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Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

the remainder…

Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , on April 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

For an indication of why I’m interested in the “more” that object-oriented philosophers grapple with, the “remainder” beyond what can be accounted for of an object or phenomenon through relational accounts, I thought it would be appropriate to share a few paragraphs from my 2001 book Claiming Sacred Ground.

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subverting the subversives?

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , on April 13, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Graham Harman replies here and here to my last contribution, and Paul Reid-Bowen joins in with an interesting and original take on the debate at Pagan Metaphysics. I’ll try to keep my reply to both of them fairly brief in what follows. Graham writes that “You can’t find the cane toad by summing up all […]

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cane toads on Mars, firewalls on Pluto

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged , , , , on April 10, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Replying to me here, Graham Harman explains his objections to relational ontologies, arguing that they fail to make a distinction between the “two sorts of relations” in which an entity is involved. These are not “the famous ‘internal’ and ‘external’ relations,” but are what he “somewhat whimsically” calles the “domestic” and “foreign” relations of an object. (I like this distinction, though I’m not sure how it’s different from internal and external relations.)

GH: “Surely Adrian doesn’t want to claim that the cane toad is a set of all its relations? If Mars were five inches further along in its course than it currently is, would the cane toad be a different cane toad than it is now?” [. . .]

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subjects & objects, together or apart…

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , on April 9, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Levi Bryant’s detailed and generous replies to my critical queries, both in the comments section of this post and at Larval Subjects, and Graham Harman’s replies here (and in an e-mail exchange) have helped me get a much clearer sense of where the main differences lie between their respective “object-oriented” positions and my relational view. […]

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philosophy of the moment

Posted in Philosophy, tagged on April 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Jeff Carrera’s Philosophy is Not a Luxury has been posting some pithy articulations of the process-relational philosophies of James, Dewey, Peirce, and others in the American pragmatist tradition. It’s too bad that the word “pragmatism” in its everyday sense doesn’t do justice to these thinkers — rather like the terms “stoicism” and “epicureanism” don’t do […]

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space junk & the (relational) Real

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2010 | 5 Comments »

(This post spun off from the last, where I concluded by noting the increasing amount of debris out in the upper atmosphere. Somehow I couldn’t resist pulling that image into the vortex of ecopolitics and the objects-relations debate, which is carrying on at hyper tiling, Object-Oriented Philosophy, Larval Subjects, and elsewhere.) Like the tail of […]

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Deleuze/Guattari and Ecology (review)

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , on April 2, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Seems someone else beat me to reviewing Bernd Herzogenrath’s anthology Deleuze/Guattari and Ecology for Deleuze Studies, and the reviews editor failed to tell me that (which he must have known for a few months now; I hope that’s not common practice for them). In any case, things like that happen, especially with academic journals that […]

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aesthetics & Peirce in the Santa Monica Mountains

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , on March 26, 2010 | 3 Comments »

I like to follow extended think-fests (such as conferences) with brief flights away from cerebrality, at least for a couple of days where possible. So following the SCMS, I visited the Santa Monica Mountains, which included a hike up La Jolla Canyon and Mugu Peak at the northern end of the range, and another up […]

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toward a post-constructivist synthesis

Posted in Philosophy, Science & society, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2010 | 7 Comments »

I recently mentioned my belief, or hope, that the humanities and sciences are working their ways toward a post-constructivist synthesis, a paradigm in the making with the potential to become a powerful player in twenty-first century public discourse. “Post-constructivism” says little, and “post-representationalism”, “post-anthropocentric humanism,” and “post-Kantianism” — the other terms I used there — […]

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weird life, shadow biospheres, dark signs… & quakes

Posted in Media ecology, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , on February 27, 2010 | 23 Comments »

The Biology Blog’s post on shadow biospheres intrigued me in part because I’ve been reading Charles Sanders Peirce, for whom semiosis is writ large (and small) throughout all things. Musing philosophically about the search for life on other planets, the author, cyoungbull, writes, “Unless we know how to interpret the signs of such life, we […]

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readings

Posted in Academe, Philosophy, tagged , , on February 18, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I’m reading, and being very impressed by, John Protevi’s recent book Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. The book brings together a lot of recent work on affect with the best of the cognitive sciences (embodied/embedded/distributive/enactive cognition), complexity and nonlinear dynamical systems theories, and a strong grounding in philosophy, from Aristotle to Kant […]

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Bryant’s objects & a possible object/subjectology

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2010 | 9 Comments »

Reading Levi Bryant’s blog sometimes feels like having a brilliant storm of white-hot thought rain down upon one’s backyard garden, the shoots struggling to stay vertical, but rendered that much stronger after the rain. There are wonderful passages in his recent musings on ethics, relations, objects, and ontology. From Ethical Etymologies: Thinking Out Loud (Always […]

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