Dark matter in astrophysics offers a rare treat for philosophers of science. When they look at the contemporary science of dark matter, they see reports of a widely accepted theoretical posit indispensable to our best theories and models but without an accepted experimental confirmation of its existence. Nearly all astrophysicists and cosmologists believe that dark matter exists and makes up approximately a quarter of the mass-energy content of the universe. However, they seem to know (...) almost nothing about its nature, cannot directly observe it, and have been unable to detect the products of any interactions with any of the candidate dark matter particles. This project addresses the apparent tension between the impressive knowledge taken to have been obtained in contemporary sciences of the cosmos and the methodological and theoretical limitations in obtaining such knowledge. To do so, this dissertation investigates the ways in which astronomers and astrophysicists are making progress by looking more closely at their experimental practices and actual theoretical commitments. More specifically, the goal is to determine how this bears on longstanding philosophical questions of scientific realism and the nature of scientific experimentation. Ultimately, I argue that astronomers do conduct traditional, interventionist experiments and that we can be realists about dark matter. These two views offer a way of thinking differently about how scientists can and do obtain knowledge about inaccessible and unobservable targets systems. -/- . (shrink)

This dissertation examines the dynamical dark matter problem in twentieth century astrophysics from the point of view of History and Philosophy of Science. The dynamical dark matter problem describes the situation astronomers find themselves in with regard to the dynamics of large scale astrophysical systems such as galaxies and galaxy clusters: The observed motions are incompatible with the visible distribution matter given the accepted law of gravitation. This discrepancy has two classes of possible solutions: either (...) there exists copious amounts of some kind of matter that neither emits nor absorbs radiation , or the law of gravitation must be revised. ;Chapter 2 describes the physical and philosophical foundations of dynamical inferences---inferences from discrepancies between well-founded theoretical expectations and reliable observations to the characteristics of candidate solutions. Chapter 3 discusses the history of dark matter . Chapter 4 reviews the present evidence bearing on the dark matter problem. Chapter 5 evaluates the important candidate matter solutions in light of the available evidence. Chapter 6 evaluates two candidate gravitational solutions on evidential and methodological grounds, and addresses the problem of theory choice. I do not try to solve the dark matter problem, but to uncover and evaluate patterns of inference involved in evidential arguments for and against candidate solutions. ;I show that Newton's "Reasoning from Phenomena" is a good framework from which to understand what is going on in this field. I argue that "higher order" and especially non-dynamical evidence is the best hope for solving this problem in dynamics. This is so in part because of "the dark matter double bind": the very existence of the dark matter problem means that we cannot be sure of the overall matter distribution in astrophysical systems, and this in turn means that the observed motions by themselves cannot provide relative confirmation of any theory of gravitational interactions taking place at these scales. I use Newton's Rules of Reasoning to argue that we should retain General Relativity as our theory of gravity at galactic and greater scales, despite the lack of positive evidence to confirm it over its rivals at these scales. (shrink)

Complex webs of loyalties—to people, to institutions, and to principles—ensnare even the most mundane lives. When played out on a stage as grand as the Star Wars universe, these various webs of loyalties—and the consequent betrayals of many of those loyalties—simply become easier to make out. For a narrative universe that is often criticized for its childlike simplicity, Star Wars depicts a wide variety of degrees and kinds of loyalty and betrayal. This chapter will examine some of them in an (...) attempt to clarify exactly what it is to be loyal and why it matters. To understand the central roles loyalty and betrayal play in the Star Wars universe, consider the path of its central character: Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. The two key moments of his life are both betrayals. First he betrays the Jedi and his mentor by joining the Sith, and then he betrays the Sith and his master by saving his son. The difference is that in betraying the Emperor, Vader fulfilled the letter of his oath as a Sith, and thus remained loyal to the Sith. It is only the motivation for his action that amounts to a betrayal of the Sith; the spirit of his action, rather than the action itself, betrayed the Sith. Had the betrayal been instead one motivated by seizing power, had Vader betrayed the Emperor in order to take his place, as he had earlier proposed to Luke, he would have remained a loyal Sith. Complications like this arise in almost every betrayal. Grand Moff Trachta and Grand Admiral Zaarin both betrayed the Emperor, but did so to preserve the Empire itself. Darth Bane betrayed the entire Sith Order, but did so in order to remain loyal to the basic tenets of the Sith. We betray one person to remain loyal to another. Given this, we have to ask, is there any inherent value in loyalty itself? If loyalties conflict, as they often do, how should we decide between them? This chapter will attempt to explore and answer these questions by considering various betrayals depicted in the Star Wars universe. (shrink)

The evidence of the phenomenon for which, in galaxies, the gravitating mass is distributed differently than the luminous mass, increases as new data become available. Furthermore, this discrepancy is well structured and it depends on the magnitude and the compactness of the galaxy and on the radius, in units of its luminous size \, where the measure is performed. For the disk systems with \ all this leads to an amazing scenario, revealed by the investigation of individual and coadded rotation (...) curves, according to which, the circular velocity follows, from their centers out to their virial radii, an universal profile \\) function only of the properties of the luminous mass component. Moreover, from the Universal Rotation Curve, so as from many individual high quality RCs, we discover that, in the innermost regions of galaxies, the DM halo density profiles are very shallow. Finally, the disk mass, the central halo density and its core radius, come out all related to each other and to two properties of the distribution of light in galaxies: the luminosity and the compactness. This phenomenology, being absent in the simplest \ Cosmology scenario, poses serious challenges to the latter or, alternatively, it requires a substantial and tuned involvement of baryons in the formation of the galactic halos. On the other side, the URC helps to explain the two-accelerations relationship found by McGaugh et al., in terms of only well known astrophysical processes, acting in a standard DM halos + luminous disks scenario. (shrink)

According to the standard model of cosmology, Λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Lambda $$\end{document}CDM, the mass-energy budget of the current stage of the universe is not dominated by the luminous matter that we are familiar with, but instead by some form of dark matter (and dark energy). It is thus tempting to adopt scientific realism about dark matter. However, there are barely any constraints on the myriad of possible properties of (...) this entity—it is not even certain that it is a form of matter. In light of this underdetermination I advocate caution: we should not (yet) be dark matter realists. The “not(-yet)-realism” that I have in mind is different from Hacking’s (Philos Sci 56 (4), 555–581, 1989) anti-realism, in that it is semantic rather than epistemological. It also differs from the semantic anti-realism of logical empiricism, in that it is naturalistic, such that it may only be temporary and does not automatically apply to all other unobservables (or even just to all other astronomical unobservables, as with Hacking’s anti-realism). The argument is illustrated with the analogy of the much longer history of the concept of a gene, as the current state of the concept of dark matter resembles in some relevant ways that of the early concept of genes. (shrink)

The essay begins by recalling the words of Homer that to live is to behold the light of the sun. For it is the ‘elementals’ of sky, sun, and light that give all things to mortal beings, including time itself, beginning with the daily alternation between day and night. But contemporary commercial and scientific projects threaten to change all this. Whether it be through the launching of tens of thousands of communication satellites to fill the night sky or (...) the creation of a sulfuric blanket in the atmosphere to block the sun’s rays to combat global warming, what is threatened is our very relationship to the sun and to light. The essay thus argues that what is today needed is a new ‘politics of light’, one that would guard the clarity of the sky. Needed as well is a philosophy that attends to things beyond the human life-world, to the elementals of sun, sky, and light, but also to the invisibility at the heart of light itself. Appealing to some of the most recent scientific discoveries regarding the hyper-giganticness of the cosmos, the essay concludes that philosophy must attend to ‘phenomena’ whose nature is precisely to remain concealed, phenomena such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy that are today thought to comprise an astonishing 95% of the matter and energy of the universe. Turned in this direction, the essay concludes, philosophy can perhaps reawaken the wonder that is at its very origin. (shrink)

Evelyn Underhill was one of the most widely read writers in spirituality in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to her nearly 40 books and hundreds of articles and reviews, Underhill wrote a significant number of letters of spiritual direction and led spiritual retreats in England in the 1920s and 1930s. Darkness and light are recurring themes in both Underhill’s letters of spiritual nurture and in the prayers that she wrote and selected for use when leading (...) retreats. These two themes also operate as a lens for exploring Underhill’s own personal, spiritual journey. In this article, the themes of darkness and light are explored in Underhill’s spiritual journey, in her soul care of others, as revealed through her letters, and in her prayers for retreat leading. Underhill provides us with wisdom concerning soul care for people experiencing darkness. She shows us how to help them endure and trust God when the light is gone. (shrink)

This paper scrutinises the tenability of a strict conceptual distinction between space and matter via the lens of the debate between modified gravity and dark matter. In particular, we consider Berezhiani and Khoury's novel 'superfluid dark matter theory' as a case study. Two families of criteria for being matter and being spacetime, respectively, are extracted from the literature. Evaluation of the new scalar field postulated by SFDM according to these criteria reveals that it is (...) as much matter as anything could possibly be, but alsoꟷbelow the critical temperature for superfluidityꟷas much spacetime as anything could possibly be. A sequel paper examines possible interpretations of SFDM in light of this result, as well as the consequences for our understanding of the modified gravity/ dark matter distinction and the broader spacetime–matter distinction. (shrink)

Recent attempts to explain the dark matter and energy content of the universe have involved some radical extensions of standard physics, including quintessence, phantom energy, additional space dimensions, and variations in the speed of light. In this paper I consider the possibility that some dark matter might be in the form of tachyons. I show that, subject to some reasonable assumptions, a tachyonic cosmological fluid would produce distinctive effects, such as a surge in quantum vacuum (...) energy and particle creation, and a change in the conventional temperature–time relation for the normal cosmological material. Possible observational consequences are discussed. (shrink)

When I was a boy, I was friendly with a lad who lived a few doors away. We used to take bicycle rides together and have gunfights on the waste land and light fires and play scratch cricket. Our ways parted as our interests evolved in different directions. There were no hard feelings and, indeed, much residual good will. Roger (this is not his true name, which I shall withhold for the sake of his family) did not share any (...) of my own developing intellectual interests and I felt none of his love for sailing. I was surprised, therefore, when one evening my mother came across an interview with Roger in the Liverpool Echo in which he declared that his real passion was `cybernetics'. I felt that I had misjudged him and wondered whether, after all, we did have more in common than I had thought. The next time I ran into Roger, I asked him about his interest in cybernetics; more particularly, I asked him what `cybernetics' was. My ignorance was genuine, rather than assumed. To our embarrassment, we both discovered that Roger, too, was ignorant about the nature of cybernetics. For him, it was just a word. It had something to do with science and technology and the future and seemed rather glamorous and was much talked-about then. It was clearly just the thing to impress the readers of a provincial newspaper. I didn't pursue the matter and we saw little of each other subsequently. The last I heard of him, he was doing well as an estate agent. Poor Roger could not have expected that his comments about `cybernetics' would have been taken up (`interrogated', `problematised') by a reader of the Liverpool Echo. This was hard luck. Even more unjustly, he was not awarded a tenure-track post in humanities on the strength of his allusion to cybernetics, or a Chair in the Systems of Thought at the University of Paris. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden’s Light in Dark Times (2020) began as an address by the president of the American Anthropological Association and was transformed into “a work of art and anthropology” by a member of the audience. The result was a coauthored book-length graphic essay that is expansive in subject matter, and in the representation of ideas, scholars, and questions about what it means to be human and how we will pass the time that is given (...) us on earth. Light and dark are central to the visual representations that serve as the background to a story about what is necessary to become a person who is honest. This critical assessment reflects on the content and form of that story, which predated the COVID pandemic, widespread political unrest, and assaults on truth, evidence, language, categories, education, and “others” in the US and elsewhere. The format is both challenging to read and interesting to think with. As teaching and learning increasingly become animated and visualized, Light in Dark Times is a worthy introduction to these ways of apprehending the vexing questions and conundrums presently in such abundant supply. (shrink)

The paper discusses this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for experiments of entanglement “establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” in a much wider, including philosophical context legitimizing by the authority of the Nobel Prize a new scientific area out of “classical” quantum mechanics relevant to Pauli’s “particle” paradigm of energy conservation and thus to the Standard model obeying it. One justifies the eventual future theory of quantum gravitation as belonging to the newly established quantum information (...) science. Entanglement, involving non-Hermitian operators for its rigorous description, non-unitarity as well as nonlocal and superluminal physical signals “spookily” (by Einstein’s flowery epithet) synchronizing and transferring some nonzero action at a distance, can be considered to be quantum gravity so that its local counterpart to be Einstein’s gravitation according to general relativity therefore pioneering an alternative pathway to quantum gravitation different from the “secondary quantization” of the Standard model. So, the experiments of entanglement once they have been awarded by the Nobel Prize launch particularly the relevant theory of quantum gravitation grounded on “quantum information science” thus granted to be nonclassical quantum mechanics in the shared framework of the generalized quantum mechanics obeying rather quantum-information conservation than only energy conservation. The concept of “dark phase” of the universe naturally linked to the very well confirmed “dark matter” and “dark energy” and opposed to its “light phase” inherent to classical quantum mechanics and the Standard model obeys quantum-information conservation, after which reversible causality or the mutual transformation of energy and information are valid. The mythical Big Bang after which energy conservation holds universally is to be replaced by an omnipresent and omnitemporal medium of decoherence of the dark and nonlocal phase into the light and local phase. The former is only an integral image of the latter and borrowed in fact rather from religion than from science. Physical, methodological and proper philosophical conclusions follow from that paradigm shift heralded by this year’s Nobel Prize in physics. For example, the scientific theory of thinking should originate from the dark phase of the universe, as well: probably only approximately modeled by neural networks physically belonging to the light phase thoroughly. A few crucial philosophical sequences follow from the break of Pauli’s paradigm: (1) the establishment of the “dark” phase of the universe as opposed to its “light” phase, only to which the Cartesian dichotomy of “body” and “mind” is valid; (2) quantum information conservation as relevant to the dark phase, furthermore generalizing energy conservation as to its light phase, productively allowing for physical entities to appear “ex nihilo”, i.e., from the dark phase, in which energy and time are yet inseparable from each other; (3) reversible causality as inherent to the dark phase; (4) the interpretation of gravitation only mathematically: as an interpretation of the incompleteness of finiteness to infinity, for example, following the Gödel dichotomy (“either contradiction or incompleteness”) about the relation of arithmetic to set theory; (5) the restriction of the concept of hierarchy only to the light phase; (6) the commensurability of both physical extremes of a quantum and the universe as a whole in the dark phase obeying quantum information conservation and akin to Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophical and theological worldview. (shrink)

The book explores the possibilities and limitations of dystopian imagination, asking if visions of horrific futures help us decide upon the best course of action, or if they paralyse us and prevent us from engaging in social transformation.

This article seeks to explore the metaphor ‘darkness and light’ and its relevance to education through hauntological study. It draws on the ideas of Derrida and Fisher to reveal that the metaphor functions in binary form and holds significations of truth, goodness and knowledge to subordinate oppositional ideas of darkness. Despite the everyday usage of this metaphor, the subordination of darkness is shown to be less positive than it would appear. Darkness and light also shows itself to be (...) an archetypal metaphor, meaning that it is founded in our depth-experiences of the world and is applicable in many varied contexts, therefore granting it a power to remain in everyday usage. The archetypal nature of this metaphor is uncovered through its utilisation in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, thus opening a discussion about how it continues to haunt education today. Broadly, it is the faith in the supposed betterment available through education that is exposed. Finally, in a Derridean manner, this article explores how the metaphor of darkness and light could be overturned in relation to education, thus destabilising a foundational metaphor on which education currently lies. (shrink)

One can make the case that we have lost the capacity for abstract thought. When we read or listen to the radio, the mind forms images in response to the suggestion. The same thing can be said to occur when an illustration provokes the viewer by its symbolic relationship to reality. Abstraction encourages the mind to bridge the distance from suggestion to reality. Art is the most benign and fundamental way of creating community that our species has discovered.

The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese philosophy, classical (...) Daoism offers a thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness as a positive contribution to human life, at the very least on par with light. I argue that both the Western criticism of the light metaphor, and the Daoist approach to light and darkness, can be read as challenging the metaphysics of presence and providing an alternative way of thought. (shrink)

Newtonian physics is based on Newtonian calculus applied to Newtonian dynamics. New paradigms such as ‘modified Newtonian dynamics’ change the dynamics, but do not alter the calculus. However, calculus is dependent on arithmetic, that is the ways we add and multiply numbers. For example, in special relativity we add and subtract velocities by means of addition β1⊕β2=tanh+tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\oplus \beta _2=\tanh \big +\tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document}, although multiplication β1⊙β2=tanh·tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\odot \beta _2=\tanh \big \cdot \tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document}, and division β1⊘β2=tanh/tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\oslash \beta _2=\tanh \big /\tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document} do not seem to appear in the literature. The map fX=tanh-1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{\mathbb{X}}=\tanh ^{-1}$$\end{document} defines an isomorphism of the arithmetic in X=\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{X}}=$$\end{document} with the standard one in R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}. The new arithmetic is projective and non-Diophantine in the sense of Burgin, 1977), while ultrarelativistic velocities are super-large in the sense of Kolmogorov, 1961). Velocity of light plays a role of non-Diophantine infinity. The new arithmetic allows us to define the corresponding derivative and integral, and thus a new calculus which is non-Newtonian in the sense of Grossman and Katz. Treating the above example as a paradigm, we ask what can be said about the set X\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{X}}$$\end{document} of ‘real numbers’, and the isomorphism fX:X→R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{{\mathbb{X}}}:{\mathbb{X}}\rightarrow {\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}, if we assume the standard form of Newtonian mechanics and general relativity but demand agreement with astrophysical observations. It turns out that the observable accelerated expansion of the Universe can be reconstructed with zero cosmological constant if fX≈0.8sinh/\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{\mathbb{X}}\approx 0.8\sinh /$$\end{document}. The resulting non-Newtonian model is exactly equivalent to the standard Newtonian one with ΩΛ=0.7\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Omega _\Lambda =0.7$$\end{document}, ΩM=0.3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Omega _M=0.3$$\end{document}. Asymptotically flat rotation curves are obtained if ‘zero’, the neutral element 0X\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$0_{{\mathbb{X}}}$$\end{document} of addition, is nonzero from the point of view of the standard arithmetic of R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}. This implies fX-1=0X>0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f^{-1}_{{\mathbb{X}}}=0_{{\mathbb{X}}}>0$$\end{document}. The opposition Diophantine versus non-Diophantine, or Newtonian versus non-Newtonian, is an arithmetic analogue of Euclidean versus non-Euclidean in geometry. We do not yet know if the proposed generalization ultimately removes any need of dark matter, but it will certainly change estimates of its parameters. Physics of the dark universe seems to be both geometry and arithmetic. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written between 1975 and 1987, covers topics including the doctrine of analogy, the Trinity, theological realism, the problims of evil and suffering, ecclesiology, and the so-called theistic proofs. The earlier writings relect the author's training as a philosopher in the Anglo-Aamerican analytic tradition. Later essays have a more explicitly theological focus, and they attempt to deal with and move beyond the tradition through hermeneutics, and literary and social theory. This collection thus addresses a wider list of (...) topics than is usual in works of philsophical theology, and is unique in its use of interdisciplinary methods and approaches. (shrink)

For the will desires not to be dark, and this very desire causes the darkness" (Jacob Boehme). Moving through the fundamental question of this paradox, this book offers a constellation of theoretical and critical essays that shed light on the darkness of the will: its obscurity to itself. Through in-depth analysis of medieval and modern sources - Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Dante, Meister Eckhart, Chaucer, Nietzsche, Cioran, Meher Baba - this volume interrogates the nature and meaning of the will, (...) along seven modes: spontaneity, potentiality, sorrow, matter, vision, eros, and sacrifice. These multiple lines of inquiry are finally presented to coalesce around one fundamental point of agreement: the will says yes, yet only a will that knows how to say no to itself, entering the silence of its own darkness, will ever be free"--p. 2 of cover. (shrink)

“It is less a matter of happiness and unhappiness than of darkness and light: one does not consist in a pure and simple privation of the other.” In contrast to Condillac, Diderot begins with the recognition of the mutually reflexive character of the state of suffering, which is independent of an alternation of pleasure and pain. Or rather, the painful state is spontaneously devalued without any invocation of a hypothetical state of constant happiness. The emergence of an affirmation (...) of physical pain belongs to the condition of the living being and assumes an immediate conceptualization of suffering, even in the imaginary state of an eternal suffering. For Diderot, questioning the meaning of existence goes hand in hand with this innate and unconditioned positing of an unhappy state. Such a postulate makes it more difficult to maintain the stereotypical view that the materialist attitude is one of indifference. Recognizing the necessary laws of matter and identifying disorders as rational productions does not amount to saying that whatever turns out to be necessary is in fact allowable. Matter conditions the constitution of morality, feelings, and thoughts. The human being, however, displays signs of revolt, as well as a capacity to adjust to his deficient states by drawing on the universal tendency of living beings to complicate the necessity of determining what is preferable and rejecting what is painful. To persevere in one’s being, and thereby lay down conditions for an assent to existence, is thus to weaken the pessimism of a blind necessitarianism. The establishment of a natural and material axiology then allows one to grasp the metaphysical implications of this medically grounded vitalism. (shrink)

There has been much interest in the recent philosophical literature on increasing the reliability and trustworthiness of computer simulations. One method used to investigate the reliability of computer simulations is code comparison. Gueguen, however, has offered a convincing critique of code comparisons, arguing that they face a critical tension between the diversity of codes required for an informative comparison and the similarity required for the codes to be comparable. Here, I reflect on her critique in light of a recent (...) code comparison investigating self-interacting dark matter in two computer simulation codes. I argue that the informativeness of this particular code comparison was due to its targeted approach and narrow focus. Its targeted approach (i.e., only the dark matter modules) allowed for simulation outputs that were diverse enough for an informative comparison and yet still comparable. Understanding the comparison as an instance of eliminative reasoning narrowed the focus: we could investigate whether code-specific differences in implementation contributed significantly to the results of self-interacting dark matter simulations. Based on this case study, I argue that code comparisons can be conducted in such a way that they serve as a method for increasing our confidence in computer simulations being, as Parker defines, adequate-for-purpose. (shrink)

Abhidharma, the genre of knowledge concerned with putting into systematic shape what the Buddha taught, can seem a forbidding subject. In this essay, taking Skandhila’s Introduction to Abhidharma and Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya as touchstones, I will try to shed a little philosophical light on Abhidharma as a variety of epistemic culture in the long fifth century C.E. in South Asia. To think of Abhidharma as an epistemic culture is not only to think of what goes into the making of knowledge (...) and its justification. It is also a way to counter-point presentations of domains of inquiry which stress the retroactive organization and unity of knowledge at the expense of the heterogeneity that goes into its making. More particularly, what is at stake is a feel for the diversity of epistemic machinery Abhidharma can involve and why such diversity can matter. The essay concludes with a consideration of Vasubandhu’s closing remarks, which suggest the importance of temporal contexts of intellectual practice in which certain styles of knowledge and virtues associated with knowledge may acquire variable salience. (shrink)

Big History provides a unique opportunity to consider the development of the Universe as a single process. Within Big History studies one can distinguish some common evolutionary laws and principles. However, it is very important to recognize that there are many more such integrating principles, laws, mechanisms and patterns of evolution at all its levels than it is usually supposed. In the meantime, we can find the common traits in development, functioning, and interaction of apparently rather different processes and phenomena (...) of Big History. Of special importance is the point that many principles, patterns, regularities, and rules of evolution, which we tend to find relevant only for the biological and social levels of evolution, may be also applied to the cosmic phase of evolution. The present article attempts (within such a framework for the first time in the Big History framework) at combining Big History potential with the potential of Evolutionary Studies. It does not only analyze the history of the Cosmos. It studies similarities between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History. Such an approach opens up some new perspectives for our understanding of evolution and Big History, their driving forces, vectors, and trends; it creates a consolidated field for interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics By LOUIS DE BROGLIE. Originally published in 1937. TRANSLATORS NOTE: THE Author has in certain places modified the original French text for the English translation, for the sake of greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order to bring them into accord with the results of later research. Occasional Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The chapter on The Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special historical interest of (...) having been delivered as a Lecture on the occasion of the Authors receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on Wave Mechanics and its Interpretations was given as an Address at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1928. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the University of Liver pool, for assistance with the translation and the proofs, and to Dr. C. Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted for valuable assistance in dealing with the equations and the more technical passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE: THE amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical point of view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole, and can be read by itself. A slight degree of repeti tion which the reader is asked to overlook has been the inevi table result for on more than one occasion I have been compelled to duplicate a summary of the great fundamental stages of con temporary Physics, such as the classification of simple substances, the investigation of the photo-electric effect and the origin of the Theory of Light Quanta and of Wave Mechanics the subjects are somewhat technical, and I cannot well assume that they are common knowledge. But though the same subject is outlined in several of these Studies, I have tried to take up a different point of view in each, and have endeavoured to throw light on different aspects of the essential problems of Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their importance. On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe that, while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure of modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the extreme delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists have succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts devised by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a degree the methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety during recent years, and how great has been the progress from the somewhat ingenuous Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of earlier thinkers. The more deeply we descend into the minutest structures of Matter, the more clearly we see that the concepts evolved by the mind in the course of everyday experience especially those of Time and Space must fail us in an endeavour to describe the new worlds which we are entering. One feels tempted to say that the outlines of our concepts must undergo a progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance of relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and Space, in other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary entities individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro cesses of interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an older generation of physicists, is forced to yield... (shrink)

In 1965, the discovery of a new type of uniform radiation, located between radiowaves and infrared light, was accidental. Known today as Cosmic Microwave background, this diffuse radiation is commonly interpreted as a fossil light released in an early hot and dense universe and constitutes today the main ’pilar’ of the big bang cosmology. Considerable efforts have been devoted to derive fundamental cosmological parameters from the characteristics of this radiation that led to a surprising universe that is shaped (...) by at least three major unknown components: inflation, dark matter and dark energy. This is an important weakness of the present consensus cosmological model that justifies raising several questions on the CMB interpretation. Can we consider its cosmological nature as undisputable? Do other possible interpretations exist in the context of other cosmological theories or simply as a result of other physical mechanisms that could account for it? In an effort to questioning the validity of scientific hypotheses and the under-determination of theories compared to observations, we examine here the difficulties that still exist on the interpretation of this diffuse radiation and explore other proposed tracks to explain its origin. We discuss previous historical concepts of diffuse radiation before and after the CMB discovery and underline the limit of our present understanding. (shrink)

The present article attempts at combining Big History potential with the potential of Evolutionary Studies in order to achieve the following goals: 1) to apply the historical narrative principle to the description of the star-galaxy era of the cosmic phase of Big History; 2) to analyze both the cosmic history and similarities and differences between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History. As far as I know, nobody has approached this task in a systemic (...) way yet. It appears especially important to demonstrate that many evolutionary principles, patterns, regularities, and rules, which we tend to find relevant only for higher levels and main lines of evolution, can be also applied to cosmic evolution. Moreover, almost everything that we know about evolution may be detected in the cosmic history, whereas many of the evolutionary characteristics are already manifested here in a rather clear and salient way. Of course, many of the characteristics are manifested in initial or nonsystematic forms but some features, on the contrary, appear to be more distinct just in the cosmic phase. And at the same time when many characteristics and features which are typical of biological and social evolution unexpectedly reveal their roots or protoforms at earlier phases, one becomes aware that the universal character of evolution is real and it can be detected in a number of manifestations. One should also bear in mind that the origin of galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects is the lengthiest evolutionary process among all evolutionary processes in the Universe. Such an approach opens new perspectives for our understanding of evolution and Big History, of their driving forces, vectors, and trends, it also creates a consolidated field for the multidisciplinary re-search. (shrink)

Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death danov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum-mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948-54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician (...) Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

Principles of Laser Spectroscopy and Quantum Optics is an essential textbook for graduate students studying the interaction of optical fields with atoms. It also serves as an ideal reference text for researchers working in the fields of laser spectroscopy and quantum optics. The book provides a rigorous introduction to the prototypical problems of radiation fields interacting with two- and three-level atomic systems. It examines the interaction of radiation with both atomic vapors and condensed matter systems, the density matrix and (...) the Bloch vector, and applications involving linear absorption and saturation spectroscopy. Other topics include hole burning, dark states, slow light, and coherent transient spectroscopy, as well as atom optics and atom interferometry. In the second half of the text, the authors consider applications in which the radiation field is quantized. Topics include spontaneous decay, optical pumping, sub-Doppler laser cooling, the Heisenberg equations of motion for atomic and field operators, and light scattering by atoms in both weak and strong external fields. The concluding chapter offers methods for creating entangled and spin-squeezed states of matter. Instructors can create a one-semester course based on this book by combining the introductory chapters with a selection of the more advanced material. A solutions manual is available to teachers. Rigorous introduction to the interaction of optical fields with atoms Applications include linear and nonlinear spectroscopy, dark states, and slow light Extensive chapter on atom optics and atom interferometry Conclusion explores entangled and spin-squeezed states of matter Solutions manual. (shrink)

“God is the light of the world and may his light shine before all” (Mathew 5: 14-16). The creator is the symmetric light which gave rise to asymmetric matter along with abundant cosmic energy that currently resides in the matrix of the universe; for the symmetry was broken with the big bang to create the universe. In the physical world, matter gave rise to biological structures to possess the electromagnetic soul and its processes; a localized (...) form created of the cosmic energy; in religion what we call the Spirit. Eternal cosmic energy is the source that supports the localized cloud of photons or the electromagnetic soul within temporary matter; propagates information across the systematic biological make up of matter; a key to the phenomenon of consciousness within the physical. Matter if corrupted or altered, leads to an imbalance in the life processes which can be healed with support from the eternal cosmic energy, as a healer for the soul. God is light; and in him there is no darkness (John 1: 1-5); for the creation was created of this light; filling the cosmos with the Spirit. Thus, we may know the ‘how’ of creation of the universe, its matter and its consciousness, but the ‘why’ shall remain eternally phenomenal. (shrink)

Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death ?danov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum?mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948?54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician (...) Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

Hartshorne (emeritus, U. of Texas), possibly the foremost living American philosopher, offers less a chronological autobiography than an anecdotal memoir and meditation associating his philosophical beliefs with specific life situations.

Chris Darke _Light Readings: Film Criticism and Screen Arts_ London: Wallflower Press, 2000 ISBN 1903364078 206 pp.

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

Chapter 12, on duties and moral obligations, has a clear function: accounting for the specificity of the Right, after the Good, and before the Virtues. Still, the same chapter leaves the reader with three different but related perplexities, which is the subject-matter of the present chapter: (1) Why would Dewey say, quite early in his career, that James’s treatment of obligation was “the simplest and best” and never use it again in his own writings, and in particular, in this (...) chapter? (2) Since we have previous versions of Dewey’s treatment of obligation in 1891 and 1908, are there some groundbreaking arguments or new concepts in the “new” analysis of duty and the Right? (3) Why is Chapter 12’s ending so “dark”? Why would Dewey devote a chapter to duties to conclude that “the new forms of lawlessness and the light and loose way in which duties are held cannot be met by direct and general appeal to a sense of duty or to the restraint of an inner law”? (shrink)