Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A somewhat interesting short book in which dimensionality is parsed into social relations to reflect the biases of human culture. The increase or decrease of dimensions is seen as a bad synthesis by others who would like to understand their own dimensionality in its limitations. An amusing idea.
What Color Is the Sacred? by Michael T. Taussig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I recall that when this book came out, it was highly acclaimed. There was much discussion. But it doesn’t seem particularly startling to me. Much of the “color” of the book comes from vivid phrasing and verbose literary remarks. The author certainly cares about his subject matter but doesn’t care to pigeon-hole it into a tightly composed theory. He doesn’t extract much in the way of making sense. He is more concerned with presenting a roundabout exploration of the topic. I gleamed more from his collection of notes than from anything much else he said.
I did find it an interesting contrast with Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages in that Guy was more interested in what makes color: its meaning and sensation than an exploration of what other people have said about it. Deutscher is able to pull through an interesting observation that the experience of color is tied very strongly to its linguistic difference… which originates from a discovery of the technological production of that color. Taussig sort of talks about that, but doesn’t really make much in the way of any “point”. He just vacillates around and presents flair in place of any firm discussion.
I found it ironic that his “polymorphous magical substance” as an alternate term for color separates it from the object of coloring — marking him in his category as that eurocentric class that would place color as being exterior to objects they color, but then again, I could be overanalysing, trying to make something of his book… since he wrote so many pages talking about not much of anything.
If you are interested in a colorful summation of other writers, I think this book would be for you.
Body Language: Another Collection of Poems About Aging by Janet Cameron Hoult
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Fairly traditional collection of poems about aging. There is a subtle tragedy that comes with not recognizing your physical self — when your self image is no longer congruent with who you have become. There is no complex imagery or startlingly difficult lines but there is plenty of humor, irony and many clever rhymes.
Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature by Gilles Deleuze
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gilles Deleuze continually amazes me. This incredibly tight and coherent book was written when he was only 28. it was his first book.
Here he utilizes Hume’s radical critique on induction (which is actually a critique on causation and empiricism) in order to realign not only culture and society but also subjectivity.
From here, Deleuze no longer speaks of subjectivity in his other works (for the most part). He immediately grasps the relation of subjectivity with time, as past coherences are also given in the present through a formal repetition of content deployment.
This is connection of Bergson and Freud; that process is knowledge, and the imprint of a particular process as being the “main line” highlights not only what is significant in an encounter but also significant for future encounters.
When we understand that relations are “outside themselves” as external connections that are imposed, we can grasp that subjectivities as self referential are also “relations outside themselves”. It is the process of this superimposition that creates mind, being and so on as synthetic relations of what we do. Knowledge is given to a material process. In later works, Deleuze shows the mixture of material sheets of consistency from which agency is expressed forms the partial objects of agential realism as the formation of new agencies as new material consistencies.
“Philosophy must constitute itself as the theory of what we are doing, not as a theory of what is”.
This is the jump as a young Deleuze pushes us beyond existentialism of a resoluteness of being into the functionalism of the 21st century.
The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book more clearly explains Ayn Rand’s position than any other book of hers I’ve read in the past.
Rand is often hotly contested; but it’s not enough to say that something nonsensical or stupid because to truly understand something we should be able to explain what it is or why something is dismissed. Not only that but we should also be able to explain how a view is (in)valid. In a sense, Rand often fails to explain what is detestable in others, resorting to words like “evil” or “irrational” to carry an emotional weight in her argument.
(Un)surprisingly though, there is much in here that is admirable. After all, anyone who can inspire and move people like she does must say something somewhere that is correct.
What is interesting is that there is much basis for similarity between herself and other thinker’s conclusions she would dismiss as they argue from a very similar basis. As hinted before, I do believe that she is a bad reader of Kant, for example.
She is correct, that Kant is the root of what she detests in modernism, but Kant’s concept of will, reason and pragmatics leads him to very nearly the same structure that Rand poses. Kant sees reason as being a tool for will finally, because Kant dismisses “pure reason” as being inherently undecidable. Rand doesn’t see things this way. She believes will is a tool for pure reason because “a=a”; that functionality is purpose therefore a consistency in reason will work itself out if we have the will to do so. This last point of reason and will being only positive is perhaps the biggest flaw for her philosophy.
In this way Rand is actually alot like Heidigger. Both Heidigger and Rand believe that language is reasonable, and non-contradictory in-itself. Both believe that ironing out consistency in languaged reason will result in successful and fulfilling lives.
This makes them both throwbacks to early modernism, towards a kind of Cartesian truth-value. This signifies a break because it is Kant who provides the initial break in his critique of pure reason that demonstrated a gap inherent within things-in-themselves and a gap within our relationship with those things. The gap with our relationship with those things formulates a basis for science and for existentialism. Unfortunately not many understand that the split also echos within reason itself, so that reasoning through sheer consistency will undeniably lead to contradiction.
Given a post-Kantian view, of which society has progressed towards, there can be no point of view from which the world will be stable, without consistency, because the world is not consistent in a human fashion. It is this last point which Rand seems unwilling to grasp resorting instead to calling all that is thought to be rational (including Classism) as subjective and arbitrary. She is correct. All views are inherently subjective and arbitrary, including her own. What makes Kant non-arbitrary though, is that he grounds human behavior and a will to maxims in his critique of practical reason that is in the supersensible. This gives up reasoning in this world as a coherency in favor of a faith, which is what makes Kant still a christian philosopher.
Rand of course, cannot stand this. From her assumption that functionality in the world is purpose, and that making one into a functional person will result in purpose she proves remarkably consistent in her assessment of the arts throughout this small book. What makes her irritating to read however, is that she is unable to express herself beyond calling positions she dislikes evil or irrational. It is in her style to insist on a singular view that is ultimately arbitrary… without providing a neutral grounds to assess what is meaningful we cannot help but judge everything else as being arbitrary to something else. Rand does seem unable to explain herself philosophically — hence she does so artistically to give us feelings of purposefulness.
Unfortunately for her, if the adherence to will as a resolution of being in existentialism is irrational then her art/philosophy in which characters will themselves to a resolution of function and purpose must also be equally irrational.
Calling something philosophy or rational doesn’t make it rational if you cannot provide a cogent basis from which to assess everything else including your own work. After all, if continual self insistence is adequate than it should be equally adequate for anything and everything else as well…and given a modernist aesthetic in which there can only be one truth and language can only mean one thing this last “equally adequation” would be inherently unacceptable!
But I doubt that Rand has the ability to express why language should be a seamless and complete consistency (a=a) with reality other than “it is”
Still, despite my disagreement and all the holes I’ve just poked at her work, I do admire the clarity with which this book is written. After all, without this clarity I would have had a harder time finding the conflicts inherent in her own writing.
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Arthur Schopenhauer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Schopenhauer finds it necessary to rescue noumena causa from Kant by calibrating our human experience to these four grounds of causation. These four grounds for Schopenhauer arise naturally due to different cuts in reasoning’s consistency. Admittedly these grounds are somewhat arbitrary, but he is unable to find much connection between these grounds except for their ability to highlight concepts. In this Schopenhauer is very much a follower of Kant.
I, too, do sometimes find Kant to be too airy. But that conceptual distant is necessary to highlight principle “noumenonal” connection between disparate phenomenon. Schopenhauer can be thought of as being a half step so as to try and bring Kant back. In the process Schopenhauer seems to find the most objectional point being Kant’s misuse of the term “ground”. Ground here is another way of denoting various cuts, “levels” of rationality for Schopenhauer, so by no means is four the only way to arrange these levels, as we can provide a multitude of differing reasons, each of which Kant would most likely state as being chimeral and undecidable in isolation.
What is of interest though, is that like Kant, Schopenhauer calibrates human action to will (desire). Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer seems to find that will is more radically aligned to create objects as well, not just through the platitudes of a noumenon as a morality but also existentially. Schopenhauer seems to find that the actual physical world is created through repetition of various consistencies like a wheelbarrow traveling the same ground in the same way as to make a rut… this dissolving of the phenomenal eliminates the thing-in-itself from view as an independence of human will. As a result, Schopenhauer requires another ground (having eliminated Kant’s ground) thus, Schopenhauer finds everything as emerging from reason as a geometry of which causation is but a mode of extension.
In some ways, Schopenhauer is like Descartes in seeing everything as a consistency constituted through a rational mentality. This is an interesting move which eventually finds its full expression with Husserl (perhaps independently of Schopenhauer) but the move to remap all in terms of rationality is perhaps too much, and allows Schopenhauer far too much freedom to disregard the world as excessive chimera, when in fact it becomes more likely that Schopenhauer falls prey to chimera himself. How else can he claim that his fourfold root is the actual calibration of that is an optimization of understanding?
He can’t. He can only show us how this view is possible, not that it is all encompassing above all other views, in part because he can’t really evaluate other views except through a neutral term, which he then goes forth and questions, as there can be no real ground as any one thing requires another thing.
In this Schopenhauer is correct, all is connected through conception and rationalization — but rather than end up with a Liebnizian monad or a Deleuzian rhizome, he reverts to a loose Kantian model of mid-modernism reasoning that cannot recognize that radical groundlessness that Schopenhauer is courting except to insist on it in terms of zero (void) or infinity (all).
What would help Schopenhauer in this, to find a quantized view of all through all else, is for him to give up the very instrument he cannot give up; to grasp that unlike Kant’s insistence on a faculty of pure reason there are in fact an indeterminate number of reason(ing)s… that reason may be sufficient but it is not the only One.
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Dennett starts this book, careful to align the specific context of Darwin’s ideas from a material biology context to one of functionalism.
With this alignment, Darwin seeks to atomize all complexity into functional processes so that the material moves within a complexity are atomized into building blocks that allow for a supervenience of complexity to material atoms.
For instance, he applies this maneuver from biological evolution to behavior, psychology, culture and ultimately consciousness. What Dennett notes as being skyhooks constitutes a logical break, such as the jump from ordinal numbers to the smallest limit cardinal numbers. What Dennett calls cranes are moves that constitute supervenience.
This mapping is accomplished by Dennett mainly through a series of analogies and then, through a series of quotes that directly address each complexity through a dialectical structure that aligns various quotations that attempt to get at the root of contrary positions. These contrary positions are then atomized in terms of Dennett’s algorithmic supervenience in order to be better incorporated into his algorithmic supervenience. If there is one thing I have noticed, it’s that the presence of a dialectical structure necessarily supports an ideological position.
It’s hard to moralize ideological positions of this complexity because of its range, but Dennett wishes to highlight the rational consistency possible in atomizing our most difficult endeavors (ethics, culture, subjectivity). This sounds well and good, but until you understand the larger context it is difficult to address how Dennett’s book is an expression of an ideologue.
One of the debates in biology is a dispute about how to calibrate survival. Richard Dawkins and Dennett both wish to calibrate adaptation to the level of the gene. Some biologists would calibrate survival to the species, others to ecology. Some to the individual. Each of these optimizations of utility provide a basis for the creation of different terminologies, some of which are impossible given a radically different calibration. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould, who comes from a paleontologist background would calibrate survival to the species and thus has arrived at varyingly different concepts, some of which are nonsensical to someone like Dennett who only sees atomized genes as being the root basis for adaptive difference.
When John Maynard Keynes in the 70s introduced game theory to biology he provided a tool for biologists to compare the utility of different survival adaptations. This revolutionized the field but it forced biologists to try and come to a different basis for how to compare adaptations. I recently read an essay exploring the utility of allowing non-queen workers to breed. Wasps and bees do have non-queen workers that can breed, and it has been shown that the queen may kill these offspring but at other times, may allow them to live so that the workers compete with each other. The question in this essay remained unanswerable because the authors of the essay were unable to provide a basis to decide what level to calibrate their comparison to. Since all the workers in a colony were related, should the adaptation be addressed in terms of the individual? Or the colony? Economics often does not have this problem (individual vs society) because the healthiness of each is hidden by the maximal utility of specific groups. Economists are often political simply because they will hide the (dis)favoring of a group by calibrating utility to the society, or to specific individuals in isolation.
By NOT addressing his heady position to this basic difference, by explaining the mechanisms of his attempt at a supervenience view of adaptation, Dennett dismisses the veracity of other views by distorting them into failed forms of supervenience.
The ideologue that Dennett wishes to superimpose is that of a consistency from the point of genetics.
What makes this position obviously an ideologue is the arbitrariness of Dennett’s stopgap. Dennett himself provides this analogy when he explains the problem of “levels”. He utilizes the example of a computer in order to highlight this issue. When attempting to explain the processes inherent in a Word processing program, Dennett states that trying to understand the program in terms of electrical mechanics, or even at the quantum mechanics level is too much! We shouldn’t try and understand the processor in terms of machine language or even at low level code, we should understand it in terms of the operating system environment and the APIs that the word processor utilizes (as well as the user context needs) in order to best understand how a word processor forms. The “baggage” of quantum mechanics or electrical engineering would be too detailed and merely mechanical from the point of view of the appropriate level, because what makes a word processor isn’t the mechanical moves of its basic units but the functional consistency of its end result.
As is Dennetts style, this analogy is very clear, but when we apply this analogy to Dennett’s own arguments (should we not understand consciousness in terms of the needs of the individual? In terms of the need for society) does this not go against a genetic view for why consciousness needed to happen? Does not the view that genetics is the key to EVERYTHING, even religion including too much baggage? After all, might not a colony of conscious robots not having genes but needing the same economic, political coordination also form a religion?
Dennett does consider that culture goes far in changing the context of what survival and adaptation means, but he seems to find the “limit cardinal” to be at the level of the gene, rather than providing a multiple level of calibration — mainly due to this insistence on supervenience being the model we should take. If this is so, however, should he have not started this book talking about Darwinist “survival” of quantum sub-atomic laws persisting in the face of disorder?
Dennett is a brilliant man and more impressively a very clear writer of very difficult ideas. But in his haste to push forward a world-philosophy-science view calibrated to that of the gene, he ends up falling prey to the same problem he would accuse others of, that genetics is a “skyhook” given the properties of chemical biology from which genetic properties can be derived. In the end, the rationality he sees as being factual is in fact, to a large degree an arbitrary choice until he is able to demonstrate that other calibrations to other levels, on their own terms, cannot provide enough consistency and explanatory power as this one. Yet even this point is arbitrary, after all, why cannot all of these different calibrations occur simultaneously in competition with one another?
F in Exams: The Best Test Paper Blunders by Richard Benson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Very amusing book.
What is funny is that the content of the book often demonstrates the viability of contexts outside of the reason given in a classroom setting.
Humor is a rationality that is rejected.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
As impressive as this book sets out to be, about 1/3 of the way through Taleb sets a very impressive bar for himself. By citing Hume’s critique on induction, Taleb aligns his thoughts on probability with Hume’s critique of induction. He then nearly immediately backs off from Hume’s scathing remarks on causality to say, well, no, we don’t want to go that far, there is causality.
The rest of the book is disappointing. Despite his address on the subject in a variety of ways, Taleb never returns to tell us what rationality is or how he realizes there is causation (to separate the signal from the noise, as he likes to say).
The rest of the book is a celebration of his own rationality. Very slyly, he then insists on his own rationality with the following structure (all the while admitting that he is not totally rational but aspires to be as such, at least in his career).
He demonstrates that scientists, other stock traders, humanities academics and so on often persist on their lines of consistency because they are beholden to such positions based on their career, despite their attempts at rational argument. He then states that because he changes his mind often in his work, he is not like them. Thus, as they are irrational and he is not like them, ERGO he must be rational.
Sorry buddy, proofs by negation do not work in real life.
There are a few failings that occur out of this.
1. Despite propounding on what is not rational (an inconsistency of basis given what is actually driving their work) Taleb fails to explain what is rational.
2. Taleb insists that he understands that there is causation despite Hume’s critique of induction — but nonetheless never addresses that point. His proof by negation is repeated maybe two or three times, and then he leaves off at that. He utilizes philosophy’s context to heighten his remarks on others but neglects to engage at that level with that context when he decides to disagree with them.
3. Changing one’s mind mysteriously without explanation may be a perfectly good behavior for a stock trader, but it is not a sign of rationality. Instead, given that academics, scientists and politicians cannot change their mind because of their career, we should understand that stock traders judged on their performance MUST change their mind because marks change it for them. If stock traders are rational because they must match their career context to survive, does this also not signify the rationality of academics, politicians and scientists because their career context requires them to behave in a consistent manner? If we judge people’s behavior based off of their career isn’t the proof by negation faulty because Taleb switches basis to assess different groups? If he wishes to judge the veracity of one group on one criteria should he not also judge other groups on a similar criteria when comparing what is rational?
4. Taleb seems to take it for granted that economic thinking is what rationality is. His he wishes his discourse to be intellectually, sound he should address Hume in terms of economics, instead of just referencing him and a bunch of other thinkers as signals of his intellectual prowess.
5. Early on, Taleb states that in the long run, all strategies even out, that given profit and loss, there is a zero sum situation. Throughout the entire book, however, he states that traders who get exceedingly rich are often so because their strategies match a trend for a time. When those trends change, they will lose out. He cites his own staying power as a sign of his own rationality. Does this mean that in the end no one is rational, that he is only right “for now”? I would think that this reading does not match the desired conclusion he wishes to leave us with about rationality.
And finally, in this sense, it seems that Taleb has no conception of rationality other than whatever allows us to have staying power. If this is true then he has to take back his statements on rationality in the face of academics, scientists and so on. He should also consider that “lucky” trends like memes which are proof of human irrationality are in fact rational in their persistence.
Taleb provides little means for us to address the ideas he puts forward critically. In fact, while he is critical of others, he provides little basis for his own rational backing. This started as a promising book but ended up being very disappointing because in the end we have the IDEAS Taleb admires although in terms of actual examples, he ends up very nearly being the only example of what is rational.
Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a very engrossing book. Portia De Rossi reveals much about herself in the process. While its obvious from the beginning that she needed to be in a different place than where most of the story takes place for herself to be even considering writing such a book, she does take us to the mindset where she was originally for her own struggle to be possible.
This is a particularly cogent tale, one that reminds us that self acceptance is perhaps the most important aspect to being well, who we are. And that taking care of ourself (or caring) is, as early Heidigger stated over and over, the very nature of being and existing.
While I appreciate the clarity with which her writing presents itself, some of her struggle and transformation do seem to be clipped. I suppose one can’t really write about it except factually, to a degree, which exemplifies the narrator’s very rational and direct mind. This is a frightening story about how the contextual baggage of seeing ones self is often all we have. This story does have a happy ending. I am glad to have read it.
