New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

“If I loved my city any more right now, my heart would burst”

One of the beautiful lines from this beautiful essay, an open letter to Anglophone media.

You write about our anger, and yes, we are angry. We are angry at our government, at our police and at you. But none of you are succeeding in conveying what it feels like when you walk down the streets of Montreal right now, which is, for me at least, an overwhelming sense of joy and togetherness....

I come home from these protests euphoric. The first night I returned, I sat down on my couch and I burst into tears, as the act of resisting, loudly, with my neighbours, so joyfully, had released so much tension that I had been carrying around with me, fearing our government, fearing arrest, fearing for the future. I felt lighter....

This is what Quebec looks like right now. Every night is teargas and riot cops, but it is also joy, laughter, kindness, togetherness, and beautiful music. Our hearts are bursting. We are so proud of each other; of the spirit of Quebec and its people; of our ability to resist, and our ability to collaborate.

[UPDATE 27 May, 8:00 am CDT*: philosophical comment below the fold]

The two-fold function of kettling: production of crowd "violence," and extra-judicial punishment

As Montreal police are beginning to increase the use of kettling in their crackdown on protest, it's a good time to remind ourselves of the dual use of that tactic: 1) the production of crowd "violence" providing pretext for further crackdowns, and 2) as a form of extra-judicial punishment (I am choosing that term carefully; I do not mean "extra-legal" but simply "outside the courts" [as opposed to the legislature]).

The best new crowd psychology shows that the police can produce violent reactions from their adversaries, just by treating them as adversaries (thereby producing a group identity of the crowd as "enclosed" and "threatened"), cutting off their path ("kettling"), hell, just showing up in riot gear. This effect is not unknown in the policing community (paywall protected article, unfortunately). You can of course investigate the self-constition of police group identity as the "thin blue line protecting society from violent mobs," etc. along these same lines.

Furthermore, as Laurie Penny points out here, kettling itself is a form of extra-judicial punishment: humiliating, anxiety-producing, etc. Just keeping you from urinating for hours has all sorts of subtle or not so subtle physiologico-psychological anxiety effects. It also puts the relief of your anxiety in the hands of the agents of the State.

One other extra-judicial punishment, beyond kettling -- or maybe a prolongation of kettling is better -- is to make the arrest procedure as long and degrading and difficult as possible. And then to decline to press charges. But the 24-36-48-even sometimes 72 hours in custody is in fact worse punishment than a judge is likely to pass down. So even if the police don't break your ribs with a billy club or pepper-spray you, they can still punish you, for just keeping you handcuffed, humiliated, for hours and hours on end is already punishment.

Putting a head / face on an acephalic movement

A perfect example here of the media's insatiable desire to annoint a leader of a mass movement. The linked BBC article not only looks to present GND (see, I'm falling into it myself, using the initials) as a "leader," it also uses "he said, she said" reporting to make sure the most reactionary creeps get air time to repeat the usual canards about the students as spoiled brats (and quite implicitly, but nonetheless there, unless I'm being hyper-sensitive, the Quebec Francophones as emotional and unruly compared to the sober and rational Anglos). Now I'm quite sure GND knows all this and has made a careful study of Camila Vallego's manipulation of and by the media. (Cf. as well David Graeber and OWS.)

What I'd like to ask for comments on is not so much that tactical level, as the philosophical question of what lies behind the mediatic creation of "leaders." What desire is at work here, what fear of the multitude is being assuaged? "Fascism" is terribly overused as an analytical category, but can that be remedied by making a distinction between micro- and macro-fascism? Is this an instance of micro-fascism, the desire to find a leader, so that all human relations are that of leader and led, crowding out the immanent self-organization of the multitude? I'm moving very fast here, from a combination of caffeine and time pressure from other tasks, but I hope some of this makes sense and is enought to elicit comments.

On est tous québecois

Someone thanked me the other day for posting on the Quebec situation. I said "there's no need for thanks, as we are all in this together, for Louisiana is set to decimate its universities via another round of budget cuts. Year after year, it's the same: http://theadvocate.com/news/2893882-123/college-leaders-blast-cuts. And of course it's completely artificial as in 2007 the Republicans pushed through huge tax cuts on the wealthy, which creates the revenue shortfall which is the pretext then for the expense cuts. The media let them off the hook by pretending there's a "budget crisis" when it's only a self-inflicted revenue shortfall. AFAICT, it's the same in Quebec, right?"

Now insofar as this is an Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science blog, here's a philosophical question: what's going on with the constitution of what I'm going to call here "serial identity," as in the title of the post? It's not quite "just" a relay of support, as in this great photo, but something more, or at least different.   

It's not the assertion of collective identity either, as in this wonderful clip "We are Wisconsin": 

Quebec's emergency decree (it's hard to call it a "law") 78

This will just be a set of links. Please contribute more links and / or discussion in comments. 

Here is a downloadable PDF of the final (English) version of the bill.

Jacob T Levy's critique of the "banana republicanism" of the bill. (The title of this post is inspired by his critique.)

Aaron Bady's take: "il faut défendre la société contre les étudiants."

[UPDATE 22 May, 7:50 am CDT: Daniel Weinstock, "an open letter to my English-Canadian friends."

[UPDATE 21 May, 8:45 pm CDT: a wonderful Tumblr: http://www.arretezmoiquelquun.com/ ("somebody arrest me!") with lots of great homemade signs: "je désobéis" / "I disobey"]

Here is the Québec Bar Association's press release on Bill 78. [UPDATE: 20 May, 5:20 pm CDT. Below the fold, a brief comment on and translation of the memo, by Iain Macdonald. UPDATE 21 May, 8:40 pm CDT: changing the term from "memo" to "press release."]

Empires: The Film

Here is the Kickstarter link for Empires: The Film, by Marc Lafia. Check out their page; here's the trailer:

Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the film, but as I don't appear in the trailer or on the list of speakers, it doesn't seem that famous saying associated with Robert Evans will hold for me. It could have been my 15 minutes!

Social cognition and controlling panic in ACC media use

This Think Progress post (and its comments -- which analyze this ABC News piece) raises two questions about science journalism in general and anthropogenic climate change in particular.

First, on a more purely cognitive line, the question is how to communicate clearly the difference between the very common use of linear projections ("if we continue on the same path ...") and the more difficult to grasp but probably more plausible postulation of positive feedback loops leading to takeoffs ("natural processes can have abrupt breaks ..."). In other words, how to explain linearity vs nonlinearity in the popular press.

But it's the second question that interests me: how do we trigger a controlled reaction to the fear provoked by predictions of ACC disaster? The tagline in the article is "hug the monster." I'll explain what that means below the fold, but first, a shoutout to my Lovecraft friends.

Aion and Aeon (Flux), or, the work of association

From a FB post by Jason Read (he of the great blog and meme) comes news of a documentary film on a sci-fi film script (UIQ: Universe Infra-Quark) that Félix Guattari had worked on. The last line of the description of the film is not a bad formula for what Deleuze calls Aion in Logic of Sense: "[Silvia] Maglioni & [Graeme] Thomson aim to isolate the singularity of UIQ in the virtual dimension of what it might have been and what it may yet become." In my caffeinated brain, Aeon Flux popped up, my nominee for best bad sci-fi film evah! Your nominees for that category?

Hey, it worked for Juan Williams, didn’t it?

[UPDATE, 7 May, 7:05 pm CDT: Schaefer Riley's master plan reaches Stage 2. All that remains is the call to Fox News.]

Feminist Philosophers and Brian Leiter have good posts on the Naomi Schaefer Riley affair at the CHE. 

My theory, which belongs to me, and is mine, is that Schaefer Riley is *trying* to get fired, so she can drive up her lecture fee on the “woe is me, the liberals have deprived me of my First Amendment rights” circuit as well as ditch the Chronicle for the greener pastures of Fox News.

Generating "learning data," or, the rush to monetize student work in MOOCs

This IHE article on the Harvard / MIT entrant into the MOOC (massively open online course) sweepstakes complements our previous discussion and brings to the fore another aspect of this initiative, producing commercial software based on the "learning data" generated by the students working in the courses. (Those who don't think such commercialization is a prime incentive here should line up for their chance to purchase shares in a large transport edifice linking these two islands.)

Harvard and MIT say one of their main goals with edX is to generate learning data that the universities  can share freely with education researchers. The MITx platform, which will serve as the technology platform for edX, “already has a lot of mechanisms for understanding how students are learning," said Anant Agarwal, a computer science and engineering professor at MIT and the first president of edX. "These data will be available to researchers at MIT and Harvard and other universities around the world,” he said.

The combination of the data-rich online medium and the scale edX hopes to achieve will "enable [education researchers] to ask very different questions than we’ve been able to ask before," said Alan Garber, the provost at Harvard. By crunching granular data on the activity of students in the edX environment, educators will be able to get a sense not only of how well they perform on high-stakes tests but also “how well they acquire and apply the information months after a class has ended,” Garber said.

In a subtle swipe at the proprietary companies (like Coursera and Udacity) that have also built platforms through which top-tier universities can run MOOCs, L. Rafael Reif, the MIT provost, suggested that the ethic of transparency and public-mindedness Harvard and MIT bring to the table will make edX a more generous and responsible curator of the learning data that MOOC platforms will accumulate.

“We feel very strongly that that data should be available for research under the governance of a not-for-profit structure,” Reif said.

Yeah, because we all know that not-for-profit universities would have no interest whatsoever in spinning off commercial technologies based on data generated from studying student behavior.

A proposal for a four-year humanities PhD program in the US

According to this IHE story, the University of Colorado is re-opening its German Studies PhD program with a 4-year-to-degree schedule. 

Students will spend two years focused on classwork, one year doing research (perhaps in Germany) and the final year writing their dissertation. Candidates will be encouraged to take on internships during summers to prepare for careers inside and outside of academe. Students might be steered toward "less onerous" dissertation topics or pursue digital publication, professors say, but the writing will adhere to university guidelines on length and rigor. The difference is in a lighter teaching burden and one-on-one mentoring, allowing more focus on classroom work earlier on in the program and more guidance on research and the dissertation.

Colorado administrators and others believe the program could be a model elsewhere, both in German and other humanities disciplines.

At first glance, there are two attractive elements here: 1) a compromise between the heavy coursework-and-exam schedule of US programs and the straight-to-research schedule of European programs; 2) the emphasis on "prepar[ing] for careers inside and outside of academe," that is, preparing for multiple post-degree employment markets.

But I suspect this will be a model for boutique programs that will not be generalizable. The key is the "post-degree" qualification to "employment markets." But the political economy of academic labor in higher education includes in many schools a reliance on pre-PhD labor. So when we focus on the key phrase, "a lighter teaching burden," I have to wonder about the finances here, given that so many universities have become reliant on the academic labor of graduate students and adjuncts, even as we read of experiments to tap into undergraduate labor, in the form of "a critical mass of deputized students" doing grading. 

Nonetheless, this may be an interesting model for schools with the financial set-up to afford a boutique program of this sort. What do readers think about either the economics of the proposal or about its educational qualities?

Happy Loyalty Day!

Per 36 USC § 115 (dating from 1958), today, May 1, is Loyalty Day in the United States of America, "a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom." The text also reads: 

The President is requested to issue a proclamation—

(1) calling on United States Government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on Loyalty Day; and

(2) inviting the people of the United States to observe Loyalty Day with appropriate ceremonies in schools and other suitable places.

President Obama's Loyalty Day 2012 proclamation is here.  (By the way, it's also Law Day, if Loyalty Day isn't enough for you.)

La Marseillaise

I was asked to do a short presentation yesterday for "Revolutionary Renditions," the culminating event in a spring-semester series sponsored by the International Studies program at LSU reflecting on the 2011 "Arab Spring." I chose the "duel of anthems" scene from Casablanca and commented on three aspects of La Marseillaise (in itself and as depicted in the movie) with regard to the intertwining of the affective, the semantic, and the pragmatic: 1) collective embodiment in music; 2) the temporality of revolutionary solidarity; 3) the universality of the values of the French Revolution and the “rights of man.” First the clip, then below the fold my (roughly sketched) notes for the discussion: 

The big dog just barked

The Faculty Advisory Council at Harvard has just issued a memo on library journal pricing. Highlights: 

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called “providers”) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals....

Since the Library now must change its subscriptions and since faculty and graduate students are chief users, please consider the following options open to faculty and students (F) and the Library (L), state other options you think viable, and communicate your views: 

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies (F).

2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access (F).

3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning (F).

The proposed Québec HE fees hike analyzed in a way which can and should be generalized

This Montreal Gazette column, among whose authors are friends of the blog Hasana Sharp and William Clare Roberts (see here and here), is an excellent example of concise and insightful analysis of HE privatization issues; as the post title claims, it need not be limited to the Québec case. Among the highlights: 

The second assumption is that increasing tuition reduces a subsidy to students from high-income families. But if tax rates are progressive, where's the subsidy? The bulk of university costs are paid on April 30 [the Canadian income tax day -- though part of the issue is the effect of different provincial tax rates / HE fees], not when the tuition bill comes due, so any concern with the unfair distribution of burdens ought to express itself in shoring up the progressiveness of the income tax, not in hitting students with increased fees....

Most everyone agrees, at some level, that justice involves those who enjoy the benefits of education bearing also the burdens of education. Where we differ is in our identifications of the primary beneficiaries of university education. Those in favour of the hikes, like Principal Munroe-Blum, believe that students are the primary beneficiaries of university education....

First, the more we stress the future economic benefits that will accrue to those with higher degrees, the more university looks like job training that employers are lucky enough to get employees to pay to undertake....

Sunday political affect news: new fronts in the War on Terror

Criminalizing desire: 

[I]n his opening statement to the jury one prosecutor suggested that “it’s not illegal to watch something on the television. It is illegal, however, to watch something in order to cultivate your desire, your ideology.”

Stimulating PTSD:

But there is another factor that might be playing a role in the increasing rates of the disorder, one that has escaped attention: the military’s use of stimulant medications, like Ritalin and Adderall, in our troops.

Breivik's political physiology practices

In describing the Columbine killers in Political Affect I looked at their ability to handle the bodily intensity of their actions. The problem they faced was overcoming the wide-spread inhibition on cold-blooded killing (as opposed to berserker rage or fugue state killing) [link to draft version here]. One of the problems in using the Columbine massacre for a case study was the suicide of killers, preventing us from hearing what they had to say about the experience. 

Anders Breivik's trial testimony (see here for previous posts on the case) provides fascinating insights into his preparation for and ability to withstand the intensity of his acts (the commentary by the reporters also is important for detailing how difficult it is for the other people in the courtroom to hear the testimony). I call this negotiation of intensity "political physiology" because it involves finding ways to allow a political action that normal physiology prevents (by triggering inhibitions, as in this account of Brevik's testimony: "I thought about it for 1 minute. Whole body resisted. Felt like a year. 100 voices in head saying STOP." Note the resistance of the "body" as well as the psychological aspects of "voices in head"). 

[UPDATE, 20 April 4:10 pm CDT: See here for more traditionally "cognitive" training Breivik did, using Call of Duty first-person shooter game for practice in "target acquisition." Of course there's a heavy affective component here too, but that's not dealt with so much in the article.]

Below the fold are more excerpts from the article emphasizing the dissociative and emotion-deadening political physiology practices Breivik performed, both before and during the events: 

An exciting new venture: the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is a recent initiative founded by an interdisciplinary collective of graduate students at Columbia University.  The Institute provides liberal arts educational opportunities to the local community.  In January, the Institute began offering classes to the public, as well as a Podcast series, a blog, and a journal, and they are in the midst of their first fundraising campaign in support of their ~Archive project.  Information about the fundraising campaign can be found at their Kickstarter page.   

Their mission statement reads: 

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research provides liberal arts educational opportunities to local communities. At the same time, it provides material and intellectual support and space for young scholars to teach, write, research, publish and, put simply, work.

Doubled differences: the Gulf Oil Disaster multiplicity and models of future deep-water spills

Deleuze's "ontological difference" between virtual multiplicity and intensive individuation processes can help us think the ontological status of "model" in its relation to the events it models. The "doubling" of difference in the post title means that the multiplicity (the model) is differential (a-centered) and that its actualizations are all different events. Translating into other terms, the second claim is that the Deleuzean scheme accounts for the "multiple realizability" of models (but please note that Deleuze would not use this term because for him the virtual is real, so individuation is actualization rather than realization).  

An experiment in replacing TA labor by "a critical mass of deputized students"

From an IHE article on a new online course project by Penn, Michigan, and Princeton:

Koller, an artificial intelligence specialist who has taught computer science at Stanford since getting her Ph.D. there at age 25, says that the challenge of assessing student work in humanities-oriented MOOCs could be addressed through a system of “calibrated peer review.” Human readers, plucked from the ranks of the course registrants, could read short essays written by their peers and rate them according to a rubric developed by the professor. A critical mass of deputized students should be able to evaluate an essay “at least as [well] as a pretty good [teaching assistant],” Koller said in an interview.

This could be another nail in the coffin of the current political economy of graduate humanities education. Why should universities pay TAs when the undergrads can grade themselves?

1. Of course, I recognize that this is for the moment restricted to non-enrolled -- i.e., extramural -- students, but you would have to be a potential buyer of the Brooklyn Bridge not to see this as an experiment whose results will be closely monitored for its potential transfer to intramural applications.
2. Replacing the current system may not be a totally bad thing...
3. Will the deputized students get badges?

For connoisseurs of the genre, the rest of the article has some great management-speak: "monetization," of course, but also "metrics," and a few others:

Revenge of Molière, or, upon being displeased to find out I've been a "freelance contributor" all along

Dear ...., thank you for relaying the correspondence from your legal team in which I am categorized as a "freelance contributor," and am asked to waive my moral rights as an author so that [name of publisher witheld for the time being] can, among other things, edit my contribution (with an example of going from 10K to 7500 words), without my consent.

The proposed contract and explanation represents a fundamental shift in the accepted relations between academic authors and publishers of scholarly work, proposing a new status for us, that of "freelance contributors." Consequently, I will have to propose an amendment to the contract before I sign.

Bergson says Spinoza, Russell says Leibniz

 In his nice post on the origins of analytic philosophy, a theme that has been addressed many times at this blog, Eric points out that Bergson was among Russell's principle targets. It is perhaps understandable that this part of the story has been forgotten. The Frege-Russell narrative concerning the origins and legitimacy of analytic philosophy has largely maintained its hegemonic status. Within this narrative, Bergson emerges not only as a  marginal “continental” figure safely ignored by analytic philosophers but moreover he is a philosopher whose influence on the continent was itself surpassed by the phenomenologists (who, such as Merleau-Ponty, rejected Bergson’s vitalism). However, following up on a comment I made on the thread to John Protevi’s post about Adrian Moore’s book, I would push back the genealogy of an important aspect of the continental/analytic divide to the choice between Spinoza or Leibniz. Understood in this way, Bergson, à la the song "Let's call the whole thing off," says Spinoza and Russell says Leibniz. In targeting Bergson, therefore, Russell is ultimately one in a line of many who are seeking to exorcise the specter of Spinoza.

Wrong but true

In History of Sexuality 1, Foucault grants the title of "science" to the biology of reproduction (54E / 73F and 154E / 204F ["les sciences biologiques de la reproduction"]) as opposed to the savoir de la sexualité humaine (204F / 154E). But this doesn't contradict Foucault's claim that "sex" is produced by the modern sexuality dispositif, for "sex" is an "artificial unity" grouping together "anatomical elements [and] biological functions" (the connaissance of which had passed the threshold of scientificity [cf Gutting 1989, 252-256]) with all sorts of other things, such as "conducts, sensations, pleasures."

Now the key move of the sexuality dispositif in constituting "sex" as a natural constant is to then give that unity a causal power (154E / 204F). And while we can note that the sexuality savoir did get some "quasi-scientificity" from its "proximity" with the bona fide science of reproduction, we also have to note that the undoubted scientific contents of the biology of reproduction could be recruited to "serve as the principle of normality for human sexuality" (154-155E / 204F).

Using the notion of "threshold of scientificity" Gutting 1989 lays out (252-256), it seems that Foucault would not object to a (Bachelardian / Canguilhemian) history of science that would say "now we know that Aristotle is wrong about reproduction, and that it was really sperm and egg and not the objects postulated by his theory that were at work." But saying this is not an archaeological analysis, so that Foucault could still say that Aristotle produced true statements relative to his episteme. In other words, to be a little paradoxical about it, he is wrong but was true. Wrong by the standards of contemporary science, but true by the standards of archaeology. (Presumably, had Foucault ever done an archeology of biological savoir in Aristotle's time.) [NB: slight rewording of this graf -- inserting the tenses in "is wrong but was true" -- done on Sun 1 April 2:30 pm CDT.]

Multi-scale political affect: securitization and racial anxiety in the Trayvon Martin case

Anxiety is classically distinguished from fear by its "free-floating" character; while fear has an object, anxiety is alertness without an object, a potentiality, a tendency toward fear.* Using a Simondonian image, anxiety is metastable and pre-individual, like a super-saturated liquid, needing only a slight disturbance to start its crystallization. We should note that Simondon's notion of individuation, imaged by crystallization, centers on the putting into connection of different orders of magnitude; I use the notion of "events as crystallizations" to investigate case studies in terms of political affect as connecting the social, somatic, and subjective scales.

Rich Benjamin's NYT piece on the Trayvon Martin case, "The Gated Community Mentality," puts some (small-scale "geo-political," if you will) orders of magnitude on the table, but suffers by not getting below the personal and subjective to the neural and affective. The term "mentality" in his title indicates that personal or psychological subjectivity is his lower bound.

Adrian Moore on a content difference between analytic and continental: identity and difference

I'm on record as favoring a sociological perspective on the question of the relation of analytic and continental philosophy. In other words, I think it's much more useful to focus on hiring and citation networks than on questions of style or of content or method. That's because I do not think we can produce a finite list of necessary and sufficient condition to create a clean distinction between the two groups. In other words, there's no essential definition that wouldn't produce easy counter-examples, so that figures usually associated with one side or the other would be mis-classified. 

But, if we switch to a family resemblance or broad tendency approach, the question of the priority of identity to difference or of difference to identity does seem a promising one for a content distinction, with AP favoring the former and CP the latter. That brings me to this passage from Adrian Moore's new book, which we've discussed before.

Feminism, slavery and reproductive rights

Catarina's post has provoked a lively discussion on the inter-relations of sex, race, and class in feminism. This Nation post by JoAnn Wypijewski* recounts a conversation with Pamela Bridgewater, Professor of Law at American University. Bridgewater's goal is to pull reproductive rights from an anhistorical arena of choice and privacy and into the historical struggle for civil (political and corporeal) freedom. The key intersection here is to expand the view of slavery from that of a narrowly economistic focus on exploitation in commodity production to a perspective that includes that of the exploitation of female reproductive capacity in slave breeding.

As Bridgewater puts it at the conclusion of this excerpt from Wypijewski's piece: “If we integrate the lost chapter of slave breeding into those two traditional but separate stories [civil rights and reproductive rights], if we reconcile female slave resistance to coerced breeding as, in part, a struggle for emancipation and, in part, a struggle for reproductive freedom, the two tales become one: a comprehensive narrative that fuses the pursuit of reproductive freedom into the pursuit of civil freedom.” 

The university president merry-go-round: how it works

The immediate context of this IHE article is the resignation of the U Illinois system president, but the lessons to be drawn are systemic: 

... a broader failing of the presidential search process, in which boards are so eager to secure experienced presidents that they are willing to overlook flaws and too concerned with protecting the anonymity of candidates to properly vet them.

Labor economists have documented that, in professions such as entertainment and management, previous experience is overvalued. Boards would prefer someone who has demonstrated some level of competency rather than take a risk on someone not working out, and they are willing to pay large salaries for that experience.

... Marko Terviö, an economist at Aalto University in Finland, in a paper entitled “Superstars and Mediocrities: Market Failure in the Discovery of Talent” [writes] “This market failure would manifest itself as a bias for hiring mediocre incumbents at excessive wages.”

Adrian Moore on treating analytic and continental philosophy with equal respect

I've been looking forward to reading Adrian Moore's The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics (Cambridge, 2011) since I saw its announcement last year. I'm now reading it, and will write more about it in the coming weeks. What attracted me to the book was its attempt to treat the analytic and continental traditions on equal footing -- to treat, with respect and charity, Quine and Lewis and Derrida and Deleuze and many others.

Of course good intentions have to be cashed out by quality philosophy, and so, after I read the Preface and Intro, I skipped to the end to read the Deleuze chapter, thinking that might eating this part of the pudding would give me the proof of its quality. And the quality is very good indeed, as I hope to be able to show in future posts. Today I just wanted to reproduce a striking passage from the Preface: 

There would, I think, be justification in the publication of this book if it made a significant contribution to overcoming the absurd divisions that still exist between -- to use the customary but equally absurd labels -- 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy. I do not deny that there are important differences between these. Nor do I have any scruples about the fact that I am an analytic philosopher. But I unequivocally distance myself from those of my colleagues who disdain all other traditions. The 'continental' philosophers whom I discuss in Part Three of this book are thinkers of great depth and power; they are knowledgeable about philosophy, science, politics, and the arts; their work is rigorous, imaginative, and creative; and it is often brutally honest. I despair of the arrogance that casts them in the role of charlatans. Perhaps, if I were asked to specify my greatest hope for this book, it would be that it should help to combat such narrow-mindedness. Or, if that seemd too vague a hope, then it would be that the book should help to introduce analytic philosophers to the work of one of the most exciting and extraordinay of these 'continental' philosophers: Gilles Deleuze. 

A Plea for Transparency in Data

Over at Choice & Inference, Jeff Helzner asks for raw Philosophical Gourmet Report data to be made publicly available. He notes that, “The PGR is based on an analysis of certain data sets, but there is often more than one reasonable way to analyze a data set,” and in fact it is now standard practice in the social and natural sciences to make raw data available upon request. Unless there are particular reasons for sequestering its data, it seems reasonable that the PGR should follow suit. The question of transparency of data has arisen in some other contexts recently. Andrew Gelman (to whom Helzner links) writes of the issues surrounding Mark Hauser that if the raw data had been publicly available, those issues would have been resolved quickly. A while ago there was considerable controversy regarding failures of transparency at The "Pluralist's Guide". We have noted the response of editors of major journals in HPS to the lack of transparency at the European Science Foundation journal ranking. In view of these and other recent cases, transparency with respect to data—as advocated by the “Open Data” movement—has become an urgent imperative, especially when the analysis of that data has serious practical consequences. Though in no way implicated in these unfortunate episodes, PGR, just because it has become the most relied-upon venue for the current ranking of philosophy departments, should set a good example by making its data publicly available.

• Eric Schliesser
• Mohan Matthen
• John Protevi
• Jeff Bell
• Catarina Dutilh Novaes
• Mark Lance
• Dennis Des Chene

Logics of deconstruction: undecidable, quasi-transcendental, aporia

Jeff mentions my hesitation as to whether Derrida’s work could be formalized. Is there a method of deconstruction so that you can identify a three step procedure of diagnose, overturn, re-inscribe? My hesitation was in how to formalize the third step, which I characterized as the move to a general economy, or to a quasi-transcendental. So I hedged my bets by saying the identification of the three-step procedure was only possible for “pedagogical purposes.”

 Now partially this was just to head off the polemical trap EM Edwards was laying, well laid out by John Drabinski at 89 on the Gutting thread. I’ve dealt with the EM Edwards of the world long enough to know when it’s no longer a pedagogical situation but a polemical one, and I wasn’t about to get into that. And partially my hesitation was because it had been so long since I had worked on Derrida that I was unsure of what to say. So I mentioned that a cautious way of dealing with deconstruction is to deny it is a method and to say it produces "singular effects."

After some time with Paul Livingston’s work, and a refresher course on Derrida – and a refresher course on my own work on Derrida, such is the effect of time – I would say that my hesitation in calling deconstruction a “method” or calling it a “textual practice producing singular effects” is precisely one of the undecidables Livingston talks about, a meta-undecidable if you will.