Pruning the neurons, competence without comprehension, the soul of white ants, eukaryotes, memes as rogue cultural variants, words are memes that can be pronounced, memes are thinking tools, words are not unlike viruses, free-floating rationales, ‘deep learning’, genetic algorithms, we are living in the post-intelligent design era, affordances… Here are just a few seconds of […]
Category Archives: Ideas and Papers
Adina Roskies on Neuroscience and Free Will
Some recent research in neuroscience seems to point to the conclusion that free will is an illusion. That’s certainly the conclusion that some have drawn. But Adina Roskies is sceptical. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast she explains to David Edmonds why she thinks that that conclusion isn’t supported by the facts. via […]
The iron cage revisited: on normative isomorphism
The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields Paul J. DiMaggio, Walter W. Powell (1983) People hired with similar education backgrounds will tend to approach problems in similar way… Read the article here
Relational Bodies and Metahumanism
A Metahumanist Manifesto by Jaime del Val and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner 1. What is Metahumanism? Metahumanism is a critique of some of humanism’s foundational premises such as the free will, autonomy and superiority of anthropoi due to their rationality. It deepens the view of the body as field of relational forces in motion and of […]
What Comes After Cultural Poetics and New Historicism?
Some reading here: Cultural Poetics according to Stephen Greenblatt New Historicism explained
The Collateral Damage of Theory
I propose to discuss this idea: Explaining social supremacies with complex power theories (Foucault, Bourdieu…) might legitimise supremacy by insisting on its sophistication. Luis de Miranda
The ‘Self-Fulfilling prophecy’ prophecy
If men define situations as real, they can become real in their consequences… How many of you have read this influential 1948 article which uncovers the notion of self-fulfilling prophecy, and how many of you knew that it was mainly about racial prejudice? More here Read the article here
The Utopian Content of Reification
The Utopian Content of Reification: Adorno’s Critical Social Theory of Nature Christopher Buck DOI:10.5422/fordham/9780823251414.003.0007 In this chapter, Chris Buck argues for a “critical social theory of nature” that requires a reconstruction of the immanent/transcendent relation. Finding resources for such a reconstruction in Theodor Adorno’s critical reinterpretation of Marx’s theory of exchange value, Buck argues for […]
The Anarchist Banker is back
Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, the ethics of those who work in the banking sector have come under special scrutiny. Indeed, the world of finance has long carried a moral taint, one which has been more than occasionally depicted and addressed in works of literary fiction. A highly illuminating and penetrating case in point […]
Second nature as a critical paradigm
Crina Archer, Laura Ephraim and Lida Maxwell (eds.) Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013 At a time when the denaturalising turn in political theory is more frequently than not either ignored or used to illicitly cover over naturalising tendencies in our understanding of human existence and political action, […]