Theology, Gnosticism, and Theory

Geo/philosophy

The sixth volume of Collapse – one of the consistently most interesting journals around – is set to be released next month according to the Urbanomic website. You can order an advance copy here. See below the fold for more information on the volume, including the list of contributions.

Oken, District 9, and Lovecraft

The following is my contribution to the cross blog event as well an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Slime Dynamics.

The question becomes what of ethics – a concern which too often than not is the center of contemporary philosophy at the cost of analytical or speculative breadth and depth. An ethics which must take the productivity and product being of nature seriously.

In “Being and Slime” Grant points out that, following Oken, an ethics without a philosophy of nature is a contradiction, a non-thing (Collapse 4, 287-289). The fundamental challenge of Kantian ethics and of subsequent post-modern ethics (following from thinkers such as Emanuel Levinas) is that they set themselves as groundless, as not following from any sort of nature or material substance. This groundlessness is only half -hearted however, as the dominant form of ethics bases itself on an unacknowledged (or celebrated) positing of the importance of human beings.

The Copernican Revolution

A reader from UC Santa Cruz has been kind enough to send along a review of the latest Collapse volume, which was focused on what the Copernican revolution should mean for thought. It’s an interesting review, and it forms a nice prelude for a few upcoming events that will soon be announced in this space.

There are also a few remaining contributions for the Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities event, though this week has seen all of us far too busy to keep it running right now. We’ll be back next week with some more however.

I am the Subject

Today’s post in the Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities event comes from Mike Watson, author of the Logical Regression blog who has been critical of speculative realism, and has been doing some really interesting work on aesthetics. His piece today is a short and programmatic statement which argues for an irreducible aspect of the subject, over and above any scientific reductionist project.

I am the subject.
Mike Watson

1. I am the subject and I exist.
2. I am resistant to scientific inquiry as it is I who scientifically inquires.
3. I am comprised, as thought, of chemical processes, but I am not reducible to chemical processes.
4. I am material in base, but my objective complexion does not indicate the preponderance of the material over me.
5. I am the object that is the subject. Definable by but not reducible to norms.
6. I cannot be thought away for to think me away is to think of me, and this is not the same thing as to say that to think of me is to be thought by me.
7. I inhere even in a non-dialectical objective thought system, as a shadow cast tellingly over the fallacy of such thought, for the thought which thinks such thought is the subject, insofar as subject = thought, even where that subject is composed of chemical processes.
8. In a realm where all objects are accorded equivalence (even the human subject) I still exist.
9. I am the sole common actor in all philosophical thought, which cannot proceed nor inquire into my honesty or accuracy without me.
10. I am an object, and can admit of this without reneging on any of the above points.

Zombies and Ethics

The latest contribution to the Inhumanities/Speculative Heresy event can be found over at The Inhumanities – make sure to go check it out! Also don’t forget to check out An und fur sich’s newest event, focused on Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money.

The Legume, the Piston, and the Bearded Man

Today’s contribution to the ongoing Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities event, is from the author, videogamer designer, Stephen Colbert guest, and blogger, Ian Bogost. Merging high philosophy with an in-depth knowledge of emerging forms of technology and art, Ian has provided a series of creative contributions to the field of ‘applied OOP’, and here provides a wonderful reflection on the issue of ethics.

On another note, I’d just like to mention that any submissions contributed need not be supportive of speculative realism or the relation between it and norms. We already have one thoughtful contribution set to be published that is critical of SR’s approach, and would appreciate other critical comments as well.

The Legume, the Piston, and the Bearded Man

Ian Bogost

Large, white letters on black, the bumper sticker reads: “Soy is Murder.”

It’s a riff off the “Meat is Murder” adage popular among some animal rights proponents, a slogan itself borrowed from the pro-vegetarian title track of The Smiths second album. It’s tempting to read the bumper sticker as a send-up, a caustic imputation of moral vegetarianism through backhanded reductio ad absurdum. But further reflection might dampen an initial scoff. Is wrestling a tuber from the ground or ripping a pea from its pod a sort of violence?

The criticism of selective indignance has long plagued veganism, whose proponents have developed a number of responses to the accusation. One downplays the suffering of plants by arguing that they have no central nervous system and thus cannot experience pain like animals can. Another points out that some plants must be eaten in order to spread their seed and reproduce—fruits, for example. There’s even a name for the practice of eating only fallen seeds, frutarianism. Such a diet is sometimes correlated with ahimsa, a tenet to “do no harm” central to Buddhism, Hinduism, and particularly Jainism.

Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities Event

Fabio Gironi of the blog Hyper Tiling has a really interesting post up for the event, over at The Inhumanities. If you haven’t already, make sure to check out his blog as well, which draws together philosophy, science and a number of other topics, into a exciting collection of thoughts (including some thoughts on the recent Badiou workshop).

The Rational Animal?

Kicking off the Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities blog event, the opening piece comes from Pete Wolfendale of the prolific and always fascinating Deontologistics blog. Pete’s piece is not only an excellent introduction to the issues, it also frames the questions beautifully, as well as contributing Pete’s own unique answer to the norms/realism relationship.

The aim over the next couple weeks will be to post up a new contribution every other day, thereby giving time for each post to generate some debate. We’ll be accepting submissions as the event continues, so feel free to send along contributions to speculativeheresy[at]gmail[dot]com or inhumanitiesblog[at]gmail[dot]com.

The Rational Animal?

Pete Wolfendale

The overarching theme of the discussion to which this piece aims to contribute is that of the contemporary demand for realist ontology. This demand is powerful, but vague, and  many different responses to it are emerging. However, we can point out a defining feature of this contemporary demand: not only must we aim to think the Real, but we must recognise that humans (and thus we who think) are part of the Real, and all that this entails. There is further disagreement on exactly how this is to be understood, but there is at least one point of convergence: thinking the human as part of the Real involves denying it any kind of privileged role in constituting the Real. This contemporary demand for realism thus involves a denial of the classical privilege accorded to man within the history of philosophy, it aims to remove man from his central role as that around which the world turns.

New Events Page

Just a quick post to note that we’ve compiled a new Events page to centralize and keep track of all the events going on around the new continental materialisms and realisms. It also includes, where possible, texts and audio from the events, forming an archive of these past events. Add a comment if there’s any we’ve missed, and/or you’d like to have your own event posted up (just has to be somewhat related to speculative realism is all).