Stuff to Blow your… Brains.
by rsbakker
Helen de Cruz, a philosopher of religion and cognitive science at VU Amsterdam, has posted her interview of me in Philosophical Percolations. I’d like to thank Helen for both her interest and her questions, which are designed to air different philosopher’s views of the importance of fiction to philosophy.
Also, the Consult Skin Spies were recently featured as the ‘Monster of the Week’ over at Stuff to Blow your Mind. Many thanks to bakkerfans for spying that one!
The way cool StarShipSofa has published an audio version of Reinstalling Eden, the short story that Eric Schwitzgebel and I published in Nature. My thanks to Jeremy Szal for that one (and also my apologies for posting this link so late).
And lastly, I spoke to Erik Hane, my US editor, last week, and he asked me to assure everyone that Overlook is very committed to the series, so there’s no reason to plague them with calls (apparently someone tweeted their phone number!). Publication dates, as well as some big announcements regarding the future of the series, will be made soon. I have to tell you, I feel like Achamian most of the time: it’s hard to express just how gratifying it is to be believed now and again. Seriously, thanks to you all.
Three Pound Brain 
Huzzah, the Path is shortened. I guess that makes those on the other end of the phone/twitter/email your crazy cabal of Mandate.
“Though you lose your soul, you shall gain the [book].” – (Our) Mandate Catechism
I know it is probably too soon to really expect, but dare we hope for another sample chapter?
Hilarious! I’ll be giving a chapter to the infinitely patient Pat at the Hotlist, and perhaps another bit to Adrian over at Grimdark, but not until we have some firm dates on the table.
Great news! I let Adrian know in case you didn’t already do it–the more TUC the better!
It has been a genuine slog now, hasn’t it? Where’s Big K when you need him?
Ah this makes me happy 😀
I’m happy to hear that Overlook has heard the call from the fans and that it is committed to the series. I’m looking forward to the “big announcement”.
Great news all around!
Brilliant news!
“Also, the Consult Skin Spies were recently featured as the ‘Monster of the Week’ over at Stuff to Blow your Mind. Many thanks to bakkerfans for spying that one!”
passing the credit to Bolivar! 🙂
“apparently someone tweeted their phone number!”
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
The Pragma are appeased. We shall await the coming of the Unholy Consult. The Logos is, after all, without beginning or end.
YES!!! We the Bakker faithful have waited SO long for this book. Let’s get it on!!!!
Scott! I didn’t know that you revised The Darkness That Comes Before for China. See the chapter list on the right…
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://www.58.com/shu25776/&prev=search
Where do you find this shit. Too. Fucking. Funny.
Scary thing is that I actually have the Book of Mormon in mind, now and again, writing the thing.
Christ, i’m already behind on rereading the Bible for tsa references, now this
I think I’ll give up with the second apocalypse – instead I need to find out more about this Kay Huss character! He sounds intriguing – though perhaps the author can’t help but write about hussies every five pages! Tut, tut!
“perhaps the author can’t help but write about hussies every five pages! Tut, tut!” i like this part
On my view, fantastic secondary worlds provide readers with faux adaptive problem-ecologies, settings that can be reliably parsed and understood in psychological terms. They provide what I call ‘cheat spaces,’ places where we have learned, over time, to game our cognitive predilections.
Is that refering to an indulgent end of a spectrum, or you’re saying for all? I mean, Aesops fables are fantasy as well – but generally there’s some sort of moral to them that maybe goes against common urge or something. Horrible histories even tells me Aesop got thrown off a cliff by a mob. He must have been going against something in his stories, surely?
So surely fantasy is there, unless indulgent? Or is it an outgroup thing – one mans moral is another mans fascistically reliably parsed and understoodisms?
Granted even with a moral or two in there, there’s gunna be cheat spaces too. But clearly not all bitching and moaning moralisation can shine through a single crack, eh?
BTW, what’s happening with the disney pieces, Scott?
I actually have a draft of the next Disney installment, but it just doesn’t feel right. I’ve been killing myself endlessly rewriting the intro to TTBD.
Catering to our anthropomorphic intuitions has nothing to do with being loved–in fact, it’s more liable to get you in trouble because it’s more liable to be read. Think of Harry Potter.
Catering to our anthropomorphic intuitions has nothing to do with being loved
K? Not quite sure how that ties in, but OK
Motherfucker. Now I gotta reread all Moorcock. Thanks, asshole.
😉
yer welcome, tho at some point the books get awfully repetitive so probably not all of M.
But she brings up an interesting point. What, if anything, do you think your anti-heroes owe to Moorcock in general and Elric in particular? I was in my early teens when I first read the Champion Eternal saga, so adolescent self-dramatization really worked for me, and I’ve always been fascinated by how artists process their relationships to artists who influenced them over time.
just hit up interlibrary loan for:
In his first full novel for almost 10 years, science fiction writer Michael Moorcock returns to one of his recurring themes: London. Set in a post-Second World War Britain The Whispering Swarm mixes autobiographical elements of Moorcock’s own life with fantasy. He explains why he has chosen to put himself centre stage.
hey Scott! thought you might enjoy this because it’s a comic and you are a novelist in spite of being a trashy Vols fan:
http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/
Hey Scott,
Fantastic news! I hope we see something soon. And thanks so much for letting us podcast your story and have you join the crew over at StarShipSofa. So fantastic to have you!
– Jeremy
Good Lord, are they waiting on the awaiting Second Apocalypse before releasing it? Anyway, glad to at least have *some* kind of announcement! 🙂
Oh wow, so they DO listen when we complain. 🙂 Great news! Let us know when you need us to yell at them for a bigger advance.
“The future of the series…” You have my interest. This day was going down the tubes fast. I’m glad I thought to poke my head in.
If I still bought hard copy books. I would get my hands on a copy of the unholy consult and place it gently next to Dune. Thank you for your commitment to the craft. Let’s get word out to the public about this series, although admittedly the first read of your initial series was tough to get thru but I credit that to the sophistication of this beloved series.
HEY SCOTT! AM TRYING TO UPDATE YOUR WIKIPEDIA PAGE–THE PART ABOUT YOUR SHORT STORIES. HAVE INCLUDED ALL OF THE STORIES HERE AT TPB AND REINSTALLING EDEN, BUT I FEEL LIKE THERE IS ANOTHER ONE OUT THERE (NOT INCLUDING GRIMDARK). TAKE A LOOK AT THE SITE AND TELL ME IF THERE IS SOMETHING MISSING: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker#Short_Stories
Excellent news about TSA. Added to my list of reasons to exist.
https://www.youtube.com/user/cmurobotics/videos
http://newbooksinphilosophy.com/2015/08/01/max-deutsch-the-myth-of-the-intuitive-experimental-philosophy-and-philosophical-method-mit-2015/
Great discussion over there. I think what you object to in Deleuze, scott, is actually Delanda’s filtering. I think where you guys part ways is basically akin to what differentiates him from Derrida. Deleuze is analagous to the second wave of cybernetics, but with a materialist slant, Maturana and Von Foerster, and I think the influence actually stems from a shared fichteanism (doesnt the attack on representation really begin with Fichte with his emphasis on the performance of pragmatic knowing?). Now where Deleuze runs afoul Fichte’s transcendentalism is that Fichte saw that philosophical thinking or ‘reflection’ as he terms it lags the generative space of transcendental synthesis and is always a caricature or to a degree mistake, but Deleuze through his hyletics manages to identify philosophical thinking with a kind of transcendental production itself. This might lend Deleuze’s thought an air of dogmatism. But besides that recall for those cyberneticist they take it seriously that realism even construed informationally is still bound to semantic naivette which is to take what needs to be explained and sneak it into the explanation itself, the idea that communication or cognition is a packaging of an aboutness or a representation rather than a coordination of a system of cycles of behaviors. Deleuze is explicit about this. In an interview he says directly that the problem is to not slide back into construing communication according to the semantic model but rather as a medium of affecting bodies and behaviors. For deleuze to give an emphasis on ‘neglect’ would be to construe information semantically, and to remain in the resentment of the dialectic of representation. But look at Derrida’s approach in contrast. All kinds of critique of representation but ran through a formalist edifice that still takes measure of the gravity or intuitive weight of representation (there’s actually a book called representation wit. Myself I favor deconstruction, but I can see where Deleuze is coming from. Deleuze just thinks he can side step all of that. But nevertheless as I pointed out in my comment on his Logic of Sense, it does show up, but he tries not to construe it through a residue of representation. And I actually think this is where there is some work to be done on the BBT. Isn’t this a big criticism that you get? How are you construing error and neglect if not on a kind of residual model of representation, which you then deny. I guess your solution is to say look, even the terms you use such as neglect or error, are construed heuristically rather than intrinsically intentionally. But I think this supposes an up and running reflective space of sorts. I think the BBT would really need to give an account of how the application of the error heuristics, the impulse to talk in terms of error arises if it isn’t simply to suppose what it is setting out to explain.
the parenthesis got cut off. there is a book called something like “Representation without Error” which seems to go into some of this which I need to look at
RSB you made a comment on evan thomson’s essay linked to by dmf in the philpercs comments. could you elaborate on what you say there, that fichte’s import is that transcendental deduction depends on an interpretative parsing of experience?
At Vanderbilt, I took a pragmatism seminar with John Lachs (who translated the Science of Knowledge) and this was something he would say, when arguing for the need to extract normativity from transcendentalism. Conditions of possibility are always the conditions of possibility of something: vary the something, you vary the conditions. The classic problem, of course, is one of fixing the explananda of consciousness/intentionality. So even if there were such a thing as a transcendental deduction, it would always be bound to underdetermined interpretation of experience/intentionality.
My problem with Deleuze is that he still takes metaphysics seriously. When I read him, I just see the stacking of epistemic liabilities in the name of overcoming epistemic liabilities. The funny thing is that what I like about him is the very thing I dislike in Derrida, and vice versa. So I like Derrida’s metaphysical minimalism, and dislike Deleuze’s extravagance. On the other hand, I like Deleuze’s turn to the material, and dislike Derrida’s thoroughgoing intentionalism. Derreuze is my preferred philosopher!
The tu quoque complaint I get is usually far less sophisticated than this (the semantic dimension of neglect), but I know that, personally, I think this is where it has the most bite. But the fact is, neglect is actually quite easy to understand in mechanical terms simply because, unlike the traditional first/third person bridge concept ‘representation,’ it doesn’t require additional intentional posits. Information the machine does not get is information the machine does not process. If you think how the problem with all anti-representationalisms is the lack of any feasible bridging concept (leading to idealisms in intentional anti-representationalism (like pragmatism and a good chunk of continental philosophy) and to mutism in classic eliminativistic accounts), then you can see how revolutionary BBT could turn out to be.
I use intentional idioms such as ‘error’ and ‘problem-solving’ and so on all the time, of course, but once you have a way to understand the regime these terms belong to, then you can side step the abductive dilemma (‘mutism’), eschew all the endless theoretical intentional ‘inferences to the best explanation,’ and see them mechanically, as a relation between, not biological systems and environments, but between the biological system that you are, biological systems, and environments. ‘Error’ is an economical way to attune ourselves to variances in our attunements. ‘Solution’ is an economical way to attune ourselves to attunements that are reinforced. They are heuristics.
“eschew all the endless theoretical intentional ‘inferences to the best explanation,’ and see them mechanically, as a relation between, not biological systems and environments, but between the biological system that you are, biological systems, and environments. ‘Error’ is an economical way to attune ourselves to variances in our attunements. ‘Solution’ is an economical way to attune ourselves to attunements that are reinforced. They are heuristics.”
yeah i think the work is not to keep trying to argue folks out of their faith-positions along these lines but to really begin to flesh out how (as best we know) this is so, to fashion a viable alternative for those with eyes to see.
this talk (and really the Q&A) was for me the first and last word on Deleuze, how he could be stripped of meta-physics and why the orthodox reading which doesn’t allow for this sort of correction is unfortunately what he himself was on about:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2014/10/mary-beth-mader-whence-intensity-deleuze-and-the-revival-of-a-concept/
dmf,
Deleuze, how he could be stripped of meta-physics and why the orthodox reading which doesn’t allow for this sort of correction is unfortunately what he himself was on about:
Kinda reminds me of Cnaiur when he passionately reunites with Moe, but at the same time is moving to chorae him.
Well, call me crazy but I sometimes think an mental under layer is doing some groundwork – eg, setting up a system that could be stripped of meta-physics.
hey callan, haven’t read our good hosts fantasy books so i’ll take yer word for it but for me mental under-layer is a kind of contradiction in terms unless by by mental you just mean something like brain functions, off the pages/screens/etc i don’t think we establish anything like systems as philosophers like to imagine/project.
https://books.google.com/books?id=zUypAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=i,+the+philosopher,+am+lying+laruelle&source=bl&ots=MMpfrsVk_Z&sig=UUNfdwz3m78b2pR54iHnSrfJf9M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBWoVChMI8L6_iJ6KxwIVhDI-Ch101AAM#v=onepage&q=i%2C%20the%20philosopher%2C%20am%20lying%20laruelle&f=false
But the fact is, neglect is actually quite easy to understand in mechanical terms simply because, unlike the traditional first/third person bridge concept ‘representation,’ it doesn’t require additional intentional posits.
Well, it is kind of weird to think of a canal that keeps its waters in by building its walls out of absolutely nothing. It’s pretty counter intuitive.
Though neglect by itself seems a bit of a floaty concept – it’s easy to guess the next responce that exploits that floatyness: Much like the conscious minds motto it’ll be ‘If it’s about neglect then who is neglecting?’
Until it comes down to darwinistic utilities (and worse, it’ll have to be expressed as possible utilities to be perfectly honest as who knows what the winning deal is (ie, to describe what IS a darwinistic utility is to presuppose some divine knowledge and back to gawd times)) that tie into that neglect, I think it’ll fly around like a stringless kite, vulnerable to that ‘but who?’ stuff, for a want of why neglect matter somehow in and of itself (attunements shmoonments – why do they matter? Becuz darwin stuffs, but otherwise floaty…). The old responce to why it matters is…because of a ‘who’ being there. The Horton responce!.
Super stoked to hear that Overlook pulled their metaphorical head out of their ass on this one. I actually called and spoke to a guy in sales and tore him a new one. I hope/wish people/fans would realize that we have more power than we think we do, particular in this crazy age of social media. We have a responsibility to help and support the artists we respect and admire and we have platform to make our voices heard.
We have your back Scott. I can’t adequately express enough how much I respect your work and how much it has enriched my life. It is art of the best kind, the kind that forces you to examine and question and dig a little deeper. The fact that your books can do this while still being incredibly fun to read is something rarely achieved in literature.
A sincere thank you for sharing your artistic vision. I cannot wait to get my hands on The Unholy Consult!
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-media-stocks-20150807-story.html#page=1
Not sure if you’ve seen this one. Was surprised to see this from the editor of constructivist foundations: http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/people/riegler/pub/index.cgi?retrieve=14
Ran into someone on reddit called ‘magic_rhyme’ who wrote the following, which I thought was a really interesting description (so I’m spreadin’ it around):
“They used to say that the world is a tragedy to those who feel but a comedy to those who think. (Because tragedy deals with empathy and comedy with intellectual distance, so the common reasoning went at the time.)
I think that the reverse is true today:
The modern world is a comedy to those who feel but a tragedy to those who think, because only those who think about it actually notice all the terrible things happening to the people around them while those who only feel tend to remain entertained by the breads and circuses held by the people in power to distract them from the tragic real world life situations of the poor and disenfranchised.”
An anuva fing! I found this interesting but maybe it’s not – I’m posting it to a more general post: It’s an examination of a popular cartoonist who’s suddenly stepped over to ‘immunisation facism’ (side note: I can see some facism involved – however, I can see a stupid ‘if mums love their kids enough, they don’t get sick’ prehistoric sentimentality primarily), as well as being accused of being a sop the rest of the time: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/19/i-dont-want-to-go-on-leunigs-anti-vaccination-mental-vacation
Ah rats, found this after – wish I’d been able to put it in the previous post: Seems amazon is fine tuning the human psychology – I especially like the snitch tech example : http://motherboard.vice.com/read/amazons-247-hell-is-the-future-of-work
Oh dear, more – I found this on reddit and yeah, it’s a bit lightweight but it is so on theme here, I think! http://i.imgur.com/hgBl6Px.jpg
Look at it the other way up, after that.