New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Weekly Philo of Economics: What to read in economics?

Since I started blogging about philosophy of economics, I regularly get asked by graduate students in philosophy for reading suggestions in economics to acquaint them with the field. While the responsible answer is that economics has become too vast even for seasoned practitioners (and I am at best a part-time philosopher of economics and I tend to rely on informants in the discipline), I do try offer sincere responses tailored to my correspondents' philosophic interests. Having said that, if one wants to understand mainstream economics (and even its evolution during the last half-century) from within, one should just start reading Paul Samuelson's collected scientific (!) papers--he defined the field from the mid 1940s onward. (If one reads his footnotes and the folk that responded to him, one grasps what happened in the field.)

Academic passing, mainstream and marginalized philosophical problems

Professor Dotson's post touches on an underestimated problem in academic philosophy: the professional pressure to pass as mainstream philosophers. I write this short comment to her excellent post mainly in order to open a forum for dicussion, so please do read the original post. The pressure of academic passing presents itself to authors who are members of minority groups, or who are interested in discussing minority issues (e.g., disability studies), but is also a lot wider.

Reflections on Academic Passing

[This post is an invited contribution from Professor Kristie Dotson.--ES]

Professional pressures exist for some of us to pass as mainstream philosophers. Academic passing is the performance of legitimating one’s projects as “properly” philosophical by attempting to conceal or neutralize what might be perceived as threatening identities, positions, topics, and/or methodologies (Dotson 2011 [or here]). Some strategies for passing concern taking great care to travel only trails blazed by previous philosophers, showing emphatically that one’s ideas flow from professionally acceptable intellectual traditions, when in reality they are inspired by rather different ones. For example, I know colleagues whose philosophical ideas spring from the writings, histories and social realities of members of their own non-European communities. Yet career maintenance requires them to show these ideas as being the natural outgrowth of some tradition in epistemology or political philosophy or phenomenology, for example, when in fact they are not.

While examples abound the issue I explore concerns a specific question that often prompts academic passing. That question, often asked of a paper written or presented by someone with a Ph.D. in philosophy, is “How is this paper philosophy?”

Artists and philosophers in the society of the spectacle

In commenting on a recent book review, I argued that some art can be unjust (in the way that disaster tourism is unjust). I did so because we philosophers should not conspire with artists that want to lower the stakes in art, or (as I argued here) in philosophy. The very practice of a search after an extensional definition of mere art (in the absence of a claim about good or unjust art) trivializes how we ought to think about art and philosophical reflection on it. Some aesthetics professors chided me unconvincingly (because they are unwilling to question their practice), but here I focus on the satirical, critical response from the Dutch novelist, Arnon Grunberg (here and here; in his blog he reminds me that I was in the audience at a 2008 public lecture of his when he compared some art to disaster tourism). We have discussed these issues on our blogs. Now, Grunberg responds as follows:

"Who isn’t a factory worker in the society of the spectacle? I’m very much aware of the fact that much art that claims to criticize the system, that sells itself as being critical, is in fact just one of the pillars supporting the system.

The artist in our societies (the West) is a conformist out of necessity and by temperament. He is too much dependent on an audience to not know what conformism is all about. He serves the powers that be with enthusiasm, especially when the artist claims to be an idealist is my experience...

Introducing the term “unjust art” is a standing invitation to censorship that we don’t need and that is not going to solve anything.

And keep in mind that the censor is very much a factory worker in the society of the spectacle as well."

Hume's copy of Berkeley's An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision

Was found in New Zealand. (Sorry I missed it before! Thanks to Kirsten Walsh for hat tip.) For more on the story see here. Sadly, there are no annotations.

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. 

Time to get out

From a New York Times story on responses to the recent murders in Afghanistan of sixteen civilians by a US soldier:

Many observers say the Americans have had a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage, accidental and otherwise, and have gotten better at doing it quickly and convincingly.

This is the good news in a story that does its best to give a positive spin to the current situation. See Glenn Greenwald for more.

Can we learn something from the Vincent Hendricks Controversy?

This note just appeared in the major Danish newspaper Politiken. As most of our readers don't speak Danish, I decided to translate it. The newspaper changed the original title, which is the title of this blog post, to "Philosopher's photo shoot presents women as stupid sex objects". The original note was drafted by Mikkel Gerken, University of Copenhagen and signed by Mikkel Gerken, University of Copenhagen;  Berit Brogaard, University of Missouri, St. Louis; Anna-Sara Malmgren, Stanford University; Anders Schoubye, Carnegie Mellon University; and Andreas Stokke, The University in Oslo.

Philosopher's photo shoot presents women as stupid sex objects

A photo shoot of philosophy professor Vincent Hendricks with a bunch of sexy female 'students' has recently given rise to debate internationally and now also in Denmark.

Unfortunately, the debate in Denmark has been unproductive. In our opinion, it has been unproductive for two reasons. First, the debate has not focused on why the pictures are unfortunate. Second, the national debate has been entirely off-topic.

The pictures are unfortunate for several reasons.

Underrepresentation of women in philosophy is a major problem. The underrepresentation is at least as bad in Denmark as it is internationally, but in Denmark, the problem has been given much less attention. Internationally, the issues have been widely discussed. People have tried to figure out what the cause of the underrepresentation is, and presumably the cause is rather complex. (See all the pictures from Connery.dk here)

Brazilian music on Fridays: Zuco 103

Last week I had a post on Michel Teló’s ‘Ai se eu te pego’, a huge success in Brazil which then got exported to large portions of the world (reminds me of what a friend used to say: Brazil retaliates for colonialism by exporting cultural product of dubious quality, such as soap-operas). But there are also a number of Brazilian artists who have built their whole careers abroad, and are little if at all known in Brazil. A good example is Lilian Vieira, the singer of the Dutch band Zuco 103, which has considerable success in the Dutch alternative scene and in the world music scene more generally. Their music can essentially be described as electronic music, but the songs are almost invariably sung in Portuguese by Lilian; they are a nice example of the kind of fusion that Brazilian matrices allow for. Not all of their stuff is truly good, but I like quite a few of their songs. I’ve seen them live once, and at a different occasion I saw Lilian Vieira performing at the Bimhuis (one of the best places for jazz in Amsterdam) with jazz musicians (not her Zuco 103 companions) – I must say that I liked the latter better than the former… Anyway, just to say that she is a versatile singer worth paying attention to.

Here are two of my favorite Zuco 103 songs, ‘Treasure’ (2002), one of their biggest hits, and ‘Nunca mais’ (2008) -- you'll have to follow the link for the original version, as embedding for the video has been disabled; here below a live version. (‘Nunca mais’ sounds much more ‘Brazilian’ than ‘Treasure’, btw.)

Extended cognition and gender balance

Now that Eric has (duly) highlighted a conference on extended cognition with a very bad gender balance (11 men, 0 women), for the sake of fairness I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to another conference in the same area/topic which does have a much better gender balance, the ‘Distributed cognition and distributed agency’ workshop, taking place at Macquarie University pretty much as we speak.

On non-apologies, and the Dutch old-boys-network in action

As our friends at Feminist Philosophers noted, this conference has a silly non-apology: "Apology :: The organizers of the conference sincerely regret the gender imbalance in the list of contributors. They admit that they should have, before the list of contributions became final, taken more proactive measures to guarantee a better gender balance in the special issue/conference line-up." It's really great to see (my?) Dutch tax money support the old-boys-network so that folk can be flown in and publications in Philosophical Explorations can come from a privileged, well connected group. The advertised sister conference in Delft, is also all-boy. It appears the only woman mentioned by name in either website handles registration. For those that still think that the academy in small (once) "progressive" European countries does not have a huge problem with gender equality, think again. UPDATE AND CORRECTION: I should not have called this a "non-apology." It is an apology and I really do not doubt it is sincerely expressed. I could have made my sociological point without suggesting otherwise.

Data, confidentiality, and PGR

Yesterday many of us here at New APPS endorsed a call for a release of the data upon which the PGR is based.  We did this simply on the grounds that public release of data is a standard in social science, that it ensures transparency, and because it allows others to draw additional conclusions that are not supported merely by means and modes.  An objection was immediately raised: reviewers are guaranteed confidentiality.  And merely removing names from review sheets would not solve this issue, because the requirement that one not rank one's own department or the department from which one received the PhD would allow others to infer the identity of referees.  This short note is simply to point out that there are two simple fixes for this problem.

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

The Vincent Hendricks Sexism Controversy: Interview

This interview initially appeared in the Danish newspaper Universitetsavisen. Since most of our readers don't speak Danish, I decided to translate it.

INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT HENDRICKS

BY ANNA MEERA GAONKAR

Vincent Hendricks was criticized for sexist behavior, when he was posing surrounded by half-naked girls in a steamy men's magazine in February. Henricks also used the photos to promote a course at KUA [a campus of University of Copenhagen]. Universitetsavisen is here investigating these issues.

A: First, why did you agree to be photographed as ‘the man of the month’ for Connery.dk?

V: I, along with many other Danes engaged in cultural, political or business projects, help promote a nonprofit charitable project called ‘youmeshopping.dk’. The pictures for Connery.dk were made in collaboration with youmeshopping.dk to build awareness of the charity initiative. This is the reason I agreed to be the man of the month in February. It is in this context that the images should be seen and understood. I consider youmeshopping.dk an important initiative that is involved in creating a connection between citizens and companies in an attempt to support various charitable organizations, such as Dansk Flygtningehjælp [The Danish Refugee Council] and Kvindernes Ulandsudvalg [The Committee for Women in  Developing Countries].

A: But wasn’t the criticism directed at the photos as displayed in a different context, namely that of your own website?

Minds on Monday: Games, Art, and Evolution II

We had a vigorous discussion last week about the merits of Bernard Suits’s definition of game. Of course, we did not reach agreement. But Tom Hurka and I argued that there is a difference between defining concepts and defining words. Our position was that Suits’s definition focuses on a valuable concept that fits most games, even if it is not precisely coextensive with the vernacular use of the word ‘game’.

Today, I want to work with a Suits-like game-concept, setting aside worries both about correspondence with the vernacular and about precise details. The idea I want to explore is that games have a reflexive structure shared by art. I also want to suggest that they might share something significant at the base level of the reflexive structure.

Feminist philosophy by departments wiki

A wonderful initiative that deserves support and participation. The link is here: https://feminist-philosophy-by-department.wikis.gdc.georgetown.edu/. Here's the intro: 

This is a public site, and anyone can add or subtract information at any time. So, you should always double check to make sure that the information here is correct. If at any point in the future it becomes necessary to restrict access to the site, please let the administrator of the site know ([email protected])! Also, if you would like to add information about a department that is not included on this list, please contact the administrator of the site to have the page added. Since the goal is to make the most up-to-date information available, we hope to keep the site completely open so that anyone can view the pages of this site, download contents, or contribute new files and edit pages. 

We hope that people will see this as a collaborative and mutualistic project, an attempt to improve the available opportunities for people who are interested in feminist philosophy! So, please, feel free to edit and improve this site; but, also remember that philosophy can be done collectively and collaboratively, even if our disputes and disagreements sometimes generate contentious claims, spirited discussions, vehement disagreements, and trenchant criticisms!

A note from the administrator after the break:

Paul Livingston responds to the New APPS symposium on "Derrida and Formal Logic"

Here is Paul Livingston's response to the posts and comments on our New APPS symposium on his paper, "Derrida and Formal Logic."

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“Derrida and Formal Logic” – Response

First I would like to thank the New APPS bloggers for hosting this symposium and those who have contributed to the discussion so far.  I believe it is deeply important for this kind of discussion to take place, especially in view of the divisions that still persist between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy in the U.S., and I thank the contributors for their willingness to talk constructively across this damaging divide. 

The scope of the analogy

I’ll begin by responding to a few of the points and questions raised in Catarina Dutilh Novaes’ post, “Diagonalization and différance: A mismatch of scope”, since of the original symposium posts this is the most critical of my general strategy in the paper.  There, I argued for the existence of analogies on several points between structures involved in producing Gödel’s results and those involved in deconstructive readings. 

Miracles and epistemic principles in New Testament scholarship

This blog post is prompted by discussion on my recent entry on Prosblogion on miracles and testimony, and on my reading of Stephen Law's thought-provoking paper in Faith and Philosophy, entitled "Evidence, Miracles and The Existence of Jesus". Unfortunately, almost all my F&P issues are still in my house in Belgium, so I cannot quote from the text verbatim (and I do not have electronic access to F&P).

In the paper, Law offers the following thought experiments: Suppose you have a couple of friends, whom you know have been reliable witnesses in the past (it might be interesting to imagine real friends for this purpose, try to think of normal people not prone to delusions, flights of fancy, and who do not enjoy playing pranks). One day they tell you that they were visited by a man called Ted who came to drink tea. You accept this testimony at face value. Now suppose that they next tell you Ted started flying around in the room (you can add some more miracles, such as that he died there and became alive again, that he made things appear out of thin air, etc.). According to Law, in keeping with Hume, it would not only be unreasonable to believe this testimony, it would actually be reasonable for you to doubt the existence of Ted.

On the journeys of faith...

"Fleischacker argues that religion provides something that secularism fails to offer successfully -- what he calls "ethics," a telos for the moral life, that which makes living the moral life and life itself meaningful and worthwhile. Fleischacker presents an extended set of convincing arguments for the very legitimacy of seeking a life-telos and "meaning" in life. Then he charges secularism with an inability to provide a persuasive resolution of that seeking. He rejects as an adequate telos for life knowledge, pleasure, self-flourishing, projectivism (that we ourselves bestow value on our life), and Kantian accounts of worth. In any case, he argues, secular views about the meaningfulness of life have no more justification than do religious views (religious views, though, have the advantage of acknowledging that they are held in faith.)"--The passage is from this review.

Leaving aside the merits of the arguments against secularism, the parenthesis suggests that defenders of revelation have made a remarkable journey from Hume's deliciously ironic closing lines "Of Miracles" with stops at Kierkegaard's leap and Nietzschean assertion of faith (in truth, revelation, etc) as (resentful) will to power. Now we learn not just that the life of faith has more integrity than the secular one (which -- echoing Nietzsche -- is disclosed as ultimately relying on faith), but it is also ultimately (in a non-trivial sense) more philosophical (because it has better self-understanding) and the only one that is capable of sustain meaning. Those of us that dance the Pyrrhica Saltatio smile.

A psychologist's irritation and the norms of his niche...

With the growth of controversies conducted through blogs the really existing norms in various scientific disciplines can sometimes be revealed (perhaps unintentionally). In this blistering post, Yale Psychologist, John A. Bargh, Ph.D., criticizes a study that had not replicated his earlier results. Here I ignore the substance of his charges (for useful criticism see here). In his criticism he vehemently attacks the online journal, PLoS ON. But he follows with a most revealing, self-undermining comment: "If I'd been asked to review it (oddly for an article that purported to fail to replicate one of my past studies, I wasn't) I could have pointed out at that time the technical flaws." The parenthesis teaches us that the (once-standard?) norm among the peer-reviewed journals in his niche is that if one is targeted (and high status?) one can expects to be the referee. Perhaps, the vehemence of the little spat is indicative that an old-boys-network is on the way out? [Hat-tips to Bryce Huebner and Antti Kauppinen on Facebook.]

Five Questions About the Unity of Consciousness

The Network of Sensory Research is an international research partnership funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It organizes inter-disciplinary research conversations on the senses.

With the Philosophy Department at Brown University, the Network co-sponsored a workshop on the unity of consciousness and sensory integration at Brown University on November 5^th and 6^th. A report of this workshop, authored by Adrienne Prettyman, Craig French, David Gray, and Kevin Connolly is now available.

Discussion of five questions arising from the workshop is now open, co-sponsored by PhilPapers:

Philosopher Convicted

Peter Smith, formerly editor of Analysis, and author of the well-known Introduction to Gödel’s Theorems (Cambridge UP, 2007), has been convicted of downloading child pornography. (See also here.) He was spared prison time, but is under supervision for three years (and placed on the register of sexual offenders for five), must perform 180 hours of community service and take a programme for internet sex offenders, and is banned from using any computer with internet access. Smith, recently retired from the Philosophy Department at Cambridge University, was found (in 2003) to have had assignations with prostitutes in his rooms at Jesus College—without charge in exchange for favourable reviews of their services. (The press was apparently slow to make this connection.) He resigned from Jesus College and was suspended from the University for three months for this offence.

NOTE: Please do not post any personal comments. We will be keeping an eye out for these, and will delete comments more readily than we normally do.

Is Experimental philosophy killing off Analytical philosophy?

In their rebellions against the sins of Psychologism as well as the unintelligibility of British Idealism, the English founders of Analytical philosophy created a surprisingly durable -- albeit ultimately unstable -- mixture of, on the one hand, a commitment to common sense realism and, especially, the method of intuition, with, on the other hand, a rhetorical commitment to science exemplified by the modern quantificational logic.

My former colleague, José Luis Bermúdez intuits, that we are nearing the final curtain of the movement: "As experimental evidence mounts that intuitions are highly variable and context-bound, perhaps they will slowly disappear from philosophical argument. I personally would be very happy with that. But I imagine that the growing industry of experimental philosophers would not appreciate being part of the ladder as it is kicked away!"

New Blog: (Anglophone) Philosophy in Turkey

Hesperus is Bosphorus (love the title!) is a new group blog by philosophers in and from Turkey. There is a very vibrant community of Anglophone philosophers in Turkey, with several Anglophone philosophy departments, and lots of interesting activities and events being organized. And of course, Istanbul is a fantastic city (which I had the pleasure of visiting for the first time last year), as are other parts of Turkey (or so I'm told, not having visited the rest of the country for now). So I'd say it's worth keeping an eye on what they are up to over there and considering stopping by at some point.

Philosophers as Performance Artists

My musings on James Young's review of a recent book by Lehrer, prompted a useful discussion here on NewAPPS, but it also provoked a response from the widely translated and very successful Dutch novelist, Arnon Grunberg; he rightly discerned that my view demands that gatekeepers of art do their jobs. (How could I think otherwise with the name "Schliesser?") But here I want to focus on the final paragraphs of his piece:

"It’s even possible that we are pieces of art without knowing it.

Mr. Schliesser is a philosopher, and a gem of a human being for that matter, but to me he is also a piece of art. Whether he is a good, a mediocre or bad piece of art is not that important. I, for one, would like to buy him and put him on my desk, that’s how much I like him as a piece of art.

One of my goals in life is to set up an exhibition in an important and pleasant museum where you can meet the philosopher as a performance artist."

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Ai se eu te pego'

At the risk of losing all my (scarce) readership in one go, today I’m posting a terrible, terrible song. ‘Ai se eu te pego’, a song by a member of the very resilient species ‘teen idols’ (a fellow named Michel Teló) is now the number 1 song on the hit parades of several European countries (Netherlands included). Apparently, it is also a big hit in North America. I am absolutely astonished that such a silly song would have such an impact, but there you go; according to Wikipedia, the effect has been boosted by football players enacting the corresponding ‘choreography’ when they score (especially Cristiano Ronaldo) – which is also a fair representation of the abominable lyrics. Be that as it may, here’s a reminder (of potential sociological interest) that there is a lot more to Brazilian music than the gems that I usually post here at BMoF… Listen at your own discretion. (But rest assured that we will resume our normal modus operandi as of next week.) 

New APPS symposium on Paul Livingston, "Derrida and Formal Logic"

Link to pre-print of Paul Livingston, "Derrida and Formal Logic"

Context of Livingston's Derrida work in his Politics of Logic

Précis of Livingston's "Derrida and Formal Logic" paper

Jeffrey Bell, The Prince of Darkness Reads Derrida

Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Diagonalization and Différance: A Mismatch of Scope

Jon Cogburn, Livingston on Semantic Doubling

John Protevi, Logics of Deconstruction

UPDATE, 12 March: Paul Livingston, Response to symposium posts and comments

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.

Livingston on Semantic Doubling

In what follows I first sketch Livinston's three part journey, where he moves Derrida from Gödel to Priest. This journey intrinsically involves looking at views that engage in what Quentin Meillassoux calls "semantic doubling." In my sketch I give examples of doubling from Averroes, Berkeley, and religious Wittgetnsteinians.

To make clearer Priest's master argument I show how something like it was instanced by early critics of Kant (from whom Priest got his initial inspiration). Then I consider three other instances of semantic doubling: (1) Carnap's pragmatism, (2) Robert Kraut's "robust deflationism," and (3) Lee Braver's interpretation of Heidegger, which is a clear instance of what Meillassoux calls "correlationism." In each case, Livinston's three steps is an important part of shedding light on the positions in question.

This is a blog post, not a paper, so my citational habits are shoddy, and the arguments trade in cartoons to some extent (but as my friend Roy Cook has argued, cartoons have an important role in philosophy).

1. LIVINGSTON ON SEMANTIC DOUBLING; WITH EXAMPLES FROM AVERROES, BERKELEY, KANT, AND RELIGIOUS WITTGENSTEINIANS AS WELL AS THE UR-CRITIQUE FROM SCHOLZE

One of the really nice things about this chapter is Livingston's discussion of how an axiomatized system’s Gödel sentence only really means “I am not provable” from a perspective outside of the system. Inside of the system it is just an incredibly long sentence of number theory.

Diagonalization and Différance: a mismatch of scope

(This post is part of the NewAPPS symposium on Paul Livingston's 'Derrida and Formal Logic: Formalizing the Undecidable')

Paul Livingston’s paper presents a comparative analysis of Gödel’s incompleteness results, Priest on diagonalization, and Derrida on différance. One of the goals seems to be to show that there are significant analogies between these different concepts, which would be at odds with the fact that Derrida’s ideas encounter great hostility among most philosophers in the analytic tradition. In particular, Derrida’s différance and the concept/technique of diagonalization are presented as being each other’s counterpart (a view earlier defended by Graham Priest in Beyond the Limits of Thought).

But crucially, while différance is presented as cropping up in any discourse whatsoever, for a particular language/formal system to have the kind of imcompleteness identified by Gödel specifically with respect to arithmetic, certain conditions must hold of the system. So a fundamental disanalogy between what could be described as the ‘Gödel phenomenon’ (incompleteness arising from diagonalization and the formulation of a so-called Gödel sentence) and Derrida’s différance concerns the scope of each of them: the latter is presented as a perfectly general phenomenon, while the former is provably restricted to a specific (albeit significant) class of languages/formal systems. Although Livingston does not fail to mention that a system must have certain expressive characteristics for the Gödel phenomenon to emerge, it seems to me that he downplays this aspect in order to establish the comparison between différance and diagonalization. (There is much more that I could say on Livingstone’s thought-provoking piece, but for reasons of space I will focus on this particular aspect.)