
altogether; for, humanity is a social construct, a shared belief. What makes us
human, what makes us ourselves,</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 14.2pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">does not
survive in one or with one. It needs others to reflect and refract, to correct,
and to construct it. Literally and metaphorically, which is to say,
metaphysically and biologically, humanity is born out of real intercourse. Abandon
that and what remains is surely a poor excuse for a human life, framed by fear of the dark, consumed utterly by the demands of survival and nothing but. Here
we are on the precipice. What shall we do? Skulk back into chthonic undergrowth
of a bestial past? Fling ourselves faithfully into the void to be sustained by
angels’ wings? Or shall we do as Camus asks and live where we stand,
cheerfully, like human beings?</span></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Agamben places
the blame for this state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of the medical
sciences. It is they, he suggests, that have ‘split the unity of our vital
experience, which is always inseparably bodily and spiritual, into a purely
biological entity on one hand and an affective and cultural life on the other.’
It is they who implanted the dualism that lives in the bone of all our thought
and action. I don’t doubt his word on this. I’m certain that our
friend and occasional contributor, James Beauregard, would wholeheartedly agree
too; it is, after all the message which underpins his bioethical efforts.
That said, we should keep in mind that the medical sciences have not worked
alone. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Separation,
dualism, and manufactured antagonism, that ‘split [in] the unity of our vital
experience,’ has an ancient pedigree. Dusty philosophical fingers point in
Descartes’ direction, he and those who blithely promulgate his realist nonsense;
in back of them all stands Aristotle, boldly bearded, tackle out. Lest we be
accused of bias, we know very well that logical coincidence makes idealism
almost as bad. (Both of which forms of old toot, by the way, the Personalists will
frequently and happily be found purveying.) We could also point to behaviourism
here, the philosophical kind; but since behaviourists have enough trouble
trying to work out who said what, let us be kind to them. Besides, the Church has
provided plenty more grist for our mill. Agamben accuses the Church of having<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 14.2pt;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">‘radically repudiated its most essential principles:’ </span><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">visiting and
caring for the sick. To be fair, Pope Francis is </span><i style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">supposed</i><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;"> to be a
radical. One might also point, here to the classical doctrine </span><i style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Contemptus
Mundi</i><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;"> and the necessitarian logic underpinning our Western, Aristotelised
version Christianity. The Schoolmen taught us that contingency, finitude, is quite
literally </span><i style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">nothing</i><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;"> before the transcendent majesty, the sheer unutterable
reality of Necessary Being. They also taught us that sickness and misfortune
are ordained from on high.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2; text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
Perhaps, then, this is all just a matter of consistency.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">And should we mention
the cult of radical individualism, born out of economic and political
neo-liberalism, which almost entirely saturates our lives?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Should we mention the feverish demand of
constant competition, grounded as it supposedly is, in the Neo-Darwinist dog-eat-dog
dogma?<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
It is, after all, as good a way of separating that ‘which is always inseparably
bodily and spiritual’ as any. But let’s not labour the point. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The dangers of
isolation and of deifying science are very real and very serious. There is no
gainsaying Agamben on that. On the other hand, consider, for a moment, how the
situation has actually played out. Agamben fears a retreat from real human
contact, substituting at every possible opportunity interaction mediated by
technology, pathological and impersonal. Very well, but here in the UK we have
also seen public demonstrations, crowds of people coming together, perhaps unwisely,
to protest against both mask-wearing requirements and institutional racism. There
have been house parties of hundreds and pubs filled to bursting; the British people
have taken to the streets to lick one another’s faces for the sheer joy of it.
Meanwhile our government, far from striving to restrict our freedom of movement
has been desperate to get everyone out of their houses as quickly as possible,
first with the ‘Eat out to help out’ discount scheme, then with injunctions to
Get Back to School and, irritatingly, to Get Back to Work (irritating, because
those of us forced to work at home since March have, by the strongest possible
implication, not <i>been</i> working.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Given the
continued rise in the number of infections across Europe and, perhaps
especially, the United States, isolation and separation may not, in reality,
have been the problem. Quite the opposite, in fact.</p><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Austin Farrer, <i>Finite and Infinite</i> (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1959), 207.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See
Wendy C. Hamblet, <i>Punishment and Shame: a Philosophical Study </i>(Maryland:
Lexington Books, 2011), Chapter 9 ‘A Christian Penology’, 125-134.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Robert Newman, <i>The Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution</i> (Glasgow:
Freight Books, 2015), ‘Group Selection’.</p></div></div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-70878660531027683522020-12-06T11:41:00.004+00:002020-12-06T11:41:57.072+00:00Life in the Plague Times IV: What's Worrying Agamben?<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><a name="_Hlk56949659"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by Simon Smith</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_Hlk56949659">Ah, is
that the whiff of freshly vaccinated air I smell? (I smell?) Possibly, perhaps,
maybe. <o:p></o:p></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Under such finger-crossing circumstances,
this seems like an appropriate moment to cast our baby blues or browns, or
both, back to the first days of life in the New Pandemonia, back to the days
when we all believed that it could never reach our own blithe little first-world
hearth and home. Riding gallantly to the aid of remembrance and reminiscence,
the very excellent journal <i>Inscriptions</i> recently published two short
texts under the title, ‘Giorgio Agamben on health scare and the religion of
science.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Originally written and published during the
first weeks of 2020 – a year which, if it were a person, would surely warrant a
cricket bat to the plums – Agamben wrote in these lovely slender articles about
Italy’s first encounter with the plague. Given the universality of his concerns,
some degree of extrapolation and comparison seems fair.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The trouble, our author avers, is plain: we
have acquiesced in a state of exception. This state is not new; it predates the
plague and has merely been normalised by it, embedded itself more firmly in our
cultural consciousness, as it were. In consequence, our humanity is at risk,
undermined, not simply by isolation as such – though, certainly by that – but
by our enthusiastic embracing of it. Willingly, happily, it seems, we surrender
to curfews more severe and more restrictive even than those experienced during
WWII.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> With furrowed brow and eager heart we
endorse our governments’ declaration of ‘the most absurd of wars:’ viz. ‘a war
with an invisible enemy that can lurk in every other person,’ ‘a civil war.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> (One cannot help thinking, somehow, of that
other absurd, and ultimately lost, war, the war on drugs.) Science, we are
told, has become the new religion and Risk the governing principle of thought
and action. As the editors of <i>Inscriptions</i> pithily put it, we have
placed ‘our ability to reason calmly and clearly in peril’ and, one supposes,
dire peril at that.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">I have more than a little sympathy with Agamben
here, for the fears he expresses, although I don’t necessarily
agree with him. He was, after all, writing in the first days of the pandemic,
when much in the way of progress and prognosis remained unknown. Elsewhere, for
example, he quotes, Italy’s <i>Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche</i> (National
Research Council), stating that those catching Coronavirus might reasonably,
that is, statistically, expect to suffer ‘mild/moderate symptoms (a sort of
influenza).’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> That wasn’t just the Italian perspective, it
was everyone’s perspective; we all believed it and, to some extent, still do. Recent
research, however, suggests this may not be the whole story. Evidence of
long-term health difficulties, including respiratory, cardiovascular, and
neurological damage, has begun to emerge. It may also be worth noting that,
under the circumstances, just how long the long-term may be remains unclear. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">This is not to deny Agamben’s point,
particularly his broader point; but we should remember that, in such
discussions, context is important and context changes. Perspective is important
too and that is something that, perhaps, we could all make more effort to
cultivate; in reminding us of that alone, Agamben’s message is a vital one. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Risking mortal, not to say catastrophic,
injury, however, let’s see what kind of view straddling the fence has to offer. As usual,
a little of both sides. That’s to say, I’m also sympathetic to those who find
Agamben’s words troubling. It requires only the most exiguous sliver of
sensitivity to see how easy it is to criticise those who fear a disease which
has, lest we forget, killed quite a lot of people. Risk may be low,
statistically speaking, but statistics are cold comfort when the coughing comes.
We do not, by and large, presume to make life and death decisions for others (although
perhaps in some circumstances we should).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> And considering the way in which the plague has
spread, largely unchecked, across the United States, some precautions don’t seem
entirely unwarranted. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">When Agamben wrote his pieces, some people,
although not a great many, had already died from coronavirus. <i>Nota bene</i>,
again, being a number in a low body-count is, one supposes, of little comfort
to those being counted. Agamben is not blasé about those deaths. He <i>is</i> more
concerned with the circumstances and attitudes they imply, however. He is more
concerned, for example, with the fact that people have been allowed to die
alone and uncomforted than with the cause of death. Hardly surprising, since
circumstance and attitude is where the deeper moral questions lie. His job, as he
points out, is ‘not to give opinions on the gravity of the disease, but to ask
about… ethical and political consequences.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">How sharp their teeth, those political
consequences; and how hungry they are when they come back to bite us. Here’s
the rub: Agamben is not, or not only, fearful of the present, ‘but what comes
after.’ A certain nervousness with regard to political freedom is forgivable. Italian
governments are not and never have been above enthusiastic flirtation with
fascists and fascism. Agamben himself was born during the most famous totalitarian
orgy in recent history; an orgy which was vigorous if, going by the mood, insufficiently
lubricated. What’s more, the 21<sup>st</sup> century has already seen an
alarmingly energetic rightwards thrust across Europe and, indeed, globally. That
everyone has forgotten the dangers of right-wing politics is both terrifying
and mystifying. (Well, perhaps not so mystifying when one considers the
Catholic Church’s role in inciting violence against Polish LGBTQ* and feminist
groups; it is, as others have pointed out, a matter of power and the fear of
being forced to share it with the other.) Even the most recent and
unquestionably excellent discharging of infected arse-water that was America’s
most recent aspiring dictator has, in reality, only seen a return to so-called ‘centrist’
politics; where the ‘centre’ is most definitely right-of-centre. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a
politician, to misquote Joyce.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><div><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> ‘<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Giorgio Agamben on health scare and the religion of
science.’ <i>Inscriptions</i> 3, no. 2 (July 2020): 72, </span><a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/issue/view/5"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/issue/view/5</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Agamben, 4.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Agamben, 3.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Agamben, 2.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Giorgio
Agamben, “The Invention of an Epidemic,” <i>European Journal of Psychoanalysis</i>,
February 26, 2020, <a href="http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/">http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/.</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a name="_Hlk57013440">Arguably</a>, where end-of-life decisions need to be made
for clinical reasons but the person concerned is not capable of making them, it
is up to others to do the job on their behalf. One would not, after all, leave
an animal to suffer needlessly; why should the situation with our loved ones be
different? Because they are not animals in the same sense? Precisely so, which
is why we owe them <i>more</i> compassion, not less. I am especially grateful
to Orla Smith for explicating this point and for giving David Oderberg a proper shoeing when he utterly failed to grasp the point during a Q
& A at the University of Southampton several years ago. <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> This
and next, ‘Giorgio Agamben on health scare and the religion of science,’ 3.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Agamben%20Blog%20v2.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> James
Joyce, <i>Ulysses</i>. See the Joyce Project for an excellent annotated text: <a href="http://www.joyceproject.com/">http://www.joyceproject.com/#</a>. Remember
to switch on the highlighted notes at the top, though. <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
</div>
</div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-11569354963774299402020-11-29T12:04:00.000+00:002020-11-29T12:04:16.046+00:00Material Parity in Values Evolution: Prioritizing Ontology over Rights Attribution in BCI Synchrony<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by Denis Larrivee</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>There is a demand for more and more
sophisticated social robots. The ideal of many engineers is to produce machines
indistinguishable from humans, on the level of behavior or appearance…</i></div><span lang="EN-US"><div style="text-align: right;">Campa</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Artificial
intelligence and its companion technology robotics promise to revolutionize
human-machine relations through their capabilities for analyzing, interpreting,
and executing human action. While stimulating both excitement and concern, these
capabilities have also invited reflection on the ethics and values guiding technology
development. Factors that induce value evolution are of interest, therefore,
for influencing the forms the technology we may adopt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">In broad terms these are seen to operate at two levels: 1) by
epistemological inference, often through neuroscientific observation – humans
are like machines, and 2) by ontological predication, that is, as an imputed
analogue of human meta properties – machines are like humans. Due to a design
intent of reducing the onus of human intervention, AI devices are increasingly
given over to servicing a spectrum of human needs, from lower order motoric
assistance to higher-order computational and social functions, e.g., living
assistance companions and work colleagues; accordingly, they invite analogy at
multiple levels. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Simulation of higher-order cognition, especially, is understood to
drive value attribution, which flows from ontological inferences about the operational
resemblance of these technologies to higher-order, human cognition. That is, through
replication of these uniquely human abilities, there is a growing ontological
incursion in the technology, which propels value evolution under the guise of
simulating ontological equivalence. Breazeale’s Kismet robot, for instance,
explores not merely the social gestures essential to promoting human-machine
interactions but also the construction of human social intelligence and even
what it means to be human. Recent trends in roboethics, in consequence, no
longer assume the normative referencing implicit in Asimov's three laws of
robotics, which prioritizes human value over robot rights, having moved on to a
more egalitarian value premise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Simulation thus challenges the traditional value prioritization placing
human beings at the apex of organismal life and grounding ethical, bioethical,
and neuroethical praxis, a prioritization that has promoted human flourishing
while also restricting harmful intervention into the human being. Rather than
emphasizing the centrality of human value, simulation promotes a value
architecture that is more inclusive, democratic, and horizontal, a trend recently
taken up in ethical parity models. Seen through the lens of ethical parity,
simulation poses a multidimensional challenge to an ethical system where value
is contingent to the human being, a challenge mediated at the level of the
ethical subject, i.e., in the siting of value contingency, in its theory of
ethics, i.e., in how ethics is normatively anchored, and in ethical praxis. In
consequence, it modifies ethical mediation as an intentionalized moral
enactment, which is framed by a referential ontology. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">The pursuit of value equivalence between robotic technology and the
human being has notably highlighted the symbiotic nature of human-machine
relations, which is evoked by the reciprocity of ontological exchange. Rather
than the merely instrumentalist association identified in Aristotelian and
scholastic philosophy, the appropriation of ontological status motivates a
physical reciprocity that lies at the intersection of the human and the machine;
that is, behind the human lies hidden the machine, and behind the machine lies
the human. Hence, symbiosis is understood to actuate an a priorism that is
physically operative at the locus of intersection between the two.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Elucidating the philosophical roots of this a priorism is,
nonetheless, infrequently considered. While revealing the presence of a
physical ‘a priorism’ can be expected to constitute a <i>meta </i>valorization
of the processual form of ontological appropriation that distinguishes
simulation; that is, through the mutual endowment of ontological identity, epistemological
sources that may reveal consilience have yet to trace the physical reciprocity
invoked by symbiosis to a <i>meta-</i>physical ground. Modern physics, moreover,
broadly views the world as consisting of individual entities embedded in space
time, a conception apparently contravened by the sort of symbiosis invoked in human
machine chimaeras.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Higher-order cognition, for instance, is thought to align with human
ontology - lower-order human capabilities are rarely considered in these
ontological derivations – and is widely regarded to emerge from neural
activity, which recapitulates machine-like functioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, Levy’s functionalist interpretation
of cognition is traced to the semblance between neural activity and
computational capabilities. Neural operation, on the other hand, is deeply physical
and neural architectures can be expected to adhere to <i>meta</i> principles
governing the physical world, including the formation of human entities. How
these positions may be reconciled by their grounding in <i>a physical a priorism,</i>
therefore, is unclear. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">This paper opines that the computational neuroscience generally invoked
for semblance with machine technology fails to trace its philosophy of science
guises to an a prioristic meta field reflective of the physical structure of
the world but rather to its properties. Recent integrationist accounts, on the
other hand, reveal a consilience with a notion of dynamic entities; that is,
neural architectures reveal an a priorism grounded in the unity of their
operation, a finding of relevance for ontology, which<b> </b><i>is</i><b> </b>characterized
by individuation rather than semblance<b>.</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Simulation through Functionalism to
Heidegger</b></span></p></div></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-US"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">And, in spite of the victory of the new
quantum theory, and the conversion of so many physicists to indeterminism de La
Mettrie's doctrine that man is a machine has perhaps more defenders than before
among physicists, biologists and philosophers; especially in the form of the
thesis that man is a computer.</span></div></i></div></div></span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">Karl Popper, 1978.</div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">As Karl Popper
notes, the hypothesis that human cognition simulates the computational
abilities of machines has propelled a widely held notion that humans share
ontological equivalence with computational machines. Indeed, over the last half
century, computationalism - whether classicist, connectionist, or neurocomputing
forms - has dominated thinking on cognition. Beginning with McCulloch and Pitts
(1943), Karl Lashley, and others, this thesis has evolved through several
incarnations. Marr and Poggio extended early computationalism to information
processing, which built on lower level computational processes to construct a
representational and algorithmic, tri-level scheme for cognition, while Fodor’s
version entailed the manipulation of symbols by means of a Turing style
computation, which he proposed enabled decision making, perception, and
linguistic processing. Fodor’s transposition of machine like computational
events to abilities distinguished as human properties of mind, particularly, introduced
simulation as a methodological paradigm for arriving at an ontological status
of parity. Implicitly claimed, in fact, is an absence of ontological
distinction, an absence that flows from the a priorism of material semblance
and grounds the physical reciprocity of human and machine, highlighted in human
machine symbioses. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">The equating of symbolic computation with cognitive capacities,
moreover, has been understood to bridge the divide between computational events
and functions carried out by the mind; that is, functions are built on
computational processes which link human and machine at the level of capacities
that are operative in the human mind. On this basis, Putnam posited that mental
states configure these functions; hence, he identified the mind as
constitutively functional. Understood this way the mind lacks a unique physical
contingency; hence, its properties cannot predicate from a holistic origin.
Functionalism, therefore, emerges from an a priorism of material semblance and
is inconsistent with ontological distinction. Chalmer and Clark’s extended mind
hypothesis, for example, is notably distinguished by its lack of a unique physical
origin to which the mind is contingent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">The lack of distinction, however, contrasts with traditional
subject/object dichotomies that view the human in opposition to the machine, a
dichotomy that has motivated efforts for its removal and the accommodation of
ontological parity. The imagery of the cyborg, especially, has been used as a
medium for conceptualizing beyond binary oppositions [Rae], which would otherwise
foreclose the physical reciprocity evoked by semblance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This conceptualization is said to require
replacement of a monadic derivation of ontology, whereby ‘two distinct entities
face one another and define themselves independently of one another’, with a novel
process of mutual endowment whereby each entity only ‘is’ by virtue of and
through its relationship with another [Haraway; Rae]. That is, the basis for
inference about ontology would no longer be drawn from an a priorism determined
by the meta ‘structure’ of the world, but by shared attributes that bind the
two relationally. As Onishi points out, the emphasis on a least common
denominator – a main tenet of the transhumanist vision, for example, is the
belief ‘that the worlds' only underlying and universal feature is information –
has the serious ontological consequence of allowing technology development to
reshape material existence at will, especially the human body. Indeed, such
thinking emphasizes the ‘entwined nature of beings’ [Rae]. Such a derivation,
therefore, denies the existence of a ‘meta-physical’ order that is the ground of
physical reality. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">For computationalism the machine-human metaphor has gained traction,
nonetheless, from Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical humanism that likewise
challenged subject/object dichotomies, but did so at the level of being, a
critique that subsequently laid the foundation for the ‘‘anti’’-humanism of
structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist thought. Heidegger’s
challenge to the Cartesian metaphysical legacy of binary oppositions (which
itself challenged scholastic notions of a priori form and purpose) rooted
itself in an understanding of being as that which <i>enabled</i> ‘things to be’
rather than a feature contingent on their reality; that is, he proposed that <i>being</i>,
rather than synonymous with being (‘<i>s</i>’),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>was something fundamentally different, an excess that, in the case of
the human being, <i>allowed</i> the human being to ‘‘exist,” rather than made
evident by his existence. Heidegger’s apriorism of a ‘murky’ being, led him to
posit a certain ‘nullity’ that now defines the postmodern subject, and indeed
all entities; hence, in the absence of predicating properties, the human subject
must be recreated from the merger of interactions with external reality; that
is, through a relational reconstruction. Indeed, much of the fluid, networked
understanding incorporated in posthumanist strands of thinking emerge from this
separation of being from its anchorage in entities, and the ensuing requirement
to restructure the entity through network interactions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">Human Action and Dynamic Entities in a Metaphysics
of Nature<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">While
Heidegger's critique is crucial for structuring ontological parity between humans
and machines by means of a novel metaphysical paradigm of being, this latter is
not widely invoked as an a priori, meta conception of the physical world.
Esfeld for example, points out that according to modern mainstream, meta-physical
thought, the physical world consists of independent and individuated things
that are embedded in space–time. These things are individual because they have
a unique spatio-temporal location and entities because they are (a) each the subject
of the predication of properties and (b) are distinguished by qualitative
properties from all other individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">This broad – indeed historical - recognition that entities comprise the
physical meta-structure of the world underscores the significance of individuation
to the ordering of physical reality. By contrast, Heidegger’s premise that
entities can ‘be’ apart from their qualities </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">leaves open the question of
whether being is one or many, thereby denying that individuation is a
constitutive feature of reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence,
the understanding of individuation has repercussions for how ontology is conceived.
</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Individuation </span><span lang="EN-US">reveals, especially, that unity is constitutive, not solely for
property predication, but constitutive to what things ‘are’ and the basis for
their persistence; hence, in contemporary physical understanding entities are
individuated because they are unified. Meta understandings of the physical
world, critically, now prominently feature an a priori operational dynamic that
is a unifying principle; thus also, the a priori presence of <i>an operational
dynamic that ‘individuates’ the entity</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">The act of
existence is not a state, it is an act, the act of all acts and therefore must
not be understood as a static definable object of conception” <i>Phelan, </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Here, Phelan
implicitly (and merely) recapitulates Aquinas’ dynamic notion of a holism:
“every substance exists for the sake of its operation”. Hence, the feature of
being is to act - “to be ‘is’ to act” - and to act is to be individuated.<b> </b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">In living systems – here understood as living entities - it is
increasingly evident that unity is autonomously mediated through a dynamic of action
execution. Indeed, the coherence and unity made evident through living systems’
autonomous engagement in action argues for the presence of a self-organizing
principle evoked as a dynamic locus of action origin. Their presence in the
world is therefore consilient with an a prioristic principle of self
organizing, self actionable individuation that emerges from the meta structure
of reality.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">Crucially, </span><i style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">human unity likewise flows from a global operational
dynamic, </i><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">where functions predicate from this dynamic. The neuroscience of
behavioral action, especially, reveals that actions are embedded within a
global operative order that is autonomously evoked during action execution;
that is, a physical a priorism of unity mediated through operation.</span><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">Human ontology, thereby, is an emergent
qualification defined by unity, operation, and self-presence; hence, an ontology
that is subjectively distinct and that flows from the world’s a priori
features.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">This physical a priorism is widely evident:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span lang="EN-US">In the coordinated activity of primitive organisms like C elegans</span></i><span lang="EN-US">. Despite the participation of hundreds of sampled neurons, their
activity is coordinated, and meaningful signals are reduced to far fewer
dimensions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span lang="EN-US">In the multisensory integration of the individual</span></i><span lang="EN-US">, who becomes the subject of experience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">In mechanisms of action identification and action contextualization</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">. For dynamic motor trajectories – events necessarily occurring in
space and time – it is critical that individual motions be set in context with
respect to the body’s spatiotemporal framework so that all motions may be
coordinated. This framework functions to unify discrete motions into a coherent
matrix in which they can be related each to another. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In action attribution and goal directed
activity</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">. </span><span lang="EN-US">Individual motions perform functions necessarily in relation to
objectives dictated by the body; hence, the body is understood to be the source
of discrete motions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">Humans and Machines in a Physical World<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Development of
sophisticated AI and robotics technologies is propelling an increasingly
intense interaction between humans and the machines they create. This has
motivated recognition of a physical semblance in models of cognition with an
ensuing emphasis on ontological and value parity. The absence of consilience at
global levels with an a priori meta model for semblance, however, weakens the
foundation for structuring ontological parity and siting value contingency and
is at odds with a general recognition of the individuation of operationally
dynamic entities that emerge from meta features of the physical world. These
features reveal the presence of dynamic holisms throughout the natural world
that recapitulate ontological distinctiveness along an increasing hierarchy of neural
complexity, culminating with the emergence of human subjectivity. Physically
grounding ontology in a meta world thus offers a basis for siting value
contingency and for informing the evolution of human machine interaction.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-36533177952382507902020-11-04T14:28:00.003+00:002020-11-04T14:28:45.353+00:00Call for Papers Inscriptions 4:2. Open issue<p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2021. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Full manuscripts due
15 April 2021.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Inscriptions</b></span></em>, an international
journal of contemporary thinking on art, philosophy, and psycho-analysis,
invites contributions to our upcoming open issue (vol. 4, no. 2). We are looking
for well-crafted and skilfully written scholarly essays and literary fiction
that in some way engage our <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/about">mandate</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Inscriptions</span></em> </b>is an
interdisciplinary, double-blind peer-reviewed journal that welcomes a wide
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and in print. <em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Inscriptions</span></em> is
indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and others, and
archived by the National Library of Norway. Our authors include Wolfgang
Schirmacher, Siobhan Doyle, Christopher Norris, and Jørgen Veisland.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Access to content in this journal
remains open on the principle that making research freely available to the
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our printed edition. Single back issues can also be ordered through our distributor.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Submission instructions:</span></strong> Academic
essays should be 3,000 to 4,500 words, while scholarship in the form of
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potential authors to submit proposals (150 words) for review prior to their
writing/submitting entire full-length manuscripts; include title, institutional
affiliation, and a brief author bio with the text of your proposal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For this open issue we also seek
submissions of literary fiction (poetry, aphorisms, short stories, fables,
literary essays, etc.), to be reviewed by our Fiction Editor Sally-Ann Murray.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For a full overview of our
policies for submission, review, and publication, please see <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/about/submissions">our website</a>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Recent
Issues:</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Inscriptions 4, no. 1: Artificial life, due out 1 January
2021</li><li>Inscriptions 3, no. 2: Power in a time of pandemic, July
2020</li><li>Inscriptions 3, no. 1: Outsourced, January 2020</li><li>Inscriptions 2, no. 2: Kierkegaard, July 2019</li><li>Inscriptions 2, no. 1: The global unconscious, January 2019</li><li>Inscriptions 1, no. 1-2: Consecrations, July 2018</li></ul><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Yours sincerely,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Torgeir Fjeld<br />
Editor-in-Chief, <em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Inscriptions</span></em><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/">https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/</a><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><br /></span></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><br /></span></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><br /></span></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><br /></span></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><br /></span></strong></span></div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-83572620809948673902020-10-18T12:58:00.002+01:002020-10-26T12:00:53.660+00:00Life in the Plague Times, Part III: A Hero For Our Times<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Simon Smith</span></p><div style="text-align: left;">Sisyphus, O Sisyphus,</div><div style="text-align: left;">The hero of the age.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>A hill he climbs,<br />From ancient times,<br />His quiff is all the rage.<br /><o:p><br /></o:p>Sisyphus, O Sisyphus,<br />The hero of the age.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>A rock he heaves,<br />But never ‘chieves,<br />The rest that we all crave.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Sisyphus, O Sisyphus,<br />The hero of the age.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Absurdity!<br />He knows it be.<br />For toil he gets no wage.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Sisyphus, O Sisyphus,<br />The hero of the age.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Upon his back,<br />The tattooed rack,<br />Of pinup Bettie Page.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Sisyphus, O Sisyphus,<br />The hero of the age,<br /><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The fan
of Betty Paige,<br /><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> Whose </span>quiff is all the rage.</div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-3357849731190651402020-10-11T10:45:00.000+01:002020-10-11T10:45:03.944+01:00Life in the Plague Times, Part II<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Simon Smith</span></p><span style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">On the off chance that anyone hasn’t already guessed, I recently turned, for the first time in many years and only partly because of the present circumstances, to Camus. <i>The Plague </i>is top of my reading list, naturally.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#_ftn1">[1]</a> Before that turning, however, I re-turned to <i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i>, unread since undergraduate days, sometime in the late fourteen-hundreds. As then so now: ruminating on reality and the absurdity of existence might profit the soul without being particularly amusing. There are very, very few jokes in Camus.</div></span><div><span style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Having glossed
<i>Sisyphus</i> and, I hope, drawn out the pricking point of application, the
question arises: where, then, does all this leave us? At a moment of awakening,
perhaps. Sisyphus’ eternity of punishment is, we know, absurd, meaningless in
every possible sense. It achieves nothing; it is no use, even as a punishment,
this eternal stone rolling, since one cannot learn from it and no change will
come about because of it. Like Hell, its only conceivable purpose is revenge.
But one must then ask, what’s the point of that? It is, in fact, all rather too
much, too late.</div><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">And where does
<i>that</i> leave us? Well, let’s not labour the point. Recent months have
brought us all closer, much closer, to mortality, our own and that of those all
around us. Yet here we are, so very far from the end, being driven back to
‘normality’ and striving with all our might to get there. Sadly, however,
‘normal’ is no longer there; and while the striving itself is, apparently,
normal, it may not be healthy; that is to say, potentially fatal and not quite
sane. Worse still, this ‘normality’ we yearn for, it is absurd, clearly and
unequivocally. It is not worth grieving for, this ‘normality’. Not now that we
have learned the truth of Doctor Rieux’s words: that ‘goodbye’ is no longer a
mere formality. (Those of us with loved ones who work in hospitals and Health
Care are still learning it, we learn it anew each day.)</div><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">It does not,
of course, matter one jot or tittle whether we agree on this, whether we
believe or not; as the good Doctor says, the plague makes opinion redundant. Even
faith can’t save us.</div><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">So where <i>does</i>
this leave us? Simple. Like Hector, atop the shining towers of ancient Ilium;
below, the city walls, impregnable, yet girt by fate and bloody battlefields.</div><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The point is
not preach inertia, but to ask, can we, like Hector, knowing what we know, go
on and meet what is to come. Or Camus’ question: can we live on this precipice without
giving up? Can we live cheerfully and without appeal, since there is no one and
nothing to appeal to? Or shall we choose negation and sedation; follow
Kierkegaard over the edge; or shall we, as Lovecraft wondered, surrender and go
mad from the revelation, fleeing into the peace and safety of a new dark age?</div><div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">We shall see,
we shall see</div></span><div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> If
any readers are able to access it, BBC Radio 4 has broadcast Neil Bartlett’s
stage version, recorded during the 2020 lockdown while the actors were
isolating in their homes. It’s quite harrowing, but still a remarkable play: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7kf">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7kf</a>.
Any references to <i>The Plague </i>herein are to this version.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><br /></div></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-60482756724487671462020-10-07T12:05:00.000+01:002020-10-07T12:05:44.228+01:00Inscriptions Vol 4, No. 1: Final Call For Papers<p style="text-align: left;"> <b style="text-align: right;"><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1e6190; font-size: 20pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">INSCRIPTIONS</span></b></p><p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">journal for contemporary thinking on <br />art, philosophy and psycho-analysis<o:p></o:p></span></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><hr align="center" size="0" width="100%" /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Deadline: 15 October 2020.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Ethics, the question of how to live right and well, has been one of philosophy’s key concerns from its beginnings. In the thought of Wolfgang Schirmacher the ethical life is connected to artifice: subjected to the event of technology we recognise our ethical being in mediated form, and it is through reflecting on this our present condition that we can begin regain our composition as ethical subjects.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">For our volume 4, n1, <i>Inscriptions</i>, a journal for contemporary thinking on art, philosophy and psycho-analysis, seeks essays that reflect on, interrogate, and bring new perspectives to the notion of artificial life and ethical living in general. Key questions include:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How must I compose myself in order to live a good, satisfying life?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">What is the good life, and what values are relevant to us in our present time?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How has the figure of the subject been challenged by our technological order, and how may we begin to ethically reassess our present condition?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Submit your manuscript (of up to 5000 words) through our <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions">online platform</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">. Proposals receive a preliminary assessment. All scholarship published by <i>Inscriptions</i> undergoes double-blind peer review. We also accept book reviews, commentaries, and short interventions of up to 1500 words.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Open Access, no APCs<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Access to content in this journal remains open on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. For this upcoming issue we will not charge authors for submission or publication.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions</span></i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"> is published online and in print, and is indexed by, among others, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Our authors include Wolfgang Schirmacher, Siobhan Doyle, Christopher Norris, and Jørgen Veisland.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Our issues are archived electronically and in print by </span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nb.no/en/legal-deposit/">Norway's National Library</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Recent Issues<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 2: Open Issue, July 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 1: Outsourced!, January 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 2: Kierkegaard, July 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 1: The Global Unconscious, January 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 1, no. 1-2: Consecrations, July 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Yours sincerely,<br />Dr. Torgeir Fjeld<br />Editor-in-Chief, <i>Inscriptions</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><hr align="center" size="0" width="100%" /></span></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; text-underline: none;"><a href="https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/">https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/</a></span></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-45389327491812447622020-09-20T12:56:00.001+01:002020-10-04T10:33:29.025+01:00Ereignis Centre for Philosophy and the Arts | ereignis.no/ | ereignis@tankebanen.no<p class="MsoTitle"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><a name="pageheader" style="font-size: x-large;"><span lang="EN-US">by Torgeir Fjeld</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><a name="pageheader" style="font-size: x-large;"><span lang="EN-US"><i>Ereignis</i></span></a><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>:</i></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> the thought</span></b></p>
<p class="FirstParagraph" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ereignis</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> is a way to understand technology and our everyday world, an approach
to life, and a distinct philosophy. We begin by unpacking the multiple meanings
of the word; we then go on to identify a vision, an obstacle, and a new
reality. In the end we ask to what service <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>
can be put to enable us to become who we are.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><a name="the-meaning-of-ereignis">1. The meaning of <i>Ereignis</i></a><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p></p><p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 144pt; text-align: justify;">An <i>event</i>
is an experience or a happening that fundamentally reconfigures the coordinates
of our lives, as a trauma or as a thoroughly exhilarating moment, strictly dividing
the “before” from the “after”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Ereignis</i> is a complex and intriguing word, even in the German. As a noun (an <i>Ereignis</i>) it basically means an unusual
or special event, or, simply, something that has happened. However, when we
investigate further we realise that there are vast arrays of potential meanings
to this term. Synonyms suggested by the dictionary include occasion, interlude,
opportunity, experience, happening, thing, and an event. At the etymological
root of <i>Ereignis</i> we find that this is
an event that is derived from the verb <i>ereignen</i>,
designating something that plays itself out, as if by destiny.</p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">One influential
interpreter sought to distinguish the prefix </span><i style="text-align: left;">er-</i><span style="text-align: left;"> from the stem </span><i style="text-align: left;">eignen</i><span style="text-align: left;">.
It is when we consider </span><i style="text-align: left;">eignen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> as a
cognate of </span><i style="text-align: left;">Augen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> that we get a sense
in which </span><i style="text-align: left;">ereignen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> is intimately
connected to our vision, to what we see or have in our view. In German, the
derived </span><i style="text-align: left;">zueignen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> and </span><i style="text-align: left;">aneignen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> means to acquire and
appropriate respectively, and the verb </span><i style="text-align: left;">eigen</i><span style="text-align: left;">
simply means to own. If an event only truly occurs when it is seen or observed,
then what has happened can only be determined with by referring to what
observers have called it to themselves, their interpretation, or appropriation,
of the event.</span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">To </span><i style="text-align: left;">er-eignen</i><span style="text-align: left;">, then, seems to mean to make
something one’s own, in by appropriating it, acquiring it’s key meaning, or
giving voice to its sense. This is important, because at the core of the </span><i style="text-align: left;">eigen</i><span style="text-align: left;"> lies </span><i style="text-align: left;">eigentlich</i><span style="text-align: left;">, designating an event’s underlying cause, or its
reality. In other words, what something really is, or what actually happens,
can only come out through appropriation, of by distinguishing what it was that
we experienced. This event, then, does not only refer to the happening itself,
but crucially also to the act of making the event one’s own.</span></p><p class="MsoBodyText"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoTitle"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><a name="X65b6094103a94d72426e4c3b6550cb16ad28ee8"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-size: large;">2. Philosophies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>: Heidegger, Schirmacher, Badiou</span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="FirstParagraph" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ereignis</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> is an experience and an approach to life. Our technological
understanding of the world can bar us from this experience. Opening up for the
multiplicity of reality we can rediscover the world as a sacred place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a name="heidegger-nearness">2.1 Heidegger: nearness</a><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">clearing</i>
is the sense we get when we approach a moment of serenity and profound insight.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">There is no doubt
that it was the game-changing philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) that
brought the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i> onto the
stage of modern thought. In an essay on the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin
Heidegger described how it feels to descend from the mountainous Alps, the
returning and homecoming, and in this essay he associates this descent with a
mystical experience of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Heidegger gave the
term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i> the task of connecting
Being, or the divine, with our lives. To Heidegger Being reveals itself as a
light which enables it to become visible to itself. Being, or the divinity,
gives, sends, or destines beings, such as ourselves, in an ongoing unfolding of
self-awareness. Heidegger thought of this double movement as Being alternately
disclosing or refusing itself, or, in a word, as a “clearing-concealing.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i> is a term to describe this
sense in which Being is self-giving or self-refusing, or what Heidegger
mystically referred to as the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>
of presencing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The “It” of Being, or the Divine, is
inaccessible to ordinary thinking; however we can come into its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nearness</i> through recollective, poetic
thought.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">To be present, then,
or to experience a presencing, is in Heidegger’s terminology to be in the
nearness of Being. When Heidegger held that this nearness nevertheless can
never be fully present he began from the assertion that the German phrase <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Es gibt</i>, there is, not merely points to
an empty placeholder “Es,” it/there, but that it serves to highlight the giving
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Es</i>, rendering the phrase as
literally “It gives.” In so far as the “It” here refers to Being, the giving
that is provided by it is its own presence. However, even Heidegger
acknowledges that this “It” is inaccessible to ordinary thinking; therefore we
should turn to the poets, and particularly the recollective verse of Hölderlin,
to be brought into “Its” nearness.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><a name="schirmacher-metaphysical-technique"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">2.2 Schirmacher: metaphysical technique</span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p>
<p class="FirstParagraph"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Now, what is the
reason that we find ourselves removed from Being, at a distance from our own
existence, in our daily lives? Heidegger was quite clear on this, referring to
the reduction of the world from a place of transport and enchantment to an
experience where we are oblivious to the things themselves as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gestell</i>. Rather than a world revealing
itself as a holy place, and the things within it as radiant, sacred beings, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gestell</i> reduces things to mere resources
that can only serve as means to ends. Wolfgang Schirmacher, a philosopher of
technology, continues Heidegger’s thought to name this blockage “metaphysical
technique,” a complex expression of attempts to dominate life by technical
mastery, a technological fix which we often think of as either technological
optimist, or utopianism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Metaphysical
technique</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> reduces our world
and other people to means to an end, making us oblivious to the things in
themselves, seeking instead to dominate them by bringing the exterior world
under our complete control.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Governed by an
“instrumental prejudice,” Schirmacher writes, the metaphysical technique is an
“ingenious expression of a technology of survival” where all objects,
everything we encounter, are regarded with suspicion, as “potentially hostile.”
This is why the dominant metaphysical technique seeks to bring the entirety of
our external world “under control under all circumstances and by all means.” It
is this naïve belief in technological supremacy which leads to the present
explanation of all our shortcomings as a “lack of technology:” when our world
is gradually brought to an end and destroyed with the aid of modern technology
the often misunderstood response is to claim that it is not modern technology,
or, rather metaphysical technique, that has brought this upon us, but the wrong
use of instruments or an insufficient determination of their purpose; in this
view our current fix is due to an incorrect application of technology. When
metaphysical technique encounters failure its answer is to stubbornly pursue
the same path with even more determination, and to explore and exploit further
its beaten path of domination by technical knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Against this
Schirmacher holds that the destructive effects of metaphysical technique cannot
be defeated on its own ground, i.e. by further pursuing an accumulation of
data, or positive knowledge. Technology, or, more precisely metaphysical
technology, serves to conceal the world to us, and more knowledge of this kind
will not reveal the world anew. In the words of Schirmacher:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoBlockText" style="margin-left: 36pt;">If the concealment of technology is not revealed by knowledge, but paradoxically rather strengthened, only ignorance can help. Ignorance does not only mean the absence of knowledge, but indicates the Socratic admission of ignorance, which is to say a knowledge that deprives knowledge of its self-evident right<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></p></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">
<p class="FirstParagraph"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What Schirmacher
prescribes is the ancient philosophical cure: truth telling, but not as a
simple mechanism to verify positive knowledge, but, rather, the Socratic model
as an approach to life. Truth of this kind cannot ultimately be found by
testing hypotheses but emerges from a technique in which “facts are shown as
they are conceived by us.” Against metaphysical technique with its “emptiness
artfully filled with an abstract language of evidence and justifications,”
truth technique makes the world in its entirety appear in a glimpse, and yet as
if eternally.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">To overcome
metaphysical technique it is required of us to pose an entirely different subject,
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>, so that we again can enter into
an essential and poetic relation to the world. Overcoming metaphysical
technique does not mean that we leave modern technology behind, but that we
abandon its use as “denizens of the night-time,” and instead treat machines and
practice the sciences behind them as “dwellers of the radiant world of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Somewhere along this
path we join in with others who have abandoned the cage of metaphysical
technique, fellow travellers who seek to give up on exploitation and abuse so
as to become guardians, custodians, and nurturers of beings, and, by
implication of the Event itself. Our question is how we are going to conceive
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i> in this sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="badiou-the-new-reality"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>2.3 Badiou:
the new reality</i></b></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">void</i>
is at the core of our existence, an empty space around which our experiences
evolve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">One way to approach
this seminal Event is suggested by the philosophy of Alain Badiou. Here, the
event is a way to understand how reality intrudes into our everyday experience.
To Badiou reality is a void grounded in an inconsistent multiplicity, a
structure which cannot ultimately be upheld in any social or personal totality.
Therefore, countless elements of this reality are excluded from the totality we
perceive as our everyday existence, and it is when any of these elements
imposes itself upon us, engendering a complete shift in our structure of
perception, that we truly can talk about an Event in Badiou’s sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">To Badiou the event
opens up our everyday appearance of normality, enabling a sudden opportunity to
rethink our lives as a whole. Since the event can be compared to a ripping open
in the fabric of established reality it offers exhilarating possibilities for
participants that can nevertheless be experienced as demanding for those who
are tasked with assimilating the event. In Badiou’s view a real event generates
not only new ways of thinking about the world, but also new truths. What
previously didn’t count, Badiou writes, comes to interrupt the continuity of
determinism, thereby generating something completely new.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;"><a name="term"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">An inconsistent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">multiplicity</i> lies at the core of reality
and is generally hidden and concealed.<o:p></o:p></span></a></p>
<span style="mso-bookmark: term;"></span>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">An utter
reformulation of prevalent prejudices and assumptions cannot be programmed in
advance. Rather, Badiou holds that a true event can only be grasped
retrospectively and that it cannot have a presence. The event, in effect,
suspends the chronology of time, becoming ubiquitous: at the moment of the
event it is everywhere and nowhere. In other words, we cannot really realise an
event until after it has passed, when we try our best to assimilate it into an
opportunity we couldn’t have lived without.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a name="becoming-who-we-are"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">3. Becoming who we are</span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="FirstParagraph"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ereignis</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> is about approaching the clearing, letting things stand out as they
are, and the festive experience, i.e. the sense in which we let the world
reveal itself as a sacred place. When we overcome metaphysical technology, an
approach to life that only allows the world and others to appear as instruments
or means to an end, we can again be brought into the nearness of a Being that
gives and reveals itself. By returning to telling the truth we can experience
the void of an inconsistent multiplicity that constitutes reality, and out of
this void we can begin to rethink our lives and generate an entirely new
reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It is when we regain
this new ground we can begin to realise and become who we truly are. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thus</i> is the experience of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ereignis</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="Compact"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/keywords.html"></a></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p></div><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-8198425634264237532020-09-06T12:10:00.000+01:002020-09-06T12:10:53.845+01:00Building a new Personalist Website Using the Ideas and Values of Personalism<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><font size="5">by David Jewson<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>It must have been a couple of
years ago that the committee of the British Personalist Forum decided to change
from publishing their journal Appraisal in printed form to a completely on-line
journal and I volunteered to try to update their website with a new version
capable of on-line publishing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The first
thing I had to decide was whether it was worthwhile. I had come across
Personalism quite by accident, having formed a friendship with Richard Allen,
the founder of the forum. I spent my working life as a GP and had always known
the importance of understanding people and helping them personally. It was
important to understand patients as a whole and how their problems fitted into
their lives. It was also important to them to have their personal stories
understood. In many ways these things were even more important than the things
I had learned at medical school. I soon realized that personalist philosophy
connected exactly with the way I thought about the world and that it had
valuable insights that were both interesting and practically useful. So, for
example, John Macmurray’s studies on fellowship and friendship as both an
important part of being human, but also as a practical political way forward
and an alternative to materialism and the self as the important things in life,
suddenly seemed to me quite obvious revelations. I now see personalism as
reaching towards a solution to current human problems, something important,
something that I emotionally feel to be good and worthwhile pursuing, and something
that I want to do with other likeminded people.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">I’m also
interested in physics and consciousness. It is conventional to start with
physics and material things and then try to explain consciousness from that
starting point. However, I have found that it is actually much easier to start
from consciousness, that is the personal world and how it changes, and explain
physics from that starting point. That means I believe that personalism, as in
the personal view, also has a great contribution to give to science in forming
a coherent view of the world from the mess that physics currently is.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">So, the answer
was that, ‘yes’, I definitely though it was worthwhile to have a website that
would allow people from across the world to express and publish their views on
personalism and help develop what I think is both a dynamic and modern
philosophy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The next
question was whether I would be able to do it. I am not naturally a
completer-finisher, I like having ideas and will spend many happy hours
thinking about things, but when it comes to putting them into action, that is
completely different. I thought I could at least have a go. The other problem
was that I didn’t know much about websites at all. Fortunately, technology came
to my aid as building a website online is now extremely easy to do, even for a
novice, with a variety of companies all offering good options. I chose Weebly
as it had good reviews. Learning Weebly was very easy, which also means that,
in the future, anyone could help me with the site, or even take it over
completely if necessary. The site allows multiple editors and as many pages as
you need, which would allow other personalists to have and edit their own pages
on the site, which I hope is something that could happen in the future.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">I was still
able to use the address of our old website, <a href="http://www.britishpersonalistforum.org.uk/">www.britishpersonalistforum.org.uk</a>,
which was important for continuity and was able to add a wealth of material on
the original site, a lot of which had been put together by Richard Allen, as
well as all previous issues of Appraisal. This means it is already a good
reference to use.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Becoming an
on-line publisher has great advantages. Costs are minimal so we can now offer
free on-line access and free publishing and should be able to maintain our
website through donations. This gives access to personalists ideas to anyone
who can access the internet completely free of charge. Authors can also publish
articles without having to pay the exorbitant fees charged by some other
journals. In this way, friends in the personalist community can share their
ideas as friends; ideas freely given and freely received with the idea of
helping each other, rather than making a profit.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">I was able to take
inspiration for the site design from other on-line journals, while trying to
keep a simple consistent theme and make the website easy to use and had some
valuable initial advice from Simon Smith. The site also has several advantages
over a printed copy. Multimedia such as sound, video and colour pictures are
easily added, so I have, for example, been able to add some video clips of
Polanyi. All the articles on the site should be searchable from within the site
but also using Google or other search engines. Philosophers trying to find out
about personalism should be easily able to find our site from anywhere in the
world and, by applying Google Translate, be able to translate it into any
language. They should also be easily able to find authors and articles or even
parts of articles by a standard google search.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">It’s been an
interesting time and there’s been a lot to learn. For example, if you want
people to be able to find your site when they do an on-line search then you
need to have your site ‘search engine optimized’ which means trying to find out
the likely search phrases people will use. So, will they search for personalist
philosophy or the philosophy of personalism or British personalists or British
personalism or something else entirely? There have also been technical issues
such as how to set up a store and on-line payments, but these have been
steadily overcome. An option to be able to use PayPal has recently been added,
for example.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Entirely
against my own expectations, the web site is now up and running and we have
posted the first on-line issue of Appraisal. We want to be an academic journal
with the highest standards. We have already signed up several supporters and
have had some generous donations. We now need some really good articles for our
next Appraisal issue, so we need to let everyone know that we are up and
running!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">With lots of
interesting ideas to explore and then thinking how they might apply to our
ever-changing world; I think the journal and the site have a great future.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><a href="https://www.britishpersonalistforum.org.uk/"><font size="5">https://www.britishpersonalistforum.org.uk/</font></a></p><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-48605423390609975982020-08-30T10:23:00.000+01:002020-08-30T10:23:02.497+01:00James Joyce: The Curve of an Emotion<p> </p><p><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">The </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">features </span><span style="text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;">of </span><span style="text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;">infancy
are not </span><span style="text-align: center;">commonly
reproduced</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes; text-align: center;"><span><span> </span></span></span><span style="text-align: center;">in the</span><span style="text-align: center;"> a</span><span style="text-align: center;">dolescent </span><span style="text-align: center;">portrait </span><span style="text-align: center;">for, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>so capricious <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span>are we,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>that we </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>cannot <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 108pt; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> <span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span>or <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span></span></span>will not <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span></span>conceive <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span>the past <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span></span>in any other than </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>its iron</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span>memorial <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>aspect. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Yet the past assuredly </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>implies a fluid </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>succession </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>of </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>presents, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>the development</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>of </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>an</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>entity </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>of </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>which </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>our </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>actual
present </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>is a phase </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>only. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Our world, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>again, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>recognises its </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>acquaintance</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>chiefly
by the </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span></span>characters </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span> </span><span> </span></span>of </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>beard</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span></span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>and</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span></span> </span><span> </span>inches</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span>and is,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>for the most part,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>estranged</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>from
those of its </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>members </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>who seek </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>through </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>some </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>art, </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>by </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>some </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>process </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>of the </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>mind</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>as
yet</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>untabulated, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>to </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>liberate </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>from the </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>personalised </span><span style="text-align: center;">lumps </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>of </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>matter </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span><span> </span><span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>that which
is </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>their </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>individual </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>rhythm,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span></span>the </span><span style="text-align: center;">first </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span><span> </span> </span><span> </span>or </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>formal </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span> <span> </span><span> </span></span></span>relation </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span></span>of their </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>parts. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">But
for such<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span> </span>as<span> <span> </span></span> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">these</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">a</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">portrait<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">is not<span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-align: left;">an<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">identificative<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">paper<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">but<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">rather<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>the</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>curve </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>of</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>an </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span></span>e</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span><span> </span> <span> </span></span></span>m</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> <span> </span><span> <span> <span> <span> </span> </span> </span> </span></span></span>o</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span></span>t</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span>i</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span></span><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>o</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> <span> </span></span></span>n</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>.</p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;">From the essay ‘A Portrait of the
Artist’ in </div><i><div style="text-align: right;"><i>James Joyce Poems and Shorter Writings</i>. </div></i><div style="text-align: right;">Eds. Richard Ellmann, </div><div style="text-align: right;">A. Walton Litz, </div><div style="text-align: right;">and John Whittier-Ferguson. </div><div style="text-align: right;">(London: Faber and Faber, 1991)
211 </div><div style="text-align: right;">(Typography added, obviously).</div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><o:p></o:p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-55250183948479618732020-08-26T16:49:00.002+01:002020-08-26T16:49:42.703+01:00New Publication by Giorgio Baruchello<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Big data and professionals: What we can learn from Michael
Polanyi</span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-large; text-align: left;">by Giorgio Baruchello</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">in</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Big Data<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="text-align: center;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Promise, Application and Pitfalls</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Edited by John
Storm Pedersen and Adrian Wilkinson</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7PMZqwUSVvKqd26apvnfJ50SqMfVoLwmo9EKqj2iR2B3cvKj6SpdXPmbjCZ5d3wpqi3WBF5TNoWC-lQqMG2_5YIvrwx42i3B-rWFGLDIj6OieiplkmG5VAv-7t1EUnWolSYwUco6AstR/s316/9781788112345_1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="200" height="494" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7PMZqwUSVvKqd26apvnfJ50SqMfVoLwmo9EKqj2iR2B3cvKj6SpdXPmbjCZ5d3wpqi3WBF5TNoWC-lQqMG2_5YIvrwx42i3B-rWFGLDIj6OieiplkmG5VAv-7t1EUnWolSYwUco6AstR/w313-h494/9781788112345_1.jpg" width="313" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Since the early 2000s, digital data has transformed the way
we live and work. This timely book looks to big data analytics to understand
this revolutionary change, unpacking the impact of big data analytics on the
mobilization and allocation of individuals, organizations and societies’
resources.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">Contributions from leading
experts on modern technological trends examine the promises, applications and
pitfalls of big data. The contributors assess the ways in which contemporary
trajectories of data processing have increased efficiency and had a
transformative effect on all avenues of life, from energy, tourism and social
media, to human resources, welfare systems and urban citizenship. At a time
when our personal data is more valuable than ever, this book seeks to make
sense of how big data analytics has transformed our lives and how it will
continue to shape society in the future.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">Astute and comprehensive, this
book is critical reading for business and management scholars with a focus
on information systems and communications technologies. It will also prove to
be vital information for students and researchers of big data and digital
society, as well as politics and administration more widely.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Available from</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/big-data-9781788112345.html"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Edward Elgar Publishing</span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-27577993039412346502020-08-21T15:25:00.000+01:002020-08-21T15:25:11.570+01:00Polanyi Society Online Discussion <p style="text-align: center;"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Zoom Discussion</span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Michael Polanyi’s 1964 Duke
Lectures</span></b></p><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Polanyi Society is sponsoring
an online discussion of Michael Polanyi’s 1964 Duke Lectures. <a href="http://www.polanyisociety.org/Duke-intro.pdf">A short
introduction to the Duke Lectures and links for the five lectures are available
in the collection of primary materials here in Polanyi Society web materials</a>.
The titles of the lectures below also directly link to that lecture. The Duke
Lectures are one of several sets of lectures Polanyi gave in the sixties; they
reflect the refinements in his philosophical perspective after <i>Personal
Knowledge</i>. Polanyi intended for the Duke Lectures to become a book but
there was a publishers’ dispute and the Duke Lectures were never published. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Schedule for Zoom discussions: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lecture 1: “The Metaphysical Reach of Science”—Saturday,
August 29, 2020 at 11 a.m. Central Daylight Saving Time <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lecture 2: “The Structure of Tacit Knowing”—Saturday,
September 5, 2020 at 11 a.m. Central Daylight Saving Time <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lecture 3: “Commitment to Science”-- Saturday, September 12,
2020 at 11 a.m. Central Daylight Saving Time <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lecture 4: “The Emergence of Man” -- Saturday, September 19,
2020 at 11 a.m. Central Daylight Saving Time <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lecture 5: “Thought in Society”-- Saturday, September 26,
2020 at 11 a.m. Central Daylight Saving Time <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sessions are projected to be one
hour in duration. Some may extend beyond that but participants can come and go
as schedules permit. Each session will have a facilitator who will make very
brief comments (or raise questions) about ideas developed in the lecture; this
is simply a device to stimulate subsequent general discussion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Anyone interested in Polanyi’s
Duke Lectures can sign up to participate in a session or all sessions. You do
not need to be a member of the Polanyi Society to participate. You simply need
to email a request to be sent a Zoom link for sessions to: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Phil Mullins (<a href="mailto:mullins@missouriwestern.edu">mullins@missouriwestern.edu</a>)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Gus Breytspraak (<a href="mailto:gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu">gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu</a>)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">You will be advised by e-mail
about any further developments and will be e-mailed a link for sessions. We
plan to record sessions and post a link for each session on the Zoom cloud as
well as the Polanyi Society web site very soon after the session. Those who
miss sessions and wish to review a recording should be able easily to do so.<o:p></o:p></p><br /></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-32295009460658700452020-08-16T09:51:00.001+01:002020-11-28T10:05:43.195+00:00The Data of Mind and the Blindness of Faith<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%;"><o:p><font size="5">by Denis Larrivee</font></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Francis Bacon’s ‘Great Instauration’ articulates the philosophical
principles that would come to ground the shape of scientific reason; through
these he also made plain the purpose for their adoption. Written in 1620, Bacon
asserted therein</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">…a way must be opened for human understanding
entirely different from any hitherto known… in order that the mind may exercise
over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it….</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Together with Descartes, autonomy for the exercise of power over nature
thus came to be embraced as <i>the</i> norm motivating the extraction of natural
principle through the pursuit of science. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">To open the way to the new understanding Bacon
refashioned the prevailing scholastic notion that regarded purpose as embedded
in nature and instead affirmed that purpose was inscribed by the exercise of
authority, which directed nature to the end proscribed for it. The
transposition of purpose – aka final cause – from its lodging within nature to that
acquired through extrinsic imposition, was achieved by a redaction of the
scholastic causal order, which has since grounded natural investigation. The complex
effect of this redaction on the autonomy that motivated nature’s subjugation has
only become apparent with the advent of modern neuroscience, however, again
calling into question the siting of purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Heir to these redactions, modern neuroscience has
faithfully conveyed Bacon’s characterization of the natural world, invoking <i>a
posteriori</i>, efficient causal influences as the mode by which cognition is
structured. The explanatory success of a variety of basic empirical discoveries
has, in fact, reinforced his conception, including such elementary neural features
as action potential generation, coding spike trains, vesicular neurotransmitter
release, and the like, all of which illustrate the contiguous and extrinsic
nature of associations that yield successive neural events. The confirmation of
efficient causal influences in basic processes of neuroscientific operation, however,
has also been upwardly extended in the assertion that large scale neural events
are themselves mechanistically confined. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">This is illustrated, for example, in the understanding used to
explicate the somatic integrity thesis, which advances a mechanistic claim on
the body’s unification and has generally served as the philosophical linchpin
for brain death assessments. In Craver and Tabery’s approach to neural
function, generally conceded to be a retrieval of the Cartesian, machine based,
inertial contact paradigm—neural mechanisms are understood to ‘do’ something, that
is, they are productive of some event. Accordingly, models of neural mechanisms
are noted for the asymmetry and extrinsic character of their causal flow. The action
potential mechanism that often serves as an archetype is posited, for example, to
induce synaptic vesicle release by means of consecutive causal and extrinsic
associations. The induction of vesicular release, therefore, is underpinned by the
notion of continuity between cause and effect, since gaps would require
additional factors as explanans; hence, causal interactions are here seen to entail
contiguity and temporal succession. Using this paradigm, large-scale neuronal events
have also been understood to flow from a causal nexus constituted, typically, by
a suite of cognitive regulatory processes. Accordingly, the somatic integrity
thesis depicts the body as a cluster of organized systems that are unified by the
brain’s regulation. Anatomically and physiologically the source of this integration
is explicitly referenced to neural processes confined to the cranium – so also
the individual. </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Analogously, other higher order neural
operations are also seen as mechanistic outputs tracing their regulation to
causal nexi within the brain. To avoid the explanatory circularity implicit in efficient,
contiguous associations—neural feedbacks, for instance—such operations are typically
parcelled into discrete functional categories, which are then investigated independent
of their relation to global behaviour. As a matter of praxis, mechanistic
models are thus constructed by segregating higher order behaviours from the
brain’s global operation, the latter conceived as having extrinsic oversight. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Perception, for example, has been widely
understood to be an extrinsic operation by which the brain independently
generates representations of the world; that is, such representations are regarded
as causally and extrinsically constructed by the brain, a posteriori. While
evidence of top down influences on the awareness of perception have in fact been
shown to occur, e.g., attentional regulation, top down influences are claimed
to extend even to the manipulation of the nature of such representations, yielding
loosely or even unrelated representations of the external world. Worded
otherwise, what is perceived to be ‘out there’ is understood to be interpretively
manipulated solely by the brain, a position that has been endorsed not only in modern
neuroscience but as a historical legacy from the Idealist philosophers who succeeded
Bacon and Descartes. Francis Crick, for example, is unequivocal.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What you see is not what is really there, it is
what your brain believes is there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Given the supposition that the brain regulates perceived events independent
of their external reality, this has the deductive consequence of laying
perception open to an unknown and highly variable account of reality. Metzinger,
particularly, is noted for extending this notion to its logical extreme, where the
brain is seen to operate independently of all external influence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Conscious experience is like a tunnel ... first
our brains generate a world simulation, so perfect that we do not recognize it
... and then a construct of ourselves interacting with it, a selective and extreme
representation of information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Unsurprisingly, this deductive position was expressed centuries earlier with
even greater clarity by Kant, an assiduous disciple of Descartes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">...appearances are only representations of
things that exist without cognition of what they might be in themselves. A mere
representation, however, they stand under no law of connection at all except
that which the connecting faculty prescribes….</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Despite the inherent variability of perceptual observations that is the
result of such logic, by carefully circumscribing the processes of perception a
constellation of studies are now used to demonstrate the grounding of perception
in mechanistic accounts; that is, as a top down, extrinsically modulated brain function.
Beginning with George Wald’s discovery of the light receptive protein rhodopsin,
and the molecular events of signal transduction, which evoke sensory receptor
potentials and on to population coding, these studies are used to illustrate
the presence of consecutive steps that generate the neural activity patterns that
underlie perceptual awareness. Reprised from global brain operation, therefore,
such studies claim the presence of only contiguous and extrinsic causal relations
in perceptual processes; hence, they are stated to demonstrate the grounding of
perception in a posteriori causal relations alone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span lang="EN-US">By extension, emotions—arguably equally complex— have also been classed
within mechanistic paradigms, a claim reinforced by, among other observations, the
demonstration of binding shifts between emotional responses and particular memories
by neuromodulation. The lesson taken from these studies is that emotions are
similarly subject to Bacon’s postulates and the notions of contemporary
neuroscientific interpreters. Distinctions that may be claimed for subjectivity
and emotional feelings, therefore, have been explained on the basis of degree and
not of kind, a message amplified in the general claim that humans share through
their neural activity in the same sorts of neural processes underwriting apparently
similar emotional events seen in animals or even duplicated in
neurotechnological devices. Such a claim, clearly, has bearing on human ontological
status, which is therefore made subject to the lack of a clear ‘exceptionalness’
criterion by which the human can be distinguished from the material world. The absence
of such distinction, conversely and further, has led to the conclusion that the
human being, and the behavioural features and emotional inclinations to which
he is privy, is exceptionless.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The move to ontology that is apparent in these
conclusions, is coherent as the expression of a consistently invoked principle on
the perceived natural order, and the culmination of a trajectory initiated by
Bacon’s revision of the older Scholastic understanding. The logical conundrum exposed
in the ontological claim, however, reveals the flawed outcome of this pursuit,
exacerbated by a dichotomy of praxis that contrasts the level of interrogation evoked
via the principle with that directed to the principle. What modern neuroscience
makes apparent, therefore, is that in staging this dichotomy there are untoward
consequences neither foreseen by the master nor intended by the disciple. Bacon’s
redaction of the scholastic causal order and his substitution of motivation for
metaphysic failed due to his failure to value the arguments that had first
sited final purpose to nature. In consequence, it exposed the ground for its
challenge in studies of the material order of the human mind, which emerged in
the 21st century. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Embedded in nature, the drive to autonomy may
be understood as the logical inference on a purposeful reality; removed from
nature for the sake of its control, autonomy is no longer manifestly present in
the natural domain. Harvard’s Wegner, for instance, personifies this logic in
his fervent denial of behavioural autonomy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Writing in 1979, Karol Wojtyla noted that the
order of nature was not coincident with the order of biology, a statement
directly referencing the general scientific perspective on the natural world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">…The expression ‘the order of nature’ and ‘the
biological order’ must not be confused or regarded as identical; the
‘biological order’ does indeed mean the same as the order of nature but only in
so far as this is accessible to the methods of empirical and descriptive
natural science…..The ‘biological order,’ as a product of the human intellect
which abstracts its elements from a larger reality, has man for its immediate
author. The claim to autonomy ….is a short jump from this…….’</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Wojtyla apparently meant by this that while the order of nature was
impressed with the totality of reality, the order of biology reflected only man’s
abstraction of nature, which reduced reality to a selected interpretation. The
consequence of this partial view is in finding that by subjugating the natural
world, nature comes to exercise control over man. As a part of the metaphysical
order, however, the drive to autonomy reflects an upward striving to personal
freedom that attains a pinnacle in the human condition. When removed from
nature for the sake of its control, though, purpose is itself lost and autonomy
denied. For Bacon’s heirs, thus, in lieu of an understanding of autonomy, only blind
faith in its motivation remains. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-56584610264328080332020-08-12T15:01:00.001+01:002020-08-16T09:47:41.830+01:00A Brief Comment on Dignity<div style="text-align: right;"><font size="5">by Simon Smith</font></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Without wishing to be facetious or obtuse, it seems there may be a factual error in Macklin's view of the concept 'dignity', discussed last time by Dr B. as being 'vague' and 'imprecise': viz. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5"><i>Dignity, n.</i></font></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The quality of being worthy or honourable; worthiness, worth, nobleness, excellence.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><font size="2">"dignity, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/52653. Accessed 11 July 2020.</font></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This, <i>nota bene</i>, is only the first of 8 definitions. Further, this being the OED, those 'mystery-shrouded' origins are laid out quite clearly, should anyone care to investigate them. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Just a thought. </div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-23964899518148182822020-08-09T10:19:00.001+01:002020-08-09T10:19:34.135+01:00Dignity<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span lang=""><font size="5">by James Beauregard</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">My first attendance at the International Conference on Persons was in
August of 2013, held at the University of Lund, Sweden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I had been reading personalism for some
time, it was the first opportunity I had had to gather with a group of
dedicated personalist philosophers, allowing me to experience personalism as it
was happening – as papers were presented, as ideas were being shared, as new
ideas were being formed. Belying the comment of a Swedish co-worker at the
time, who told me that “All Swedish food is grey,” I also discovered more variety,
in colour and flavour than that statement would have led me to believe. I also
inadvertently discovered that there are some very good Italian restaurants in
southern Sweden – who knew? Many personalist conversations were conducted over
red sauce that week. That Italian food proved so congenial to personalist
discussion was not the least of the reasons that I organized the dinner for the
Boston International Conference on Persons in the city’s Italian section, the
“North End.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">But, back to Sweden - I remember Randy Auxier’s
introduction to the conference on the first day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In those introductory remarks he made it a
point to mention the notion of human dignity “something personalists profess to
care about.” In a sense, this set the tone for the week for me – thanks Randy!
– and more recently has led me to consider human dignity more carefully, and in
a more organized fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In much of the world, both East and West, the
concept of dignity has fallen on hard times. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some places, dignity talk is ignored or
banished, in others attacked, in still others devalued or ridiculed, and still,
in some places, recognized and affirmed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">How did we come to this situation in a
relatively short span of time?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
years after the Second World War we saw the promulgation of some of the
greatest documents on human dignity and human rights that the world has known –
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights being a flagship
example and in inspiration for many other documents that would follow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Jump ahead with me from 1948 to 2003, when the
American bioethicist Ruth Macklin published a brief editorial in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BMJ</i> called “Dignity is a useless
concept.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> She concluded her essay with the statement,
“Dignity is a useless concept in medical ethics and can be eliminated without
any loss of content.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
Macklin, the origins of the concept of dignity are obscure, shrouded in
“mystery” and she deemed the concept of dignity incoherent due to its vagueness
imprecision, to the point where it could invoked by multiple sides in debates
on life issues.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> She argued further that dignity had been drawn
into bioethical debate as a substitute term for autonomy and “respect for
persons,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>terms she found more specific
and useful.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> Noting the lack of a concrete working <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">definition </i>of dignity in various
bioethical and international rights documents, she stated that “In the absence
of criteria that can enable us to know just when dignity is violated, the
concept remains hopelessly vague.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> A final criticism of dignity was addressed to
its origins in religious sources, “especially, but not exclusively in Roman
Catholic writings,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that have “crept
into the secular literature in medical ethics.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> Because of this, the aetiology of the concept of
dignity, in her view, remained “a mystery.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">There is much to ponder here. Is dignity still
a useful concept, and if so, in what contexts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How should it come into play?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What are the consequences of including dignity in public conversation
and what are the consequences of its absence? Macklin’s views have not going
unchallenged, and there is a literature since 2003 in direct response to her
shot across the bow, as well as a continuation of dignity more generally that
we will also consider. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Macklin’s comments may seem damning –
vagueness, incoherence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concept of
dignity has been employed on both sides of the assisted sides debate – the
dignity of the human person defended against assisted suicide on the one hand,
and death with dignity on the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the problem runs deeper than the issue of language and of definition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is at stake is human persons, and not
least our very understanding of who is a person, what constitutes
personhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we speak of dignity,
either to support it or criticize it, we are speaking at some level of the
dignity of persons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What I am writing here is the beginning of an
investigation – an investigation of dignity, which is something that, as Randy
said back in 2013, is something that should receive the attention of
personalist philosophers and theologians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To do this, this blog begins a series of reflections on human dignity
that will look at the context and history of the notion of dignity to create a
context, and that will then look at dignity in its contemporary context, which
presents multiple perspectives, some in favour of recognizing dignity, some
against it. I will be asking the question of dignity, and as a precursor, the
question of persons, to whom dignity is ascribed or denied, or removed from the
conversation altogether. In the next instalment, the long history of the
concept of dignity will be our starting point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a name="_Hlk45356701"></a><a name="_Hlk45356700"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk45356701;"></span></a><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk45356700;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk45356701;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk45356700;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk45356701;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ruth Macklin, “Dignity
is a useless concept,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BMJ</i>, 327
(20-27 December 2003): 1419-1420.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ibid., 1420.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Macklin specifically
mentions the California Natural Death Act in 1976 in the debate on death with
dignity, 1419.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ibid, 1420.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Desktop/BPF%20Dignity%201.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div><br />Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-4609420677122618662020-08-02T10:27:00.019+01:002020-08-02T10:35:54.558+01:00On Determinism<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><font size="5">by Simon Smith</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Marking season has come and gone,
and with it my chance to<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 180pt; text-align: justify;">mete and dole<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">Unequal laws unto a savage race…<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></a></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As seasons go (or come) it’s been
unusual, what with the global plague and such. This year, I was marking essays
in applied philosophy, some significantly better, I’d say, than the usual
emetical exam scripts. Their authors had taken the time, or <i>some</i> time,
to reflect upon their chosen topics with no little care. The essays were fairly
interesting, more so than the usual boked up remembrances of Descartes or
Nietzsche, being as they were an attempt to apply new-born philosophical acumen
to some ‘non-philosophical’ material: a book, a film, song lyrics, etc. A refreshing
change to merely reading <i>about </i>philosophy, which is largely what
academic philosophy seems to be <i>about</i> these days. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The standard
of English was better, too, than many a professionally produced paper I’ve
encountered lately; depressingly so. It surprises me that a profession which stakes
its credibility on clarity of thought appears to have so little concern with
basic grammar, punctuation, and, quite often, spelling. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Agonising
Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: 14.2pt;">It
would, oh it would. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A common theme of this year’s
essays was that ol’ black magic called Determinism. Students attacked it
vigorously and from a variety of angles; most concluded that Free Will is an
illusion while Determinism is the very Hymenoptera’s patella. Curiously, hardly
any of them seemed remotely perturbed by this. Coming apocalypse
notwithstanding, they have their lives ahead of them and yet they cheerfully
accept the idea that they are merely vibrations in the universal web of causal interaction
and interpenetration; they accept that their lives, being consequent on
physical causes, are also meaningless. Do these nascent Socrates and
Socratesses feel the physical and metaphysical weight of a universe pressing
down upon them already, I wonder. Has the sudden swell and flood of coughing
death impressed upon them the sheer futility of all human endeavour? Perhaps; gloomy
little buggers. Or maybe they’ve drunk too deep of the usual old rationalist
toot without really thinking about it.</p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">‘Courage!’ he said,
and pointed toward the land…<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span></a></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One common assumption seems to be
that Determinism is somehow scientific, or at least supported by scientific
thought, whereas the belief in Free Will is a conjuration of folk psychology. Hardly
a fair assessment. Both Determinism and Free Will purport to say something, not
just about my experience of the universe, but about how the universe <i>really</i>
is. As such, they are <i>both</i> metaphysical positions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">The temptation
to align metaphysics with science cannot be denied, however. Clearly, there is nought
but causal order to the universe, chain-link of events from one end to the
other without pause or pass. All else within its measured span is prefigured,
as it were; why should human action be an exception? That tightly woven skein is,
after all, the necessary ground of all my actions; without it, what could I do?
‘Nothing at all,’ replies the Determinist, ‘as you well know.’ <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Then we’re agreed:
the dragon wing of Determinism, o’erspreads my actions in their entirety. Such
is the verdict of a scientifically informed metaphysic; and the physical
sciences should know, after all, since cause and effect are meat and drink to
them. Nothing that falls within the purview of scientific investigation could
ever occur without its prior cause. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">That such a
purview surveys the entirety of creation is, of course a moot point. Doubtless,
there are modes of exploration and investigation which require something a
little bit more sophisticated than cosmic clockwork to make them go. The social
and historical sciences might be two. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">But this is a
path well-trodden indeed. Stepping off it, one might note, instead, that this
allegedly ‘informed metaphysic’ might not be as well-informed as it thinks.
This picture of a universe woven in cause and effect, handed down from
Aristotle to Newton and thence to the modern-day Determinist, is rather out of
date. That antediluvian physical theory was shown to be metaphysically useless
a hundred years ago. Once modern science flipped the relativistic switch,
Farrer, Whitehead, and Bergson were more than ready to reshape metaphysics in
Einstein’s energetic mould. Thanks to them, we now live in a Gershwinian universe:
it’s got rhythm.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">It’s common
knowledge in the world beyond philosophy that quantum mechanics – a fundamental
theory in the physical sciences – does not strictly abide by those old-fashioned
rules. Rather, it maps their disruption. Down below the subatomic level, where
stuff and substance no longer matter, it seems that photons and the like just
can’t make up their minds what they’re up to. The fact that what happens on the
quantum level does nothing to falsify the higher-level mapping of causal
relations is irrelevant, for all such talk concerns the efficacy of
calculations, not of what is or is not real: it’s maths, not metaphysics. The
fact remains, when quantum mechanics get to work with their sub-atomic socket
sets, the rules of classical causality no longer seem to apply. Apparently,
then, the sciences to which Determinists appeal are quite prepared to consider
the possibility that Newton’s physical theory does not operate successfully in <i>every
possible or conceivable case</i>. If scientists can do this, why not
philosophers. In short if quantum theory tells a different story, it is surely
not beyond the bounds of possibility that human action could do likewise. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">All of which
may or may not be interesting, but it is rather beside the most curious point
of the whole Determinist case, which is talk of causal necessity. Just what,
one might fairly wonder, does <i>that</i> mean? Necessity, after all, is
logico-linguistic: it concerns the ways in which we talk and the relations
between the propositions we use in doing so. The most common examples of
necessary truths, as every schoolboy knows, are tautologies; for example,
either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow. Logically speaking,
this proposition is necessarily true. Anyone who has ever been to old Ireland
will know that, <i>as a matter of fact</i>, it’s a load of <i>bollóga</i>. In the
heaving metropolitan hub that is Knobber, simultaneous rain and not-rain is both
normal and perpetual. It is, I’m told, what’s known as a ‘soft day.’ <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Therein lies
the rub. Logical concepts such as ‘necessity’ apply very well to propositions,
but they have no real purchase on the world and our encounters with it. The
world of experience and experiment, that is, the world that is known and
knowable, operates within a framework of probability, not necessity. So much we
know: the successful performance of an experiment, whether in the laboratory,
the kitchen, or the bedroom does not guarantee the same results next time. The
hundredth successful performance might give you considerable confidence in the
results, but it cannot <i>necessitate</i> them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">That, by the
way, is what Friedrich Waismann called the ‘open-endedness’ of description.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Of course, the proposition ‘every effect has a cause’ may be necessarily true, but that’s only
because the concept ‘effect’ entails the concept ‘cause’. Whether, as a matter
of fact, of experience, every state of affairs really is caused by some other
is another question entirely. Necessity in a proposition does not equate to
necessity in fact.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">Oil and water,
then: necessity and causality don’t mix. Any ‘knowledge’ gained from causal
necessity would be simultaneously <i>a priori</i> and <i>a posteriori</i>. If
we’re going to insist that there’s no room to swing Schrodinger’s cat in this
universe – all available space being positively heaving with Newton’s balls – then
what we have on our hands is a good old-fashioned necessitarian metaphysic. One
might almost imagine that Determinism is just an attempt to secularise an
old-world theology, which itself was an attempt to legitimise and impose an old-world,
authoritarian political philosophy. The schoolmen taught that misfortune was a
divine judgment: poverty, sickness, disability, etc. were the wages of sin.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Secular Determinism is more enlightened, naturally. Too embarrassed to talk
about sin or God directly, we say inequality is natural; poverty, sickness, and
disability – isn’t that just how the universe goes? How grand, if you happen to
be in the universe’s good books; an <i>unnecessary </i>cricket bat to the plums
for everyone else. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">All this is,
of course, only half the story, as well we know. And we know the other half very
well too; if we didn’t, we wouldn’t know anything at all.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
That’s not to say we’re absolutely free. We aren’t ‘swimming in a perfectly
featureless medium;’ we’re ‘walking the earth among all sorts of obstacles’
without which we wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
More importantly, we’re walking the earth among all sorts of people without <i>whom</i>
we wouldn’t be able to do anything at all because we wouldn’t <i>be</i>
anything at all.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ah
yes, but that heralds ideas like duty and responsibility, the ‘claimingness’ of
others, the demand for action. In the end, however, isn’t it just easier to hunker
down beneath the comforting fatalism of Determinism and pretend that we’re
merely cogwheels in the cosmic clockwork?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">‘Shite and
onions!’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Them
that ‘hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
or anybody else it seems always miss the real point of human existence. In the
end, that is, we’re not condemned to <i>behave</i> as though we’re free while <i>knowing</i>
our every thought and action is ordered by the turning of wheels and the depression
of levers. We’re condemned to be free while knowing, in reality, it makes damn
all difference one way or the other.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses">Tennyson, Alfred.
‘Ulysses’. Poetry Foundation, n.d..</a> <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm">Joyce, James. <i>Ulysses</i>.
Project Gutenberg, 2008.</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/search?query=The+Lotos-eaters">Tennyson,
Alfred. ‘The Lotos-eaters’. Poetry Foundation, n.d..</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPRiM5JvYx8">Gershwin, George. ‘I’ve Got
Rhythm.’</a> For the rest, see Farrer’s <i>Faith and Speculation </i>(London: Adam & Charles Black, 1967); Whitehead's <i>Process and Reality, Corrected Edition</i>, edited by David Ray Griffen and Donald W. Sherbourne(New York: Free Press, 1978) as good examples. </p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See
Friedrich Waismann, ‘Verifiability’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Theory of Meaning</i> ed. G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: OUP, 1982) and ‘The
Resources of Language’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Importance
of Language</i> edited by Max Black. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall,
1962). <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Parts 3 and 4 of Hamblet, Wendy C. <i>Punishment and Shame</i>. Plymouth:
Lexington Books, 2011. <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Hampshire, Stuart. <i>Thought and </i>Action. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1983) 49-50.<i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <o:p></o:p>Farrer, Austin Marsden. Finite and Infinite. (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1959) , 233.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See
Farrer, Austin Marsden. <i>The Freedom of the Will</i>.<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 300:</span> ‘thank heaven I have not to meditate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in vacuo</i> on what to make of myself….
Thank heaven I have this lecture to write and beyond that, my pupils to see to;
and ah, beyond that, if I dare to look, there is Lazarus on the doorstep
covered with sores.’<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm">Joyce, James. <i>Ulysses</i>.
Project Gutenberg, 2008.</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses">Tennyson, Alfred.
‘Ulysses’. Poetry Foundation, n.d..</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Me/Google%20Drive/Simon's%20Stuff/Currently%20Working%20On/Blog/Free%20Will%20and%20Determinism%20v3.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Everybody knows this quotation, but just in case, it can be found in <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm">Sartre,
Jean-Paul. ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ at the Marxists Internet Archive</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><br />Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-78828761185383396832020-07-26T11:51:00.000+01:002020-07-26T11:51:39.429+01:00Inscriptions Vol. 3, No. 2<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 21.6pt; text-align: right;"><b><span style="color: #1e6190; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">INSCRIPTIONS<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">journal for contemporary thinking on <br />art, philosophy and psycho-analysis<o:p></o:p></span></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><hr align="center" size="0" width="100%" /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Inscriptions</span></i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, an international
peer-reviewed journal that publishes contemporary thinking on art, philosophy
and psycho-analysis, vol. 3, no. 2, is available Open Access at <a href="https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Power in a time of pandemic</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Among our key questions in
this open issue is the relation between the subject and power: what is the
substance and appearance of the sovereign, what is the domain and limits of
state power, and what are the effects of governance in the time of a health scare.
Two short texts by Giorgio Agamben show how a religion of science became a tool
to administer an exceptional governmentality under the pandemic. This issue
features contributions by Leopold Haas, Christopher Norris, Mehdi Parsa, Lukas
Reimann, Philippe Stamenkovic, and Regina Surber.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">- Table of contents: <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/issue/view/5" target="_blank">https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/issue/view/5</a><br />
- Get a beautifully printed softbound copy (84 pp; USD 9.95): <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/backcopies.html" target="_blank">https://www.tankebanen.no/backcopies.html</a><br />
- To subscribe to the print-edition of Inscriptions contact our publisher
at <a href="mailto:post@tankebanen.no" target="_blank">post@tankebanen.no</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Call for Paper: Ethics and
Artifical Life</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2020. Full manuscripts due 15 October 2020.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Ethics, the question of how to live right and well, has been one of philosophy’s key concerns from its beginnings. In the thought of Wolfgang Schirmacher the ethical life is connected to artifice: subjected to the event of technology we recognise our ethical being in mediated form, and it is through reflecting on this our present condition that we can begin regain our composition as ethical subjects.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">For our volume 4, n1, <i>Inscriptions</i>, a journal for contemporary thinking on art, philosophy and psycho-analysis, seeks essays that reflect on, interrogate, and bring new perspectives to the notion of artificial life and ethical living in general. Key questions include:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How must I compose myself in order to live a good, satisfying life?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">What is the good life, and what values are relevant to us in our present time?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How has the figure of the subject been challenged by our technological order, and how may we begin to ethically reassess our present condition?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Please submit a brief proposal (of up to 300 words) or full-length manuscript (of up to 5000 words) through our <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions">online platform</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">. Proposals receive a preliminary assessment. All scholarship published by <i>Inscriptions</i> undergo double-blind peer review. We also accept book reviews, commentaries, and short interventions of up to 1500 words.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Open Access, no APCs<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Access to content in this journal remains open on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. For this upcoming issue we will not charge authors for submission or publication.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions</span></i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"> is published online and in print, and is indexed by, among others, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Our authors include Wolfgang Schirmacher, Siobhan Doyle, Christopher Norris, and Jørgen Veisland.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Our issues are archived electronically and in print by </span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nb.no/en/legal-deposit/">Norway's National Library</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Recent Issues<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 2: Power in a time of pandemic, July 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 1: Outsourced!, January 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 2: Kierkegaard, July 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 1: The Global Unconscious, January 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 1, no. 1-2: Consecrations, July 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Yours sincerely,<br />Dr. Torgeir Fjeld<br />Editor-in-Chief, <i>Inscriptions</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><hr align="center" size="0" width="100%" /></span></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; text-underline: none;"><a href="https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/">https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><o:p><br /></o:p></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-35789829498118102632020-07-19T11:09:00.000+01:002020-07-19T11:09:15.027+01:00Economics on Screen<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">by </span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Gábor
István Bíró</span></div><div><span lang="HU" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: HU; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="HU" style="mso-fareast-language: HU;">The double
threat posed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany gave rise to a pioneering
educational project in the thirties: the first economics film. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCP5CGdbjbeqv_frcBDLXRJdaxJ38oplo-h8c40Y4_WttCV0ukRGNk6X9HMoZomHCoxbzyr_kp-Sz0dCodgIX1-S0fADlmlXLgMR7C3b1Lqn-RrtTOgpZ5Pz7pv8X23X_a2zvLGbkznjgj/s571/EconFilm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="571" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCP5CGdbjbeqv_frcBDLXRJdaxJ38oplo-h8c40Y4_WttCV0ukRGNk6X9HMoZomHCoxbzyr_kp-Sz0dCodgIX1-S0fADlmlXLgMR7C3b1Lqn-RrtTOgpZ5Pz7pv8X23X_a2zvLGbkznjgj/w625-h430/EconFilm.png" width="625" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Image Credit: Unemployment and Money: The Principles Involved (1940), British Gaumont Instructional Ltd.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal">While most economists have heard about Karl Polanyi, the mastermind who linked
economics with anthropology in pursuit of
understanding the social insensitivity of the West, they rarely have noticed
that his younger brother, Michael, also found unorthodox ways to guide his
peers into economic realms. One of these unconventional ways was to develop an
economics film. Michael Polanyi’s aim was to convey the message of a specific
breed of Keynesian economics, <i>neutral
Keynesianism</i>, to the masses. He hoped that, by informing society about this
new stream, people would be more resistant to the siren calls of economic
planners who carefully disguised the pillage of liberty as the promise of
security.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>A Martian in Manchester<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Polanyi must have felt that the death of liberty was in his wake. He
fled from the terror in Hungary (1919) and found a temporary liberal sanctuary
in the German scientific milieu. But soon he needed to flee again (1933). This
time from the nazis.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></a>
When he started to see the spread of authoritative patterns in his third home,
the United Kingdom, he took action to counter the illiberal threat. For that,
he needed to redirect his energies from chemistry to economics. Being the head
of a well-equipped laboratory at the University of Manchester gave him exactly
what he needed: free time. Stepping away from doing experiments himself, he
devoted much of his time to reading and writing about economics. He soon joined
a most notable network of liberal intellectuals by attending the Walter
Lippmann Colloquium (1938) and becoming a member of the Mont Pelerin Society
(1947). But Polanyi was not satisfied with any of the available liberal
proposals so he decided to forge a new one which would be appealing to the
masses.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Polanyi, the Walt Disney of Economics <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He first had the idea of making an economics film to teach economics in
1929. After getting grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the University
of Manchester and teaming up with British Gaumont Instructional, his film
project was on a fast track. He developed two versions of his pioneering motion
picture. The first premiered as <i>An
Outline of the Working of Money</i> (1938), the second <i>as Unemployment and Money: The Principles Involved</i> (1940). The film
portrayed the circulation of money in the economy and proposed a specific kind
of Keynesianism to counter the recession. Similarly to the Keynesian recipe, the
Polanyian proposal urged state intervention into a troubled economy. But,
unlike orthodox Keynesianism, it did not accept infrastructural investments and
public works as healthy solutions. How else can the state intervene if not by these
fiscal means? Well, by monetary means. Polanyi proposed to inject more money
into the circulation when needed simply by tax remissions and budget deficits.
Not removing the expected amount of money from the circulation, Polanyi advised,
would have a similar effect to putting more money into the circulation. He
imagined this to be a <i>neutral</i> solution,
that is, a way which does not favour any group at the expense of others. For
him, no discretionary decisions (e.g., about which infrastructural projects to
support by the state) meant no opportunities for corruption. Polanyi envisioned
the additional amount of money to be spread uniformly over the given amount
without causing spikes of riches and valleys of poverty. His talking and moving
picture economics immediately drew serious interest. Journals and newspapers
like <i>Nature</i> and <i>Times</i> celebrated Polanyi’s novelty and one of the first reports
called it an ‘art of a new Walt Disney.’ (unknown 1938) What happened then? Why
did this story become a long-forgotten chapter in the history of economics?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Silence of the Tutors<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The film left the projection room and entered
British classrooms all over the country. In cooperation with the Workers’
Educational Association (hereafter W.E.A.), Polanyi had his film tested by at
least nine tutors in various schools between 1941 and 1942. Experience from
these test screenings shows that neither the schools nor the tutors were prepared
to use educational films. One tutor noted that it took forty-five minutes for
the technician to get a properly focused picture on the screen. Another
indicated that there was no screen at all in his school so they needed to
improvise one. However, the most crucial critiques were not related to
technical applicability but to pedagogical applicability. One of the tutors
complained that the audio track of the film forced her to be silent during her
own class. She felt deprived of the freedom to teach what and how she pleased.
Some tutors complained that the narrative of the film made traditional
blackboard work unnecessary. Others complained that the film made it necessary
to do even more blackboard work than before because tutors needed to explain
what was happening on the screen. Most tutors simply did not know what to do
with the film: they could not see how to make it fit to the given syllabus and
to their usual verbal narrative. As Polanyi’s film left the projection room and
entered the classroom its perception changed. From a promising novelty it became
an impractical curiosity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>A Textbook Remake<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Polanyi recognized the undesirable reception of
his film and started to work on a textbook, <i>Full
Employment and Free Trade</i> (1945), which told a similar story in a very
similar way (he even used the same artistic style for the illustrations). Why
was he so presistent about his project? For him, it was not only an innovative
scholarly endeavour but an important social mission. He wanted to educate the
public for a special reason: to make people more resistant to the threat of
autoritarianism. This threat was coming from various places. It was coming from
the ideologies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that had already reached
British shores. And it was coming from certain proposals for economic crisis
management (e.g., the Beveridge plan) that aimed to ease economic hardships at
the expense of public liberties. Polanyi was unwilling to compromise and worked
vigorosly to kickstart his liberal rescue mission. Not surprisingly, a reviewer
of his book called Polanyi the ‘buoyant economist’ (unknown5 1946) of liberal
capitalism in contrast to Hayek, who was described as the rather passive ‘warning
prophet’ (ibid) of the same ideology. One might wonder, what could have these
two accomplished together in the 1940s by fusing Polanyi’s energy with Hayek’s scholarly
rigor?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>References<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk45354821">Frank, Tibor. 2009. <i>Double
Exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian Professionals through Germany to the
United States</i>, 1919-1945. Oxford: Peter Lang.<o:p></o:p></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Polanyi, Michael. 1938.
<i>An Outline of the Working of Money</i>,
G.B. Instructional Ltd.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">——— . 1940. Unemployment
and Money: The Principles Involved. G.B. Instructional Ltd.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">——— . 1945. <i>Full Employment and Free Trade</i>.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">unknown. 1938. ‘Money
is Star of this Film.’ <i>Evening News</i>.
10th March, 1938.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">unknown2. 1938. ‘First
Demonstration of Money Movements.’ <i>Nature</i>,
21st May, 1938.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">unknown3. 1940. ‘Economics
Taught by Film: New Notation for New Ideas.’ <i>The Times Educational Supplement</i>. 15th June, 1940. London: The
Times Publishing Company.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">unknown4, 1942. <i>The Film in Economics Classes: A W.E.A.
Experiment</i>. London: Workers’ Educational Association.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">unknown5. 1946. ‘Capitalism
and Work.’ <i>The Church Times</i>, 18th
January, 1946.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 144pt;"><b>Dr. Bíró</b> is the vice head of
the Department of Philosophy and History of Science at the Budapest University
of Technology and Economics and a research fellow at the <i>Morals and Science Lendület Research Group</i> at the Hungarian Academy
of Sciences. His interests are history of economic thought, science and
technology studies and intellectual history. He recently published a research
monograph titled <i>The Economic Thought of
Michael Polanyi</i> (Routledge, 2019).<o:p></o:p></p>
<div><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="HU"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="HU" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: HU; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="HU"> <i>The Martians</i> were a group of prominent Hungarian scientists
fleeing from Hungary in a double exile (Frank 2009) first to Austria or
Germany, and then, to the UK or the United States. Polanyi kept in touch with
several other Martians including John von Neumann, Leó Szilárd and Eugene
Wigner. He organized an economics discussion group in which several of his
fellow Martians participated during the Berlin years.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div>Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-46007293696543056132020-07-17T15:39:00.000+01:002020-07-17T15:39:08.359+01:00Meaning of Life 2020<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><p class="MsoNormal">Tuesday 21st July, 15:35: R. T. Allen of the British Personalist
Forum will be presenting a paper at the 3rd International Conference on
Philosophy at the Meaning of Life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Some Possible Meanings of ‘the
Meaning of Life’ and of ‘the Meaninglessness of Life'</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Discussions of ‘The meaning of
life’ have often been distorted by the very wording of the topic, which wrongly
assumes that life can have only one meaning. Obviously many different accounts
of the meaning of life have been suggested, and these can be classified as, for
example, secularist and theist. But the very wording of the question suggests
that these types of meaning, and the particular versions of each, are all
mutually exclusive. This paper aims to show that, there are also categories of
meaningfulness and meaninglessness; that these can be, and usually are,
combined; and that this is a necessary feature of any type of meaning and the
particular instances of them. This will be shown by first listing the
categories and then giving examples of how different particular examples
combine at least some of these categories, either explicitly or implicitly, so
that they envisage human existence as having one or more aspects that are
meaningful in one way and others that are meaningless in another way. It builds
on some recently acknowledgements of some of the ways in which
world-and-life-views are structured. For example, the meanings of ‘meaning’ have
been differentiated: e.g. signifying what will follow, intentions, intended
signifying, and value. The last is clearly implied in any answer to the correct
formulation of the question, ‘What are the meanings and lacks of meaning in
human life?’, which asks for what is of value and what lacks value, but without
indicating what those values may be and what embodies or could embody them.
Another set of categories have also been distinguished: ‘cosmic’, of the whole
universe, and ‘individualist’, of or for individuals. In turn ‘generic’
meanings, those applicable to all persons, and individual ones, applicable just
to one person, and that a generic one, such as to develop one’s talents, admits
individual ones. Furthermore it has been acknowledged that several meanings can
be attached simultaneously to human life and that there are questions of why do
the universe, human beings, and oneself exist, and for what purpose, if any. To
these further categories will be added and exemplified, to give a more
comprehensive and systematic account of the possible meanings and meaningless
of human life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The conference will be held entirely online, obviously, and is,
by all accounts, free to attend. To register: <a href="mailto:meaninginlife2020@contacts.bham.ac.uk" target="_blank">meaninginlife2020@contacts.bham.ac.uk</a>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Conference Website: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ptr/departments/philosophy/events/2020/philosophy-and-meaning-in-life.aspx">https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ptr/departments/philosophy/events/2020/philosophy-and-meaning-in-life.aspx</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Abstracts: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/ptr/philosophy/Abstracts-Third-International-Conference-on-Philosophy-and-Meaning-in-Life-2020.pdf">https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/ptr/philosophy/Abstracts-Third-International-Conference-on-Philosophy-and-Meaning-in-Life-2020.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></p></div>
Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-27254840909406614302020-06-18T11:18:00.001+01:002020-06-18T11:18:30.615+01:00Inscriptions Vol 4, No. 1: Call For Papers<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 21.6pt; text-align: right;"><b><span style="color: #1e6190; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">INSCRIPTIONS<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">journal for contemporary thinking on <br />
art, philosophy and psycho-analysis<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">
<hr align="center" size="0" width="100%" />
</span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Deadline for proposals: 15
September 2020. Full manuscripts due 15 October 2020.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Ethics, the question of how to
live right and well, has been one of philosophy’s key concerns from its
beginnings. In the thought of Wolfgang Schirmacher the ethical life is
connected to artifice: subjected to the event of technology we recognise our
ethical being in mediated form, and it is through reflecting on this our
present condition that we can begin regain our composition as ethical subjects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">For our volume 4, n1, <i>Inscriptions</i>,
a journal for contemporary thinking on art, philosophy and psycho-analysis,
seeks essays that reflect on, interrogate, and bring new perspectives to the
notion of artificial life and ethical living in general. Key questions include:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How must I compose myself in order to live a good,
satisfying life?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">What is the good life, and what values are relevant
to us in our present time?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">How has the figure of the subject been challenged
by our technological order, and how may we begin to ethically reassess our
present condition?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Please submit a brief proposal
(of up to 300 words) or full-length manuscript (of up to 5000 words) through
our <a href="https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions">online platform</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">. Proposals receive a preliminary assessment. All
scholarship published by <i>Inscriptions</i> undergo double-blind peer review.
We also accept book reviews, commentaries, and short interventions of up to
1500 words.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Open Access, no APCs<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Access to content in this
journal remains open on the principle that making research freely available to
the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. For this upcoming
issue we will not charge authors for submission or publication.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions</span></i><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"> is published online and in print, and is indexed
by, among others, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Our authors
include Wolfgang Schirmacher, Siobhan Doyle, Christopher Norris, and Jørgen
Veisland.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Our issues are archived
electronically and in print by </span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nb.no/en/legal-deposit/">Norway's National Library</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;"><b><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Recent Issues<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 2: Open Issue, July 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 3, no. 1: Outsourced!, January 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 2: Kierkegaard, July 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 2, no. 1: The Global Unconscious,
January 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; margin-left: 48pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "times new roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Inscriptions 1, no. 1-2: Consecrations, July 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Yours sincerely,<br />
Dr. Torgeir Fjeld<br />
Editor-in-Chief, <i>Inscriptions</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.8pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/">https://inscriptions.tankebanen.no/</a></span><span style="font-family: "libre baskerville", serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br />Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8544261987299197060.post-70705134895964395652020-06-07T11:44:00.001+01:002020-06-07T11:44:57.201+01:00Coming Soon: Polanyi on Zoom <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Polanyi Society 2020 Zoom Conference</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">9-11 June</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The times and brief descriptions of all six zoom presentations are
listed below. Anyone interested can participate in any of these zoom
discussions, but you do need to register in order to set up a secure connection.
You will later be e-mailed a link for the specific session.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">There is a zoom
presentation link on the Polanyi Society website (</span><a href="http://polanyisociety.org/" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;" target="_blank">polanyisociety.org</a><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">). The
paper for one session listed below is not yet posted but should be posted here
in a few days. If additional zoom presentations/discussions are scheduled, the
information about the sessions will be posted on </span><a href="http://polanyisociety.org/" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;" target="_blank">polanyisociety.org</a><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"> as
soon as details are worked out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">If you wish to participate in any of the Zoom discussions, please send an email to both Gus Breytspraak </span><a href="mailto:gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;" target="_blank">(gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu</a><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">) and Phil Mullins (</span><a href="mailto:mullins@missouriwestern.edu" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;" target="_blank">mullins@missouriwestern.edu</a><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">).</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">11 a.m. US-Central Daylight-Saving Time, Tuesday 9 June
2020</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Discussion of Michael Polanyi’s “Economics Education” Film
with Gabor Biro</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“Money Circles, Sensible Citizens and the Walt Disney of Economics” is a
21-minute talk (with PowerPoint slides) by Gabor Biro posted on YouTube at the
following address: </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0HT6QO7jOM" style="text-align: left;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0HT6QO7jOM</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">Biro, author of </span><i style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">The Economic Thought
of Michael Polanyi</i><span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"> (2019), provides details about Michael Polanyi’s
diagrammatic film on selected Keynesian ideas that Polanyi hoped would
transform society as well as economics in the thirties and forties.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">11 a.m. US-Central Daylight-Saving Time, Wednesday 10
June 2020<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Jon Fennell, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/Fennell-Paper-Polanyi&TP-Problem15May20.pdf" target="_blank">“Michael Polanyi and the Theologico-Political Problem”</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Polanyi declares that reason and
revelation are so different in kind that they cannot conflict.
Surprisingly, this denial of the theologico-political problem is the product of
acquiescence to the very presuppositions that are the central target of
Polanyi’s rejection of Cartesian systematic doubt. Fuller appreciation of
Socratic rationalism supports Polanyi’s project while demonstrating the
perennial salubrious tension between reason and revelation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">11 a.m. US-Central Daylight-Saving Time, Thursday 11 June
2020<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Robert Hyatt, “Trauma, Metaphor and Meaning”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Polanyian insights
into the ways meaning is created within the arts provides a coherent
perspective for understanding why and how the arts are useful in ameliorating
the devastating effects of trauma. Recent discoveries by humanistically
oriented practitioners of trauma therapy conform to, and helpfully extend,
Polanyi’s views of the relationship of mind and body.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Please download all
three components:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/Hyatt-Poem-MonsterWithin-15May20.pdf" target="_blank">B. Austin, “The Monster Within” (1-page poem)</a></li>
<li>Robert Hyatt, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/Hyatt-monster-within-commentary15May20.pdf" target="_blank">“Polanyian Poetics: Commentary on ‘The Monster Within’” (3
pages)</a></li>
<li>Robert Hyatt, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/Hyatt-Polnyian-PhilRsces-MntlHlth-Trauma-15May20.pdf" target="_blank">“Polanyian Philosophical Resources for Mental Health
Professionals Dealing with Trauma Related Pathologies” (9 ½ page essay)</a></li>
</ul>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">12:15 p.m.
US-Central Daylight Saving Time, Thursday 11 June 2020<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Charles
Lowney, "Body-Knowing
and Neural Networks: Is a Computer’s Ability to Learn Human Skills a
Victory for Reductionism?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Harry Collins
believes that Collective Tacit Knowledge (CTK) is irreducible, but Somatic
Tacit Knowledge (STK) is, in principle, explicable and reducible. Polanyi, in
contrast, sees irreducibility in a <i>process</i> of tacit knowing
that extends from bodily skills right up through linguistic and social skills.
Using examples from Martial Arts, I first show how the body displays
intentionality and innovation that Collins sees only at the CTK level. This,
however, might not convince Collins because neural network computing machines
are able to perform skilful tasks we once thought irreducibly human, e.g.,
driving a car.<i> </i>I show how Polanyi's structure of tacit knowing and
learning is indeed modelled by these machines, but they also display
irreducibility.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">11 a.m. US-Central Daylight Saving Time, Friday 12 June
2020<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Phil Mullins, “Michael Polanyi’s ‘Social Capitalism’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
This presentation/discussion is one that leads into and complements the session
which immediately follows it (15 minutes after the conclusion of this session).
“Social Capitalism” was a 2200-word Michael Polanyi opinion piece (1946) that
provocatively reflects some of Polanyi’s mid-century social and political ideas
as well as his developing account of the history of economic ideas. Posted are
both Polanyi’s short essay and a 10-page comment on a few interesting elements.
The posting for the following session is a concise 1947 essay by Karl Polanyi.<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Michael Polanyi, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/1946-MP-Social-Captlsm-Time&Tide-edited-version.pdf" target="_blank">“Social Capitalism,” </a><i>Time and Tide</i>, 13 (April
13, 1946): 341-342.</li>
<li>Phil Mullins, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/Mullins-SocCapitalism-Zoom.pdf" target="_blank">“Michael Polanyi’s ‘Social Capitalism’”</a></li>
</ul>
<br /><o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">12:15 p.m.
US-Central Daylight Saving Time, Friday 12 June 2020<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Walter Gulick, Gus
Breytspraak, and Phil Mullins, “Michael and Karl Polanyi”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Scholars interested in Michael Polanyi usually pay little
attention to Karl Polanyi’s abundant writing and vice versa. Should this
standoff end? These brothers read each other’s writings and communicated with
each other. They are not, of course, always on the same page, but neither are
they always “worlds apart.” This discussion aims to open up not only some
of the connections and disconnections between Michael’s and Karl’s thought, but
to explore how each has insights that complement the thought of the other.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<li>Karl Polanyi, <a href="http://polanyisociety.org/2020Zoom/KP-obsolete-mkt-mentality-1947-zoom.pdf" target="_blank">“Our Obsolete Market Mentality,”</a> Commentary 3
(1947): 109-117.</li>
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Dr Simon Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159479762645457545noreply@blogger.com0