Visiting Speaker

Dear All,

The Philosophy section has a visiting speaker tomorrow at 1pm in room 215 of the ICAN.

Mental Health: Extreme Sport for Thinkers. Mr Jim Bunker, NHS Healthcare Trust.

This will be of interest to anyone interested in the Philosophy of Mind, Issues surrounding mental health, and practical ethics, and place philosophy has in mental healthcare.

Philosophy Reading Group - Hegel, History and Politics

Hi Everyone

Next term we will commence a new staff-student reading group focussing upon the ideas of the highly influential Franco-Russian philosopher Alexander Kojeve. There will be three sessions in all.

Session 1: Weds April 27th - Kojeve and the End of History Debate
Session 2: Weds May 11th - Kojeve and the Nature of Philosophy
Session 3: Weds May 18th - Kojeve and the Master-Slave Dialectic

Kojeve was a very significant but often silent influence on the development of 20th century western philosophy. Much contemporary French philosophy owes a huge debt to his interesting and innovative reading of Hegel.

In the first session, Neil and Patrick will discuss Kojeve's influence on contemporary political philosophy.

Readings for the first sesssion can be obtained from the box outside my office, rm 213, on the second floor of the George Eliot building.

These sessions should be of interest to all those taking Phil 205, Social and Political Philosophy, as well as those wnating to continue with Philosophy at post-graduate level.

All sessions take place 1-2.45 in room 219.

Hopefully we will see quite a few of your there!

Cheers

Neil

Philosophy: Events Week Screening

Der Ister (The Danube) - Barrison and Ross, 2004.

Tuesday Feb 15th, 11am-2.30pm, rm. 219.


'The Ister is a 3000km journey to the heart of Europe, from the mouth of the Danube river on the Black Sea, to its source in the German Black Forest. Hailed by Scott Foundas of Variety as "a philosophical feast—at which it is possible to gorge oneself yet leave feeling elated,” the film is based on the work of one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, who in 1933 swore allegiance to the National Socialists. By joining a vast philosophical narrative with an epic voyage along Europe’s greatest waterway, The Ister invites you to unravel the extraordinary past and future of ‘the West.’
Awarded the National Research Cinemas Association (GNCR) Prize at the Marseille International Documentary Festival in 2004, and the Quebec Film Critic’s Association Documentary Prize at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal, 2004' (from the film's website at www.theister.com).

Paul Virilio on philosophy and literature...

In a tv interview,

Cyberwar, God And Television: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=62

Paul Virilio asserts:
>
I always write with images. I cannot write a book if I don't have images.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse. Writing is not possible without images. Yet, images don't have to be descriptive; they can be concepts, and Deleuze and I often discuss this point. Concepts are mental images.<<

Two interesting points for consideration here:

1]Writing isn't possible without images (and the concomitant remark about philosophy as part of literature!)

2]Images can be concepts--and concepts are mental images.

The notion that concepts are mental images seems at least open to debate to me, since concepts are usually seen as separate from images, based on cognition rather than pictorially imbued (?) One has a mental image of a cat, does this predate the concept of the cat, or is the mental image of the cat identical to the concept of it?? Or, can one grasp the concept of a cat without a corresponding mental image?

Hmmm

Ruth

The Human Brain Analogy

The trend, in relatively recent years has been to think of ourselves and perhaps more specifically our brains as very sophisticated computers. Prior to this, top scientific minds understood the brain as though it were some sort of very complicated clockwork mechanism. In this short article I would like to make an effort to counter this trend of anthropomorphic infatuation with our ‘highest’ technology and so posit the notion that the human brain is like a very sophisticated potato.

If you look at the facts I think you’ll agree. In terms of shape, size (admittedly that would be a large potato) and chemical composition a human brain is much more like a potato than the tiny silicon chip that can be found in any number of computational devices. I’ve had a look about online and most accounts seem to suggest that a human brain is approximately 75-80% water depending on personal circadian rhythms and that potatoes are pretty uniformly around 78%, which for me is almost close enough to cause concern. Have we all gone totally mad and fixated on this benign head tuber when it simply has nothing to do with what makes us human?

I’m bound to say it’s possible. From here it looks as though the inevitable connection between medical science and medical technology has created an overly organised view of the human body. It is quite understandable as the technology, the tools of the trade if you will, is only capable of solving a technological problem. It isn’t that they don’t work, it’s just that the problem is partly made by the solution, when the solution is to make a diagnosis in analogy.

“Yes Mr Smith, you’re a mechanic you’ll understand. You see the body’s vital organs are like a car’s engine. If they do not receive enough oxygen then the spark plugs will be unable to burn the fuel in the chamber and the engine will not run. In short Mr Smith, smoking has blocked your intake valve.”

As horribly mixed a metaphor as it is, the analogy here serves a purpose but it is technological at it’s core. Mr Smith understands the mechanical results of smoking but that is all the analogy is capable of. And the same holds true for the analogous brain-computer. There are respects when medically, the analysis of the brain as though it were a computer will be useful, however in the case of trying to comprehend human conciseness the medical analogy is simply inadequate. As is any I suppose, so I’ll have to retract my earlier statement about potatoes.

Staff Student Seminar - Revised Programme

Philosophy – Staff Student Seminar Series 2011

Revised Programme


Weds Jan 12th 2011, room 215, Ugur Parlar - Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Ethics in 19th and 20th Century Western Thought: From Emerson’s and Thoreau’s Transcendentalism to Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic

Weds 19th January 2011, room 215: Neil Turnbull - Philosophers and Players: Narcissism as a Theme in Western Philosophy

Weds Feb 9th 2011, room 219, Ulrich Hass, Manchester Metropolitan University - Nietzsche and the Future of our Educational Institutions

Weds Feb 23rd 2011 Frederick Aspbury, room 219 - Hegel meets Freud: The Dialectic of the Subconscious

Weds March 2nd 2011 Ruth Griffin, room 215 - Through the Zizekian Lens Darkly: Lacanian Psycho-analysis and the Philosophy of Film

Weds April 13 2011, room 215 Jim Bunker – Working with Mental Health is an Extreme Philosophy

Weds April 20th, room 215 Patrick O’Connor - Desire and Pleasure: The Death of Life in Recent French Thought.


All seminars start at 1pm and finish @2.45pm.

All welcome.

My Top 10 Greatest Short Philosophical Works

There has a lot been said, and many charts have been compiled about the top 10 and top 20 greatest philosophical works. But I thought it would be interesting to collate a top ten of short philosophical works. Graham Harman (see his blog on the side links 'object-oriented philosophy') has recently spoken extensively on the idea of the TOP 20 books, so I thought it would be interesting to give a brief justification of what makes a short work great and include my top ten. I think this would be good for you students as well since it offers you a great entry into philosophy, in a concise but by no means uncomplicated introduction to philosophy. I know that 'long' and 'short' can be fairly subjective, but we can think of a short work as in some way self-contained, for example, one of Montaigne’s essays, which could easily be placed in a larger collection. Also as a rule of thumb, we can say a short work, at the top end, could take you a day to read if you put your mind to it. But what makes a short work interesting? The first thing that springs to mind is precision, and I don’t necessarily mean in the analytical sense. These texts are precise in the sense that there is a lot going on in them which is expressed in the minimal amount of prose, dialogue or even poetry. These texts stylistically embody the universal in the particular. To my mind Plato''s Symposium despite its length is exceptionally rich, having infinitly more depth, truth and rigour than AJ Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic. Secondly, I think that short philosophical works can provide us with an interesting historical insight. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (around 10000 words which is less than a level three dissertation!) has a unique ability to make present its time, namely the urgencies, political malaise and anxieties of industrial Europe, much more I think say than ploughing through Das Kapital. Thirdly, I think that we do not have to think of a short work as necessarily a book. We could easily think of some of Leibniz’s letters to Arnauld has having a huge philosophical impact, or a collection of Marcus Aurelius' maxims. if we look at the letters, this is interesting because it gives an insight into the biography of the philosopher. If we think of philosophy in letters we can see the human behind the interlocutor, and can gain a sense of their lived debate. Fourthly, for philosophical reasons, short works are great because we can get a sense of what the philosopher thinks is most essential rather than just engaging in the finesse of arguments. This brings a dynamism to philosophy, which might be lost where one has the luxury of working out ones arguments over 800 pages!

All of these choices are of course arbitrary, and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this, or a reminder of any omissions

So off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

Aristotle-De Anima
Plato – Phaedo (All of his short dialogues could be here but these are my favourites)
Plato – Symposium
Leibniz – Monadology
Hume – Autobiography
Kant – The Metaphysics of Morals
Nietzsche – On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life
Marx – The Communist Manifesto
Bergson – An Introduction to Metaphysics
Wittgenstein – Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus