“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead
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Reflections on Physicist Lawrence Krauss and the Consolations of Philosophy
Below is Lawrence Krauss from a recent interview in the Atlantic (Thanks to Jason/Immanent Transcendence for bringing this controversy to my attention): Krauss: …Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then “natural philosophy” became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there’s a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered Read more
Ancient Philosophy, Copernican Revolution, Daniel Dennett, Pierre Hadot, Plato, Richard Dawkins, Schelling
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Tim Morton lecturing on object-oriented poetry.
Romanticism 20: Keats and Shelley and OOO. I’m reminded of an earlier reflection on Whitehead’s and Schelling’s process ontology of organism and the principle of non-contradiction. Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. Read more
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Deacon’s Incomplete Nature (con’t.)
A week and a half ago, Jason/Immanent Transcendence posted the first volley of our summer reading group on chapter zero of Terence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (2012). In that chapter, Deacon introduced the key conceptual locus of the book, what he calls the absential features of living and psychic systems: “phenomena whose existence is determined Read more
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Reflections on the Astrality of Materiality
Levi Bryant/Larval Subjects has a few new post up (HERE and HERE) about the contingently constructed concept of “nature” and about his own flavor of monistic materialism. Bryant and I have argued in the past about his materialism and its lack of formal and final causality. I’ve been claiming that ideas and purposes are real, Read more
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Reading “Incomplete Nature” by Terrence Deacon
Jason/Immanent Transcendence has written the first response for our summer reading group. Chapter 0 of Terrence Deacon‘s new book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter introduces what he calls the “absential” features of the universe. According to Deacon, the defining property of every living or psychic system is that its causes are conspicuously absent from the Read more
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Heading to Pyramid Lake for Symbiosis Gathering
I’m off tomorrow to Pyramid Lake, NV to attend the 3rd Symbiosis Gathering. I attended the last gathering in 2009 just outside Yosemite. Here are some images from that event: It’s a dazzling mix of art, music, and culture all put together by two graduates of CIIS, Karen and Kevin KoChen. This year we’ll have Read more
“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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Footnotes2Plato 