A lot of fun. Baudelaire would be proud of this episodic post. Kim’s exclusion theory intrigues. I want it to be true, but every fiber of my cultural studies background shivers at the proposition. Why reduce causes when you can multiply them? Keep doing what you are doing. This post reminds me that I need to have a little more fun while writing. I need a space to do that.
I appreciate and return the encouragement! r.e. episodics: did you ever read The Book of Disquiet? I find Pessoa so interesting!
On Kim's exclusion theory, I think if you're a committed physicalist the cultural studies approach might feel less like the right analogy because you have a picture like: in seeking an explanation of the mental state's being (and being the way it is), we can read everything we need from the prior physical conditions—when I think about a multifactorial case, maybe some causes of X aren't necessary for X's being the case but are necessary for X's being the way that it is, and in the physicalist case you have... both! All that said, I'm not totally with Kim either—I have a conversation coming out in a few weeks with a neuroscientist who has thoughts on this!
I am big fan of George Steiner, and he loves The Book of Disquiet. I haven't read any of it myself, but it sounds like a fascinating text. Yes, I haven't quite decided yet how much causal force I grant to mental phenomena. Kim seems to want to grant them some force, but not very much. I feel like I would grant them a little more force if I were pressed, but don't really have the philosophical armature to make that happen at the moment. Either way, it is a very serious debate with very big ramifications across a wide range of disciplines and questions. Probably should give it some more thought in the upcoming months.
There’s a recent Complete Edition of The Book of Disquiet which looks really nice! It’s apparently in a quite different order from the penguin edition I read—I think penguin was translated by Richard Zenith who also recently published a lengthy biography of Pessoa
Kim’s exclusion argument doesn’t grant any force, but he has said he thinks his own argument must be wrong because of the bare fact that we have something like free will and his argument would eliminate it... much like Jacobi’s move! Agreed, on the force of the conclusion. It’s certainly not easy to work around it—Descartes never gave Princess Elizabeth a satisfactory answer to the question after all
re: podcast & intros — to be cringe is to be free! if we all religiously avoided seeming like a Type Of Guy/Gal we’d never do anything interesting at all
also i’m pretty sure i generally refer to you as “Gradient Daniel” (complimentary)
Very good point—I think I also resist talking about it in intros because I don't want to think it's the only interesting thing I do, but I suppose it's all to get somewhere else! (and glad that's complimentary, not sure how I feel about being "Gradient Daniel" 😆)
A lot of fun. Baudelaire would be proud of this episodic post. Kim’s exclusion theory intrigues. I want it to be true, but every fiber of my cultural studies background shivers at the proposition. Why reduce causes when you can multiply them? Keep doing what you are doing. This post reminds me that I need to have a little more fun while writing. I need a space to do that.
I appreciate and return the encouragement! r.e. episodics: did you ever read The Book of Disquiet? I find Pessoa so interesting!
On Kim's exclusion theory, I think if you're a committed physicalist the cultural studies approach might feel less like the right analogy because you have a picture like: in seeking an explanation of the mental state's being (and being the way it is), we can read everything we need from the prior physical conditions—when I think about a multifactorial case, maybe some causes of X aren't necessary for X's being the case but are necessary for X's being the way that it is, and in the physicalist case you have... both! All that said, I'm not totally with Kim either—I have a conversation coming out in a few weeks with a neuroscientist who has thoughts on this!
I am big fan of George Steiner, and he loves The Book of Disquiet. I haven't read any of it myself, but it sounds like a fascinating text. Yes, I haven't quite decided yet how much causal force I grant to mental phenomena. Kim seems to want to grant them some force, but not very much. I feel like I would grant them a little more force if I were pressed, but don't really have the philosophical armature to make that happen at the moment. Either way, it is a very serious debate with very big ramifications across a wide range of disciplines and questions. Probably should give it some more thought in the upcoming months.
There’s a recent Complete Edition of The Book of Disquiet which looks really nice! It’s apparently in a quite different order from the penguin edition I read—I think penguin was translated by Richard Zenith who also recently published a lengthy biography of Pessoa
Kim’s exclusion argument doesn’t grant any force, but he has said he thinks his own argument must be wrong because of the bare fact that we have something like free will and his argument would eliminate it... much like Jacobi’s move! Agreed, on the force of the conclusion. It’s certainly not easy to work around it—Descartes never gave Princess Elizabeth a satisfactory answer to the question after all
Have you dug into Borges yet?
I haven’t yet, but do have a copy of his Collected Fictions that I’ve been meaning to read! Do you have any favorite writings of his?
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." "The Maker." "The Aleph." "Dreamtigers."
The first one describes a tribe that speaks only in adjectives. That idea has stuck with me for many years.
He is a playful follower of the philosophy George Berkeley.
He loves to think about time, memory, and language.
His Harvard lectures are fun to listen to: https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/poetry/listeningbooth/poets/borges.html
re: podcast & intros — to be cringe is to be free! if we all religiously avoided seeming like a Type Of Guy/Gal we’d never do anything interesting at all
also i’m pretty sure i generally refer to you as “Gradient Daniel” (complimentary)
Very good point—I think I also resist talking about it in intros because I don't want to think it's the only interesting thing I do, but I suppose it's all to get somewhere else! (and glad that's complimentary, not sure how I feel about being "Gradient Daniel" 😆)