Unflattering photo

A Guelph student posted this 'creepy' picture of me. Thanks, John Findlay.

Quotation Collage -- 'Vulgar Materialism'

Pierre Cabanis: "The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." 1802

John Elliotson: "thought ... seems as much function of organ, as bile of liver." c. 1840

Karl Vogt: ‘The brain secretes thought as the stomach secretes gastric juices, the liver bile, and the kidneys urine.’ 1852

G. F. Stout: 'When we say that digestion is a function of the stomach, we mean that digestion is the stomach engaged in digesting. ... But if we describe the brain at work, there is no need to mention consciousness at all. ... If consciousness is supposed to be produced by the nervous process, the production is simply creation out of nothing.' 1899

Update (Oct. 19, 2009) -- John Searle: 'On the view of mental states adopted in this essay, mental states and processes are real biological phenomena in the world, as real as digestion, photosynthesis, lactation or the secretion of bile.' 1987

Tillich & Kierkegaard on irony

I knew that Paul Tillich anticipated some of the recent expressions of dissatisfaction with pervasive irony (inspired by David Foster Wallace's critique [pdf]). I finally found the quote. Here it is:

"The word ‘irony’ means that the infinite is superior to any finite concretion and drives beyond to another finite concretion. The ego of the romantic in Schlegel’s sense is free from bondage to the concrete situation. … Romanticism drives beyond any particular actualization of the infinite in a finite situation. Now this romantic irony breaks through the sociological forms, for instance, … the idea of the family, … the political stability, etc. All these forms now become questionable. … [Irony] always says ‘no’ as well to a concrete solution to life’s problems. … But if this happens, then with the loss of concreteness a sense of emptiness sets in. Schlegel had the feeling that by undercutting the forms of life, the beliefs, the ethical ties to family, etc., a situation arises in which there is no content, no obligatory contents. This results in a feeling of emptiness with respect to the meaning of life. … It is this dissatisfaction with any concrete situation, this ironical undercutting of everything, not in terms of a direct revolutionary attack, and not in order to transform reality …, but in terms of questioning, undercutting, etc. …" -- Paul Tillich (History of Christian Thought, pp. 385-6)

Update: Tillich must have been influenced by Kierkegaard's critique of pure irony. Here are some relevant passages (with citations at end of post):

'In irony, however, since everything is shown to be vanity, the subject becomes free. The more vain everything becomes, all the lighter, emptier, and volatilized the subject becomes.' (pp. 258-8)

'[Pure] irony is no longer directed against this or that particular phenomenon, against a particular existing thing, but … the whole of existence has become alien to the ironic subject and the ironic subject in turn alien to existence, that as actuality has lost its validity for the ironic subject, he himself has to a certain degree become unactual.' (p. 259)

'In order for the acting individual to be able to accomplish his task by fulfilling actuality, he must feel himself integrated in a larger context, must feel the earnestness of responsibility, must feel and respect every reasonable consequence. Irony is free from this. It knows it has the power to start all over again if it so pleases; anything that happened before is not binding.' (p. 279)

'Boredom is the only continuity the ironist has.' (p. 285)

All quotes are from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, with continual reference to Socrates (ed. and trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong [Princeton University Press, 1989]); quotes are taken from Brad Frazier, ‘Kierkegaard on the Problems of Pure Irony’ Journal of Religious Ethics, 32 (2004): 417-47.

Falling in love with an automaton

I revisited E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Sandman, which Freud discussed in his paper on the uncanny. Written in the early 1800's, Hoffmann's tale anticipates more recent fiction involving automata. E.g., in The Sandman, a character falls in love with Olympia, whom he then discovers to be a robot. Freud notes that this strand of the narrative isn't the source of the story's uncanniness, and that, if anything, Hoffmann puts the automaton to a humorous, satirical use. E.g., once Olympia is exposed, Dr. Spalanzani, one of her designers, has to flee to "escape a criminal charge of having fraudulently imposed an automaton upon human society," a crime that sows "an absurd mistrust of human figures." Indeed, to be sure they're not dating robots, men start requiring their girlfriends to demonstrate their human imperfection by singing and dancing out of time, which is a very different male response from the one in Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (where the realization that one is dealing with an automaton is uncanny). A similar motif animates one of the best episodes in the 1960's TV series The Outer Limits. This 1964 episode, 'Demon With a Glass Hand' (written by Harlan Ellison & starring Robert Culp), presents a woman's response to the discovery that she's fallen for an automaton -- she screams and runs away.

Update (Sept. 26, 2009): According to this Wiki article on the 'Uncanny Valley', real automata inspire only revulsion.

Update (Sept. 27, 2009): Unsurprisingly, there's also an old Twilight Zone episode featuring a relationship between a human person and a automaton. It's called 'The Lonely'.

Update (Oct. 4, 2009): And of course there's a Star Trek episode (from the original series) to be cited. It's called 'What are little girls made of?' It featured several 'androids', the best one of which was the obvious robot, Ruk (who was played by the same guy who played Lurch in the Addams Family).

Me here and there on web

My academic website includes my publications and conference papers.
I have a list of neat philosophical quotations, as well as a minimal YouTube location (which consists mostly of my favourite music videos).

I have a catalogue of my books online along with some reviews. I have additionally posted at Chapters/Indigo some reflections on books that I've read (generally not the philosophy books). Also, I'm on Amazon, Tumblr and LiveJournal.

My doctoral dissertation is accessible via the National Library of Canada's site. A couple of on-line articles that I co-authored with Andrew Brook are available here and there.

Here's a comment of mine on how to interpret Gilbert Ryle (at B. Weatherson's blog, Thought Arguments and Rants), as well as a comment on causal overdetermination at the same blog.

Finally, here's me speaking up for Jaspers and Dilthey at Brian Leiter's blog (Leiter Reports).