The aim of this paper is to explore Deleuze's use of Kant's argument from incongruent counterparts, which Kant uses to show the existence of what he calls an “internal difference” within things. I want to explore how Deleuze draws out an important distinction between the concept and the Idea, and provides an incisive account of his relationship to both the Kantian and Leibnizian projects. First, I look at Kant's use of the argument to provide a refutation of the Leibnizian account (...) of space, before showing how this criticism in fact rests on the question of the conceptual determination of object. Second, I show how Deleuze develops a taxonomy of difference on the basis of his reading of Kant's argument. Finally, I look at what Deleuze sees as the limitations in Kant's understanding of this concept and Deleuze's attempt to overcome these limitations through the introduction of the notion of the Idea, which will provide a genetic and nonconceptual account of the object. In doing so, I show why Deleuze takes the formulation of an adequate account of difference to be one of the central aims of his own metaphysics. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

The publication of Cora Diamond's important 2002 “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” (in Philosophy and Animal Life) stimulated the writing of this essay. “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” attempted to show that there are experiences of reality (recounted especially in literature like John Coetzee's novels and Ted Hughes' poetry) in relation to which philosophical concepts and words encounter difficulty. The experiences resist conceptualization. By examining several of Diamond's earlier writings, I try to (...) show that the difficulty of philosophical conceptualization of reality is due to the fact that reality does not exist external to experience. Reality being internal to experience means that reality contains an unfixed set of possibilities. Being experiential, reality is historical. The historical dimension of reality – such as the reality of animal life suffering – makes the words through we describe this reality too weak, i.e. they are not powerful enough to capture reality, hence the difficulty. Consequently, as I argue, for Diamond, the weakness of words means that words are never complete concepts. The meaning of them seems always still to come since reality seems always to have a surplus of possibilities. I suggest that because of this always still “to come” aspect of the meaning of words, we might characterise Diamond's thought as a messianism. (shrink)

The concept of care has occupied a central place in nursing philosophy and scholarship since the modern formation of the profession. Perhaps the defining character of the scholarship has been the recognition not only of the complexity of the concept of care, its elusiveness and ambiguity, but also the lack of consensus or agreement regarding its meaning and value. I will make two interconnected arguments: first, I will argue that disputes around care are not an accidental feature or an unfortunate (...) condition of its applicability. Rather, care is an example of what I will call, following W.B. Gallie (1956), an “essentially contested” concept. Secondly, I will employ insights from the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859‐1941) to explore the concept of care and argue that the essentially contested processual nature of care is the source of its meaning and value. (shrink)

The problem of time involves an overlap between physics, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. My talk will discuss the role of time in physics but also emphasize that physics may need to expand to address issues usually regarded as being in the other domains. I will first review the mainstream physics view of time, as it arises in Newtonian theory, relativity theory and quantum theory. I will then discuss the various arrows of time, the most fundamental of which is the passage (...) of time associated with consciousness. I will argue that this goes beyond both relativity theory and quantum theory, so that one needs some new physical paradigm to accommodate it. A new paradigm is required anyway to describe quantum gravity and this may elucidate the nature of both time and consciousness. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop a consistent reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of capitalism by taking seriously their use of Kant’s philosophy in formulating it. In Sect. 1, I will set out the two different roots of the term axiomatic in Deleuze and Guattari’s thought. The first of these is the axiomatic approach to formalising fields of mathematics, and the second the Kantian account of the indeterminate relationship between the transcendental unity of apperception and the transcendental (...) object. In Sect. 2, we will see how this transcendental aspect of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of axiomatics is expressed in the notion of binding, which Deleuze and Guattari take to be a process that forces us to understand a field of entities in a certain manner, namely as clearly delimited and deployed in a homogeneous space. I will argue that this process of binding operates as a transcendental condition for capitalism for Deleuze and Guattari. Section 3 addresses some of the details of the capitalist axiomatic itself, drawing out why a Kantian reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the axiomatic provides a response to some of the criticisms of it. Section 4 then analyses Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the outside of capitalism, using the double signification of the noumenal to understand the complex relationship between what they call the war machine and its representation within the axiomatic. (shrink)

Clarice Lispector puts forth nothing less than a complete philosophy of time in her writings, that is, a cohesive philosophical examination of what time is, of its physics and metaphysics, of how humans and animals perceive time, and even an innovative aesthetic theory in which time is the inspiring force giving rise to literary and artistic creation. Her view of time is unique in the Western philosophical canon, offering original solutions to many of time’s classic difficulties. For Lispector, time is (...) pure actuality. Reality is an unwavering present that never stops being, is fully material, and is ceaselessly attentive to itself. The present, matter, and attention form the unquestionable unit of the real and the core of Lispector’s philosophy of time. Supporting this structure is her inventive metaphysics of time, anchored in her notion of the “fourth dimension of the instant-now,” which is given close attention. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has witnessed a renewed interest in the works and ideas of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). But while contemporary scholarship has sought to rehabilitate Bergson’s insights on time, memory, consciousness, and human freedom, comparatively little attention has been paid to Bergson’s relationship to pantheism. By revisiting the ‘pantheism’ controversy surrounding Bergsonian philosophy during Bergson’s lifetime, this article argues that the panentheistic notion of ‘being-in-God’ can serve as an illuminating framework for the interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy. By examining the ‘pantheist’ readings (...) of Bergson and comparing and contrasting Bergson’s philosophy of life with Spinoza’s panentheistic metaphysics, this paper shows that an account of ‘being-in-Life’ is key to Bergson’s metaphysical outlook as well as his account of philosophy as a practice of ‘intuitive’ thinking. In so doing, this paper highlights some of the implicit religious motifs not only in Bergson’s metaphysical outlook but also in his conception of the task of philosophy. (shrink)

Phenomenology presents itself not as an explanation or interpretation of phenomena but as a description of them. Describing experience means making its internal structure explicit, which, in phenomenology, is an eidetic structure. The method of phenomenological explication or clarification is, however, by no means univocal. This paper aims to isolate the two fundamental ways in which phenomenological description is achieved. The first refers to a phenomenology of manifestation, based on the concept of determination or datum, which is realized in the (...) phenomenological-static approach and, in particular, on the concept of extensive quality. The second refers to a phenomenology of disposition, based on the concept of tension or force – which is realized in the genetic approach as well as in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception – and, in particular on the concept of intensive or forceful quality. The analysis of the difference between the two approaches allows us to introduce the crucial distinction between digital and analogue dimensions within phenomenology. (shrink)

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4–6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time (...) is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond that, I explain how, for Merleau-Ponty, (...) mathematical cognition requires not only the presence and actual manipulation of some concrete perceptible symbols but, more strongly, how it is fundamentally linked to the structural transformation of the concrete configurations of symbolic systems to which these symbols appertain. Furthemore, I fill a gap in the literature by explaining Merleau-Ponty’s claim that these structural transformations are operated through motor intentionality. This makes it possible, in turn, to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s approach to ontologically idealistic and realistic views on mathematical objects. On Merleau-Ponty’s account, mathematical objects are relational entities, that is, gestalts that necessarily imply situated cognizers to whom they afford a specific type of engagement in the world and on whom they depend in their eventual structural transformations. I argue that, by attributing a strongly constitutive role to phenomenal configurations and their motor transformation in mathematical thinking, Merleau-Ponty contributes to clarifying the worldly, historical, and socio-cultural aspects of mathematical truths without compromising what we perceive as their universality, certainty, and necessity. (shrink)

With respect to the several giants of post-Kantian German philosophy – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche – developments elsewhere in Europe have often seemed to pale into insignific...

In Bergson and Intensive Magnitude: Dismantling his Critique, Florian Vermeiren argues that Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will is inconsistent with his later philosophy, and even inconsistent with the role of a “difference in degrees of freedom” in Time and Free Will. I argue that it is rather Vermeiren’s analysis which mischaracterizes Bergson’s critique and therefore the interpretation of an inconsistency cannot stand. In the first two sections I reevaluate Bergson’s critique, showing what, according to Bergson, (...) are the good and bad senses of intensity, and how this critique allowed Bergson to institute a new conception of difference as expressed in concrete continuity. In the final section I examine the importance of infinitesimal thought in Bergson’s good sense of intensity. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of labour through a diremptive reading of Polish philosopher Stanisław Brzozowski’s essay “Prolegomena filozofii ‘pracy’” written in 1909. This essay appears as a chapter in his main work Idee: wstęp do filozofii dojrzałości dziejowej, first published in 1910. In “Prolegomena,” Brzozowski defines labour as an inner gesture that delineates the duration of life. In the interpretation of this definition the influence of Henri Bergson on Brzozowski’s thought is stressed. Inspired by Bergson, Brzozowski understands labour as (...) the only ground-creating—and therefore metaphysical—activity of humanity, when faced with the absence of transcendent grounds for existence in modernity. Emphasis is placed on Brzozowski’s insistence in “Prolegomena” that labour is irrational in its delineation of the absolutely new. He describes it as the α of the inner gesture of labour that cannot be known until it is performed. This unknown α is interpreted as his way of describing the groundlessness of the ground-creating activity of labour, and that this groundlessness means that labour eludes the control of the subject. (shrink)

As a philosophical paradigm, differential heterogenesis offers us a novel descriptive vantage with which to inscribe Deleuze’s virtuality within the terrain of “differential becoming,” conjugating “pure saliences” so as to parse economies, microhistories, insurgencies, and epistemological evolutionary processes that can be conceived of independently from their representational form. Unlike Gestalt theory’s oppositional constructions, the advantage of this aperture is that it posits a dynamic context to both media and its analysis, rendering them functionally tractable and set in relation to other (...) objects, rather than as sedentary identities. Surveying the genealogy of differential heterogenesis with particular interest in the legacy of Lautman’s dialectic, I make the case for a reading of the Deleuzean virtual that departs from an event-oriented approach, galvanizing Sarti and Citti’s dynamic a priori vis-à-vis Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. Specifically, I posit differential heterogenesis as frame with which to examine our contemporaneous epistemic shift as it relates to multi-scalar computational modeling while paying particular attention to neuro-inferential modes of inductive learning and homologous cognitive architecture. Carving a bricolage between Mark Wilson’s work on the “greediness of scales” and Deleuze’s “scales of reality”, this project threads between static ecologies and active externalism vis-à-vis endocentric frames of reference and syntactical scaffolding. (shrink)

The debate between Einstein and Bergson is a salient episode in the history of modern physics and a telling example of the interaction between science and philosophy. This paper initially discusses five reasons why Bergson criticised Einstein for giving up absolute time. The most important one was Bergson’s commitment to an intuitionist, anti-Kantian metaphysics informed by common sense. Apart from that, he knew that the theory of special relativity permits “duration” in the form of the passage of proper time, to (...) which Bergson referred as “real time”. Neither static eternalism nor dynamic eternalism are acceptable from Bergson’s philosophical perspective, which acknowledges the role of temporal experience and everyday thinking in addition to science and metaphysics. He understood temporal passage as creation of new existence, anticipating what later became known as the growing block theory of time. The pointy relativistic variant of this theory, which divides the universe into blocks of growing past light cones, does justice to large parts of his philosophy, including the distinction between the actual and the virtual. Supporters of Bergson’s account of duration should adopt this theory of time. (shrink)

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...) extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa. (shrink)

The foundation of irreversible, probabilistic time -- the classical time of conscious observation -- is the reversible and deterministic time of the quantum wave function. The tendency in physics is to regard time in the abstract, a mere parameter devoid of inherent direction, implying that a concept of real time begins with irreversibility. In reality time has no need for irreversibility, and every invocation of time implies becoming or flow. Neither symmetry under time reversal, of which Newton was well aware, (...) nor the absence of an absolute parameter, as in relativity, negates temporal passage. Far from encapsulating time, irreversibility is a secondary property dependent on the emergence of distinct moments from the ceaseless presence charted by the wave function. (shrink)

The concept of shame is important for Deleuze's ethics and politics. In this essay, shame is positioned within a nexus of concepts: the intolerable, seeing, resistance, powerlessness, and belief in this world. If one has fallen short, it is not because of who one is, how one is seen, or how one has been judged, but it is, in part, because of one's failure to see what is intolerable. In this respect, shame, in particular ‘the shame of the world’, has (...) the potential to be a proto-political and proto-ethical affect because it suspends and precludes the ready invocation of clichés and explanations that buttress us against reality. This disruption in turn opens a space for creativity and resistance. (shrink)

The central focus of this paper is the disjunction between the findings of climate science in revealing the threat of global warming and the failure to act appropriately to these warnings. The development of climate science can be illuminated through the perspective provided by Peircian semiotics, but efforts to account for its success as a science and its failure to convince people to act accordingly indicate the need to supplement Peirce’s ideas. The more significant gaps, it is argued, call for (...) the integration of major new ideas. It will be argued that Peirce should be viewed as a Schellingian philosopher, and it will then be shown how this facilitates integration into his philosophy of concepts developed by other philosophers and theorists within this tradition. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ will be integrated with Peirce’s semiotics and used to analyse the achievements and failures of climate science. It will be suggested that the resulting synthesis can augment Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and so provide a better basis for comprehending and responding to the situation within which we find ourselves. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of ‘skeuomorphic reassurance’ as a guiding principle for human interfaces in technological development and design, particularly for older people and people with dementia (PwD). Skeuomorphs exhibit decorative design elements reminiscent of ‘parent’ objects that incorporated such design elements because they were structurally integral. Human interfaces adopted by new technologies need to be carefully balanced between novelty and recognisability. -/- The philosophy of personhood is discussed in the context of dementia, concluding that the subjective character of (...) conscious mental processes is an irreducible feature of reality, and that the persistence of personhood in PwD constitutes a further argument in support of this assertion. -/- Assistive technologies that aid family and carers, as well as PwD, and their relationships, need to ensure that skeuomorphic reassurance is incorporated in their design, not least because older people and PwD need recognisable interfaces today, but, as this paper argues, because the problems today’s over-65s have with digital technologies may quite likely not go away, but re-present themselves generation after generation, unless skeuomorphic reassurance is built into their design. (shrink)

Background: The application of the philosophical mode of investigation called “phenomenology” in the context of sport. Objective: The goal is to show how and why the phenomenological method is very often misused in the sportrelated research. Methods: Interpretation of the key texts, explanation of their meaning. Results: The confrontation of concrete sport-related texts with the original meaning of the key phenomenological notions shows mainly three types of misuse – the confusion of phenomenology with immediacy, with an epistemologically subjectivist stance (phenomenalism), (...) and with empirical research oriented towards objects in the world. Conclusions: Many of the discussed authors try to take over the epistemological validity of phenomenology for their research, which itself is not phenomenological, and it seems that this is because they lack such a methodological foundation. The authors believe that an authentically phenomenological analysis of sport is possible, but it must respect the fundamental distinctions that differentiate phenomenology from other styles of thinking. (shrink)

According to the B-theory, the passage of time is an illusion. The B-theory therefore requires an explanation of this illusion before it can be regarded as fullysatisfactory; yet very few B-theorists have taken up the challenge of trying to provide one. In this paper I take some first steps toward such an explanation by first making a methodological proposal, then a hypothesis about a key element in the phenomenology of temporal passage. The methodological proposal focuses onthe representational content of the (...) element of experience by virtue of which time seems to pass. The hypothesis involves the claim that the experience of changeinvolves the representation of something enduring, rather than perduring, through any change. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain how the Heraclitean doctrine of universal flux must be rejected, while the notion of flux should and can be preserved. Against the reductionist account of subjectless change, a modern version of the Heraclitean doctrine advocated by revisionist metaphysics, I argue that (1) the idea of subjectless change is one that can and should be formulated in the established conceptual framework, and (2) subjectlessness is a feature that most aptly characterizes material changes. In (...) essence, I seek to provide a proper accommodation for the notion of flux in a conceptual framework that is traditionally understood (or rather misunderstood) as decidedly excluding it. (shrink)

A number of recent papers or monographs have examined Susan Stebbing’s criticisms of Arthur Eddington’s scientific-philosophical writing. These papers focus on Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s attempt to infer philosophical conclusions from developments in modern physics, his view that there is a discrepancy between the world of science and the world of common sense (best encapsulated by his famous ‘two tables’ metaphor), and his use of “inexact language” to try and convey modern scientific insights to his readers. On November 10th, 1938, (...) Eddington presented a paper at the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge entitled “Prof. Stebbing’s ‘Philosophy and the Physicists’.” Eddington did not go on to publish this paper and it is not discussed in relevant scholarship. However, the details of Eddington’s talk are outlined in the minutes of that meeting. I argue that these minutes provide new insights into both the Stebbing-Eddington debate and developments in Eddington's late philosophical views. A full transcription of the minutes are included as an Appendix to this paper. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that Bergson and James defend a form of panpsychism, and that on this point, Bergson probably had an influence on James. For Bergson, matter has psychic characters, in particular a memory of the immediate past and a motor memory. These characters are necessary to explain causation within the physical world, understood then as analogous to automatic activity in living beings. However, according to Bergson, there is a radical distinction between the inert and (...) the living: only the living is capable of creation. Probably inspired by Bergson, James develops a similar idea: causation in the physical world is understandable only by admitting that matter has psychic characters. Nevertheless, unlike Bergson, James does not make a radical distinction between the inert and the living. This leads him to make a link between matter and consciousness. (shrink)

The digital humanities have developed in concert with online systems that increase the accessibility and speed of learning. Whereas previously students were immersed in the fluidity of campus life, they have become suspended and drawn-into various streams and currents of digital pedagogy, which articulate new forms of epistemological movement, often operating at speeds outside the lived time and rhythm of human thought. When assessing learning technologies, we have to consider the degree to which they complement the rhythms immanent to human (...) thought, knowledge, investigation, and experimentation.In this paper, we examine learning from a humanities perspective, arguing that reading, writing, and thinking are ways of learning underscored by various genres of movement that segue with or diverge from the movements inherent to digital technologies, especially those deployed in learning systems. Using the work of thinkers such as John Dewey and Michel Serres, we examine the importance of movement in dialogue, where to truly learn involves embedding oneself in the flow of thought, accepting the flexibility of concepts, and aligning oneself with a community of thinkers. (shrink)

With its minimalist narrative and long durational recordings of a family living on the margins of modern society and drifting around deserted urban spaces in Taiwan, Stray Dogs ( Jiaoyou, Tsai Ming-liang, 2013) provides a productive reading of cinematic slowness and a critique of the globalising domination of capitalism and neoliberalism in a locally and culturally specific context. This article examines how the representation of cinematic slowness in Stray Dogs encompasses both a narrative that requires the audience’s sympathetic and intellectual (...) understanding and a durational perception of time that calls for empathy and intuition. Moreover, this article aims to reveal how the film’s temporal illegibility, resulting from its radical use of long takes and unresolved differentiation between the past and the present, transforms a prolonged hesitant moment into an act of resistance against the ongoing capitalist and neoliberal standardisation, rationalisation and homogenisation of time’s, or more specifically duration’s, heterogenous nature. By exploring the potential of ethical hesitation and political resistance, underscored by slow aesthetics such as the use of long takes, this article aims to make the case for a specific and unique understanding of slowness as a philosophical signifier of empathy. (shrink)

Can the brain become mind? If the question seems strange, aberrant even, it is perhaps due to the way the problem brain–mind is commonly presented, where what's repeatedly asked is whether the brain is or isn’t ‘mind’. Yet, if we take Deleuze and Guattari's provocation seriously, in the Conclusion of What is Philosophy?, the problem is radically recast: even if speculatively, that is, properly philosophically or conceptually, the brain, for them, involves its own becoming, both in terms of its ‘becoming-subject’ (...) and ‘becoming-mind’, as ‘Thought-brain’. I will explore references within Deleuze's philosophy in relation to the brain, namely in The Logic of Sense and his work on cinema, as I try to work out what this fantastic story (with necropolitical undertones) may in fact look like, the one where the brain not simply is but becomes, and in becoming, becomes mind…. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation for Sartre’s account of the unity of consciousness in The Transcendence of the Ego. I will argue that it is only once The Transcendence of the Ego is read alongside other texts written around the same time, such as The Imaginary, that we can understand how Sartre believes it is possible for consciousness to be unified without an I. I begin by setting out the Kantian context that Sartre develops for (...) his views, before looking at Sartre’s arguments themselves. I then turn to some of the difficulties other readers have encountered with making sense of the arguments of the Transcendence of the Ego. I argue that it is only in relation to Sartre’s account of what he calls the illusion of immanence in The Imaginary, that we can make sense of Sartre’s account of consciousness, before reconstructing what I take to be Sartre’s position drawing on Sartre’s references to Bergson and Spinoza. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the French philosopher Henri Bergson was a hidden interlocutor in Susan Stebbing’s critique of Arthur Eddington in her Philosophy and the Physicists. First, we outline Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s philosophical- physical writings with a particular emphasis on her case against Eddington’s account of the passage of time. Second, we provide evidence that Eddington’s philosophy is, at its core, Bergsonian and make the case that Eddington was directly influenced by Bergson’s philosophy of la durée. Third, (...) we lay out Stebbing’s critique of Bergsonism in her Pragmatism and French Voluntarism and identify important similarities with her critique of Eddington over twenty years later. In doing so, we show that it is Eddington’s Bergsonism that she is attacking. Finally, we situate Stebbing’s criticisms of both Eddington and Bergson within two wider conflicts that emerged in early twentieth century British philosophy: one between an objectively describable time of physics and subjective temporal experience, and the other between science and intuition. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Gaston Bachelard’s criticism of Henri Bergson’s employment of intuition as the specific method of philosophy, and as a reliable means of acquiring knowledge. I locate Bachelard’s criticism within the reception of Bergsonian intuition by rationalist philosophers who subscribed to the Third Republic’s ethos. I argue that the reasons of Bachelard’s rejection of Bergsonian intuition were not only epistemological, but also ethical and pedagogical. His view of knowledge as mediated, social, and historical, cannot be separated from (...) his conceptions of society, education, and the human being. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) philosophy of time on three early twentieth-century British philosophers: Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1889–1953), Hilda Oakeley (1867–1950), and May Sinclair (1863–1946). I demonstrate that three central claims of Bergson’s account of temporal experience (novelty, memory, and indivisibility) were creatively incorporated into their accounts of time. All these philosophers place time at the centre of their philosophical systems, so this study of their views on time and temporality can deepen our understanding of their systems (...) more broadly. Further, this study helps us appreciate the reception of Bergson’s thought in British philosophy after it was ferociously attacked by Bertrand Russell in 1912, and can provide more detailed contours on the joint fortunes of temporal experience and Bergson's thought in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. I conclude by emphasizing reasons why contemporary philosophers should pay particular attention to the three figures’ treatment of Bergson. (shrink)

Existential anxiety is an outstanding issue both in psychology and philosophy. It implies the mental rummage following the notion of existence, inexistence and related concepts. Martin Heidegger is a philosopher incorporating the meaning of existential anxiety and time perception in a unique comprehensive view, suggesting that there is a relation between being, time and anxiety. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical study has assessed any association between time perception and existential anxiety. The current study aims at investigating the (...) mentioned association. Eighty four students in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences voluntarily participated in this study and gave their written informed consent. Time perception was assessed by verbal and production tests. The score of existential anxiety was obtained by the Good & Good Existential Anxiety Questionnaire. Association of time perception and existential anxiety was analyzed statistically. Mean score of existential anxiety of subjects was 7.57±4.75 out of 32. Accuracy of time perception was significantly related to existential anxiety score (_P_ = 0.034); in the manner that inaccurate time perceivers had higher existential anxiety scores. The results of this study are preliminary in line with the existential concepts presented by Heidegger; indicating that existential anxiety and time perception may have common roots. This understanding about existential anxiety suggests further explorations and deeper existential reasonings, as well as more efficient psychological and psychiatric clinical practice. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859–1940), the most prominent member of nineteenth-century French spiritualism, is the first philosopher who explicitly defined philosophy as a practice which consists in posing problems anew and in creating concepts. In this article, I will try to reconstruct the progressive importance acquired by the terms ‘problem’ and ‘concept’ in nineteenth-century French philosophy and how they combined in Bergson’s theories about creativity, invention and novelty. I will argue that Bergson’s conception of philosophy as a creative intellectual practice was the (...) result of a negotiation, inside a pre-existent spiritualist framework, between, on the one hand, neo-Kantianism and, on the other hand, evolutionism which strongly influenced empirical psychology and the emerging social sciences. Bergson’s solution, influenced by the evolution of mathematics and literary theory, was just one of the possible options, and the main alternative to a new form of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Prerequisite to memory is a past distinct from present. Because wave evolution is both continuous and time-reversible, the undisturbed quantum system lacks a distinct past and therefore the possibility of memory. With the quantum transition, a reversibly evolving superposition of values yields to an irreversible emergence of definite values in a distinct and transient moment of time. The succession of such moments generates an irretrievable past and thus the possibility of memory. Bohm’s notion of implicate and explicate order provides a (...) conceptual basis for memory as a general feature of nature akin to gravity and electromagnetism. I propose that natural memory is an outcome of the continuity of implicate time in the context of discontinuous explicate time. Among the ramifications of natural memory are that laws of nature can propagate through time much like habits and that personal memory does not require neural information storage. (shrink)

This thesis seeks to understand the nature of and relation between science and philosophy articulated in the early work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. It seeks to challenge the view that Deleuze’s metaphysical and metaphilosophical position is in important part an attempt to respond to twentieth century developments in the natural sciences, claiming that this is not a plausible interpretation of Deleuze’s early thought. The central problem identified with such readings is that they provide an insufficient explanation of the (...) nature of philosophy’s contribution to the encounter between philosophy and science that they discern in Deleuze’s work. The philosophical, as opposed to scientific, dimension of the position attributed to Deleuze remains obscure. In chapter 1, it is demonstrated that this question of philosophy’s contribution to intellectual life and of how to differentiate philosophy from the sciences is a live one in Deleuze’s early thought. An alternative, less anachronistic interpretation of the parameters of Deleuze’s early project is offered. The remaining chapters of the thesis examine the early Deleuze’s understanding of the divergence between philosophy and science. Chapter 2 gives an account of Deleuze’s metaphilosophy, alongside a reconstruction of his largely implicit early understanding of science. The divergent intellectual processes and motivating concerns that account for Deleuze’s understanding of the differentiation of science and philosophy are thus clarified. In chapter 3, Deleuze’s use of mathematical and physical concepts is examined. It is argued that these concepts are used metaphorically. In chapter 4, the association between modern science and the Deleuzian concept of immanence that has been proposed by some Deleuze scholars is examined and ultimately challenged. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the significance of Deleuze’s early work for contemporary debates concerning the future of continental philosophy and the nature of philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Principles of design composition are commonly understood to pertain to geometrical systems for arranging parts in assembling a formal whole. Connection to socio-cultural 'meaning' and relevance arguably occurs primarily via the assumed divinity or universality of these systems. In the contemporary architectural world, where explicitly held beliefs in fundamental, geometrically defined principles or values have dissipated, guiding principles of composition appear to be obsolete. This seems particularly true in relation to work that highlights process - or change, responsiveness, interactivity and (...) adaptability - since this implies that the composition remains in flux and unable to be grounded in the composition of form. While processually inflected architecture (referred to here as 'processual architecture'), has been an active field since at least the 1960s, it has been significa ntly developed since design experiments involving digital computation intensified in the 1990s. For this field of work, both highly celebrated and criticised as superficial or unethical, any connection to 'meaning' or value that might be offered by principles of composition would appear especially lost. This thesis reviews, counterpoises and reorients these assumptions, arguing a case for the value of processual architectural that has not been previously articulated. After the last 10 to 15 years of digital experimentation, it is clear that digital technology in itself is not the primary issue, but simply part of a complex equation. The thesis articulates this 'equation' through the model of emergence, which has been used in the field with increasing prominence in recent years. Through both practice-based research and theoretical development, a processually inflected theory of composition is proposed. This offers pathways through which the potential of processual architecture might be productively developed, aiming to open this field of work into a deeper engagement with pressing contemporary socio-political issues. The thesis demonstrates how the cultivation of particular modes of attention and engagement, found to hold an implicit but nevertheless amplified significance within processual architecture, make it possible to develop an embodied awareness pertaining to an 'ethico-aesthetic know-how'. This know-how is acquired and matured through attention to the affective dimensions that arise through design activity. The thesis highlight aspects of design process and products that are routinely suppressed in architectural discourse, generating new insights into the importance of affect for design process, design products and the relations between them. The ethical dimensions of such an approach become especially poignant through the explicit connection made between design activity and the practices of everyday life. Relationships between architecture and the social become re-energised, in a radically alternative manner to the social agendas of modernism or the more literary critiques of post-modernism. Through detailed discussions of the specific, local conditions with a series of design projects I have undertaken, I argue how and why close attention to the affective dimensions of design process offers new and productive ways to approach research through design practice. This offers a response to the calls for new 'post-critical' forms of research through empowering both sides of a previously held divide: theory and practice. (shrink)

Using a process-oriented understanding of the relation between actions and agents, the author argues that an ontological agent is the ongoing effect or by-product rather than the antecedent cause of actions. Applied to the relation between natural and supernatural in philosophical cosmology, this allows one to claim, first, that agents (whether natural or supernatural) are not sensibly perceived, but only inferred from the ongoing observation of empirical actions; second, that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is then conceivably (...) a distinction between interrelated processes rather than between independently existing agents; and third, that a higher order process of supernatural origin could be operative in a lower order empirical process without interference even though its existence and activity could only be established on the basis of a faith commitment, not empirical evidence. What Paul Ricoeur referred to as a “surplus of meaning” over and above the scientific explanation of an event would be in play with the claim of divine guidance for the cosmic process. (shrink)

The problem of biological memory led Russell to propose the existence of mnemic causation, a mechanism by which past experience influences current thought directly, that is, without the need for a material intermediary in the form of a neural "memory trace." Russell appears to have been inspired by German biologist Richard Semon's concept of mnemic homophony, which conveys memory to consciousness on the basis of similarity between current and past circumstances. Semon, however, in no way denied a role for stable (...) neural structures or "engrams" in the memory process. In contrast to Russell, contemporary biologist Rupert Sheldrake provides a viable theory of memory by remaining true to Semon's original idea and expanding it beyond personal memory to the collective memory of species, encompassing not only mental but developmental memory. (shrink)

Deleuze’s philosophy is permeated with the problem of the continuum. The idea that the coexistence of durations is implied in the concept of duration itself allows Deleuze to offer a fresh perspective on multiplicity, which is distinct from Bergson’s approach, and which proposes new perspectives on the continuum. While Deleuze critiques Leibniz’s view on this concept by highlighting the non-uniform nature of the continuum, the infinitesimal still plays a significant role in his analysis. However, in his late reading of Leibniz, (...) Deleuze emphasises that folds, rather than infinitesimals, should be considered as the smallest components of the continuum’s labyrinth. This implies that there is a union of indiscernible cuts in the continuity, cuts that do not create gaps or breaks in the overall coherence, but rather a labyrinth. I will show how, in exploring this problem, Deleuze and Guattari draw inspiration from Kafka, in order to relate continuity to contiguity. This relation reveals an internal difference that defines the distinction between what is continuous and what is contiguous. This, in our view, marks a considerable shift between Deleuze’s early reading of Bergson and his late reading of Leibniz, and it allows Deleuze to further develop his idea of the continuum. (shrink)

Jean Nicod (1893–1924) is a French philosopher and logician who worked with Russell during the First World War. His PhD, with a preface from Russell, was published under the title La géométrie dans le monde sensible in 1924, the year of his untimely death. The book did not have the impact he deserved. In this paper, I discuss the methodological aspect of Nicod’s approach. My aim is twofold. I would first like to show that Nicod’s definition of various notions of (...) equivalence between theories anticipates, in many respects, the (syntactic and semantic) model-theoretic notion of interpretation of a theory into another. I would secondly like to present the philosophical agenda that led Nicod to elaborate his logical framework: the defense of rationalism against Bergson’s attacks. (shrink)

In cinematic experience, a view from nowhere appears in an instituting moment – neither in time nor out of time, but part of time itself – when a camera reflex lifts the viewer’s perception out of somewhere and into the infinite time of the film. We argue that the view from nowhere found in Birt Acres’s film Rough Sea at Dover – a fifteen-second shot of waves breaking against a sea wall in Dover, England in 1895 – transcends all attempts (...) to turn it into a view from somewhere, as an empty space that carries the auratic trace of the past into the present through phase shifts of technical mediation. In Simondon’s terms, the view from nowhere opens up possibilities of becoming all ways at once in the reflexive capacity of the human organon. Following Stiegler’s organological technics, we identify the capture of perception by the apparatus of recording and playback in the digitally automated algorithm as a threat to the reflexive capability of the organon to see otherwise in the creative individuation opened up in the phase-shifting process. Our analysis triggers a switch from an anthropocentric to a neganthropic-ecological mode of seeing in which the auratic trace of the event of waves crashing against the pier is seen in an inhuman view from nowhere that carries the threat of automatized systems in which human noesis – self-reflexive capacity – is eclipsed by machines. By seeing otherwise, the eclipse by machines is reversed to reveal the complex becoming of the film in its materiality as a work of creative individuation. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical reflection on how the development of science and technology can be studied better through the tradition of Islamic philosophy. This is attempted because the approach that has been used to study science and technology in the Islamic world is still centered on the process of assimilation or Islamization of Knowledge. In a critical reading of the two approaches, the problems that arise from the study of contemporary science and technology become something that is difficult to (...) anticipate. In fact, the development of science and technology is also moving very fast. This raises the question of the need for alternative approaches in the study of contemporary science and technology in the arena of Islamic Philosophy. To solve this problem, the author conducted an initial experiment that could elaborate Irfani's approach on the one hand with studies of contemporary science and technology on the other. This becomes possible with the reinterpretation of the concept of emanation that exists in the discourse of Yazdiyah's Hudhuri Science. Based on this interpretation as well as the perspective that Mishbah Yazdi has made about the help of Irfan in philosophy, the application of the Irfani approach in the study of science and technology becomes possible as part of the practice of Hudhuri Science. On a more practical level, the author also uses this Irfani approach in a scenario format to read the vision of contemporary science and technology in the NBIC discourse. (shrink)

Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will mainly targets Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception”, in which the Kantian distinction between matter and form is lowered. Bergson pra...

This article investigates the place that habit occupies in different ‘architectures of the person’, focusing particularly on constructions of the relations between habit and other components of personhood that are marked by time. Three such positions are examined: first, the relations between thought, will, memory, habit and instinct proposed by post-Darwinian accounts of ‘organic memory’; second, Henri Bergson’s account of the relations between habit, memory and becoming; and, third, the temporal aspects of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus understood as a (...) set of hereditable dispositions. These different ‘architectures of the person’ are considered with regard to the role they accord habit in trans-generational mechanisms of inheritance; the historicised forms of embodied personhood that they propose; and the manner in which they account for the emergence of a capacity for freedom that can (partially) offset the weight of the inherited past. It is argued that the imputation of such a capacity to some forms of personhood, but not others, is both shaped by and provides the conditions for the operation of liberal forms of government. The manner in which the conduct of those who exhibit such a capacity for freedom is brought under the direction of varied ‘authorities of freedom’ is given particular consideration. (shrink)