Some ‘did-you-know’s

1. Apparently Jung gave seminars on Kundalini yoga (presumably signifying some knowledge of Indian philosophy)
2. Some people (not myself) consider Idealism to have links with Vedic and Buddhist philosophy
3. Some x-phi philosophers (or x-phiers) have noted a significant difference in epistemic intuitions between undergraduates from China and UGs from the USA

Sinistre*

Not quite the best..

After some thought on this issue for a few months I have come to consider Gilette products to be quite pedestrian, quite proletarian, quite chav-esque. It’s tagline is the best a man can get; well surely, that’s defeatist attitude, resorting to the bottom of the pit; to the (false) platitude that what is available is the scope of one’s aspirations.

Gilette has way too much alcohol (or some kind of hydrocarbon), and has a very old man kind of scent. A very military one scent fits all approach. I remember (I must repeat this anecdote a great many times), that I once had a theology tutor who once told us that Microsoft Word is the most evil piece of software; because it tells us what is good or bad english. If one is to put Jane Eyre (I can’t really remember the exact example but it was 19thC English Literature) into MS Word; we shall find that the spell and grammar checker will deem many things incorrect.

Gilette does not go well with me; single brands should not lay claim to a whole market. Also, it makes my face dry (ironic for a moisurising post-shave balm).

I do like the blades though.

Michael

The name of Tigger

I was watching an episode of the New adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a bastardisation of A.A. Milne’s stories after Disney had obtained the rights to the characters, and thus could do anything they wanted with it (beyond the original canon).

I saw one interesting episode where Tigger was bouncing in the mud and Rabbit made the other toys pin Tigger down into a bucket and washed him. After tigger was washed, he had lost his stripes. When Rabbit, Pooh and Piglet saw him, they were asking who he was. Tigger said to Pooh, “It’s me!”, and then Pooh said, “yes I know you are, but what is your name?”. They refused to see or comprehend him as being a Tigger, so they thought he was a rabbit (due to having a tail and ears), but after a mistake at gardening, Tigger was convinced that he was not a Rabbit, so he thought maybe he was a bear. Pooh then made Tigger steal some honey, after being stung and not doing well with disturbing a bee hive, Pooh was convinced that this red tiger was not a Tigger.

Throughout the story, whenever Eeyore passed by, he kept referring to him as a Tigger despite all the other characters not being able to see Tigger and being confounded as to who this red feline was.

What is criterial of Tigger? is it his stripes? his attitude (being bouncy)? or, as Eeyore (and the percieved final answer of the show), what was inside the toy that was criterial. Eeyore said that he saw him as a Tigger the whole way through because he was looking not at his apeparance but what was inside. It looks like Eeyore has Kripkean intuitions about reference.

Michael

on reading allowed (sic)

i’m terrible at reading aloud, I need to read things a few times before I see it as a sentence that has a structure, then I need to read it a few more times in order to actually understand the sentence.

I am going through my blogfeeder and saw a story (or so it seems) on the Large Hardon Collider. I’m sure many other people make that mistake too. Another thing I do is see two or more words separated vertically and mistakenly read it (horizontally).

Michael

25 things about you

I have noticed a few dozen people in my facebook network to be taking part in this ‘25 things about you’ craze.

It goes something like this:

tag 25 people in a note,
say 25 things about yourself
those 25 people (if they are fuckwits) will say something about themselves

It’s kind of a self-indulgence thing, or only interesting if you want to bone the other person, or tell someone you want to bone something about you.

Michael was going to write an article on this, but actually say 25 things about himself, I suitably chastised him, and am putting this article in its place

Antisophie (edited by last laugh Michael)

Excuse me for being confused

Why is a song named “Wish I was a Punk Rocker” a twee (sic) poppy acoustic song. Surely a song that is genre referential would be self-referential, right? Okay, so maybe there are interesting exceptions to this; maybe it is parodical. But the lyric “…with flowers in my hair” mystifies me even more. Is a punk rocker some kind of hippy? furthermore, is a twee pop song concerning the countercultural movement of punk suggestive that it bears similarity with the almost diametrically opposed hippy movement, or even that they conflate into one? (think, leather mixed with free love, fucking the system vs. removing the system; spitting vs hugging; harsh dissonance vs. basic primary chord harmony consonance).

Maybe I’m missing the point, that there is some kind of irony, or horrible parodic statement about the futility of affiliating youth cultural movements and their sociogenic features with musical styles. Surely a conformist song would not point to something countercultural without in osme way neutralising or undermining its seriousness? Self-referential or genre-referential music can have this effect. Examples I can immediately think of include how Tenacious D seem to always self-affirm how they are part of some ‘rock’ dynasty; or how power metal bands overly use the word ‘metal’ in a way that obviously is genre-referring and yet gives the very poor veneer that it is not genre-referring.

Antisophie (and Michael)

why the simpsons are outdated…

1. The family structure of 2.4 children is simply inadequate for our age: grandparents, live-in adults, uncles, single parents, gay families etc. has undermined old certainties

2. The characters fit outdated archetypes: the bumblebee man represents droll foreign TV (which we could have from a pre-digital satellite or cable network); the ‘disco stu’ character represents outdated nostalgia, in a sense, we have all become disco stu with postmodernity’s celebration of the past, and yet, no distinct figure as he is relevant anymore; comic book guy is an inadequate conception of the sci-fi and fantasy savant; for not all of us are fat, white, or male.

3. The history of such a family is becoming a bit inconceivable; given the original age of the simpsons from its original date, Bart’s character would now be the same age as my brother – 28. A 28 year old cannot maintain the guise of being 10 years old for very long (although people in their 30’s can reasonably do teenagers in hollywood films…)

M

My hypocrisy with baby talk

Some readers may be aware that I have been blessed with a lovely little nephew. A friend of mine from grad school once told me that when his sister-in-law gave birth it changed everything in his family. Not only did he always want to show off his new addition to the family, but also he developed a a different personality and attitude towards those little ones.

I have always found it bizarre to see adults doing baby talk, almost to the end of them talking through their children. One time, I was being ‘interrupted’ by a couple, when I was having coffee with Antisophie. The couple had a child, and they put on this overly emphasised ‘voice’ and this obviously put-on ‘baby’ talk.

I’ve always had an annoyance towards this ‘baby’ talk; why? It seems almost like an excuse for adults to be child-like, and almost to live through their parents, but I have found, myself, that I too am subject to enjoying playing with the little one. I enjoy making him smile, making him lauh, keeping him company and playing with him, and that does, admittedly involve some ‘baby’ talk, despite that, I try to teach him some stuff matter-of-factly, namely, sharing my jaded adult-ness with him. For instance, the weirdness of Cliff Richard and Jon Bon Jovi’s mullet during the 90s’!

Michael

Computer game; video game; or game (genera)

The phrase ‘video game’ really doesn’t seem to refer anymore. It seems to be a term that show’s one’s age more than anything. To refer to a classic like Metal Gear Solid, or Super Mario as a video game shows one’s age and disposition to being a luddite.

The phrase ‘computer game’, by contrast, has a similar air, of a more partial luddite. Almost as if referring to a computer game is by an outsider to being a serious gamer, or a gamer or game developer/promoter who is making a product saleable to an unknown audience.

If I just said game; for instance, I am playing this awesome game at the moment, depending on the presuppositions of the speaker, can be an acceptable, and perhaps, favourable expression. To say ‘game’, almost presupposes a computer game.

However, what is a good term for a game (computer)? Games can be handheld, console, or pc/linux/mac. What is a good expression for a game, that is non-loaded?

Sinistre*

Two thoughts on scholarly literature

Concerning the Textbook

Like wikipedia, it is a good sign of a textbook to be uninteresting, yet informative. By uninteresting, I mean that the knowledge within the text can be found in similar books. A textbook on quantum mechanics should contain enough material to teach the basics, or perhaps even the advanced-level nature of the work, but not engage in controversy by means of taking a position that is unique of one against many, or some against others; but to teach the nuts and bolts of a position.

We can learn of a theory without the theorists or the theorising. Such is the work of a textbook.

Two remarks follow from this: firstly, this would mean that the textbook has a priviledged kind of knowledge, a medical textbook is practical to teach someone about a particular area of medicine, perhaps it may contain excercises, or further references. But the textbook, whether good or bad, or whether it has a particular focus or not, is dispensable to other ones. The textbook has a priviledged knowledge insofar as its content is taken fro granted by the experts of the topic. It allows one to learn the established notions, principles, laws, and propositions of a discourse. Nothing contraversial should really be in a textbook, and perhaps, nothing that is brand new (and consequently, contraversial).

I consider this point because I am aware of the Cambridge edition of Kant’s writings, that has been worked on for a long time (by the likes of Paul Guyer, Allen Wood, Henry Allison, Karl Ameriks etc…). Kant scholarship is a dull and painful literature, and Kant’s own writing is all the more painful (but occaisionally fun). Apparently, after the Second World War, there has been the benefit, and the unfortunate situation of both the discovery of hitherto unkown works, and destruction of original and uncategorised texts. One of the texts found is an introductory metaphysics textbook by Baumgarten.

Back in Kant’s day, people were increasingly worried by the increasing uncertainty of philosophy that was put by the very fact of disputation, such as between (in epistemology and metaphyics), empiricist (and largely British) philosophy, against rationalist (and continental) systems of thought. It seems like a common conception of philosophy to see it as disputing what is fundamentally disputable; and as such,  no real certainties can ever come to be. The idea of a ‘textbook’ on metaphysics, therefore, has a lot of redundancy, except, of course, for the teaching of a course, or a specific thinker or issue.

Scholia

The obvious import of this is the notion of talking about what counts as an accepted scientific theory, or a practice, when teaching to schools. We might, for instance, teach the basics of general relativity to children, due to the large concensus of it; or we may make a pragmatic rationale and teach mechanical physics that is a dummy version of the classical Newtonian programme. What we then find as we come up to learn more about physics, is that the dummy model that we are taught is increasingly wrong, but more subtly expressed. This sounds about right for being a scholar, and marks the difference between knowing enough for application of a theory (when we presuppose something that grounds engineering prospects or software design, for instance), compared to advancing the techniques of the underlying discourse itself.

Concerning public access

As someone who often reads historical philosophy, translation issues are very close to mind. With Nietzsche, for instance, early 20thC translations are influenced by Hegelianism, and the notorious association of being anti-democratic and German during the runup to the two world wars, as well as the influence of some antisemites after the death of Nietzsche. Having a textually sensitive, yet historically accurate, and a secondary concern, readable in the nuances of the langauge of translation.

While there are various trends of late, such as the Gutenberg project, wikitexts, Librivox, and other such public access literature; it is certainly a great thing that the old works can be accessible to the public at large. Books are, in my life, the best kind of friend a person can have, I own very few things (in an attempt to embrace the virtue of poverty [the celebacy ideal failed quite hurrendously]), but the one thing I do hold on to are books. I love used books, I love cheap books, I ADORE free books (which are quite common outside university departments or closing offices!).

On the one hand, its always a best idea to know the original language, and better still, the cultural context. When I read Nietzsche as a teenager, I, with my very intense schooling, was able to understand the very subtle jokes (e.g. “only the English seek happiness” [a comment about ethical theory]), but many references such as these can be missed. When reading Kant, for instance, an understanding of Aristotle can give quite an interesting reading that shows nuanced affinities between the two (such as the notion of the categories [cf. Korner]). On the other hand, it is of great cultural benefit that anyone can have access to the works of the past.

Consider the “New Atheism” for instance, many people think that they have interesting things to say, and yet, have no idea about key works in the history of atheism and secularism, consider for instance, l’Encyclopedie, Hume’s Diaglogues, Montaigne’s Essays, Spinoza’s Political Treatise (which I must say, is the most fascinating and in my view, intuitive and difficult statement of secularism). Those new to atheism, and the intellectual history of it, can easily come to access some of the great works.

From a scholarly point of view, however, there is a necessary elitism about translation issues, and textual issues in interpretation,  that require some serious publishing houses to invest in scholarly work. Open-access literature has its worth, but it is for intellectual tourists at best.

Jonathan Bennett, for instance, has a website with his own translations. I’m a bit torn on whether these are good. While Bennett is a fine scholar (Kant, Hume, Locke, Spinoza), and a philosopher in his own right, he is one of those philosophers who are dismissive or are not keen on playing up the historical issues of exegesis, this is not a bad thing (in some respects it is my favoured writing style of scholarship), but this comes at the cost of appearing ignorant, purposely or unpurposely, to the subtle issues of historical import. The good aspect of the Bennett reading, however, is that it considers philosophical notions in terms of contemporary (and thus more strict and critical) standards. Bennett as a translator seems an unusual choice, given his particular angle. Some of his translations on Kant make me somewhat uncomfortable, but then again, I can only seem to get into the unreadable (and thus accurate to the German) translations.

Michael