While I try to shrug off all this Neo-liberalism this, and Neo-liberalism that, as other blogsters are using fancy acronyms for Neo-liberalism as if they are busy making entries in the Merck manual, this one passage of qualifications and analogies from the Neo-liberal hating Levi Bryant I find interesting (yes, he has equated Neo-liberalism with Nazism recently):

While I do not disagree with Rowan William’s thesis that the picture of the human as an intrinsically self-seeking creature constitutes a false anthropology, I have noticed that there is a tendency to treat the core of neo-liberal capitalist ideology as consisting almost entirely of this false anthropology. What is missing in this conception of neo-liberal ideology is the legal and normative framework that underlies this way of relating to the world and others. On the one hand, in order for neo-liberal capitalist ideology to get off the ground it requires what what might be called a “pure subject” or a “subject-without-qualities”, not unlike Descartes’ cogito or Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. At the heart of neo-liberal capitalist ideology (NLCI) is not so much a subject pursuing self-interest, as a legal subject functioning as the substrate of property, commercial obligations and debts, and divorced from social context and conditions of production.

One can see right away from the bolded material that analogies abound. Levi objects to an anthropological view being read as the core of Neo-liberalism, because there is a framework (legal normative) in which (?) a substrate operates (legal subject) onto which various formal economic relations adhere.  What Levi denies, in something beyond a point of emphasis, is that the “heart” or the “core” of Neo-liberalism is the self-interested subject. Instead it is a mere formalism of “subject” and its laws. To put it briefly, it’s not the self-seeking, self-interested desiring-subject, it’s the structured-subject (legally and philosophically) that is the troublesome kernel of Neo-liberalism. Let’s leave aside the kind of rhetorical slippage between philosophical “subject” and legal “subject” here, is it really correct to say that THIS is the core/heart of Neoliberalism (whatever that is)?

From my perspective the attempt to minimize the anthropological myth, the idea that human beings are essentially and naturally selfish beings, and instead draw a different heart/core made of some kind of structuralization, misses something. The entire legal and normative framework, we would say, came into existence and into justification in the very strong context of the belief that human beings are self-interested beings, essentially. The entire formalized drive towards privatization is made in response to this picture of humanity, it is naturalized within it. While I’m not sure who is saying that Neo-liberalism is nothing but this myth – David Graeber does make a vivid anthropological argument that “even” exchange is something that is done between enemies, suggesting that economic models of abstract equivalencies are necessarily mythologically self-interested ones - I am also unsure how much of the “framework” and its formalized subject could operate without it. In fact, as Spinoza knew just at the cusp of the Cartesian subject, one cannot cut off the conception of the cogito from the idea of its separate faculties of Willing and Judgment. In order undo the abstract subject, willing and freedom have to be radicalized. The desiring subject, how it desires, and what it desires for is integral to the very isolation of the said “substrate” of the subject in the first place. In fact, all of this stems to a great degree from Representational conceptions of knowledge and related questions of autonomy, freedom and desire.

I don’t really know what good finding the heart or the core of Neoliberalism does, other than create a kind of rhetorical force to steady the aim of our critique. But I do doubt that our narratives about how humans naturally (or if one is in Lacanian moods, structurally) desire are not every bit as important as the laws and norms that are created to regulate and shape those desires. I personally find the Neo-liberalism stigma mark to be something of a canard, designed by those that think “radical break”, getting “outside”, is the only way towards justice, but in any case, philosophies of “lack” (including much of what flows from Hegel, and those that hunger after essentialized “nothingness” or “absence” or “object”) have a great deal to do with foreclosing the possibilities of thinking about the “subject”, or better, the self beyond its normative product-buying, object-chasing behavior. One  also has to ask, as we pre-occupy ourselves with “objects” as essential and constitutive relations, are we not already caught up in economies (of desire, of real capital) which presuppose the “lack” which drives them, sinking deeper into our mental concrete the assumptions which secure the relations we would wish to change or improve upon.

A lot of people are going to get cameras this holiday season, or have them from the last few seasons.  They have a basic SLR and the kit lens.  There’s a lot you can do with these simple combinations, but they’re limiting as well.  I’ve been involved in a few discussion forums for these mid-level beginners and wanted to echo a post here about an individual who was looking to upgrade, primarily interested in wedding photography, but wanted advice on path forward.

“Agree with others, 18-55 kit *can* take a sharp photo, but it’ll be a challenge if you’re handheld, in low light, and don’t have a high-contrast subject that’s moving. The variable aperture also makes using Manual difficult, try Shutter Priority (Tv) or Aperture Priority (Av) first to get comfortable with working your exposure. If using a flash head, try fooling with bounce flash and Program mode (P). If you have an older Rebel without a thumb wheel, then you won’t really be able to use Manual for anything beyond posed shots, because you’ll only have one of three exposure parameters (shutter, aperture, sensitivity) assigned to the index wheel. Oh, thoroughly read the manual for your camera as you explore each setup. Some people are able to know just the basics and get great stuff, some people need to really dig and understand the nuance. Find out which you are and how much effort you’re willing to put into your craft before laying out cash. Regarding upgrades, I’d stick with the Rebel and first invest in glass. That 50 1.8 is a good choice, you can even get them used for $75 or lower, although they are a bit long on a 1.6x Rebel, almost 85mm. It’ll take some getting used to, which isn’t a bad thing. The 50 1.4 is an even better choice if you can drop a few hundred. Zooms, I’d say go for the 17-55 2.8 IS.. it doesn’t say L (no weather sealing, etc) but it’s L-quality glass. Every bit as good as the 16-35, 24-70 or 24-105 for under $1000. And if you don’t have one, get yourself a 580ex or 580exII flash head and rechargeable batteries (I like Ansmann 2700mAh AAs, they’re a bit pricey but pay for themselves over time) or an external battery pack. Learn to use bounce and fill-in flash and your photos will improve dramatically. More light means smaller aperture and faster shutter, which means more sharpness. More light also means greater saturation. I’m of the philosophy that photography isn’t cheap. Yes you can get by, and yes in the end, it’s the photographer not the camera. You can get some amazing photos with a $250 point-n-shoot, I know… but the proper kit makes it possible to get 500 amazing photos in a night as opposed to just 10 or 20. That’s once you’re ready to “go live,” you can learn everything you need to learn on the Rebel with one decent (fixed aperture) zoom, a prime or two, and a flash head. Best of luck and let’s see some of your photos as you progress!”

Click the photo to see Bryan Carnathan’s excellent review of the latest Rebel offering from Canon, the T1i, an incredible bang-for-buck DSLR package.

What are Subjects, Objects, and Possessive?

Example: The ball hit the neighbor’s glass.

The owner of the glass is “the neighbor.”

Before we discuss about when to use who, whom and whose we have to study first about subjects, objects and possessive.

These portraits illustrate why

I normally like photographing

landscapes. No two-way 

conversation is necessary.

Once I see what I like the most

about their personality, I point

and shoot. For most portraits,

it is  necessary to talk to

the subject to develop the most 

cursory of relationships prior

to pushing the button to expose

the subject’s personality.

Stephen K. Malshuk

American Photographer

i wrote this when im still a senior..highschool days..^_^

…………………………………………………………………………..

bago ang lahat..hayaan mo muna akong ipabasa sa iyo ang isang kahit hindi naman masyadong mahalaga ay makatutulong naman sa iyo kahit papaano..

read on..

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TEN TOP SIGNS YOUR A:

PERFECTIONIST

it isn’t easy being a perfectionist. you have to be persistent, detailed, and an organized high achiever. you must have exceedingly high standards not only for yourself, but also for those around you. you have to conceal your imperfections from others in an attempt to always project an image of perfection.

Here, 10 signs that you’re in “grave danger” of being one:

1. you can’t stop thinking about a mistake you made.

2. you are intensely competitive and can’t stand doing worse than others/

3. you either want to do something “just right” or not at all.

4. you demand perfection from other people.

5. you won’t ask for help if asking can be perceived as a flaw or weakness.

6. you will persist at a task long after peoplehave quit.

7. you are a faultfinder who must correct other people when they are wrong.

8. you are highly aware of other people’s demands and expectations.

9. you are very self-conscious about making mistakes in front of other people.

10. YOU NOTICED THE ERROR IN THE TITLE OF THIS LIST.

-Source: The BBC News Online

of course, no one can be perfect. so their quest for perfection, perfectionists place their health in peril through stress and anxiety-and they can make other people’s lives miserable. working for a perfectionist boss is really tough since he or she will have unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of employees.

the BBC News Online notes that some physicians think perfectionism is a medical condition that should be categorized as a behavioral problem or a psychiatric disorder.

“extreme forms of perfectionism should be considered an illness similar to narcissism, obsessive compulsiveness, dependent-personality disorder, and other personality disorders because of its links to distress and dysfunction,” Canadian professor Gordon Flett said.

Three Types of Perfectionists

• self-oriented perfectionists, who expect perfection of themselves.
• other-oriented perfectionsits, who demand from other people.
• socially prescribed perfectionists, who think others expect perfection from them.

How Can You Spot a Perfectionist? Look for People Who…

…have a “self-promotin” style and try to impress others by bragging or displaying their perfection.

…shun situations in which they might display imperfection.

…have a tendency to keep problems to themselves, including an inability to admit failure to others.

A Scary Warning for Perfectionists……………..

the impossible quest for perfection has been linked to a host of emotional, physical, and relationship problems-including depression, eating disorders, marital discord and even

suicide.

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bakit ko ba sa inyo pinabasa ang bagay na ito?

ito ang palagi kong binabasa sa tuwing masisita ako ng guro ko sa english..minsan, dahil sa isang pagkakamali..pero minsan, parang nararamdaman ko na na sobra na ang pagiging mapuna niya sa akin..oo, magaling siya magturo, isa nga siya sa big three ng eskwelahan eh..pero, baqkit ba siya ganoon? minsan nasasabi kong,

“kahit marami siyang positibong bagay sa pagkatao niya, parang hinihikayat na ako ng sarili ko na puro negatibo na lamang ang isipin ko sa kanya..”

00. ganon ako kasama.. pero ang point ko ay sa kanya lang ako masama..palagi akonmg nadadali dahil sa kanya eh.. sa mga requirements gaya ng notebooks, projects, recitations, tests at kung anu-ano pang school work, maayos at above average naman ang nagagawa ko pero pag dating sa kanya, palagi na lamang may mali..

ano ba ang problema sa akin?

dala lang ba iyon ng takot ko sa kanya dahil mahina ako sa itinuturo niya?

dala lang ba iyon ng pagka-ayaw ko na maging guro siya?
o dala ba lang iyon ng mga pagkakamaling nagawa ko na ayaw ko ng magawa pa dahil mapupuna na naman niya iyon?

“gusto ko siyang panggigilian, suntukin, sabunutan, saksakin, bugbogin, sipain, sampalin, sapakin, daganan, batuhin, sibatin, hambalusin, sagasaan, tusukin, plantsahin, batukan, tanggalin ang mga eyeballs, bunutin ang lahat ng buhok niya, buhusan ng kumukulong tubig, hagisan ng paputok o mas maganda bomba na lang, talupan ang katawan niya, ingudnguod sa putikan, kanyunin, pakainin ng pako, goma gagamba at mga insekto at painumin ng lason, tapyasin ang mukha at tengaat lahat ng pwedeng gawin sa kanya..(madadagdagan pa ito..)”

noong una, talagang wala akong makitang maganda sa gurong ito..wala talaga..habang tumatagal, masa naiintindihan ko na siya at ntatanggap ko na ang kanyang pagka-perfectionist ngunit ngayon, sa pagkakataong ito, sa oras na ito, galit na galit ako sa kanya..

bakit?

una, nasita na naman ako sa pagkakamali ko..sa tono ng boses niya kanina, para bang ayaw ko daw magbago..sus, oo, paulit-ulit ang pagkakamaling iyon pero, hindi ba niya ako maintindihan na tao din akong maituturing?

pangalawa, naiwan ko ang isang sulat na naglalaman na pumasa ako sa UST na nailagay ko sa envelope ng mga projects na pinasa ko sa kanya..ayun, nasama..nang tinanong ko na sa kanya, sabi niya,” nakuha ko na..kung saan mo kasi inilalagay eh..nakuha ko na..” kinuwento ko sa aking mga kaibigan pero walang makaintindi..siguro, hindi nila maintindihan ang naramdaman ko noon..pagkabadtripm, pagkainis, sa kanya..

ano ba ang dapat kong gawin? sobrang pangit na ng record ko sa kanya..

siguro, stick na lang din ako sa kung ano ang dapat kong gawin, na paulit-ulit ko mang masimulan, tila walang pagkakataon na ako’y magtagumpay..

isang malabalong buntung hininga..

hmm..sana maging maayos na ang lahat ng ito at sana, sa darating na graduation, maging matagumpay ang mga dapat kong mapagtagumpayan..

ngayon, masasabi kong siya ay isa sa mga perfectionist na nabasa doon sa nasa taas..(nakita ko lang iyon sa diyaryo..)..dahil ayun, halos lahat ng tao sa eskwelahan ay napuna na ata niya..mga estudyante, mga guro..hihintayin ko pang makasama ang principal at pati na ang nasa ibang sisterschool..haay..

at nakakatawa man, ngayon ko lamang naisip, isa din ako sa mga perfectionist na iyon..sa kadahilanang bakit masyado kong iniisip ang pagkakamali ko? bakit sobrang sumasama ang loob ko sa mga pagkakamali ko? siguro, oo, dahil sa paulit-ulit na lang..

at ang huli kong masasabi..

patawad sa iyo kung pinagsalitaan kita ng masama dito pero inilabas ko lang ang aking nararamdaman. kung mabasa mo man ito ay siguro maiiba na ang tingin mo sa akin, iba pala ako..marami ka ng nagawa, mga atrasong hindi ko na makalimutan at hanggang ngayon ay dala ko pa din pero, pinipilit kong baguhin pa lalo ang sarili ko, maging isang produkto ng galing mo..sa mga mata mo, sa mga pananalita mo at sa lahat ng ginagawa mo sa akin, alam kong tama ka naman sa mga katwiran mo ngunit, nagagawa ko pa ding mainis..siguro nature na ng katawan ko iyon, ng isipan dahil sino ba naman ang hindi magagalit sa ugali mong iyan? pero, inuulit ko, gagawin ko ang lahat, para sa natitirang tatlong buwan ay kahit medyo malamig ka sa akin ay pipilitin ko pa ding magtanim ng isang buto na magiging puno, na magbubunga ng isang magandang pagsasamahan..

maraming salamat sa lahat ng ibinato mong bato sa akin, na dapat kong tanggapin dahil sa mga pagkairesponsble ko sa buhay at ngaun, ang kapalit,

babatuhin pa din kita ng , noon siguro ay bato, pero nagyon ay tinapay na lamang..

siguro, matanda ka na at dapat ka ng intindihin, kaya ibilang mo na ako sa mga taong magiinitindi sa nararamdaman mo..nararamdaman kong baka magretire ka na, dahil hindi lamang sa katandaan kundi pati na rin sa iyong pagkakamasakitin..

nandito po ako para sa inyo..

hindi ko po kayo makakalimutan hindi lang dahil sa maga kabulastugan na ginawa mo sa akin kundi pati na rin samga butil ng karunungan na iyong naituro dala ng iyong isang intelektwal na pagiisip..

ayan, nailabas ko na ang aking galit..medyo maayos na ako ngayon..

ikaw? kinagagalitan ka ba ng iyong guro? magulang? o kahit sino pa man? huwag kang mahiyang magcomment at pwede kong masabi ang iba pa na dapat nating isaalang-alang kapag ang nakatatanda’y kinaiinisan natin..

pahabol sulat..

bakit si tinkerbell? dahil iyan ang bansag ng mga estudyante sa kanya..

Freud and Spinoza on Kant’s Freedom

A few days ago I listened to the paper by Michael Mack (Nottingham), “Spinoza and Freud, or how to be mindful of the mind”  from the Spinoza and Bodies conference (audio here), and one quote really stood out, taken from Heine on Spinoza. Mack’s paper argues that Freud subverts the primary aim of Kantian philosophy: the autonomy of the human under and definition of Freedom. That is, the Copernican turn accomplishes a radical autonomy of man which is strictly modern, that the recursively defined categories of thought provide humanity with a kind of fresh space, a topos, upon which to do and be and make whatever they well, a cocoon of freedom. He doesn’t express it in this way, but I do. Freud takes this from Kant and the modern heritage in that he takes from the inside the autonomy that Kant attempted to carve out,  the “self”. I had never really thought if it in these terms, but one can see that it is precisely at the level of freedom that Spinoza’s Freedom and Kant’s Freedom collide, and one can see Mack’s point that Freud and Spinoza are on the same side on this, that the “self” is ever only partially free, and the sense that we are all exposed to causal forces far beyond our control, the ignorance of which deceives us into thinking we are freer than we are.

The paper is a wild ride at times, and Mack has the haltering verbal excitement of someone overly familiar with a history of ideas and some much neglected material that makes his reading engaging, at least to my ear. He exposes some, one wants to say sublimated, or at least seldom acknowledged even by Freud himself, influence of Spinoza on the father of psychoanalysis. Mack’s point falls off in the area of the Death Drive where he doesn’t do a sharp enough job of contrasting the admitted radical difference of Spinoza and Freud on this point, a chasm gap, surely on account of time .  For me, any comparison between Spinoza and Freud must at least start or end there. Where Mack is really strong is how he positions Freud and Spinoza towards Kant’s autonomy, and the subject of the Self.

In making his point about Freud, Spinoza and Jewishness, Mack brings the wonderful quote by Heine on the subject of Spinoza’s charged atheism. In an almost over-statement in response to the Pantheism Controversy, Heine declares, it is not God that is denied by Spinoza, but rather Man:

“Nothing but fear, unreason and malice could bestow on such a doctrine the qualification of atheism. No one has spoken so sublimely of Deity than Spinoza. Instead of saying that he denied God, one might say that he denied Man. All finite things are to him but modes of the Infinite Substance, all finite substances are contained in God, the human mind but the luminous ray of infinite thought, the human body but an atom of infinite extension. God is the infinite cause both of mind and of body, natura naturans.”

Everywhere you look, nature rears its head. No matter how many man-made phenomena there are or will ever be in the world, I guarentee there will always be some sort of natural world for flora and fauna to reign in.

I once did a blog post on my nature-bound journaling excursions a while back (yes, being able to reference old posts is an accomplishment for me!), and I explained how I journal about the natural world. Now, however, winter has set in, and the “natural world” around me has become a lot less sparse with animals hiding and hibernating from the cold, and always unbearable for me save in the middle of the day due to the temperature.

This caterpillar resides on a remote island in the South Pacific, and disguises itself as a tree twig so as to chow down on exotic fruit flies.

So, I’ve found a way to cope. I may not have a fast enough hand to be sketching out or writing about the things I see in them, but I’ve started watching nature documentaries about some of the world’s most amazing natural phenomena. It’s much more than I can see around the neighborhood, in my yard or on a local hiking trail. I’ve seen birds with amazing lifecycles, bees with happy face patterns on their back, trees that essentially pass (toxic) gas when they’re eaten too far… there’s a lot to see in the natural world.

One way I can get myself away from the computer long enough to watch a full documentary is by sitting down with my family at supper. We almost always have some TV show to watch, and recently we’ve been watching several different nature documentaries. We get them via Netflix, and they seem to be enjoyed by all… especially me. One we’ve been watching recently is Wild Pacific aka South Pacific, a documentary about the over 20,000 isolated islands in the South Pacific ocean. The vast array of wildlife on these desolate islands is remarkable, and it sucks you in, making you steadily await the next island they’ll cover.

Anyone can watch a documentary on wildlife. But how many of us focus on learning from it? The amount I learned from this excursion proves once more a general point about education: The more you’re into something, the more you tend to learn from it. I find this to be true of most anything in my life, and in education in general. It’s one of the reasons a free-form education goes well, because being hand-fed the same stuff every other person in the country had to soak up in the same grade you’re in now keeps you from flourishing in your learning, and finding what subjects and content really speak to you.

‘Til next time,
The Free-form Scholar

Bruce Sterling. Atemporality & The Passage of Time. 2009.

Critic, science fiction writer and noted Net theorist Bruce Sterling speaking on atemporality and the passage of time as reflected in images at the EGS in Saas-Fee, Switzerland in May 2009. Sterling spoke about computer security, post modernity, time, the digital frontier, the nature of the archive. Sterling attempts in his lecture to “get away from words” in order to focus on an atemporal sensibility in order to get the audience to see images in the way he sees them.  Using a different approach to a human standpoint of time, Sterling attempts to examine futurity, history and the present from the standpoint of “contemporary temporalism.” Looking at the archive and our relationship to objects from Leonardo Da Vinci to contemporary fetishes, Sterling examines each subject from the standpoint of atemporality. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland.

As well as being a leading science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling has been involved with numerous projects and written several books of futurist theory. He was the founder of the Dead Media Project, an on-line reliquary, or archive, to forgotten, or dead, media technologies.  In this way, he looked to the past through the future, anticipating, almost, in the shininess of new media, its utter destruction.  He also founded the Viridian Design Movement, an environmental aesthetic movement founded on the ideas of global citizenship, environmental design and techno-progressiveness. His numerous book length essays both question and promote how the future is shaping our concepts of self, time and space. In “Shaping Things” (2005) offer a history of shaped objects, moving from the most rudimentary hand-made artifacts through to the complex machinery which defines our current existence. In “Tomorrow Now; Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” (2002), Sterling examines how today’s technologies will affect our future lives.  Written in a wry, intelligent style, Sterling’s book makes bold claims on the future, examining scientists use of medicine to extend our lives while examining at the same time our seemingless bottomless thirst for oil. Sterling’s most acclaimed book, “The Hacker Crackdown; Law and Order on the Electronic Frontier” (1993) is a deep history of the birth of cyberspace, following the periphery of the development of technology from the first telephone hackers to the government’s attack on several prominent hackers in 1990.

Bruce Sterling’s novels incluce Intuition Ocean (1977), The Artifical Kid (1980), Heavy Weather (1994), Zeitgiest (2000), and most recently The Caryatids (2009). His essay collection and non-fiction books include The Hacker Crackdown; Law and Order on the Electronic Frontier (1993), Tomorrow Now; Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2002), and Shaping Things (2005). He currently blogs at Beyond the Beyond for Wired Magazine.

When I thought and decided that my topic was about recycling, I felt I should be in the Science class though my topic is also part of the T.L.E. Subject. The reason behind is that I can’t think of any good topic aside from recycling. Another reason is that, I felt that my learning about blogging would seem difficult because I haven’t made any blog before. It’ s just this time so as I thought, I should deal with relevant and simple topics.

Simple topics have simple and easy related informations to be researched or discussed. As for my topic, it’ s not difficult to get informations about it. It is because of the so called familiarity of it with everyone and of the internet but eventhough they’ re already familiar with it, it should have to be a little unique to other related blogs.For it to be a little unique, I will provide videos, pictures and graphics and if possible, statistics and testimonials about saving the Earth.

subject:  hi check out my new e mail

A central aim of Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science is to diagnose what he refers to as the “epistemic fallacy”. In a nutshell, the epistemic fallacy consists in the thesis, often implicit, that ontological questions can be reduced to epistemological questions. The idea here is that ontology can be entirely resolved or evaporated into an inquiry into our access to beings, such that there are no independent questions of ontology. As an example of such a maneuver, take Humean empiricism. As good Humean empiricists, we “bracket” all questions of the world independent of our mind and simply attend to our atomistic impressions (what we would today call “sensations”), and how the mind links or associates these punctiform impression in the course of its experience to generate lawlike statements about cause and effect relations.

Note the nature of Hume’s gesture: Here we restrict ourselves entirely to our atomistic sensations and what can be derived from our sensations. Questions about whether or not our sensations are produced by entities independent of our mind are entirely abandoned as “dogmatic” because we do not have access to the entities that might cause or produce these sensations, but only the sensations themselves. Consequently, the order of knowledge must be restricted to what is given in sensation. Hume’s epistemology is thus based on a thesis about immanence or immediacy. Insofar as our minds possess and immediate relation to our sensations, we are epistemically warranted in appealing to sensations as grounds for our claims to knowledge. We are not however, warranted in appealing to objects, powers, selves, or causes because we do not have sensations of these things. Consequently, all of these ontological claims must be reformulated in epistemological terms premised on our access to being. If we wish to talk of objects, then we must show how the mind “builds up” objects out of atomistic impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of powers, then we must show how the mind builds up powers out of atomistic impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of causality we must show how the mind builds up an idea of cause and effect relations through impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of selves and other minds we have to show how mind builds up our sense of self and other minds out of impressions and cause and effect associations.

At the level of the form of the argument, not the content, nearly every philosophical orientation since the 18th century has made the Humean move. While the content of these positions differ, the form of the argument remains roughly the same. That is, we perpetually see a strategy of attempting to dissolve ontological questions through epistemological questions. This move always proceeds in two steps: First, one aspect of our experience is claimed to be immanent or immediate. Second, the furniture of our ontology is then dissolved through an analysis of those entities with reference to this plane of immanence or immediacy. The immediate can be impressions as in the case of Hume, the transcendental structure of mind as in the case of Kant, the intentions of pure consciousness as in the case of Husserl, or language as in the case of late Wittgenstein or the thought of Derrida. Other examples could be evoked. In each case, the gesture consists in showing how the being of beings can be thoroughly accounted for in terms of our access through this immanence or immediacy. The point is that we no longer treat the entities in our ontology as existing independently of this field of immanence or immediacy, but now see them as products of these modes of access. Whether the world is really like this independent of our chosen regime of construction is a question that is abandoned as dogmatic.

read on!

If Bhaskar refers to this form of argument as the “epistemic fallacy”, then this is because, in his view, it renders our actual engagement with the world incoherent. In other words, for Bhaskar we are unable to make sense of our actual praxis in seeking knowledge if we dissolve questions of ontology into questions of epistemology. I’ll get to how this might be so in a moment, but the first point to note is that Bhaskar’s point is not that epistemology as such is a fallacy. In short, Bhaskar is not claiming that we should abandon epistemological questions or questions of how we know. Indeed, Bhaskar pitches A Realist Theory of Science as an epistemological inquiry. As he writes in the first chapter,

Any adequate philosophy of science must find a way of grappling with this central paradox of science: that men in their social activity produce knowledge which is a social product much like any other, which is no more independent of its production and the men who produce it than motor cars, armchairs or books, which has its own craftsmen, technicians, publicists, standards and skills and which is no less subject to change than any other commodity. This is one side of ‘knowledge’. The other is that knowledge is ‘of‘ things which are not produced by men at all: the specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis, the mechanism of light propogation. None of these ‘objects of knowledge’ depend on human activity. If men ceased to exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies fall to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi there would be no-one to know it. Let us call these, in an unavoidable technical neologism, the intransitive objects of knowledge. The transitive objects of knowledge are Aristotlean material causes. (21)

The central nut that Bhaskar’s theory of knowledge seeks to crack is how knowledge can be socially produced (the transitive dimension), while nonetheless delivering us to intransitive or human independent objects that exist in their own right. It is the second of these claims, of course, that is controversial within the framework of contemporary philosophy. While the reigning anti-realisms are more than happy to argue that our knowledge is socially or mentally constructed, the thesis that the objects, things, or entities that our social or mental constructions deliver to us are real or intransitive to that knowledge, that they are independent of the social and the mental, is understood to be the height of dogmatism. Here it is important to note that anti-realisms are not being accused of Berkeleyian idealism or the thesis that mind creates reality without remainder. Most anti-realists are more than happy to hold, as did Kant, that there is a mind-independent reality. Rather, the anti-realist thesis tends to be more nuanced. The point is not that this mind-independent reality doesn’t exist, but that we can never have any access to that reality. Rather, we must be content with treating ontological claims in terms of what being is for-us, remaining agnostic as to whether reality itself is “like this” independent of us or our social practices.

Bhaskar’s thesis is that when epistemology makes this move our practice becomes incoherent. If the epistemic fallacy is, according to Bhaskar, a fallacy, then this is because 1) questions of ontology cannot be reduced to questions of access or epistemology, and 2) we cannot dispense with a realist ontology if our theory of knowledge is to be coherent. The fallacy then consists in the thesis, often implicit or assumed, that ontology can be dissolved in epistemology. Not only will Bhaskar argue that daily practice and science become incoherent under this model, but he will also argue that this thesis undermines the possibility of emancipatory politics.

The reference to our actual practice should clue us in to the point that Bhaskar’s argument for ontological realism is transcendental. It will be recalled that, roughly and crudely, a transcendental argument proceeds by asking “under what conditions is such and such a particular practice or form of cognition possible?” Thus, for example, Habermas’ theory of communicative action asks “what does communication presuppose in order to be possible?” and proceeds to deduce the norms governing communication between two or more people. Similarly Kant, accepting Hume’s arguments that we cannot ground causality based on sensation and association, notes that we nonetheless do make causal judgments, and therefore proceeds to inquire as to the conditions under which these judgments are possible. If these judgments can’t be grounded in sensation, yet we nonetheless make them, then it follows, according to Kant, that we must have an a priori category in the mind that the mind imposes on the flux of sensation, contributing the judgment of necessity. Generally transcendental arguments take the form of tracing conditions of possibility back to mind or society. The Kantian revolution consisted in analyzing our cognition of objects, rather than objects themselves. The price he paid was that we must now reject knowledge of things-in-themselves as we have duly restricted ourselves to our cognition of objects. In other words, we can never know whether things-in-themselves possess these causal relations.

Now what makes Bhaskar’s transcendental argument so delicious is that he inverts the nature of transcendental arguments. Where transcendental arguments tend to trace the transcendental conditions of possibility back to mind or some variant of the social and proceed based on the question “what must our cognition be like for this sort of experience to be possible?” or “what must language be like for this form of experience to be possible?” or “what must society be like for this form of experience to be possible?”, Bhaskar instead asks “what must the world be like for science and our daily practice to be possible?”

If we cannot imagine a science without transitive objects, can we imagine a science without intransitive ones? If the answer to this question is ‘no’, then a philosophical study of the intransitive objects of science becomes possible. The answer to the transcendental question ‘what must the world be like for science to be possible?’ deserves the name ontology. And in showing that the objects of science are intransitive (in this sense) and of a certain kind, viz. structures not events, it is my intention to furnish the new philosophy of science with an ontology. The parallel question ‘what must science be like to give us knowledge of parallel question ‘what must science be like to give us knowledge of intransitive objects (of this kind)?’ is not a petitio principii of the ontological question, because the intelligibility of the scientific activities of perception and experimentation already entails the intransivity of the objects to which, in the course of these activities, access is obtained. That is to say, the philosophical position developed in this study does not depend upon an arbitrary definition of science, but rather upon the intelligibility of certain universally recognized, if inadequately analysed, scientific activities. In this respect I am taking it to be the function of philosophy to analyse concepts which are ‘already given’ but ‘as confused’. (23 – 24)

We will recall that “intransitive objects” are objects that are mind-independent and that would continue to do what they do regardless of whether or not humans existed. By contrast, the transitive consists of those changing theories, social conditions, language, categories, and so on. That is, all the elements that belong to the domain of how knowledge is produced. Here it is important to note that ontology does not tell us what particular objects exist and what their powers are. This is a question for actual inquiry that requires hard and laborious work. In other words, we can’t know before we know and we have to engage in the process of inquiry to reach these intransitive objects. Moreover, we can be mistaken about the nature of these objects. Ontology, then, simply outlines the most general features the world and objects must possess for our practices to be intelligible.

But why must we presuppose the mere existence of these mind and society-independent intransitive objects to render our practices intelligible. As chance would have it, a discussion with a good friend and colleague (a rhetorician) today provided me with a wonderful example of just why the epistemic fallacy is a fallacy. In a discussion about the differences between realist ontology, realist epistemology (which I don’t advocate), and anti-realist epistemology and ontology, my friend made the offhand remark that, “I just figure that perception is the best we have so we’re constrained to work within this framework.” In articulating this thesis my friend had articulated a very basic anti-realist claim. If we don’t like the term “perception” (content), we can nonetheless preserve the form of the argument, plugging language, society, social forces, power, mind, sensations, intentionality, etc., into the place of “perception”. The point is that my friend, in making this offhand statement, was making the claim that we can only work with what is given, immediate, immanent, or what we have access to. For him this was perception. In a manner analogous to Hume, my friend was proposing that all claims about beings are really claims about perception (not the things themselves).

Now, it has been my experience that for whatever reason us Continentalists tend to get squirrely or really nervous whenever there is talk about science. Somehow all our critical acumen is directed at showing how science is dogmatic, yet we don’t interrogate our own key concepts. In this connection, it occurred to me that perhaps Bhaskar’s argument would get more traction with my friend if, rather than talking about things like the atomic properties of hydrogen, I instead discussed something closer to home in the world of the humanities and social sciences: psychoanalysis. Wouldn’t it be delicious, I thought, if it could be shown that Lacanian psychoanalytic practice could be shown to presuppose a realist ontology? So where, and how, can Lacanian psychoanalytic practice be shown to presuppose a realist ontology?

To answer this question we must look at what actually goes on not in the theory, but in the clinic. Here my focus will be on neurosis as this is what is most commonly treated in the clinic. To understand the realist underpinnings of Lacanian psychoanalysis we must, in a thumbnail way, have a sense of 1) the Lacanian theory of subjectivity, and 2) the position of the analyst and how the analyst comports himself in the clinic. Within the framework of Lacanian theory, the subject is essentially relational. This is one of the reasons that Lacan was so interested in topology, and, in particular, topological figures like the moebius strip, the torus, the cross cap, the Klein bottle, and so on. Where our standard notion of mind tends to conceive it on the model of a sphere with a clearly defined inside and outside, topological structures like the moebius strip, the Klein bottle, the cross-cap, and the torus do not have a clearly defined inside and outside. They appear to distinguish inside and outside, yet what we find when we investigate these structures is that the surface is continuous.

These topological meditations on the structure of the subject are not idle musings, but have real clinical consequences in terms of how treatment is conducted. If the subject is, for example, like a moebius strip, this is because the relationship between the “I” and the “Other” (and no, I’m not here confusing the “I” and the subject) is a continuous surface, not a relationship between what is “inside” a sphere and what is “outside” a sphere. Just as when we draw a line along the surface of a moebius strip (make one for yourself!) we find that, much to our surprise, the line appears on both sides of the surface, the relationship between the subject and the Other is not one of two separate spheres, but is rather a continuous surface. The manner in which the subject relates to the Other is itself a dimension of the subject, not something Other than the subject. Put otherwise, we can say that the subject constructs its Other as a sort of formal schema of how it relates to all others so as to constitute itself as a subject. However, here’s the kicker: Just as when we initially view a moebius strip we think it has two sides (not one), when we relate to others we genuinely think they are others and don’t recognize the manner in which we construct our others or our “formal schema of the Other”. This construction of the Other is what Lacan calls “fundamental fantasy”.

Here I am simplifying tremendously, but it is this strange topology that is the focus of the Lacanian clinic. It could be said that the Lacanian clinic practices the difference between the Other and the Other. What do I mean by this? The Lacanian hypothesis is that the symptom of the patient, the reason the patient suffers, is because of the Other that she constructs. As Lacan will put it in the middle work, the neurotic subject converts the desire of the Other into a specific demand or request. Whenever we hear the term “desire” we should think “opacity” or “enigma”. In Seminar 10, L’angoisse, Lacan gives the disturbing image of standing before a praying mantis without knowing whether or not you’re wearing the mask of a male praying mantis or a female praying mantis. The female praying mantis, of course, devours her mate. This state of non-knowledge is– and here I simplify again –for Lacan, desire. It is the anxiety of being before an Other without knowing that characterizes desire. As Lacan will say, neurosis is characterized by perpetual doubt. What is it that that Other wants. We construct our own desire around this question.

The neurotic strategy for dealing with this anxiety provoking state with respect to the Other’s desire is to maneuver herself so as to convert that enigma and opacity into a specific demand. A demand has content, whereas desire is perpetually withdrawn or enigmatic. This gives us a sense of just what the Lacanian subject is. The Lacanian subject is a sort of strategy for evoking demands. The obsessional neurotic, for example, might be extremely attentive to all the wants of his partner. He listens to what sort of housework she wants, how she wants it in bed, what sorts of gifts she wants, how she wants to be talked to, what his bosses want, how forms are to be filled out, etc., etc., etc.. In relation to these demands he tries to perfectly fulfill each and every demand, completely satisfying them and always being attentive in every way. Indeed, this satisfaction of demand can go so far that it becomes mockery. For example, the partner says, one time, in the bedroom “no, do it this way!” with some particular touch or kiss, and suddenly that is all the obsessional does in bed.

Two things are going on here. First, by satisfying each and every demand and doing so before they are even requested, the obsessional strives to negate or dissolve the desire (enigma, opacity) of the Other. The idea is that you can get rid of the trauma producing enigma of the Other if you only satisfy all their demands. Second, by over-satisfying the demands of the Other, the obsessional insures that he will not be an object of the Other’s jouissance or enjoyment. This sounds counter-intuitive. Why wouldn’t someone want to be the object of an-other’s enjoyment? To understand this, we should think in terms of “being enjoyed by an-other at our own expense” as in cases where we feel a boss is just using us as their tool with no regard for who we are or when someone else mocks us. What terrifies the neurotic is being this type of object of enjoyment. And when the neurotic is enjoyed by an-other this “at my expense” is how they experience this jouissance of the Other. They experience themselves as fading or disappearing as a subject. In this respect, the obsessional’s behavior can be interpreted as a way of negating of defending against the Other’s jouissance because, in that jouissance, they disappear as a subject.

The case is similar with hysteria. Where the obsessional strives to satisfy all the demands of the Other and to convert desire (enigma, opacity) into demand, the hysteric strives to evoke the Other’s demand (“do this!”) so as to frustrate it. In frustrating the Other’s demand the hysteric strives to evoke the Other’s desire. In other words, where the obsessional strives to negate the Other altogether by reducing them to a specific set of demands that he can then parodically fulfill, the hysteric’s strategy for negating the Other’s desire is to turn himself into an enigma for the Other or an object of desire that perpetually evokes the Other’s demand, seeming to want that demand, while frustrating that demand leaving the Other wondering “what is it he wants?” He might turn forms in late at the office, for example. He might adopt an enigmatic and elliptical style of writing. He might give all the signs that he sexually desires the Other only to swerve and feign indifference when the Other shows interest. In this way, the hysteric manages the desire of the Other by himself becoming an opaque enigma.

The key point is that the neurotic himself does not know that he is the one orchestrating this drama. Just as we first think the moebius strip has two sides, the subject thinks that it is the Other that is making all these demands, that it is the Other who mysteriously always ends up desiring him, and so on. He doesn’t recognize his role in orchestrating these intersubjective dramas.

Enter the analyst. By now descriptions of the Lacanian analyst are famous. She doesn’t speak much. She often simply repeats what the patient says or says “hmmm” in a high pitched voice. When she does speak she does so in riddles worthy of the Oracle at Delphi or Jesus. The analyst is opaque and enigmatic. “Why don’t you just give me the answer!” the patient cries out? “Why won’t you even talk to me about how your day was or your latest article?” In the initial sessions of analysis the posture of the analyst can be extremely anxiety provoking. It’s like being thrust into a world without coordinates. And the coordinates absent here are the coordinates of the Other or our standard others.

This posture can seem extremely cruel. “I want a therapist that will talk to me, that will comfort me, that will give me advice, tell me what my problem is, or lay down the law!” However, there is a point to this “cruelty”. What the analyst practices through his practice is the difference between the Other and the Other. Here we are finally in a position understand just what it might mean to practice the difference between the Other and the Other. On the one hand we have the Other as the construction of the subject or that moebius strip that organizes the patient’s self-other relations. On the other hand, we have the Other as that enigma that perpetually withdraws from our ability to capture them in the net of demands, the Other as opacity and enigma, the Other as irreducible to any specific demand the Other might make. In occupying the position of enigma and opacity– and this is what is above all important in the position of the analyst –the analyst gradually draws the attention of the analysand or patient to the differend between the Other that he constructs and the Other as independent of that construction. In the dawning awareness of this differend, in the experience of the fact that he perpetually attributes all sorts of thoughts and dispositions to his analyst without the analyst behaving in any way that could merit or support the attribution of these attitudes towards him, the analysand gradually becomes aware of how he has constructed the Other. Put otherwise, the analysand comes to see how the desire he was attributing to the Other was his own desire all along. No longer does he see himself as the innocent victim of the Other’s demands and desires, but he now sees himself as the origin of these desires, such that he is now in a position to choose those desires or adopt other desires. For example, where before he saw the demand to be a doctor as issuing from his parents, he now sees that as his own reflection in a mirror that he encountered without recognizing that image as him or the result of his construction. This is a central part of what it means to traverse the fantasy.

So, we might ask, where is the ontological realism in all of this? Why, we might ask, is this practice only intelligible on the grounds of an ontological realism? If, as my good friend suggested, we only went on perception, the practice of analysis would be completely incoherent? Why? Because the practice of drawing the differend between the Other and the Other is dependent the premise of something that we do not have access to through perception. Rather the Other would be that construction. This, for Lacan, is the position of the psychotic, where the Other does not exist for the “subject”. For in the case of the psychotic, the “intersubjective” relation is defined not by the perpetual doubt that characterizes neurosis, but in certainty. The psychotic holds that the Other is nothing but the Other that they know and that he has immediate access to that Other. By contrast, the Other upon which the position of the analyst is premised is an ontological Other, or an Other that is independent of any of our constructions or fantasies. It is an Other that is not exhausted by our access to this Other, but rather an Other that can only be thought in ontological terms as what is in excess of any perception, talk, or idea we might have of this Other. Here we have a case of an entity or entities that must be presupposed in order to render a practice intelligible or coherent in transcendental terms. The question is not strictly one of access, but of what the world must be like– what intersubjective relations must be like –in order to be rendered intelligible. This discovery is not isolated to Lacan. It was discovered with respect to Husserl in the case of both objects and others, again in the case of Levinas with respect to the Other, and yet again in Jean-Luc Marion with respect to existence. In each case, epistemology passes over into ontology, discovering a limit where the question “how do we cognize objects” encounters an internal limit where the question can no longer be exhausted by epistemology, but where we must pass over into genuine ontology.

I used to think that I hated Drew Barrymore because of Charlie’s Angels,  her stupid palsy face, and for doing stuff like this:

I still kind of hate her, but after having a recent discussion with my friends, I’ve come to the startling realization that I may like Drew Barrymore. I know, it makes me cringe too, but let me explain:

1. I loved “Ever After.” It’s a beautiful dream-like movie that I used to watch over and over when I was younger.
2. I may be the only person in world who actually watched, let alone liked the movie “Never Been Kissed.”
3. I absolutely love “The Wedding Singer.” It is one of my favorite pseudo ’80s movies of all time. It’s one of those movies that, if it’s on, I’ll drop everything to watch.
4. “Donnie Darko”
5. “Whip It” was actually not that bad either. If you can get over the awfulness of Ellen Page (which some people can’t) it’s worth it. Maybe I just liked it because of the roller derby factor, who knows?

In any account, I felt it was necessary to share my feelings on the subject.

Subject-verb agreement

          This syntax issue can really bedevil writers, especially students who are still struggling a little with the myriad of rules and regs. Perhaps part of the problem with this guideline is the word “agreement.” We all know the meaning of “agree” as in “You and I will never agree,” or “We will agree to disagree,” but when we talk about subject-verb agreement, we’re actually talking about something entirely different. In this case “agree” means matching subjects and verbs according to number. That is, when you have a singular subject, you have to match it with a singular verb: The dog runs. When you have a plural subject, you must have a plural verb form: The dogs run.

In short sentences we can hear the problem: The dogs runs just doesn’t sound right so we can usually make the necessary changes to The dogs run.

There are, however, three problems that can crop up:

• Prepositional phrases
• Indefinite pronouns
• Reversed sentence order

 Prepositional phrases consist of words that slip in between the subject and the verb. The dogs in the mudroom is dirty. The noun “mudroom” may be singular making us think, perhaps, that the following verb “is” should be singular as well. But the subject is “dogs.” Take out the prepositional phrase in the mudroom and we’re left with the sentence The dogs is dirty, which is clearly not correct. The correct verb should be “are” as in “The dogs in the mudroom are dirty.”

We only need to remember one thing about indefinite pronouns: if a word has one of these endings: everybody, everyone, anyone, anything, etc., it is singular. We can also include each, either, and neither in this group.

• Everyone is going…
• Each is taking the train…
• If anyone comes later…

The normal pattern for English sentence order is subject-verb. There are, however, a few cases where this order is reversed. For instance:

          There are dogs in the kitchen.  The standard order would be Dogs are there in the kitchen. Or some such version that places the subject and verb in the standard order.

          Where are they? Or:  They are where?

          We would not write or say There is dogs in the kitchen, or They is where?

          Easy this is, yes?

          Thank you Yoda, but not always.

You don’t have to but it’s suggested that you read this first:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1116/1224258920419.html

In the place of any particularly insightful investigations of the reasons, interests and mistakes that have led to the economic downturn in Ireland, not to mention a sense of history and reality regarding economic booms in general (surprise surprise, they don’t last forever), the Irish media is a flurry with articles and opinion columns looking for meaning in what is apparently a new topsy-turvy world. A new series the in the Irish Times inviting young people with ‘bright ideas’ to voice their opinions started today with Cameron Stewart founder of clothing company Ark. He’s founded this ethically run company on the basis that every time you wear the brand you’re encouraged to perform acts of kindness to help spread the love and give people hope. These range from simple acts such as giving up your seat on a bus or buying a stranger a coffee to painting an orphanage or helping the homeless. The message coming from Stewart’s article seems to say that while the recession is no doubt a negative thing it has in fact helped us to see things a bit clearer, to have less faith in material things as a way of making us happy and to appreciate the important things in life such as family, friends and relationships. True happiness one might say.

It’s difficult to really take issue with anything that Stewart is saying and I certainly don’t wish to dismiss him simply as an idealist and write him off. However, even before the recession became official in Ireland throughout the media there was already a wave of articles and features on what were effectively ethical business people: entrepreneurs whose businesses seemed as concerned with profit as they were with environmental or human rights issues. Again, what could possibly be wrong with that? And again I’m not exactly here to say that there is, however I do think there is more room needed to introduce a critical analysis. Taken as a whole, or as a movement it would seem that these ethical-entrepreneurs are advocating social change through consumer choice. As a phenomenon this is not particularly new, one recalls how just a few years ago Shell’s advertising campaign focused purely on their environmental projects and had nothing to do with the company’s product itself. This is brand marketing and I do not wish to use this space to launch a critique of that, it has already been covered elsewhere.

If we take for granted that the media do engage in certain amount of agenda setting as regards politics, and relatively recently people’s own private concerns, the proliferation of these kinds of features can be seen to constitute a form of propaganda advocating that people, the individual, can become active through consumerist choice operating within the set of rules laid down by the free market economy; seeking social change through the mechanisms and supports of business and operating within our own small sphere of influence. The word active has multiple meanings. It has a political/social sense: I can change things by buying a particular product which donates to charity or by helping a man on the street. Following on from this it also has a very personal sense. In effect what one can say is: I become active through my choice, through my choice in the market, selecting this product because it is more ethical or charitable than this other one, or doing what I can. Here we enter a very personal and contentious space. We are talking about the individual and how they are individualised.

The theory of the individual is obviously a vast subject to try and attack and I’m certainly not setting out to formulate a theory of it here. However what we can say in a very summarised way is that the formation of the individual in both an ethical and political sense is something akin to a battleground. If we take Foucault as a staring point (and I certainly do) we can begin to look at the various struggles throughout history which have centered around the constituting of the individual and one of the major weapons of course in these battles was ideology. The notion that we live in a post ideological age is slowly dying after a quite a short life, and all the better for it. What I think has happened however, since the great ideologies fell at the end of the twentieth century is that we are now faced with a new battleground, one that is a lot murkier, less dualistic and while maybe not more complex perhaps it is more subtle. If left and right don’t particularly mean anything anymore we remain in a much hazier middle. If we acknowledge that ideology has played and continues to play such a key role in the formation and constitution of the individual then what is left when ideology itself becomes such an uncertain territory?

I think we are seeing at least some of the results now. To quote Badiou “the being of the individual is the lack-of-being, it is only by dissolving itself into a project of that exceeds him that an individual can hope to attain some subjective real”^1*. While I can’t really go along with the notion that lack-of-being constitutes the being of the individual (this seems to me to be too psychoanalytic/Christian in outlook) I think what we can take from this is the idea the importance of the movement (project), a movement driven by an ideology, in the constitution of the individual. Consumerism is a movement. It works like any other setting out forms of conduct and behaviour, setting down beliefs and defining individual outlooks and lifestyles, these are all individualising factors. One unique feature of consumerism as considered in this way is that it actually works towards making itself invisible while at the same time spreading its influence further and further. What consumerism works towards more and more is to position itself as both non-ideological and at the same time unquestionable, as some kind of natural order and it has succeeded in many respects.

Following on from all this what can we say about Ark and Cameron Stewart’s article. Well a few things. I wish to reiterate that I’m not completely opposed to someone coming along and simply asking people to be kinder to one another. Stewart specifically says “we are a movement more than a company…” however the problems with such an argument, especially one coming from somebody who actually runs an enterprise, is that it presupposes a fundamental idea that the individual is a consumer and lives within a predetermined sphere of influence. As such it encourages them to become actively individual through their consumer choice and by performing small acts of kindness. What of course is not taken into account in this analysis is the determining effect that consumerism itself plays in the constituting of people as consumers, and the formation of their sphere’s of influence. It’s the prison officer asking us nicely to keep our cells tidy and be friendly to our fellow inmates.

What before might have been an ethical consideration worked out in relation to either self assessed beliefs or one imposed/encouraged by a religious network has now become inexorably tied to the market, a market which over time has evolved to treat everything, even concepts like charity or compassion, as marketable commodities and as such devaluing them completely. Consumerism can be regarded as complicit in the creation of the world in which its new humanitarian messages/angle have become necessary. We can perhaps consider this movement, and Ark is just one of many, in the same light as the merchant classes of the Middle Ages commissioning so many artistic and civic projects but at the same time working to maintain the status quo, the exploitation of the workers and so on. While those businessmen in no way considered the masses as capable of taking part in civic life today we are encouraged to make change, as long as it is, of course, within the system and status quo we already find ourselves. In a time when real tangible benefits to the poor are in danger of being cut in order to balance the state’s budget it is perhaps not enough to simply ask that everyone help one another within the system they find themselves, it’s time to ask real questions about the system itself.

Notes & References:

*I have substituted the word ‘individual’ for the word ‘subject’ in this quote in order to maintain a coherence to the piece. I feel it doesn’t sacrifice too much Badiou’s original meaning

1. Badiou, Alain, The Century, tr. Alberto Toscano, Polity Press. 2007, pp 100-101

They know that subjects and verbs need to agree, even in questions. The following headline is disagreeingly blaring at Free Software Magazine:

Yikes! Of course, this should be “Is Microsoft to blame…”

In this question, Microsoft is the subject, not costs. Thus, the singular form of the verb to be is required.

Reading this almost makes my ears bleed. Will Free Software Magazine be liable for my medical bills?

I’m always fascinated by studies, especially studies having to do with psychology or anything similar.

However, yesterday I wondered whether there has ever been a study about the following thing… I would do it this way:

You have 6 beauties. 3 of them behave quite unfriendly and antisocial, the other 3 are friendly and nice.

Then you have 6 ordinary persons, neither looking too good nor too ugly. Like “the beauties”, half of them are nice, the others are grumpy.

To complete the whole thing, there are 2 persons to test on their minds; of course they don’t have any idea what the study is going to be about.

So now one of the “victims” has a look at the grumpy beauties and the friendly average persons. After just looking at them, he/she is having a conversation with all of them – where the grumpy ones will act cheeky and the others are supposed to behave decently.

Question: What’s going to happen with the subject’s mind?

1. After looking at the beauties, the impression is: “They are good-looking. They must be very polite and social people.”
   After getting to know them:
   [1] “Urgh. They are antisocial and not even good-looking at all.”
   [2] “They are antisocial. But at least they are looking good.”
2. After looking at the ordinary ones, the impression is: “They are average, nothing special, maybe even ugly. Hm. Perhaps they tend to be grumpy.”
   After getting to know them:
   [1] “Right, they are ugly but at least they have good manners.”
   [2] “What a beautiful mind. They aren’t as ugly as I thought!”

So now the other subject has a look at the friendly beauties (acting politely in a conversation) and the antisocial average persons (acting… antisocial). And after that, having a conversation.

Same question, different solutions:

1. After looking at the beauties, the impression is the same as before.
   After getting to know them:
   “Good-looking person being nice. I didn’t expect anything else.”
2. After looking at the ordinary ones, the impression is also the same as before.
   After getting to know them:
   “Ugly person acting somewhat disgusting. I didn’t expect anything else.”

Well, after all I wondered two things:
1. Does our mind prevent us from regarding good-looking people as beautiful after they have been rude to us? Is it making us forget about the first impression we had?

2. Does our mind develop and “improve” our view on somebody being nice to us, who is actually looking more or less ordinary/ugly, to someone being a beauty?

For generations, most people never sought specialized knowledge after completing school. What they learned about business, managing, selling, or their profession was acquired on an accidental hit-or-miss basis.

Now that’s changed. Today there are seminars, workshops, short courses, and conferences where you can learn the latest techniques and knowledge about anything you need to know. These sources of specialized knowledge have three advantages over conventional education. They are taught by experts, not be people whose only qualification is a degree. Second, the subject matter relates directly to your needs. Irrelevant information is avoided. And third, you’ll acquire as much useful information from other attendees as you do from the instructors. Specialized learning meetings attract only sharp people eager to make more money and enjoy greater success.

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昨天还是tutrial,今天就变成了SC90了.基础演说在英特尔的cto展开了,

发表的主机内容

上面的是服务器,下面的是3D Tours interconnerct Network和Local disc 还有低温配管,不经意的让我说了,这个美国技术人员就是牛…有关sc90的资料请点击这里

Democrats in the senate are about to make the biggest mistake of their lives, and ours.

Many of them are still playing political games with our lives and our money to fool us into leaving them in power.

As I write this, they are beginning debate on whether to move forward with debate on the health care bill in the senate.  They need 61 votes.  The plan is to bribe, coerce, and otherwise influence enough of them to vote for this to proceed so that the bill can then be run through the same private, democrat-only conferences that gave us the house bill.  When it comes back to the floor for a vote it will only need 51 votes.  Some of the senators will be let off the hook by democrat leadership so they can then vote against the bill and go home to their constituents and pull a “John Kerry,”  telling their constituents they voted for the bill before they voted against it.

This isn’t just any politics-as-usual bill or situation.  America is on the edge of the abyss economically, and this bill will push us over.  Not to mention all of the freedoms and liberties that will vanish with the stroke of a pen when this monstrosity is signed into law.

Every battle we fight from here on out is a must-win.  We are fighting a delaying battle until reinforcements arrive.  We are fighting for the survival of America.

If you are an American citizen, if you love America, if you love freedom, liberty, and the American way of life, you will clog the fax machines, shutdown the e-mail servers, and fry the phone circuits on Capitol Hill to let them know we will not let them take from us what isn’t theirs to take.

Be a citizen, not a subject.

Are You A

DEMOCRAT

Or Are You An

AMERICAN?

Choose this day whom you will serve, but choose wisely.

A vote to allow the current health care bill to move forward is a vote AGAINST America.

We know what games you are playing.  Many of you plan to vote for it now when there must be 60 votes for debate to proceed, then some of you will “strategically” vote against it when only a simple majority is required so you can go home and lie to your constituents and claim you “voted against the bill.”  You are liars and deceivers.

Make no mistake, any vote in favor of this legislation is a vote against America.  Understand that you are pushing us over a cliff.  We are already trillions of dollars in debt, you are playing the same shell games with money that landed Enron executives in jail to keep various government agencies afloat, other countries are bailing out of the U.S. dollar as their reserve currency, and many of the nations to which we are debtors are beginning to balk at buying any more of our debt.  Should that happen, there will be an INSTANT depression.  With your reckless spending of money that doesn’t even exist, you may have already sealed America’s fate.  Passing the extraordinarily expensive takeover of the American health care system will nail the coffin shut on America in more ways than one.

If you vote for this bill, you will be removed from Washington.

Over 200 of the house democrats have already been fired, but they haven’t accepted that fact yet.  They should start cleaning out their offices and packing their bags now.

You are the last legal and constitutional line of defense against this attack on America’s freedom and liberty.

Will you defend American’s freedom, liberty, and the United States Constitution?

Should you choose not to, do not think you will be untouched by the anarchy and chaos that is likely to result.

It’s time to choose.

In my last post I tried to lay out the ground for my approach to meta-ethics, that is to investigating what is involved in moral claims being true or false. Today I’m going to try to put flesh on those bones by developing an account of how it is that we think about other people and their experiences, on which empathy is rationally required, and people who behave like psychopaths are rationally defective – victims, so to speak, of a delusion, just as much as any other psychotic.

So I should with some setting-up. Firstly, I want to say what I think the intuitive assumption is, the picture that I want to argue against (or at least provide an alternative to). The view can be summed up I think in two theses:

1) Thoughts about other people’s experiences have separate cognitive, affective, and motivational components, and;

2) People with different affective and motivational components can still share the same cognitive components.

That is, if malicious person A and compassionate person B both observe person C in distress, they can share the exact same cognition – namely, awareness of the fact ‘that person C is in distress’. They differ simply in that A adds to this a layer of enjoyment and a motivation to keep watching that distress, while B adds a different affective component (they are distressed themselves) and a different motivation (to relieve C’s distress).

What this picture implies is that at the level of cognition, there is no difference between A and B – and so neither can be called right or wrong. They differ only in the further steps they take after becoming aware of this fact. What I want to argue is that for these affective and motivational components to differ as they do, A and B must also have different cognitions, i.e. they believe different facts.

How does this work? My essential claim is this: that A is thinking of a certain object, which they understand and predict by running through a series of thoughts, treated as fantasy-thoughts, while B is thinking of a viewpoint embedded in a body, from which the world appears a certain way.

But obviously this requires more ground-laying. We will need a quick discussion of thought in general, and what it involves, before we can talk about particular classes of thoughts. So I’m going to try to run through some points about thought in general. Obviously on such a topic it’s impossible to avoid being in certain respects controversial, but I’m trying to largely go along with philosophical consensus and common-sense.

So the first point is about the idea of an ‘object’, and the corresponding term ’subject’. The basic idea is that most thoughts take the form of being ‘directed onto’ something, being ‘about’ something, the object, while also being thought ‘by’ something else, the subject, and that in the thought, we are conscious of both the gap between these two, and of the connection between them that the thought itself establishes.

So for instance I focus my attention on the empty cup of tea in front of me. My mind is directed onto the cup – it is my object. ‘I’ am the subject of this thought, and in looking at the cup I have the sense of being distinct from it – it is not me. Yet at the same time I am aware that by being able to see it, I am in some way connected to it (different philosophical accounts of perception try in various ways to integrate the element of separation and the element of connection in such states).

Now, a key point here, which has been insisted on by a great number of philosophers, is that ‘I’ the subject am ‘present’ in all these mental states (that is, in having them, I am conscious of myself) but not as an object. I’m not constantly thinking about myself, but I am constantly aware of myself – this sort of awareness is sometimes called ‘pre-reflective’, i.e. I don’t need to actively reflect on myself to have it. In particular, when I am aware of many different objects at once (which is pretty much all the time – consciousness is usually complex) I’m pre-reflectively aware of myself as what connects all these different objects that I am simultaneously aware of.

One very nice metaphor, which I think comes mainly from Wittgenstein, is that of the subject as being like the eye. I can see my visual field – but I can’t see my eye. Nevertheless, I am aware of my eye whenever I am seeing things – but not as a visible thing, as the limit and basis of the visual field. Similarly I am aware of myself whenever I am conscious, but not as an object, as the limit and basis of all my awareness of objects.

And one noteworthy point here is that this means that a certain connection exists between statements about myself and statements about the world and it’s objects. For instance, for me to say “I am disgusted” is connected in this way to saying “things are disgusting”; “I believe that P is true” is connected with “P is true” (imagine if someone said “it will rain soon but I believe it won’t rain for a long time” – they have contradicted themselves, but not in the normal logical way). “I am pleased” is connected with “things are good”. This link is not quite that of strict synonymy, but it is noteworthy nevertheless.

Almost there.

I’m aware of any given object in many different ways – I can see this cup now, see it tomorrow, smell it, see it from the other side, see it from far away, see it with hateful eyes, see it with scientific precision, see it as enormous relative to a cockroach or see it as tiny relative to this building. But the cup doesn’t change – what changes is ‘me’, and the way that I am aware of it. This, we can express by talking of viewpoints. We see the cup from different viewpoints, and we end up with a range of thoughts about it, each qualified by the viewpoint it comes from. But because we’re rational thinkers, we try to synthesise these different views, to explain how the same object seems different when viewed in these different ways. We see, for example, that the laws of geometry, and certain assumptions about space and movement, can make sense of why it has different apparent shapes and sizes when seen from different angles and distances. That’s easy. More difficult is to do the same with, say, emotional viewpoints – why does an event seem unfair when looked at in one way, fair in another, shocking from one perspective, or obvious, threatening, indifferent from others? We don’t know exactly, but we try to find out – and in order to find out, we must take each viewpoint we get as a valid datum. That is, we must be like scientists trying to find a theory that explains all the data, and not simply ignore those data which we don’t want to have to integrate.

One part of this process is that when we find that a good overall viewpoint differs from a specific one, and can explain why that specific one differs, we suppress that specific thought, we try to not let it affect us. If something looks unfair from our overall understanding, but good from one particular viewpoint, we try to suppress that perception of it as good, and not act on it. But this is only ever a discriminating kind of suppression – we can only perform it on particular thoughts if we have good reason to think they are mistaken.

What we cannot do standardly is to just suppress a load of thoughts because we want to. We can’t, if we want to be rational, just take everything we know about some topic, and then ignore it. That’s the paradigm of irrationality. But when can we do this, when can we suppress thoughts indiscriminately? When they are part of a fantasy: when we are watching a film, or imagining a remote hypothetical event, or picturing what it would be like to visit Mauritania. In these cases it is the mark of rationality to avoid acting on the motivations that these thoughts generate – e.g. when watching a scary film we do not rush to get our gun, or run screaming from the theatre, or call 999. And note, this reflects the fact that these fantasy thoughts are not integrated with other thoughts at all – because they are not perspectives on the world of objects, but rather on non-existent objects, like Frodo Baggins or my guide to Mauritania.

So.

So my claim is that person B, the compassionate one, sees C in distress and cognises this fact as something like: the world appears horrendous and distressing from “C’s perspective” – and the idea of “C” is derived from the idea of “C’s perspective”, not vice versa. That is, B looks at this body screaming and weeping, and processes this as revealing an aspect of the world, and the viewpoint from which it appears with that aspect.

Person A, on the other hand, processes this quite differently: they process person C as an object, as a thing among other things in the world, and not as a viewpoint on the world – note that neither B nor C thinks of C in this way. One consequence of this difference is that the ‘connection’ between thoughts about C and thoughts about the world is preserved for B, but not for A. For C, the thought “I am pleased” is closely connected with the thought “things are good” – and for B, the thought “C is pleased” is also closely connected with the thought “things are good”. Equally, of course, “C is distressed” is closely connected with “things are bad” – and so B is made to themselves feel bad, and motivated to end C’s distress. Whereas for A, “C is distressed” has no connection at all with “things are bad”. Instead, it’s just a fact about this one particular person, C, this particular object. This means that A need not have any particular feelings about it, or motivations. In this case, of course, A is motivated, and is motivated maliciously – they feel good that “C is distressed”, for whatever specific psychological reasons. But it is their ‘objectification’ of C that gives space for their particular feelings and desires to operate.

But none of the rest of this is just a matter of ‘emotions’ or how we happen to feel – the connection between “I am pleased” and “things are good”, or between “I am in danger” and “things are dangerous”, or between “I believe that P is true” and “P is true”, is not just a matter of feelings – it is a basic part of how our cognition works. Or at least, to say that it is so, is a position just as plausible, and probably far more historically supported, than to deny that it is so.

Finally though, we might ask – if person A regards person C as an object, and not as a viewpoint, how do they even make sense of person C’s being conscious and having thoughts? This, I think, we must look at by analogy with what I said about fantasy thoughts. Person A must somehow formulate the idea of distress if they are to recognise what distress is (and see person C as more than just a doll designed to make noises). But they then don’t let that idea of distress upset them – they suppress it, but not because they think it’s unreasonable (after all, they know that C has good reason to be distressed). And this is what we do with fantasy-thoughts – that is, with thoughts that we regard as perspectives on unreal objects, and not on the world itself.

This post is far too long, but hopefully those who have struggled through so far have some idea of what I’m trying to get across.

Note, I haven’t yet tried to show that one or the other of these ways of thinking is correct or incorrect – merely that they are different, and that this difference is cognitive, making use of the most basic forms of cognition we have (subject, object, world, perspective, reality, etc.) Next post, hopefully, will give some reasons for considering empathy rational and objectification irrational.

615 // November 18, 2009

The most recent addition to my collection of vintage cameras is owed to a long-time partner/colleague of the company I work for. Lori Feldman has come to know me on more personal level via Twitter — at least enough to know that I am an avid collector of these antique items.

This is a Cine Kodak Magazine 16, manufactured between 1945-1950. I’m having trouble finding much more info than that… but I’m on a mission. I like to find out the history behind each piece.

So, again, I am sending my thanks out to her for not only another cool camera to add among my others, but for the thoughtfulness to send me such a gift!