Took a look at the Metzinger essay. I can't say I like what Metzinger writes in general - I read his book The Ego Tunnel expecting to be blown the fuck away and left with a bunch of unanswered questions. Later I realized his view is based largely off of shaky contemporary neuroscience. Graham Harman has a good set of criticisms of Metzinger's positions - his general scientism (contra phenomenology, commonly found in reductive materialist and eliminativist literature), his reductionism (once again, contra phenomenology), and his incoherent notion of a no-self (ditto again on the phenomenology). He uses science as the unexplained explainer - ignoring subjective phenomenal experience in favor of "objective", "hard", "phallic", "scientific" data.

A few pages into the essay and he re-states what Nietzsche had already made clear - that what makes a life worth living is whether or not you would live it over again. The amor fati of a hypothetical eternal recurrence. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's ahistorical wheel-reinvention.

Graham Harman — darthbarracuda

Could you give me a link to those? Thanks!

http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/231

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HARMAN_IAmAlsooftheOpinionThatMaterialismMustBeDestroyed.pdf

Thanks.

I've also read The Ego Tunnel.

As everyone knows I'm not sympathetic to the eliminative materialist stance, nor for that matter to those who are diametrically opposed to them: the (Cartesian) substance dualists. Like Richard Swinburne.

But I think Metzinger, despite his tendencies towards eliminative materialism has quite a few interesting points. For example, his idea that the self is more like a process / activity rather than a static / passive substance is good. His idea that this "phenomenal self-model" is transparent, namely that it is not perceived like an activity/process is also interesting - this also brings up the possibility of the phenomenal self model becoming opaque, and hence visible. I'd say he is quite close to the religious tradition of Buddhism, and is more like someone such as Sam Harris from the atheists. In other words, his "eliminative materialism" isn't as eliminative as he sometimes makes it sound.

Personally, I side more with philosophers like Plato/Aristotle or St. Augustine/Aquinas and think that the soul (or self) is the form of the body, in the technical sense of the term. Both form and matter are needed to constitute the substance that is us.

Metzinger's article was interesting. Can't say I learned all too much that I didn't already "know", apart from Metzinger's own musings about how suffering manifests in his philosophical model of the self (PSM). Was surprised but also disappointed at his short section on antinatalism, was glad to see the distinction between negative utilitarianism and AN.

He's right, though. Suffering is a very important, if not the most important, relevant constraint on inquiry. It's time we start taking it more seriously, in science, phenomenology, and ethics. In this sense, religion has a serious head start.

George Williams and Daniel Reynolds - A Charter of Rights For Australia
Evelyn Fox Keller - Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines
Evelyn Fox Keller - The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Culture

Life 3.0

My Fox Keller books haven't arrived yet : ( So, before those -

Catherine Malabou - Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality
Catherine Malabou - Changing Difference: The Question of the Feminine in Philosophy
Maurice Blanchot - The Step Not Beyond

Edward Feser: Scholastic Metaphysics

https://isidore.co/calibre/get/pdf/Scholastic%20Metaphysics_%20A%20Contemporary%20Introduction%20-%20Feser%2C%20Edward_5458.pdf

Happened to stumble upon this one, been wanting to read it for a while.

you might like this.

John Banville - The Book of Evidence.

Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle.

Always try to read three books simultaneously, one fiction/short stories, one philosophical/non-fiction and one book of poetry. But I haven't been able to find a book of poetry that has held my attention recently.

Ever read Ariel?

I recently picked up The Concept of Time. [Heidegger] This is the short lecture. I think there's a longer text with the same name. The last two thirds are lean and lovely prose (translation by William McNeill). It's understated, suggestive.

I also have Existential Psychoanalysis. This is just a couple of chapters from Being and Nothingness, but Sartre is really on fire in the chapter "Existential Psychoanalysis."

[The] impossible synthesis of assimilation and an assimilated which maintains its integrity has deep-rooted connections with basic sexual drives. The idea of "carnal possession" offers us the irritating but seductive figure of a body perpetually possessed and perpetually new, on which possession leaves no trace. This is deeply symbolized in the quality of "smooth" or "polished." What is smooth can be taken and felt but remains no less impenetrable, does not give way in the least beneath the appropriative caress -- it is like water. This is the reason why erotic depictions insist on the smooth whiteness of a woman's body. Smooth --it is what reforms itself under the caress, as water reforms itself in its passage over the stone which has pierced it....It is at this point that we encounter the similarity to scientific research: the known object, like the stone in the stomach of the ostrich, is entirely within me, assimilated, transformed into my self, and is entirely me; but at the same time it is impenetrable, untransformable, entirely smooth, with the indifferent nudity of a body that is beloved and caressed in vain.

...
Destruction realizes appropriation perhaps more keenly than creation does, for the object destroyed is no longer there to show itself impenetrable. Is has the impenetrability and the sufficiency of the in-itself that has been, but at the same time it has the invisibility and translucency of the nothingness which I am, since it no longer exists.
— Sartre

Just finished a collection of Lovecraft stories. Chipping away at The Gay Science as well. I've been extremely lazy lately.

Anyone know how to get access to On Tyranny? Please PM me.

Buy it? It's in stock, mein Freund.

Buy it? It's in stock, mein Freund. — Thorongil

Too expensive for one book, especially since I'm only interested in one specific part of it.

Giorgio Agamben - The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days
Eva Jablonka & Marion Lamb - Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

I've probably read 500 science fiction books. Most are badly written. Few have any depth. My son gave me "Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie last Christmas. I'm trying to think of a science fiction book I've loved more or that was better written. In the story, military space ships are run by sentient computers. The computers are connected to "ancillaries" who act as the ship's hands and eyes on and off-ship. Ancillaries are criminals who's minds have been wiped. The hero of the story is one of the ancillaries who breaks free.

It's a great story - interesting, thoughtful, and moving. It addresses gender in a way that is disorienting, enlightening, and philosophically challenging. The book is the first part of a trilogy. I've also read "Ancillary Sword," which is as good or better than the first. I have "Ancillary Mercy" which I haven't read yet.

Oi, it's going to be cold tomorrow and I have a day off! That means my fat purple dance socks, over-sized XXL man-hoodie, fluffy white snuggly blanket and as much hot chocolate as I want while I read...



It arrived today :)

Was re-reading through Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophy of Freedom" as well as Neitzsche's "The Gay Science", recently. Also finished "The Lurking Fear and Other Tales" by H.P. Lovecraft. Honestly more interested by Lovecraft than yer boys...

Sounds like some postmodernist beating around the bush O:)

I've never read anything by Lovecraft. Apparently, he has a lot of fans scrambled around the internets.

Not sure, because I don't make judgements until I actually read it, O judgemental one. :P

Well, SLX only reads postmodernist beatings around the bush, so... :D

You nasty little pastie.

Besides, if we did a comparative of post-quality, then post-modernism it is given that streetlight is a portal to the mysterious realms of awesomeness.

>:O

:D Awesome! Should be a pretty quick and fun read, alot of it is very 'practical' kind of advice where you'll be left wondering how political theory ever thought differently to begin with - or at least that's the hope.

Also - portal to mysterious realms of awesomeness will do just fine too :D

Wearing nothing but TL's fat purple dance socks, here's what I'm reading:

Thinking of a career change?

Not so much. More like buying a car repair manual. It's cheaper to DIY.

Didn't have Gulag Archipelago on Kindle. This is pretty good though. Also got a sample of Street's Oyama ontogeny of info recommend.

Don't steal my attention-seeking thunder, although a visual of you wearing nothing but my purple socks, my fluffy white blanket as a cape with a pair of novelty springy-eye glasses as you skip down the street singing zip-a-dee-doo-dah may just be as entertaining as this book.

Although, your book will be my next. (Y)