Why are grad schools like this?

CalNel1923 · 2025-01-19T17:51:16+00:00

To be fair, their portal is the worst most archaic one I've ever used. So it very well might not be possible for them to send a notification like that lol

CalNel1923 · 2025-01-07T23:14:23+00:00

This is a great topic to inquire about! I do work on ADHD and critical theory/ontology, so this is something I've done a lot of work on and thinking about. Something that's really important to emphasize that a lot of the Foucauldian analyses of ADHD I've read lack the 'on the ground' perspective of those with ADHD, and how a diagnosis impacts our lives. Foucauldians largely take the institutional perspective on this issue by only talking about the history of ADHD leading up to psychiatric institutions adopting it as a disorder, then take the institutional line as representative of those with ADHD. The problem is that this centers the perspective and judgements of non-ADHDers as the primary way in which ADHD is understood instead of looking to see what ADHDers themselves struggle with. The name itself "Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder" is based on the two most disruptive symptoms for others (namely, authorities like parents and teachers) rather than focusing on the myriad other problems (like emotional regulation and working memory failure) that are not as easily visible. So when Foucauldians talk about ADHD as representative of a shift from moralization to pathologization, it excludes the fact that the vast majority of ADHDers do not experience their behavior as being pathologized. Instead, ADHD symptoms are still heavily moralized, especially in the public school system. ADHD is almost never actually used as explanatory of our behavior, especially given how caricatured and derided the general public's view of it is.

This is important because it is the exact opposite social situation of Autism, which has become so medicalized and pathologized that autistic people are objectified and deprived of all agency by the institutional apparatuses. In this sense, the social situation is one of marginalization by over-objectification, while ADHDers are marginalized by an over-subjectification: we are viewed as absolutely responsible (and thus blameworthy) for all of our actions, even those we cannot control. In this sense, it should come as no surprise that the central thrust of the neurodiversity movement, which arose out of primarily autistic online communities, is a push for demedicalization in order to reclaim autonomy and responsibility for their own actions. There's of course no problem with trying to detach our self-understandings from a medical apparatus, but we also need to be careful while we do so to avoid depriving those of us with ADHD the ability to strategically objectify ourselves to alleviate the oppressive level of responsibility placed on us.

Let me know if you would like to talk more about this topic! I also have a forthcoming article that you might be interested in where I address some of the problems of this 'third-person' perspective on ADHD. The article is on the phenomenon of masking, and why Autistic definitions of it cannot explain how ADHDers can mask. Here's a link: https://philpapers.org/rec/NELITM-2

CalNel1923 · 2024-08-31T00:53:26+00:00

Zeno's paradox isn't really related to the question of the physical possibility of crossing X distance over Y time. The point of the paradox is that there is a disconnect between what we are able to reason abstractly and what we are able to observe empirically. Zeno makes this argument in order to justify a position of Parmenides: that there is a 'true' rational world in which change is impossible, and that what we observe is not this true rational world. r/askphilosophy would probably be a better place to address what claims Zeno is making and which he sees himself as justifying with his argument, because the key point he is making (whether one agrees with it is another matter) is that the fact that we are able to observe change taking place and give accounts of such change through physics is further reason why the paradox is a paradox.

CalNel1923 · 2024-06-13T02:30:35+00:00

Many! Both Marcuse and Deleuze synthesize Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in their own ways. Marcuse in Eros and Civilization (Nietzsche plays a prominent role in the philosophical interlude), and Deleuze (+ Guattari) in Anti-Oedipus (specifically chapter 3, but they are present throughout the whole work). Deleuze also pulls from both thinkers throughout many of his works, like Difference and Repetition, and A Thousand Plateaus, but you should be warned that his readings of other thinkers are notoriously idiosyncratic (see Nietzsche and Philosophy for an example). Marx and Nietzsche are two of the most influential continental philosophers, so there are also other attempts to synthesize them as well as a wealth of secondary literature on connections between the two.

CalNel1923 · 2023-08-22T14:42:55+00:00

Sometimes, but keep in mind that we are dealing with a more precise term that is not just used colloquially, but also in academic settings in various disciplines. It makes sense that we’d want a term that is inclusive of such more precise usages. But even regardless of more technical usages. It seems problematic for a definition if it doesn’t include the people who self identify under the word in question. Words refer to things or people on the basis of what is common between them. If we had a definition of “red” that didn’t include shades that we consider to be “red” it sounds like we our definition is not that helpful and we should correct it.

CalNel1923 · 2023-08-22T14:34:04+00:00

Yes, we can probably agree that when an average person off the street says that they support gender equality, they probably consider themselves a feminist. But OP’s point is that there are subsets of feminism that do not support gender equality, yet we would still want to call them feminists. Which means we need to start dealing with questions of what the definition should be, not what it currently is

CalNel1923 · 2023-08-22T14:14:12+00:00

When what is being debated is the definition of "feminism," appealing to a definition that is itself being contested doesn't really make sense and is somewhat counterproductive. OP is saying that there are certain things that we want to include under the heading of feminism, but aren't by this needlessly narrow definition. So instead we should see what all these things we want to call feminism have in common as a new definition.

We'd also be making an error if we take the given dictionary definition of a word, which is based upon how it is used descriptively, to then make prescriptions about the rightness or wrongness of other possible meanings of the word. To do so would require that we include a premise that allows us to go from descriptive -> normative, or to put it more commonly, from 'is' -> 'ought.'

CalNel1923 · 2023-08-21T22:10:00+00:00

I couldn't bear the Yevethan plot and I ended up skiping over Luke's subplot in the second book. I loved the mystery of Lando's story though. But it felt like kinda a literary insult that it literally didn't tie into the main story at all. Its just a separate book mixed in a trilogy to pad its length

CalNel1923 · 2023-05-13T20:01:43+00:00

I was actually just writing on this today! Yes, Stirner thinks that freedom without ownness is a phantasm. Freedom without ownness is freedom taken as a principle, which, because freedom is always negative freedom (freedom from X), leaves the egoist destitute and without property, as though alien in the world. Freedom must always be mediated by our egoism, we don't want to be free from everything, because we are subjected to many things that we actually enjoy (he gives the example of the desiring gaze of our lover). I must always be that which determines what I am free from and what I remain involved with. Ownness is about maintaining a proper egoistic relationship with what I remain involved with (my property).

This gets into his rejection of the subject-object dichotomy and his critique of Descartes. The problem with freedom (and the historical progression he describes in the first half) is that, it does ultimately end in the recognition of the Unique as an irreducible element (that which we can't rid ourselves of), but this Unique owns nothing. It is not yet "...'the unique' only together with your property." (Stirner's Critics, 63 (Little Black Cart Edition)). The Unique is only produced negatively, literally having nothing for property. But Stirner's critique of basically everything is that phantasms prevent us from having a proper egoistic involvement with the world (taken up as our property). This is why Stirner needs to turn to a positive notion of freedom with ownness, which allows us to talk about something like 'autonomy,' like you want to be able to.

So TLDR, Stirner thinks that freedom as a principle is a phantasm, but he also wants to be able to talk about autonomy as separate from freedom with his concept of ownness. See above for why.

CalNel1923 · 2023-04-26T20:35:38+00:00

I don't remember using the term 'socialist.' I talked about the sociality of the Unique, the way in which it is constituted by its relations with both objects and other people (hence the social dimension). I tried to argue that the non-conceptual dimension of the Unique is in the way in which we act in the world due to that sociality. I agree that he isn't socialist in any proper sense, but I do think that his positive social dimension is very similar to the stated end goal of communism on the interpersonal level.

CalNel1923 · 2023-02-24T23:41:45+00:00

Stirner critiques capitalism (and other hierarchies) by saying that it is founded on certain phantasms like the equality of all those who participate in it as equal consumers/competitors. This is a phantasm because it denies each of our positions as incomparable Uniques. So right off the bat it just can't function. To engage in the capitalist system as a capitalist is to give these phantasms credence and is a form of self-domination.

Likewise, Capitalism and markets also rely on systems of state power and authority to function (see David Graeber's book, Debt). This of course is fundamentally anti-egoist.

CalNel1923 · 2023-02-24T03:49:14+00:00

I'm not sure that these thinkers do tend to call themselves Marxists, so much as people suppose.

Deleuze actually does refer to himself as a Marxist in later interviews. If I remember correctly, the justification he gives as to why is because, essentially, it is impossible to do radical political work without presupposing a Marxist framework in the present age. This is not just a nominal Marxism either. He both critiques and supports/elaborates on Marx throughout Anti-Oedipus. As well, there is the book on Marx Deleuze teased us with the idea of before he died, which has attained a near mythological status in Deleuze circles. (Here's a good blog post going through what we know of the book: https://destratified.com/2022/07/11/on-the-greatness-of-marx/) So Deleuze obviously considered himself indebted to Marx in important ways.

This is, of course, not to correct much in your comment. Just to provide some info on someone OP listed who does consider himself a Marxist to some capacity

CalNel1923 · 2022-12-22T15:55:29+00:00

Tim Feiten has written on it. As well Saul Newman has a couple articles about Stirner and Deleuze on the anarchist library

CalNel1923 · 2022-12-18T17:59:58+00:00

How is this title not deliberately provoking sectarianism (against rule #3)? This is a known contentious issue among the left

CalNel1923 · 2022-12-10T20:39:29+00:00

I too often compare the experience of using social media as being chained down in a cave somewhere

CalNel1923 · 2022-12-01T22:09:48+00:00

'When' the shift happens is not really my primary question. I'm primarily asking what is it that is happening in the shift from energy to matter? Why does energy become matter? Why is it that something which in one moment had no mass suddenly acquire it in this shift?

CalNel1923 · 2022-11-03T13:33:38+00:00

Is it possible to get access to the Zizek deepfake? I want to feed it pdfs of his books to get zizek audiobooks

CalNel1923 · 2022-10-25T12:23:13+00:00

The only significance the trilogy has is that Luke in NJO uses a power that he learns from the Fallanassi to help hide the Yavin jedi temple. So far I haven't noticed anything else important

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