MachineMachine /stream - tagged with philosophy

What Immanuel Kant got right about digital piracy

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:28:23 -0700

It turns out that Kant didn't think that an author could mount a strong legal case against piracy based on property rights in words. After all, even after pirates copied an author's words, the author himself still had them. It was better for an author to argue that his book was not an object but an exercise of his powers, which "he can concede, it is true, to others, but never alienate". In other words, ... a pirated book was not to be understood as property that had been stolen; it was rather a speech act that had been compromised.…

Freud: The last great Enlightenment thinker

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:07:00 -0700

John Gray on Freud (the last great Enlightenment thinker?) http://t.co/cKMdkDWl

Speculative Realism Pathfinder

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:50:24 -0700

Speculative Realism reading list http://t.co/Fkm6YZqN rt @t3dy

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:20:23 -0700

RT @nytimes: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick — Edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem and Erik Davis — Book Review http://t.co/yrrheIoS

Wittgenstein Revisited

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:07:38 -0700

Wittgenstein Revisited

Does Pinker’s “Better Angels” Undermine Religious Morality?

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:58:44 -0700

It is often argued that religion makes individuals and the world more just and moral, that it builds character and provides a foundation from which we understand right from wrong, good from evil; if it wasn’t for religion, apologists say, then the world would fall into a Hobbesian state of nature where violence prevails and moral codes fail. To reinforce this contention, they point out that Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists to force an illogical causal connection between what they did and what they believed. One way to answer the question of if religion makes people and the world…

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (by Alan Turing)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:53:59 -0700

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But…

Is mental time travel what makes us human?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:32:53 -0700

A stonishing animals show up everywhere these days. Cooperative apes, grief-stricken elephants, empathetic cats and dogs crowd our bookshop shelves. It’s all the rage to plumb the cognitive and emotional depths of the animal world, rejecting sceptics’ sneers of “anthropomorphism” to insist that we’re finally coming to see animals for who they really are: not so different from us. Pushing against this tide of animal awe is a competing cultural trope, the relentless seeking of human superiority. It’s from this second camp that Michael C. Corballis, a professor emeritus of psychology from New Zealand, has written The Recursive Mind: The…

The case for reconciling the scientific with the divine -- and against the anti-religion of Richard Dawkins

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:01:04 -0700

As a both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science. The first step in this journey is to state what I will call the Central Doctrine of science: All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe. Although scientists do not talk explicitly about this doctrine, and my doctoral thesis advisor never mentioned…

Delusions of Peace

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:37:06 -0700

John Gray vs Steven Pinker : Evolutionary psychology is mere speculation http://t.co/tfJcvHD5 #fb

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate [excerpt, part 1/2]

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:40:12 -0700

How Can We Understand Code as a "Critical Artifact"?

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:23:48 -0700

The working definition for Critical Code Studies (CCS) is "the application of humanities style hermeneutics to the interpretation of computer source code." However, lately, I have found it more useful to explain the field to people as the analysis of technoculture (culture as imbricated with technology) through the entry point of the source code of a particular digital object. The code is not the ends of the analyses, but the beginning. Critical Code Studies finds code meaningful not as text but "as a text," an artifact of a digital moment, full of hooks for discussing digital culture and programming communities.…

Can religion tell us more than science?

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 03:52:49 -0700

In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion. This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study of the myths…

How Can We Understand Code as a "Critical Artifact"?

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:26:12 -0700

Can religion tell us more than science?

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:12:00 -0700

In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion.

This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study…

The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:15:28 -0700

Berry’s book is less one specific philosophical argument of what software is and what code does, but consists of chapters that illuminate different ways one can approach software and software culture philosophically. It gives a broad way of looking at the way in which code mediates and media is nowadays coded. As such, it indeed is good in tapping into various fields of philosophy: ontology (what is code as mode of abstraction from voltage differences to assembly languages), aesthetics and phenomenology (algorithmic art and how do we experience code), epistemology (how do we understand, make sense of code and how…

Death Is Not the End (Long Live theory!)

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:08:16 -0700

Was theory a gigantic hoax? On the contrary. It was the only salvation, for a twenty year period, from two colossal abdications by American thinkers and writers. From about 1975 to 1995, through a historical accident, a lot of American thinking and mental living got done by people who were French, and by young Americans who followed the French. The two grand abdications: one occurred in academic philosophy departments, the other in American fiction. In philosophy, from the 1930s on, a revolutionary group had been fighting inside universities to overcome the “tradition.” This insurgency, at first called “logical positivism” or…

The New Atheism

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:21:05 -0700

Trapped in the childhood literalism of my background, I had not entertained the possibility of Christian belief separated from the great lure and threat of heaven and hell.

The New Atheism is locked into a similar kind of literalism. It parasitically lives off its enemy. Just as evangelical Christianity is characterised by scriptural literalism and an uncomplicated belief in a "personal God", so the New Atheism often seems engaged only in doing battle with scriptural literalism; but the only way to combat such literalism is with rival literalism. The God of the New Atheism and the God…

Death Is Not the End (Long Live theory!)

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:48:43 -0700

Was theory a gigantic hoax? On the contrary. It was the only salvation, for a twenty year period, from two colossal abdications by American thinkers and writers. From about 1975 to 1995, through a historical accident, a lot of American thinking and mental living got done by people who were French, and by young Americans who followed the French.

The two grand abdications: one occurred in academic philosophy departments, the other in American fiction. In philosophy, from the 1930s on, a revolutionary group had been fighting inside universities to overcome the “tradition.” This insurgency, at first called…

Giorgio Agamben. What is a Paradigm. 2002 1/10

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:50:19 -0700