Comments for AGENT SWARM

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by dmfant

dmfant — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:40:48 +0000

TB,sure we all have our own tastes/interests.
JH, roughly following Pickering’s work (TB has a lot about it around here if yer not familiar) on the mangle of practices not sure how (or why really) we would cleanly separate the material from the discursive, or the personal from the environmental. As for why try something new I guess if one is satisfied with the current trends than one could carry on as usual, to each their own as I say above, 1,000 flowers bloom and all…

Comment on DARK SUBJECTIVITY AND AN APODICTIC HERMENEUTICS OF SCIENCE: On Naturalism as Nostalgic Pathos by terenceblake

terenceblake — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:15:37 +0000

Who is “one”? I don’t know him. My overall “criterion” is individuation, so you can see from the name that it has no universalising pretention. Indeed it is deliberately vague and ambiguous. How do I differentiate and determine which is best? The only way I know is by immersion and hard thinking. Very often in my case that involves following the best arguments. But one has to be able to see the arguments. Feyerabend’s AGAINST METHOD for example is one of the most well-argued texts in epistemology, but he had the unpleasant surprise, as I did, of seeing that very many could not identify and engage with the arguments, and just stuck to deformed and simplistic stereotypes. The same is true of Deleuze for example. To my shame I read Jung but was not enthused, and I needed to read Hillman as a way into seeing the arguments in a deeper light. Creation of concepts is another criterion, and Feyerabend despite claiming that none of the ideas he expresses are his own is rich in invention of concepts. Having immersed myself in such intercessors I can see that Bryant for example is not only ignorant (we can’t be familiar with everything) but also blind. Bernard Stiegler is a thousand times richer, has better arguments and more useful concepts. What more do you want? Have you found it yet?

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by terenceblake

terenceblake — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:56:47 +0000

Convergence, consensus, or even dialogue are required by no law or rule, and may not always be possible or even desirable. An open exchange includes many intensities, including the polemical. Creating and trying out new types involves some sort of exchange with “intercessors” that are not so much dialogical partners as stimulants to research and to experiments in living. So not being right, nor even making things right, but making things richer, more differentiated, more fluid, more mobile, more satisfying etc. An intercessor in this sense can be just as often adversarial as collaborative, as long as he or she does not lead us into sterile repetition. Improving my enmity by deepening, extending and intensifying it can be just as positive and enriching as flourishing into friendship.

Comment on DARK SUBJECTIVITY AND AN APODICTIC HERMENEUTICS OF SCIENCE: On Naturalism as Nostalgic Pathos by stellarcartographies

stellarcartographies — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:55:07 +0000

What is the process through which one is able to differentiate between different epistemological, ontological and psychological “systems”? How does one determine whether one system is better than another? What allows one to say that something is rational or that something is irrational?

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by Jason Hills

Jason Hills — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:23:18 +0000

I was noting the material organization as you, DMF, note more the discursive. I gave a concrete example to illustrate the reality of the issue, but I did not mean to imply that the issue is merely personal. So how can what appears to me a discursive approach address so many problems?

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by dmfant

dmfant — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:01:46 +0000

hey TB, yes as Wittgenstein/Deleuze have shown us there are limits to conversation/debate/negations especially when it comes to differences in the faith(religious or otherwise) convictions/orientations that can separate people/world-views. So knowing this seems to call out for some different approaches to the traditional academic style to and fro but I’m not sure that we have made much progress on what comes next, looking forward to seeing what experiments we might come up with if we can ease our way out of our habituated socializations a bit and test some new prototypes/forms.

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by dmfant

dmfant — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:49:26 +0000

I understand that there are lots of intense pressures on/in folks but the gossip world is by and large the folk human world and it takes intentional efforts to try and sublimate some of our drives/interests to do otherwise. I just hope that in these small reserves on the intertubes we might be able to ease up a bit on trying make our mark, earn our place in the primate troop, and especially our need to already be right and focus more on trying to make things right, but than I’m a pragmatist by nature.

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by terenceblake

terenceblake — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:35:23 +0000

Getting clearer is one of my goals, as is opening up a wider and more plural dialogue. Disarming conflicts (personal and otherwise) in favour of free exchange is not impossible. Sometimes I have felt that it was on the verge of happening, but that something intervened to thwart it. So let’s keep pushing in that direction.

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by Jason Hills

Jason Hills — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:21:21 +0000

Thanks, DMF.

I apologize for occassionally being a bit snippy. I would say that much of the problem has less to do with cliques and feedback loops, as those are symptoms of something much larger. At least around “here,” you’re spending a lot of time with the traditions of philosophy that have been exiled from the institutional protection of mainstream philosophy, and thus there are many material conditions pushing people’s buttons.

Over at the SAAP FB page we just had a long chat about this, while noting that the downturn actually made things worse. Oh, “we” would include dozens of scholars from the most junior to senior. One of the problems we have is how to survive as Americanists within the institutional dominance of analytic philosophy, which is a notable problem because so very few in fact survive and end up exiting the academy. Hence, appeals to pluralism from analytics often fall on deaf ears (I’m not saying this is happening right here), because the Americanists are more worried about economic and institutional practices than who has the theory right. And I think that there, like the local blogosphere, is a driving factor in the “cliques” and such.

Comment on LARUELLE: CORRELATION vs PRIMACY by dmfant

dmfant — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:09:35 +0000

if I do add things that might help us to get clearer about which way to go next than that will be to the good, I hope over time that the personality conflicts will ease up but I fear that there may not be enough space/breathing-room for folks between what they are putting out there in terms of ideas/possibilities and how the think/feel about themselves, maybe there is something to the more therapeutic aspects of the kinds of modes of individuation that Terence is working out here that could help us get out of the gossipy cliques/feedback loops that so enchain the academy…