Category Archives: Philosophy
Depth, breadth and density
If you don’t know what intellectual depth means, you’ll think it means thoroughness. But thoroughness is not depth, it is density within a given breadth and depth of knowledge. Both excessive breadth of knowledge (how many things one has knowledge … Continue reading
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Against Nature, for the sake of ecology
I am reading Tim Morton’s Hyperobjects by day and listening to Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now by night. It is interesting how both thinkers, as different as their philosophies are, come down against “Nature” (in the Romantic sense of a deified, … Continue reading
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Nietzsche on suffering
Two reflections on suffering from Nietzsche, the first from The Gay Science and the second from Twilight of the Idols: Knowledge of distress. — Perhaps nothing separates human beings or ages from each other more than the different degrees of … Continue reading
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Suffering about suffering
When painless pleasurable existence is assumed to be the normal state of life, and pain and displeasure to be abnormal, pain and displeasure are compounded with metapain and metadispleasure — suffering — at the fact of pain and displeasure: something … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Politics
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Updates to “Eroding to Wisdom”
Responding to feedback from my friend Leafy, I added some transformative comments to “Eroding to Wisdom”. I sort of wish I’d entitled it “Progressive Tradition”. I can tell rewrites are on the horizon. I may want to elaborate on what … Continue reading
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Intellectual idolatry
Never, ever forget: Human beings reliably choose the death of other human beings over the death of their own philosophies. And the worse the philosophy, the more unconditionally and violently it loves itself and esteems its own Truth over reality … Continue reading
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Mereology
New word alert! mereology noun – The formal study of the relationship between the parts of a system and the whole ORIGIN: Gr meros “part”, and -ology
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Eroding to wisdom
The best quotes are the misattributed ones — overused maxims that become smoother as they tumble from paraphrase to paraphrase until they are worn smooth like river stones. Whenever I track one of these retroactively adopted orphans back to their … Continue reading
Posted in Chord, Design, History, Philosophy
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My stance on IDW
A reply to the Medium article “The Intellectual Dark Web Is Dead”: We need to become more nuanced in our expectations of unity. We will think more clearly about IDW figures better if we think of them in private-inner- vs … Continue reading
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Hammerhead
The well-known saying “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” has a corollary: “If every problem you see can be solved by pounding nails, every tool around you looks like a hammer.”
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Usefulness, Usability and Desirability of philosophies
Tim Morton explains Speculative realism: Speculative realism is the umbrella term for a movement that comprises such scholars as Graham Harman, Jane Ben- nett, Quentin Meillassoux, Patricia Clough, Iain Hamilton Grant, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, Steven Shaviro, Reza Negarestani, Ray … Continue reading
Posted in Design, Philosophy
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How I work
I don’t do work-hard/play-hard. I do work-playfully/play-workfully.
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Will not be codified
Deleuze electrified me this morning. I need to circle back to this after I finish my OOO binge: Modern society clearly does not function on the basis of codes. Yet if we consider the evolution of Marxism or Freudianism (rather than … Continue reading
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OOO: an engineer’s philosophy?
Could it be that OOO is an engineer’s philosophy? It seems somewhere between possible and likely. Since good designers must develop knowledge of the engineering involved in their chosen medium, I probably need to learn to think OOO. Maybe I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in ANT, Philosophy
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“Stop making your feelings everyone else’s problem.”
I said the daddest thing ever on vacation: “Stop making your feelings everyone else’s problem.” You know, I think this is good advice to this moment in history, especially this pervasive feeling of resentment, the least respectable feeling a person … Continue reading
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The design of OOO
I’m reading an Object Oriented Ontology book. The OOO folks talk about withdrawal of objects from one another. Things are essentially hidden from one another prior to interaction. Is subjectivity part of what is withdrawn into the interiority of being? … Continue reading
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An autobibliobiography
Well, I tried to write about my books and how I want to prune my library, and ended up writing a history of my interests. I know there are loose ends, but I am tired of writing, so blat, here … Continue reading
Posted in ANT, Biography, Design, Hermeneutics, Judaism, Phenomenology, Philosophy, Pragmatism
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Eureka
From Tim Morton’s Hyperobjects: The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory spearheaded by Bohr holds that though quantum theory is a powerfully accurate heuristic tool, peering underneath this tool to see what kind of reality might underlie it would be absurd … Continue reading
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Casual relationships with important things
I am noticing how much I like it when cultures enjoy a relaxed and creative attitude toward themselves. I noticed it first with Jews toward their religion: Judaism belongs to Jews in a way that Christianity does not belong to … Continue reading
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