Varieties of Aboutness
by rsbakker
So I’ve swapped out the old About page for something more self-promotional. I can’t read it without cringing, tweaking and re-tweaking, so I figured it would pay to find out what eyes less invested make of the thing. It’s hard to walk magical tight-ropes when you can’t bear to look…
You would think I’d be more comfortable with the abyss by now!
Three Pound Brain 
I think it is great and very in keeping with what I’ve been reading on the three pound brain. I like how you refer to the possible truth being the horrific one but then don’t provide any more details. I think that will want to make people find out more.
As somebody with no philosophy background I find myself somewhat disengaged when you touch on certain schools of philosophy or particular philosophers. I personally don’t need any of that information (not to say I wouldn’t benefit from it) to enjoy your ideas on the subject. So as an about page, and thus potentially a very first introduction to somebody about who you are, I wonder if those details detract from or ‘bog down’ the summary you are trying to convey? Just my 2 cents, can’t wait to read the last 2 books!
Thanks Rundlesten! Too many mouthfuls does seem to be the growing consensus. I’m certainly starting to look at it that way!
this reminds me a bit of the short video you posted a while ago at some fantasy author event where you broke into abstractions when ya should have been pitching story,, perhaps tying in a bit with Rundlesten I don’t think you quite found/made a way to bring together talking about the philo and the fiction but it’s certainly not too self-aggrandizing.
maybe putting it more concretely in terms of yer auto-bio-graphy would help stitch the two together for a reader?
Like my Mama always used to say, you can’t talk when your mouth is so damn full. Point well-taken… Finding ways to integrate this divide has been my life story, pretty much!
I wouldn’t call it a sell – and where it is a sell I can almost feel it being held with tongs at arms length, lol! I mean we start with a sermon, then you state you’re a storyteller – basically showing the man behind the curtain to those who want that curtain very much held shut. Then we get one quote out on tongs, then maybe trying to show some legitimacy to the academic readers? Maybe a bad reading on my part, but I wouldn’t call it a sell. High honesty rating, AFAICT, though! I guess it’s screwy if it’s the case that a large demographic of fantasy readers fail to see conversation and instead see world – and to sell that is to expedite that failure. How honest is that, ever? Being a more mercenary soul myself, I’d keel to selling it more, though. Maintain the world more from first contact. Support the shell they want between reality and themselves more and not laying down brute realities. Well, not until they are far more in the shell and have less capacity to retreat…lol! But maybe I say this and then I latter I maybe see it actually work out and I go ‘Corr!‘
Should I pitch it the plain jane way, then? TPB is a pop-culture meets cognitive science meets philosophy blog, pretty much. Maybe I should just put aside the theatrics and call it what it is….
It probably doesn’t match the genre of theatrics various fantasy readers are looking for. Perhaps retune the theatrix and also say the posts on TPB give insights into the second apocalypse books – I genuinely think they do! Thus TPB is a treasure trove of details on the series fantasy world, if readers can just unearth it from the posts! Read, friend, and enter! 🙂
Damn good idea… Hmm.
lol, all i am going to say is that i routinely have the private thought that “its his damn iconoclasm that will have the BBT never see the light of day.”
I think that was bound to happen anyway. Group dynamics drive all discourses, some dragging facts, other hopes.
Stigler’s Law, as they say, was not the invention of Stigler.
That said, I am trying to put a little less piss in my vinegar.
Unrelated–For a comical take on ignorance/mental blind spots, check out the “Flowers for Charlie” episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (season 9, episode 8).
I am a poor philosopher perhaps . . .
I have never quite understood the meaning issue, either here or more generally speaking. I hardly know where to begin actually. At one point Rorty influenced me, but I am also more positive about where we stand on the issue.
Assuming the death of Searle like objections, we have a good enough understanding of the general program of language and of theorizing, or of such activities of humans. You call it an apocalypse, where it just seems standard issue to me. It’s a bit like the worry that we live in a chaotic, anomic, absurd or degraded world, if god has not ordered the world for humans. God has not ordered it for humans. Our false previous belief does not mean we are all of a sudden thrust into a degraded world. We were simply always already living in such.
The same idea applies to meaning. We are telling plausible enough tales about how language and theorizing work. We understand what brains and languages do, from a broad enough perspective. And we understand how theoretical schematics relate to the physical world. I do not have a clue what meaning was supposed to be or what it is, in regards to such. Or what we have lost if our language games are only mechanistically covarying structures.
What exactly are you searching for or see as being denied?
I also think you overstate the case as to science and technology becoming more meaningful, or having people interpret them in such a way. The ability to manipulate or “read” the world, say by exoplanet exploration or through biomedical technology, does not equate to greater meaning. It seems like it is only a narrow viewpoint that sees science in such a way. If we change the DNA of corn to grow to 20 feet tall, most people do not see that as imbuing greater meaning onto the world. It is simply humans changing the world in more impactful, thoroughgoing ways. There is no reason to equate that with meaning. Such an analogy is lost on me. And I think it would be lost on many scientists.
Some great observations, Lyndon. The problem with practical meaning arises once you appreciate the degree to which it turns on ancestral cognitive ecologies. Social cognition (which requires meaning talk to communicate) turns on cues which derive their predictive/explanatory/manipulative utility from the way they ‘track’ the actual biologies/ecologies involved. Think moths and porchlights. The Crash Space story is meant to illustrate this in a dramatic way, but probably covers over the ambient nature of the problem more than anything else. The point is that social cognitive modes are heavily dependent on backgrounds that are being revolutionized as we speak.
Tech is becoming ‘more meaningful’ to the extent that it is becoming increasingly adept at gaming the cues upon which social cognition turns. Think chatbots, Siri, and the like.
But your takeaway point is the important one: the problem as I frame it isn’t convincing or clear.
whoa where does he equate science and technology with greater meaning? what makes the BBT nihilistic is precisely that it shows the reverse, and actually gives naturalistic arguments for why. i always took the affective attitude of the BBT to still be basically frankfurtian. he claims that science is powerful, that science when it comes to theoretical cognition outstrips traditional modes, but ive surveyed most of the material on this site, and i never recall him saying that science makes things more meaningful.
“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Except that he forgot to carry the one…
Jason Deem re-imagines the Prince of Nothing book covers http://spiralhorizon.deviantart.com/art/Pon1-590405015
Are you kidding me! Jason has outdone himself again. Too cool. Let him know I’ll be forwarding these to my editor (in my ongoing attempt to convince her to champion a series re-release…)
🙂 Will do
Would a re-release involve translations to other languages? I’m looking for Castellano to be exact.
And while I’m here. Your new [About] reminds me, a little, of some of the things covered in Freakonomics or The Black Swan. (Taleb not Portman of course). I’m not the sharpest tool in the box but I understand it well enough. It’s easy to read. That is all I could ask for. About all the ‘useful’ feedback I could offer I think.
Thanks elne0fito. A re-release would be in English, I fear, and would only spur more translation deals if it did well enough to capture attention overseas. It’s the old ‘you gotta be big to get big’ paradox, I fear. I’ve been to dinners where every writer present had to pay for their own meal except the bestsellers.
That’s a shame. I guess I’ll have to try and translate it myself until you are big enough to get big. Until then I shall look forward to (and fear in equal measure?) the conclusion of the second apocalypse in English for now. I appreciate the reply!
He actually did two sets
He actually has a second set as well
http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=1734.msg24276#msg24276
Way cool. My editor said she loved them, and said they’re discussing the possibility of a re-release, but are concentrating for the nonce on TGO. The galleys have apparently been printed already…
Curses, no edit button.
No pictures, but he says below my other link
“Thanks, man. I did TJE, TGO and TUC in the top style, but sort of petered out with WLW. Haven’t done any others in the bottom style. But, yeah, Mimara is on my cover for TJE, Proyas on TGO, and Aurang on TUC. Might (some day) finish up the series in both styles.”
I love the silhouettes. Big fan of enigmatic outlines…
I’m with you there. The silhouettes are more powerful for me, though I think the full pictures make “better” (ie more mass appeal, more likely to be picked off the shelf, and therefore more potential profit generating) fantasy book covers.
Hey Scott,
Pat from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist here. I’ve been in touch with the Overlook publicity department earlier this week and they told me that the galleys won’t be ready until a few weeks from now. As things stand, they have no marketing material associated with TGO.
Wanted to email you about this, but for some reason I can’t find your current email address. Give me a shout! =)
Cheers,
Patrick
Members of The Second Apocalypse do a reread discussion of The Thousandfold Thought https://soundcloud.com/tsa-cast/tsacast-12
Just hypes TGO and TUC even more if these are the “interesting” parts.
I like it. Crispy.
Congratulations on elucidating novelty for those of us who follow – especially in the unique form of our communicative cruxes and, of course, the mind-bending fiction and brain melting revelations therein.
Skauras may have told Conphas that “he who drinks with me, drinks with himself.” But those who read Bakker may well find themselves rewritten, that they were never even that person who they thought sat down to read in the first place.
“Never hope for the best, always plan for the worst.”
Cheers, buddy. Communication being what it is, people will always misinterpret your words. All you can do is put them out there with a little planning and know – strange as it is – that there are those of us out here compelled to proselytize right along with you :).
Well, you do know how good melted brain tastes on toast! Mmmmmmm.
Misinterpretation is actually a decent indicator you’re doing something right, so long as the brighter bulbs can scry your corners. It’s when everyone is misinterpreting you that you’re in trouble!
Quint VonCanon renders Cnaiur, Possessed at Joktha http://quintvc.deviantart.com/art/Cnaiur-urs-Skiotha-2-595391204
Is it a sell? No more than the rest of this blog. It’s dense, full of philosophical verbiage, and any promotional statements are qualified.
It does contain what I’d consider spoilers, though. One of the joys of an initial read of the Prince of Nothing series, for instance, is the slow realization that Kelhus is monstrous. Here you’re putting it right out there as part of the pitch (such as it is).
You’re right on all counts, I suspect. I need to ponder the spoilage–it’s actually tough teasing without giving something away.
Otherwise, I probably should have qualified my goal as ‘less alienating’ as opposed to ‘more promotional’!
But, this is who I am. And the academic stuff is beginning to turn real heads… There’s synergies brewing… I think…
Have you taken a look at Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari? He seems like another thinker who’s tackling the same questions you’ve been obsessing over.
From more a Jared Diamond angle, but pretty much, from the looks of it. You’ve definitely bumped the book up my TBR pile! One of the exciting things about ‘crash space’ is that it provides an elegant theoretical way to model these kinds of issues–I actually feel like I’m at the crest of the wave with this one, unlike BBT, which remains a warning buoy, flashing on the dark horizon.
Bakker, one thought. I would be more blatant about the plug/quote for the book by the Atlantic. It might feel like you are taking charge of your promotionalism instead of just feeling about it. Just a thought.
A great idea. What I need is a splash page, I think… My brother says he’s pulling something together, a short animation of all the over-the-top blurbs the series has received.
That would make sense. I hope, I think, we are allowed to plug our own work. Its hard though, sometimes. People have good suggestions up here. I think its just about finding the right attitude, which is difficult. I’m looking forward to the last installments, just so you know :).
Madness and I have mused on creating such a thing , a la Malazan: http://www.malazanempire.com/site/
People seem unable to take any but the least bothersome path. So we’re brainstorming doing just that, creating a central page to just link to everything else (forum, TPB, various social medias, wikis, etc.)
We’ll likely be going through another server hosting change soonish (hopefully with minimal interruptions to the forum), and as a part of that process, sliding in a front page. We’d probably have http://www.second-apocalypse.com/ be the main splash page, and redirect the forum to http://www.second-apocalypse.com/forum ,or some such, as a link along with everything else we can find that is link-able.
Owning the domain makes such things possible. The task of finding a satisfactory host, however, has been ongoing and not nearly as satisfying.
…I was publicizing this around and I was quickly countered:
What if human civilization is about to outgrow choices, purposes, and values the way it has outgrown destinies and gods, enter an age that can only be conceived machinically?
They said: Huh, but human civilization HAS NOT outgrown destinies and gods. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
One of the mistakes western atheist scientific elites make is to think that we are representative of humanity. We think the ISIS holy warriors, Christian fundamentalists and new age pseudo-Buddhists somehow don’t count. It’s easy to deceive ourselves if the only people with whom we come into contact are like minded. If we and our like minded friends despise their beliefs and despise them for believing we will misunderstand their impact on human civilization.
Like broken relationships can be a question of who dumped who, here perhaps the relative positions are the wrong way around. Perhaps the question is what if the machines are outgrowing choices, purposes and values?
I mean what were your interlocutors thinking – that the people who have not outgrown destinies and gods are the really super relevant ones to the future? Off in their hovels, having low level psychotic fits?
I mean they suck at the teat of a life support machine, but they think what they have not outgrown is really at the center of things, somehow? There really is a self empowerment fantasy out there (no doubt taught at the universities and schools that are the supposed means of self empowerment. Ejamacation!)
The wording makes it easy to misread, you’re right. But otherwise, commercial protocols primarily organize our lives, not religious ones. There’s a lot of lip service paid to gods and destinies, I grant you that, but what the bulk of humanity happens to believe is only indirectly relevant. Think evolution–the technologies arising out of our understanding it transform lives regardless of whether the masses believe it or not.
Another thing I’m getting why I talk about this stuff in certain philosophical circles is being dismissed with: “ahah, so you’re a reductionist. So old.”
How do we consider reductionism here. BBT is reductionist, right? Is really reductionism so controversial? Are there even convincing scientific alternatives?
I meant “another thing I’m getting *when”
Sean Carroll to the rescue:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/04/21/avignon-day-3-reductionism/
No one denies that in practice we can never describe human beings as collections of electrons, protons, and neutrons obeying the Schrodinger equation. But many of us think that this is clearly an issue of practice vs. principle; the ability of our finite minds to collect the relevant data and solve the relevant equations shouldn’t be taken as evidence that the universe isn’t fully capable of doing so.
Yet, that is what they were arguing — that there was no useful sense in which something as complicated as a person could, even in principle, be described as a collection of elementary particles obeying the laws of microscopic physics. This is an extremely dramatic ontological claim, and I have almost no doubt whatsoever that it’s incorrect — but I have to admit that I can’t put my objections into a compact and persuasive form. I’m trying to rise above responding with a blank stare and “you can’t be serious.”
No… Not… Sean Carroll! Just kidding, or course. I love the guy.
He’s friends with Dan Dennett so I’m actually confused why he should find the issue challenging.
How does something being not useful to do also mean an ontological claim has been made?
Anyway, with the ‘so old’ comments, do they have some kind of text against reductionism (a kind of no-BBT?). Hopefully one that isn’t just the author loosing track of his own claims then stumbling over his own assertions but taking them as fact now (that’s for fantasy writers, after all!)
Or do they treat reductionism like ‘teapot orbiting the sun near Jupiter but you can’t see it’ claims? Like they don’t have to disprove it, the claimant has to prove their claim instead?
Of course really it’s just social rejection patterns, but if we play at it being a course of reasoning and ritually sacrifice a small mouse, there’s a chance it’ll become a course of reasoning.
Imagine I’m talking with a very brilliant guy who knows EVERYTHING about philosophy, a really excellent talker who knows what he’s talking about and is great at making you also understand without simplifying. Exactly like a Bakker pre mystical crisis.
So this guy still has 100% faith and love for philosophy and is now discovering Dennett and thinking he’s the greatest living philosopher today.
That’s what I have. Enormously competent and brilliant guy, but still energized by all that philosophy can do.
The thesis he’s pushing on in this debate seems essentially “Nagel”, who I’ve never heard of before. So while looking for reductionist arguments I also went reading the comment Carroll writes about Nagel:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/
Which is why, at the end, his position isn’t very interesting. (Because he doesn’t have anything like a compelling alternative theory, not because he’s a philosopher.) He advocates overthrowing things that are precisely defined, extremely robust, and impressively well-tested (the known laws of physics, natural selection) on the basis of ideas that are rather vague and much less well-supported.
But I also know that Carroll is self-declared atheist, so in a debate he’s seen as “partial”. He’s the knight of one faction. He faithfully submits to his King (as they see it).
On the opposite side there’s the faction that is equally despised, the theist faction. Looking for the answer into God, mysticism and all that.
But instead (and source of so much misunderstanding in discussions) this group of philosopher-followers is squarely positioned in the middle. So they DO champion DOUBT (I repeat I define myself as agnostic but they take it as a strategic move to set them off balance).
But they think that if you remove the possibility of a reductionist explanation, that in their eyes seems to not be functional, you OPEN ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES.
If reductionism is seen as act of faith in Science, and theism is an act of faith in Faith itself, then there’s still yet-to-be-discovered middle ground. Though of course they are philosophers and they do not know what this middle ground is made of… (something about “life” being a special thingie in respect to the rest of the physical world)
But still they mock me, because my bets are on a reductionist explanation. And because that way I subscribe to an “ideology”.
And: “those people erase all artistic, creative, literary languages from the field of human knowledge”.
…which is amusing.
And Nagel, in their view, is essentially exposing some critical weaknesses in the reductionist approach. This is the thesis. Nagel demands the field to be opened after having undermined (in their view credibly) the current reductionist approach.
That gap that is opened is where they will do their philosophical dance rave party.
The theist critics applied to this other reductionist faction: are you really certain that you already have in your hands all that is needed to explain everything?
Hence the doubt in this reductionism certainty.
So philosophers can still do their dance.
I’m not sure what certainty has to do with anything. Methodological reductionism is simply a bet that what’s served science in the past will serve science in the future. To insist that some things are essentially irreducible is to assume that one has robust theoretical knowledge of those things. So the question becomes one of where to find theoretical knowledge outside of science. All philosophy has is controversy and speculation. Using rank speculation to circumscribe the limits of scientific cognition is pretty clearly getting things backward. If it doesn’t work for astrology why should it work with theism?
Well, here’s a question – how do you want this brilliant talker to respond, Abalieno? What do you want him to be doing?
Typically its used as a shibboleth, a way to avoid argumentation. Just ask’em how ‘irreducibility’ amounts to something more than ignorance.
For me personally, the most impressive thing about BBT is the way it unravels the central arguments for irreducibility. I spend some time on it in the Scientia Salon piece I did: https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/back-to-square-one-toward-a-post-intentional-future/
Thanks for the pimping the books Abe! I have a lotta people I need to convince that the series is worth resuming…
I cringe a little bit reading the comments, they try to preempt what is there criticizing either form or tone. It’s frustrating.
For example this Patrice Ayme guy who explains (quite well) how through the history science has actually worked with and confirmed intuitions and common beliefs.
But then he observes:
What science brought that’s really new, like neurons, if anything, made the world ever more complex, mysterious, magical.
You can even add technology to that picture, or the discussion over quantum mechanics. DF Wallace wrote something about this in his book on the mathematical infinite, explaining the “gap” between knowledge and experience. It’s widening, and this concept shouldn’t be contentious.
So the guy spent a page basically denying how science is counter-intuitive, but what he describes is exactly the novelty of the fracture. If for hundred of years science evolved hand in hand with common knowledge, and it was better integrated in all human things, now everything changes and science proceeds at a pace of its own that has no “mercy” on common human thinking. Most of everything that is studied today is extremely counter-intuitive and hard to grasp, and it is demonstrating concretely how nothing that we assume as common sense is actually working as it appears to.
It wasn’t always the case, but it is now, and it’s what characterizes modern times more than everything else. It is so obvious that something is changing, and changing dramatically. Even mainstream media understand this.
And then nitpicking over too categorical claims like:
“Biocentrism is dead for the same reason geocentrism is dead for the same reason all of our prescientific theories regarding nature are dead”
is the same of:
What if human civilization is about to outgrow choices, purposes, and values the way it has outgrown destinies and gods, enter an age that can only be conceived machinically?
People will argue the claim before they even try to understand the idea expressed.
And this is similar to the discussion above about “what else then”:
What it asks is that philosophers convinced they have found some special, extra-scientific version of Square Two provide evidence that this is indeed the case. As of yet, NOT ONE RESPONDANT HAS.
The new question is quickly becoming one of why that might be so. How could you all be so certain? Does it just ‘feel’ that way?
Anyway, the philosophers I’m dealing with are an expression similar to those over there in the comments, with a slight different spin:
They say that this radical reductionist stance, being unable to provide persuasive explanations for those things that defy reductionism, end up FUELING the theist side. As if saying, people end up going to where they can find actual answers, since radical reductionism has stalled and only receives more skepticism as a reaction. As if it puts the whole of science under a bad light by showing incompetence at solving the problem.
If instead we were more open to contemplate different solutions, open the field some more, we would have a science that is less blinded by its own limits and flattered by its own absolute power, in this particular field.
They say: physics worked perfectly well to describe certain things, but it’s not working equally well to grasp how life works.
I think that Massimo Pigliucci himself has expressed ideas that go against this kind of radical “scientism”?
I’m just trying to grasp the overall structure of the debate:
Theists on one side, reductionists/eliminativists on the other (yours) and then there’s this third middle field that is really vague and that is mostly frequented by philosophers.
And I agree that this third alternative doesn’t really currently exist as a challenger. There’s no framework of any kind, just a gap that is opened that, as you say:
‘irreducibility’ = ignorance of how to analytically proceed.
The usual hand waving and speculation once you find a dark area that currently resists knowledge.
Nagel’s conclusion seems to admit as much (just looking into amazon preview, it’s a small book):
“In the present climate of dominant scientific naturalism, heavily dependent on speculative Darwinian explanations of practically everything, and armed to the teeth against attacks from religion, I have thought it useful to speculate about possible alternatives. Above all, I would like to extend the boundaries of what is now regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world. It would be an advance if the secular theoretical establishment, and the contemporary enlightened culture which it dominates, could wean itself of the materialism and Darwinism of the gaps—to adapt one of its own pejorative tags. I have tried to show that this approach is incapable of providing an adequate account, either constitutive or historical, of our universe.
However, I am certain that my own attempt to explore alternatives is far too unimaginative.”
So there’s something but he has no idea what it is. There’s no alternate explanation of Square Two.
Though, it can be interesting to read the motivations that bring him to say that “materialists views are almost certainly false”. Maybe he has some actual valid reasons to think the current path isn’t going to work?
This last point is the only one that MIGHT not be entirely pointless. One doesn’t need to have a working alternative to demonstrate the current one being wrong. It would be desirable, but not necessary.
All the verbiage aside, it still comes down to a bet on scientific methodologies in general versus a bet on some one traditional, speculative interpretation of some X. If they can’t arbitrate between their own speculative positions, why should anyone think any given one of those positions circumscribe the applicability of the sciences? I always seem to have the best luck in these debates when I stick with this. The nice thing is that you don’t need to have some grand speculative account of What Science Is aside from ‘generally successful and socially transformative.’
Eric Schwitzgebel has a nice piece on the inescapable counter-intuitivity of any theory of consciousness called “A Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind.” And Anthony Chemero has a great bit on the history of apriori arguments in science in his Radical Enactivism.
The nice thing is that you don’t need to have some grand speculative account of What Science Is aside from ‘generally successful and socially transformative.’
But it wouldn’t work as an argument because “successful and socially transformative” can be even non-science. When you look at consequences and effects, everything can bring dramatic changes on culture.
They do not even subscribe to the common sense principle of:
what’s served science in the past will serve science in the future
Being philosophers they argue about the validity of the claim itself. So they’ll point that “bets” and vague prediction fall in the same case of acts of faith, more or less marked.
But yes, it’s less a case of making the Science case stand out, and more a case of: explain me why an alternative should work better.
And even then, I suspect, they’ll muddy the water describing how important was philosophy in the development of Science.
I’m not sure I get you on the first bit, unless you’re interpreting ‘socially transformative’ in an empty sense. What kind of technologies does religious cognition, say, make possible?
Otherwise anyone can game claims endlessly. But those who do this to claim there’s no cognitive difference between the sciences and other claim-making institutions are best critiqued with shoulder-shrugs and funny faces. They suffer dysrationalia, and should be avoided. In my experience, pretty much everyone concedes that smartphones and thermonuclear weapons evidence something pretty remarkable. The monstrous amount of agreement required to make those things possible is also something they concede, as well as the fact that no other form of theoretical claim-making possesses anything resembling the kinds high-definition consensus involved. They agree that controversy is a hallmark of philosophy. The point isn’t to get them to change their mind, remember, but to see how unlikely their position looks from the outside.
Rather than argue to show them they are wrong, you argue to show them how unconvincing their position has to look to someone not sharing their specific assumptions. Magical belief lottery winners.
Scott,
Religious cognition isn’t much good at creating technology, but it’s surprising to hear a man who is writing about a world based on the Eurasia of the first Crusade implying that religion can’t be socially transformative. Consider one difference between Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus regularly rejected earthly political power and argued for a separation between church and state that eventually found its way into the Constitutions and basic laws of much of what we think of as the West. Muhammad believed in and Islam practiced unity of secular and spiritual authority in his own person and in the persons of the Caliphs. One could argue that Christianity facilitated the creation of the liberal democracy that has in turn spawned much of the technology that is remaking the world. One could similarly argue that chnges in the practice of Islam lead to social changes that caused the Muslim world to relinquish the leadership in science and technology that it held over the West through most of the Middle Ages. Religious cognition does not lead directly to technology but it can form the conditions under which science and technology either do or do not flourish.
I find it surprising as well! Earthquakes are socially transformative. Everything is, potentially. The plague arguably made western science possible…
Surely technological social transformation is both different in kind as well as institutionally bound up with science. If so, then I fear I don’t see the problem.
http://www.thesociologicalreview.com/blog/showing-not-telling-some-thoughts-on-social-science-and-science-fiction.html
I remain unconvinced of your philosophical project*, but I feel like I as a reader of your fiction (though I think fan is to strong a word here, and consumer isn’t right either…maybe critic, but that doesn’t quiet capture the relationship I have with your fiction), I should help you, from my perspective, to outline the reason why the knew ‘about’ isn’t sales friendly. First, I often feel like about pages create an artificial connection between author and reader. A kind of empathic invitation to motivate the reader to see it as buying something from a friend instead of a faceless author. Yours does not have that. Second, I don’t really think you should mention much of your philosophy, or how that effects your work. That’s not because I don’t think your philosophy isn’t interesting (if flawed), but rather because its not a selling point to those with no context to understand your argument. You might want to play up your homages to Tolkien, or Howard, something to give the readers most-likely to buy your books something to grad hold off, a path to familiarity (even if you wanted to sell your philosophy as much as your fiction). Finally, I believe its overly long. As I’m sure you know, late-capitalism has turned time into a commodity and so every second of everyday is important, and if you can’t sell your fiction quick and easy, what’s the point of your about? If it is to sell your philosophy I believe all you’ll be getting (outside of those individuals already engaging with your philosophy) is the newly converted, not fans.
* I feel like it was unfair to state without reason. I feel like you mischaracterize, the brain+biology (biology and the brain is much more plastic than you give it credit for, science has shown us this), humanity as whole (for instance, much of the time you seem to be talking about individuals who live in urbanized cityscapes, and who are well-tuned into the global economy), and science (science is often wrong, and often breaks down on the local level–when you speak of science I believe you’re talking about technology which can argue is the result of science but I believe those two things exist in separate, if related categories). If you think I’m being unfair, or wrong, don’t be afraid to say so.
Thanks for the insights, BDG. I agree with everything you have to say regarding the ‘sales friendly’ bit, but TPB, for better or worse, is a philosophy blog, not a sales platform. The question for me has always been one of finding the least worst way to pitch that content from the standpoint of my fiction. Jettisoning that content would be the best from a commercial standpoint, I’m sure, but it would also defeat the whole point of the project as well.
Regarding the theory stuff, I’m not sure how and where I give plasticity short-shrift. I’ve been told this before, but since no one has ever followed through on the complaint with arguments, I’ve just assumed they were taking some Malabou-esque line, confusing arguments like mine with determinism, and confusing plasticity with something more than biomechanical. This is certainly what Malabou does.
As much as I love the books, I also think the biggest problem with the About Page is its honesty. The pleasure I get in reading Bakker is not the pleasure I get in reading Tolkien (or Raymond E. Feist, or Robert Jordan, or Stephen R. Donaldson). In fact it’s somewhat the opposite. Tolkien and most of his literary descendants present moral universes. In this the comparison of Middle Earth to the Israel of the Old Testament is apt. There is great pleasure for many readers in visiting a universe in which virtue is rewarded and evil punished. There is great pleasure in visiting a universe to which the human drama is central.
The world of the Second Apocalypse is not at all like that. It is as amoral as real life, and the About piece reflects that amorality, both of the people and of the universe in which they exist. Similarly, Blind Brain Theory is amoral in a way that most philosophy is not. As has often been pointed out in this blog, much philosophy of mind flatters human self-regard. Blind Brain Theory seems to be about destroying any remaining sense of human exceptionalism or specialness. This makes both the Second Apocalypse and Blind Brain Theory “acquired tastes.”
“confusing arguments like mine with determinism, and confusing plasticity with something more than biomechanical”
yeah I’m always puzzled by the much ado about plasticity, I mean great news if you suffer a TBI of certain scale/impacts but otherwise hardly news that we keep learning as life goes on and has little to nothing to do with the limits and possibilities of AI and or neurophenomenology/enactivism.
https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2016/04/09/malabou/
Yeah, I the way i read it functional plasticity is a central concern of the BBT. RSB mentioned this is contexts widely differing from parsing out psychosocial functions in experimental psychology and mapping them to differing levels of granularity to neural (cognitve reduction) and how this is unending owing to the unending ways environint contexts can occasion and ‘repurpose’ extent or native brain capabilities, to the way that there is underdetermination between the interpretative priors an explanation is to be given in terms of metacognitively (brandom never once mentioned the term experience in Making it Explicit!). I don’t know what people want though. The BBT isn’t a theory of learning. The buck has to stop somewhere. Explaining everything isnt a precondition of explaining some things.
Quint Von Canon renders the epic ending to The Thousandfold Thought http://quintvc.deviantart.com/art/Repudiation-583471061
Sounds about right.
Which one is Jabba? 😉
Koonyah mahlyass koong! Ees too rong tah oong jedi mind trick!
Fucking love me some of Q’s Doom County!
Sort of on topic : http://www.consciousentities.com/2016/04/zappiens-unreads/
What struck me from reading it is that authority might be shored up on entertainment. Like the martial threat of authority might be bricks, but they just shift around and eventually tumble apart without the mortar that is entertainment. And who controls entertainment now? Anyway the spam filter at CE is still eating my posts so I couldn’t post there. I wish philosophers would learn to understand their spam filters!
New excerpt from The Great Ordeal will be out in early May! http://goo.gl/vPfu0v from http://goo.gl/NGvNL2
Full trailer for R. Scott Bakker’s The Second Apocalypse! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIciOLD3iO0&nohtml5=False
That was gewd! I tried to watch with fresh eyes – it might seem a bit pretentious, but they’re books that actually pay out the cheques they’re writing!
Sounds like the voice over guy from Civ V.
Awesome trailer.
So now that we have a firm release date to The Great Ordeal in US,Do you know anything about the release date in the UK? Orbit UK has not listed it yet.
Hi Redeagl: Amazon.co.uk has two listings for The Great Ordeal. One is the Overlook Hardcover, which shares the July 5th release date of Amazon.com. The other is for some kind of paperback slated for release Sep 29/16. No word on ebooks, as of yet.
So we have a frim release date for The Great Ordeal in US but what about the UK?? Orbit UK hasn’t listed it yet.
Without clogging the comments up above I wanted to report how I closed the debate. I had to backpedal all the way and re-frame everything because otherwise nothing I said was even considered. So the whole discussion ended up in an attempt to structure the debate itself, without the debate taking place at all.
The last attack was a complete misrepresentation of the thesis, saying that eliminativists refuse to even consider the question “why consciousness feels the way it feels” and why we perceive an united “self”. So this is why I wrote, horribly translated back:
—
Two things, since the debate has been framed incorrectly and so the result can’t be balanced.
First, who supports and researches reductionist/eliminativist theses does NOT consider the question illegitimate, quite the opposite. All the efforts are focused on obtaining an answer precisely to that question. If consciousness is thought to be “illusory” then it does not mean that an eliminativist position refuses to investigate into it, but that it is necessary to find an answer that describes why consciousness is an illusion and that precisely describes how it works. If the mind is a trick, that trick has to be thoroughly explained in its totality and the question needs to have an exhaustive explanation. Removing consciousness as a thesis doesn’t mean removing the problem it poses.
Secondly, theist theses too are completely open, since it’s not possible to radically disprove god (see “brain in a vat” and similar impossible-to-refute hypothesis). We deal instead with considerations at the general and personal level both, that lead to determine in what direction to focus a research. Eliminativist theses look for an answer to that question (that is LEGITIMATE regardless the angle) in a reductionist direction after a series of considerations that led to believe that’s the area that seems more valid and worthwhile. So not to dismiss other areas on a dogmatic premise that refuses everything else. That would be an erroneous description.
“More valid and worthwhile” means that a simple comparison has been made. The reason why Nagel’s thesis is not accepted within reductionist fields is not because there’s an “a-priori” rejection, or a principle, rather it’s because Nagel doesn’t point to or demonstrates an alternative theoretical framework that can be considered as solid or more solid when compared to the reductionist one.
That means, again, that Nagel’s hypothesis is still completely open. Reductionists simply aren’t convinced the answers are going to come from that direction, and so focus their work on a different area.
(of course that’s not a “debate”, that’s a long way to simply structure the discussion itself, because the discussion should actually be about WHY reductionists believe answers will come from their direction rather than somewhere else, and why instead Nagel is convinced they have failed and will continue to fail. But some people get VERY aggressive as soon you vaguely imply their work is not going or has become superfluous… And positions can also look specular when you consider just the argument.)
I think part of the problem is the ‘obviousness’ of something being there, so from that perspective the only question to ask is why the thing that is there feels the way it feels. After all, we don’t ask whether the keyboard we sit at is there, we just use it – so they don’t ask if the consciousness they report is there, they just ask why it feels the way it feels.
It reminds me of Eric’s post on experiments where toothpicks were poked into subjects backs and they had to tell if there were one or two toothpicks being poked. Close enough pokes and the subject could not tell if there were two. Thus two easily feels as if it is one. It might be worth raising this subject as a way of showing how a perception can easily be false. They’ll no doubt play the ‘but something IS poking’ card in responce, but it’ll still be progress.
Off topic I’d love to get onto the stimulus error mentioned in Eric’s post – because interestingly I think it’s actually an error on the researchers part. A sort of ‘incredulity error’ where the researcher, after seeing the subject call out one toothpick about thirty times when there were two, just feels the compulsion to project an error onto the subject on the matter as they can’t believe it isn’t obvious somehow when there are two toothpicks. As if the subject is capable of detecting it but is just failing somehow, when really the subject can detect it no more than they can detect ultraviolet light with their eyes.
I guess that we have limited tactile resolution the same way we have limited visual resolution. We can’t tell with our naked eye if it’s one star or two stars orbiting each other. With a telescope we can. Is it reasonable to think we have “introspective resolution” and if so what are the things we try to resolve/perceive when we introspect? What are the limits of introspective resolution? Is it possible to create tools to do for introspective resolution what telescopes do for visual resolution?
I raised the idea of a ‘Incredulity error’ on Eric’s blog and…’introspective resolution’ seems another ‘Incredulity error’. I mean, where else do you start treating your senses as anything but just raw contact – to bonnet of the car is scalding hot, the toothpick left on the ground is piercing to the foot, the couch is comfy to ones bum. We don’t raise the idea of introspective resolution here – these are just what it is. Only when errors come in, like with the toothpicks, does this notion of introspection come in (in Eric’s account as well) – which I call an incredulity error. Because it’s the incredulity in response to simply being blind on the matter. Why call it a stimulus error as Eric does or why describe it in terms of introspection? In Eric’s example his notion is the subject ‘fails’ to identify that the ‘one’ toothpick is just a matter of what the subject ‘thinks’ is the number of toothpicks – the subject ‘fails to recognize it as just his introspection’.
When really there’s no such dimension at all. The subject just feels one toothpick when there are two. Sense and mind, in this case, do not have some distance between them, they are one and the same. Only incredulity at this makes it seem otherwise.
I am having problems with this website…I made another comment but not sure if it got posted.Any chance of re releasing the first trilogy? Something like a special edition, 3 books into 1 massive one. Add illustrations,high quality paper,cool maps and so on, just like those pimped out medieval bibles. You could also edit the books themselves. I don;t think they need much editing, adding a little here and there, cutting a few lines, basically just polishing. I think the third book from the trilogy was the weakest.
Anyway, it’s something that I would buy. Make it limited edition 1000 copies, put a high price and wait. It might take a while but you will be sold out !
Preach :)!
Also, would buy!
https://neurolaw.edu.au/
https://www.singularityweblog.com/robert-j-sawyer-quantum-night
There are a surprising number of metal bands named after bad-guy people and places in Middle Earth, such as Gorgoroth, Amon Amarth etc. Would you be okay with a band named Golgotterath or Black Seed?
Looks like Nile got there ahead of you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Seeds_of_Vengeance
Also this guy’s taken Mog Pharau as a black metal stage name: http://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Mog-Pharau/516317
I’d personally favour Angel of Endless Hunger. Fits in nicely with all the other ‘Angel’ thrash/death metal bands (Dark Angel, Death Angel, Morbid Angel, Angelcorpse, etc.).
https://commons.trincoll.edu/dlloyd/research/selected-papers/through-a-glass-darkly-schizophrenia-and-functional-brain-imaging/
https://kantsellarsmeillassoux.wordpress.com
sign up and present ‘the eliminativistic implicit’ or ‘the real problem with correlation’.
Quint Von Canon – Swayali Witch – http://quintvc.deviantart.com/art/Serwa-604033291
Click to access ChatterjeeNeuroaestheticsJOCN.pdf