September 2010

In my metaphysics courses, I am currently teaching Buddhist thought. I find Buddhism powerfully attractive due to its emphasis on living a life characterized by non-hurtfulness, compassion, and the diminution of suffering. While one might be able to do all sorts of conceptual contortions to show that such concepts are present throughout the history of Western thought, it’s my view that these concepts are almost entirely absent. The closest one comes is the thought of the Epicureans and the Stoics, yet even there, while we get an emphasis on diminishing suffering (though not in that language), we don’t encounter much in the way of discussion of anything resembling a discussion of either compassion or non-hurtfulness. And here it should be understood that the diminution of suffering, and the pursuit of compassion and non-hurtfulness is restricted not simply to the human, but to existence in general. In my view, we need to make a place for these values. This is the way it is with most ethical philosophies: They boil down to the exhortation or imperative “don’t be an asshole!” It’s a shame that generally moralists are the biggest assholes of all. So it goes with the narcissism that ethical thought often invites despite itself.

Now, I’m just easing my way into various strains of Eastern thought (I’m nearly a complete virgin), so please go easy on me. However, my hunch is that the ethical system of Buddhist thought follows almost directly from the metaphysical of conditioned genesis. What, then, is conditioned genesis? The term “conditioned” should be understood, I think, as a verb, “to condition”. Something conditions something else when it affects that way through some sort of action. “Genesis”, of course, refers to the production of something. Thus, for example, when you cook dinner at night, you are engaged in an act of genesis that produces a meal. When the two terms are put together, you get the thesis that all entities are a product of their interactions with other entities. Contrast the wine grape approached in an Aristotlean manner from the wine grape approached in a Buddhist way. The Aristotlean would focus on the qualities of the grape: it is purple, round, has such and such a taste, etc. The Buddhist wouldn’t reject these qualities, but rather than drawing our attention towards the object taken in isolation would instead direct our attention outward, focusing on the relationships and interactions of the grape. Hence the Buddhist would attend to the soil conditions, the sunlight, the weather conditions, the other plants in the region, the smog of California, the animals and the insects that contribute to producing these particular qualities.

read on!

The other day it occurred to me that rather than referring to thoughts and mental states as something that we have or that are predicates of our mind, it would be better to think of them by analogy to metereology or weather events and patterns. If the brain is, as Metzinger elegantly argues (though I’m not sure why he believes this is contrary to the concept of substance), or units are, as Bogost argues, a set of operations, then it seems that we should think about mental states as not being properties or states, but rather as processes. The problem with saying, for example, that “I am depressed” is that it gives the impression that depression is a sort of fixed property of the brain, rather than a process or activity on the part of the brain. Just as we might say “the ball is red”, treating red as a fixed quality of the ball rather than an event that occurs to the ball, we treat depression as something that we just are. Far better, I think, to compare or analogize depression to a storm or a hurricane that takes place as an unfolding process. As the hurricane travels across the waters of the ocean it becomes more and more powerful from the heat of the water and increases in humidity, becoming an organized system that takes on a life and substantiality of its own. Likewise with depression. It begins as a tiny swirl within the brain, a mere murmur, a “tropical depression” (pardon the pun), but through a confluence of events in both life and drawing on other mental events (not unlike drawing on the heat of the water) becomes stronger and stronger, more and more pervasive, until it overshadows everything else. Were we to think of thoughts, affects, mental states, etc., as being akin to metereological events how might this change the way we pose questions about cognition, mental “disorders”, and the sort of practice we adopt in the clinic. I’m not sure.

I’ve been behind the curve for the last couple of weeks due to encountering my finitude. I’ve been extremely sick, spending about sixteen hours a day in bed, unable to do much of anything. Hopefully I’m beginning to get better, although I still feel rather weak and scattered.

At any rate, Michael, over at Archive Fire, has two excellent posts up discussing the first chapter of DeLanda’s New Philosophy of Science (here and here). In the first post, Michael questions whether all relations, as DeLanda suggests, are external to their terms. Here I am more or less in agreement with Michael’s suggestion that we need a continuum between internal and external relations. I attempt to capture such a continuum in my distinction between endo-relations and exo-relations. Exo-relations are relations between distinct objects. Thus, for example, Michael and I are only “exo-related”. If I am destroyed, Michael does not cease to exist. To be sure, Michael can influence my local manifestations in all sorts of ways, but my existence is not dependent on Michael’s existence. By contrast, endo-relations are internal relations that constitute the structure of an object. In the case of endo-relations, the terms cannot be separated from one another. Endo-structure can thus be thought as the essence of an object, so long as essence is not thought as what is common to many different objects, but rather what is absolutely unique to one and only one object (perhaps Scotus’ term “haecceity” would be better here).

read on!


via Progressive Geographies:

Call for Papers: The Difference of Things






Thematic objects may include, but are not limited to:

The arche-fossil
Vicarious causation
The democracy of objects
Distinctions between Objects and Things-in-themselves
The changing statuses of the commodity and the money form
New treatments of phenomena and understanding
The return of the transcendental


Aristotle’s weirdness is not a mark against him, but rather an indication of his greatness as a philosopher. However, things do not start out being weird. Every science investigates a specific object distinguished by the properties unique to that object. Thus, for example, economics investigates exchange and exchange is distinguished from all other phenomena by a specific set of qualities or properties. However, when we abstract from all differences between specific types of objects, we are nonetheless left with the insight that all of these objects are. Consequently, we can ask ourselves what is the “beingness” or the “existenceness” of being? What is it that is common to all these beings, despite their differences, such that they are beings? Such is the question of metaphysics or ontology. Aristotle’s answer to this question is the rather common sense conclusion that being is composed entirely of primary substances. I’ll say a bit more as to what primary substances are in a moment, for now, while Aristotle begins with a common sense hypothesis, things very quickly become weird when we begin to work through just what a primary substance might be.

Although being is said in a variety of senses (quality, quantity, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection), the primary sense of being, and the one upon which all these others are dependent, is that of primary substance. Take the example of a quality such as the color of my hair. If qualities like the color brown are secondary substances, then this is because they cannot exist in their own right, but can only ever exist in primary substances. Brown has never been encountered floating about as a being in its own right. Likewise, a relation like “being-a-student” does not exist in its own right, but only exists in and through the primary substances that enable it to exist (institutions like schools, teachers, etc). Consequently, when asked “what color is Levi’s hair?” or “what is Jordan?”, it is perfectly appropriate to answer “brown” (quality) and “student” (relation), so long as we understand that these senses of being are dependent on a more primary and fundamental sense of being: primary substance.

By now what a primary substance is becomes obvious. A primary substance is just any individual thing. Here are some examples of primary substances: that tree, Ian Bogost, my glasses, the sun, the planet earth, this tardigrade, a burrito, my coffee cup, the United States of America, a corn thresher, etc. A primary substance is just any individual thing or entity. Within the Aristotlean orientation, the primary sense of being always refers back to things or objects, such that all other senses of being are rooted in, and dependent upon, this primary sense of being.

read on!



It seems my last post has raised some eyebrows, suggesting that I don’t care about politics. What a strange conclusion. What is the valuable lesson to be gleaned from the Tea Party? Through their militancy they’ve been able to push the Republicans to the right. In their unwillingness to compromise and their capacity to organize and put forward candidates, they’ve forced establishment Republicans to the right. Their ideology is terribly wrong, but their tactics are right. And here I’m not saying anything that Zizek hasn’t said about the Act or Badiou about truth procedures.

At present Democrats are holding the American left hostage. For the last three decades the argument has been the same: ” yeah we suck, but if you don’t vote for us the Republicans will take power!”. To this day, Nader is used as a constant cautionary tale for the 2000 elections… Despite the fact that far more Democrats went over to vote for Bush than for Nadar. The result of this Stockholm syndrome is that American leftists end up continuously put Democrats into power that promote neo-liberal, pro-corporate agendas. Short of violent revolution, how is it possible to change this dynamic?

I don’t claim to be saying anything profound or original here, but so long as progressive votes can be taken for granted there’s no hope of change. It will be the same old story: we donate our labor, campaign contributions and votes only to have all that work usurped by a plutocratic political establishment that assumes office. The only way to change this dynamic is through the formation of political forms (in large numbers) that are willing to assume risk and loss. This means 1) refusing to vote for and support establishment candidates that will promote a corporate agenda, and 2) putting forward our own candidates that might not win.

This is the brilliance of the Tea Party. I doubt they expect a nut like Christine O’donnell to win, but while they might lose the battle they win the war. They win the war by forcing the Republican establishment to become more conservative and by very likely forcing them to put up a conservative presidential candidate. They are thus more likely to get more of the sort of legislation they would like to see supported. So how do leftists go about doing that? They don’t do it by getting behind existing Democrats. With health insurance reform and the financial reform we’ve already seen that Obama and Rahm are more than willing to sell us out. So long as we don’t put the fear of god in them none of this will change. But that fear of god can only be produced if people are willing to organize in large enough numbers and assume risk, giving up on the politics of incrementalism and compromise that perpetually moves American politics to the right. Again, nothing original here but it still is worth repeating.

Next Page »


Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,267 other followers