Incognitions (blog)

conceptual automata

With midterms out of the way I’ve been able to begin preparing for some upcoming events. In particular, I’ll be one of the lecturers at this year’s Deleuze Camp, along with Ian Buchanan, Dan Smith, and Ron Bogue (there are a couple others as well, I believe, but that’s all I know for now), and so I’m busy preparing for what I’ll do there. I’m also editing a book with Levi Bryant and have finally gotten together my proposed abstract for that project. I post the abstract here since I’ve already posted on this blog many of the ideas that will eventually appear in that essay. This work is also related to what I’ll be doing at the Deleuze Camp so any feedback or suggestions are welcome. As is the nature of abstracts, they often make broad sweeping claims and promises with only an indication, if that, of how successful the arguments will be in the end. I would hope that combined with previous posts some of these inherent problems in abstracts will be alleviated. Regardless, comments are welcome. The tentative title for the essay is ‘Conceptual Automata’.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

Dewey…the most important philosopher of the twentieth century

At the Leiter blog there was an interesting thread (here) concerning Philip Kitcher’s recent essay, “Philosophy Inside Out” (here). Given the current state of support for philosophy (or lack thereof) within the academy, it was not surprising that many of the comments were in support of Kitcher’s basic claim that philosophy ought to reconsider or reflect upon its core mission, although not everyone agreed with how such a reconsideration would look in practice, or what has put philosophy into the state it is in.

Kitcher’s basic argument stems from his reading of Dewey, who he ‘take[s] to be the most important philosopher of the twentieth century.’ In particular, Kitcher analogizes much of the “core” work that is most highly valued in philosophy today, by which Kitcher means epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind, with placing the highest musical value upon those who can perform an ‘ornamented Quadruple Temolo 41 with an extra trill.’ In short, much of the core work in philosophy Kitcher claims is increasingly devoted to making finer and finer distinctions, the relevance of which is apparent to an ever-dwindling number of fellow neo-scholastics (referring here to Ladyman and Ross’s critique of contemporary analytic metaphysics, as discussed here). The overall message: it’s no wonder philosophy programs are at risk. It’s time to take stock of what we philosophers are doing and whether it is worth doing.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

historical ontology – Spinoza style

In my post on historical ontology over at the new APPS blog (here), I anticipated the following criticism: how is the multiplicity related to actual beliefs and states of affairs? Are you not appealing to some mysterious aspect of reality, a pure becoming so to speak, that transcends the actual, in order to account for how what we actually know becomes other? Is this not contrary to the very spirit of Spinozism to take immanence seriously, and to take it all the way to its natural conclusions? This is a variation on a criticism that is often directed at Deleuze’s theory of the virtual (most notably by Badiou as I discuss here). Fortunately or not, I was spared this criticism to my post, but it still seems appropriate to address it for I think it clarifies a number of points. This also gives me the opportunity to deliver on a long overdue promissory note I offered Steven Shaviro in my response to one of his posts (here) that was itself in response to my post on eternity and duration in Spinoza (here). Some differences will likely remain, but hopefully what’s at stake will be clearer, and with luck Shaviro will feel I’ve made good on the promise.

This post will be long, though it’s likely to be my last on Spinoza for some time. In fact, this will probably be my final blog post at this blog for a while (many other obligations are piling up, though I’ll likely post over at the New APPS blog on occasion). I may make one final post summarizing some of my thoughts about how blogging has fit into (or not) my philosophical work, but most importantly the blog has become, for me at least, a vehicle that compels me to write more, to come up with something to say. Now this might seem to be a good thing but it is not, for I agree with what Deleuze says, in a Nietzschean vein,

What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or even rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.

With this caveat, therefore, and with utter irony, I’ll now attempt to do good on what I had promised Shaviro in my earlier post.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

iPhones and God

During my runs I will always be found with my iPhone, which has an app (RunKeeper) I use to map my route and track my pace (through the phone’s built-in gps) all while listening to my favorite playlist or CD. Frequently I’ll get a text from my wife or daughter, or occasionally from my orthopedist friend, each from their own iPhones, while I’m out on my run. If the text is not urgent I can always wait until the cool down to reply, and then I’ll also use the phone to check my email and reply to comments on my blog (or check blog statistics, which is in itself a bad habit, I know). Moreover, if I were to happen to run out of the house on an errand and forget my phone, which is itself a rare occurrence, I will feel a notable sense of lack. Many I’ve talked to feel the same way. As I’ve heard it put so many times, “I can’t live without my iPhone.” There are three philosophical points that come to mind from this rather humdrum example, points that may reciprocally clarify and be clarified by this example.

  1. If God, in Spinoza’s sense, is the immanent cause of things, then in an important sense things express or manifest God, including my iPhone
  2. My iPhone is an excellent example of desiring-production, in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense of the term, in that the lack I feel is not the cause of the desire for the iPhone; rather, it is the machinic assemblage of desires associated with the iPhone that causes the feeling of lack, and hence the reproduction of the assemblage (which includes, among many other things, the phone, Apple, and AT&T).
  3. The fact that iPhones are ubiquitous among a broad swath of society, from middle class teens to wealthy doctors and surgeons, offers a window onto contemporary perceptions of wealth and poverty.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

the relevance of philosophy (Frege or Spinoza)

Frege’s famous essay, “On Sinn and Bedeutung,” begins with the problem of identity, or equality. If a and b designate the same thing, Frege argues, then ‘it would seem that a = b could not differ from a = a.’ But the latter, as Kant argued, is an analytic statement while the former may ‘contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge’ and cannot be validated a priori. This problem sets the stage for Frege’s well-known solution: ‘a = b’ and ‘a = a’ differ in sense (Sinn) while they are identical with respect to reference (Bedeutung). More to the point, for Frege one may grasp the sense of a statement, word, thought, etc., but ‘one is not,’ he claims, ‘thereby assured of a Bedeutung.’ For Frege fiction is an example wherein one may grasp the sense of the story, follow the adventures of Odysseus for example, and yet this sense does not have a Bedeutung. As Frege puts it, ‘The thought remains the same whether “Odysseus” has a Bedeutung or not.’ In fiction, therefore, it is only the sense or thought that matters. But for Frege whatever ‘aesthetic delight’ we may derive from the thoughts associated with such fictional accounts, the will to truth (to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche) will lead us to move beyond them: ‘The question of truth would cause us to abandon aesthetic delight for an attitude of scientific investigation.’ Or again: ‘It is the striving for truth that drives us always to advance from the sense to the Bedeutung.’ It is this striving for truth, this will to truth, that drove Heinrich Schliemann on his quest to determine whether story of the Iliad were merely a story or whether Troy actually existed – that is, he sought to determine whether or not the Sinn of ‘Troy’ had a Bedeutung.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

real patterns all the way down

After hearing and reading about Ladyman and Ross for some time now, with opinions ranging from volatile dislike to euphoric endorsement, I’ve finally taken the time to read Every Thing Must Go and come to my own conclusions. I’ll use this post to sketch my reading of the arguments of ETMG and offer some thoughts and questions at the end. As usual I’m open to feedback and am always curious to hear of alternative readings.

In many ways ETMG is a book I should be naturally predisposed to read. With my own reading of Hume’s thought as compatible with realism (or hyper-realism as I would call it) I should be interested to see how they incorporate Humean verificationism, along with Peircean verificationism (another philosopher I greatly admire), into their arguments for realism. Ladyman and Ross also draw heavily on current work and research in physics, a discipline I initially pursued and still take great interest in; and they use their readings of physics as a mathematics of real patterns to legitimize work in dynamic systems theory (a systems theory properly understood [more on this below], which I draw on heavily in my Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos book. Finally, by their own admission Ladyman and Ross (though I shouldn’t forget the et. al. of Spurrett and Collier) see the arguments of their book as an alternative to the neo-scholasticism of contemporary analytic metaphysics. I agree wholeheartedly with this objective, though I may have an inner neo-scholastic in me for I find some of Ted Sider’s arguments helpful and think Peter Unger’s essay “The Problem of the Many” is a classic, albeit likely a classic in neo-scholastic analytic metaphysics by Ladyman and Ross’s lights. Despite this, I’m generally in agreement with their criticisms of contemporary analytic metaphysics and thus, with this and all the other points mentioned above I had some very good reasons to read this book.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

Spinoza and OOO

I’ve been thinking through a number of issues related to Spinoza and OOO, extending conversations I’ve had with Levi over whether one can read Spinoza in a way that is compatible with OOO while at the same time not bastardizing  Spinoza’s thought or warping it into something that would be unrecognizable to Spinoza (which I think is precisely what Badiou does in his reading of Spinoza). I think Levi and I are agreed that such a reading is possible (though of course I’ll let Levi speak for himself). That said, poring through Spinoza again of late it appears that one must be quite careful in attempting, as Deleuze sought in his reading of Spinoza, to make substance turn upon the modes. Let me explain.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

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