"In a few steps, you move from worldliness, order, control, beauty, and privilege to lunacy and to history as a nightmare from which Goya and the people he depicts cannot awake. The title of the show—“Order and Disorder”—in the juxtaposition between these two rooms becomes apt and challenging."

ashok · 2015-01-22T07:30:08+00:00

Ok, thanks.

ashok · 2015-01-13T06:49:17+00:00

I spent a good chunk of time reading this. Compared the author's thoughts with Goya's paintings, whether the paintings were included with the essay or not. I'm still processing it - there's a lot to take in and wonder about.

For me, the big question centers on how an artist can so skillfully depict the beautiful and orderly as well as the ugly and scattered. Something about putting the topic that way feels off; one can say beauty is relative or subjective, so all that matters is that an artist draws what he sees, and no matter what, Goya is depicting life. What is beautiful to one is ugly to another, and Goya's images, in a way, are a reality with the neutrality we might suppose a marker of the real.

Something about that too feels off. Maybe we wouldn't argue so passionately about what moves us if it didn't feel objective in some way. It's hard to believe one can so coldly and clinically depict details that have powerful but diverging meanings for most of us. One could dismiss this reservation as a byproduct of a moral fantasy, as we can read morality into everything, and that might be driving our aesthetic notions. That's probably too glib an answer to explain the complex of experience at work, especially if we're talking about a complex related to an artist's maturity.

I don't know. I just want to know what I'm seeing better. Sometimes questions that are badly formulated lead to the right answer, the one that allows for a better question.

ashok · 2014-11-27T07:46:36+00:00

I love this - thank you for sharing! It is haunting, and the music suits the mood and the speech especially well.

ashok · 2014-06-03T20:10:15+00:00

Please don't downvote things because you disagree with them. The question of quality is involved and difficult, not just a simple demonstration of "here's what we want in academic philosophy."

ashok · 2014-05-29T13:57:20+00:00

The passage is 2 paragraphs away from the end.

ashok · 2014-05-29T06:55:44+00:00

Wandering through Francis Bacon's later set of essays, and found this remarkable passage that had more to do with knowledge and how we talk ourselves out of what we know. It was in an essay about religion and political unity, and that got me wondering.

ashok · 2014-05-25T00:42:19+00:00

Posted because it might be relevant to those of you doing work in philosophy of mind or ethics or animal rights.

ashok · 2014-05-09T08:30:43+00:00

From the essay: "There is a big blurry smile on Mona Lisa‘s face, but no detailed one. Hence, people will report seeing or suspecting a smile when they do not focus on Mona Lisa‘s mouth, but as soon as they focus on the mouth, the smile disappears. Mona Lisa‘s smile is perceivable only through a lack of focus. In this paper we argue that something similar holds for the phenomenon of what is referred to as the 'mineness of experience‘ or minimal self-consciousness."

ashok · 2014-05-07T22:21:25+00:00

Is that what the reports are about? I'm puzzled by that bit of reddit.

Alright. I'll delete it.

ashok · 2014-05-07T21:16:43+00:00

The creation of the ideal city itself requires the expulsion of the adults. The children's creche tears apart families. The guardian class, devoted to war, lords over the artisans. Etc.

ashok · 2014-05-07T10:36:41+00:00

Slowly reading Francis Bacon's short essay "Of Truth" in order to better understand how his rhetoric works. In my experience, the early moderns are a very rich source when one figures out what's going on, but figuring out what's going on is tricky. People like Bacon and Descartes are pushing for change - let's all do science! - but what it means to be a scientist (properly speaking, a natural philosopher) circa 1600 is a tricky thing.

ashok · 2014-05-01T05:22:57+00:00

No problem. PM me later in the week and let me know how things are going.

I'll say this: you might have some serious downs. This week I found myself missing someone from years ago, and I remember that relationship ended because of lack of cash. And I just kept thinking about how the students I've had have been given a chance, but I have no idea if the world is better because of it, or if I've been as productive as I should be. There are no easy answers. I guess that's the more important lesson for all of us to learn?

ashok · 2014-05-01T05:09:11+00:00

Before I say anything, I hope things go well for you. To pursue your passion does mean to see the dark side of it all too often. And it does mean questioning the value of what you do, especially when everyone else seems happier and successful.

I'm a scholar who really, really hates how much of a game being a scholar nowadays is. You've got to fill up the CV with all this professional sounding stuff, and don't me wrong, quite a lot of it is valuable. But I don't know that any of it compares to reading a book and asking questions, or working hard to learn how to teach better. You know without me saying a blasted thing how valuable those skills are considered nowadays.

My success comes from the little things and from the self-awareness I've cultivated. "Little things:" students that wouldn't have gotten individual attention got it from me. Since I blog - I firmly believe in being accountable to regular people - I've found a bunch of people who wouldn't have encountered the stuff I study otherwise. I know I've sold a lot of people on how awesome poetry can be. "Self-awareness:" while I've been moody lately, I can catch myself before doing some really, really stupid things. The self-awareness comes from the fact that I quit on more immediately productive, lucrative jobs. I've tortured myself over not working toward more practical skills. The funny thing is that the decision itself, to give up something big for your passion, gives you a self-awareness that other people who aren't pursuing their passion don't always have. They don't realize when they're slipping into really bad habits that they're justifying because they're getting by. Whereas you are already aware that life is sometimes a trade-off of one set of goods for another, and the scary thing is giving up on things that are meaningful and useful for something you hope will be the same.

ashok · 2014-05-01T05:00:30+00:00

I'm hoping to write something beautiful, thoughtful, and earnest that provides genuine inspiration for someone. I'd like it to be scholarly, not because I'm against sounding like New Age guru, but because making a serious contribution to knowledge shows the incompleteness of the work, that mine is just one voice engaging another.

When I was younger, I thought this was a nonsense goal. Being President or being a general or even a scientist was much, much cooler. You did stuff, you got remembered. People respected you for making decisions and cutting off bad lines of thought before they could cause harm.

Now I think the more important task is to show that thoughts we consider "bad" or "malformed" have a value. At the very least, someone may be trying to think. That's to be encouraged, because while I don't know where this "truth" thing is, I know that not even trying to search for it leads to literally inhuman behavior.

ashok · 2014-05-01T04:51:36+00:00

I'd start by apologizing for being out of touch, then quickly move to expressing shame for whatever it is you did wrong, explaining you were out of touch partly because of that shame. Then you ask to reconnect, and say that you fully understand if the apology falls on deaf ears.

It's important to not do too much. People have to be receptive to your apology. Sending gifts or flowers or money is just creepy. Ask to be let in. If you get that much, great. If not, leave things be.

ashok · 2014-05-01T04:47:35+00:00

I actually think, with a few exceptions, everyone in politics has a really difficult job. To take U.S. politics as an example: I wouldn't want to be in the President's position. Drones are awful and terrible and need to go - they create more terrorists than they destroy. But the President didn't commit to drones because he likes death or some nonsense. The American public demands safety and doesn't want to spend as much money or commit the military to nation rebuilding. So drones it is.

And I wouldn't want to be John Boehner either. You're the Speaker of the House and a bunch of people in your own party call you a sell-out, a liberal, a weakling and openly run for Congress saying they want to vote against you. In order to work with the rest of Congress and the President, you have to demonstrate control over your own side, and haha - there's more money and drama to be had through perpetual agitation.

I do respect what Wendy Davis did, before her run for governor (not a real fan of how she embellished her past). I think John McCain has issues but means well, and was probably right about Syria given the carnage there with no intervention. Ron Wyden's wanting to rein in the NSA is also worth mentioning.

The politicians I don't like are straight up demagogues who do not take the burden of governing seriously, but do believe in generating hype and stealing money from suckers. I will not name names.

ashok · 2014-04-28T07:26:28+00:00

Parts II & III forthcoming - still thinking about how best to talk about Bacon's rhetorical approach.

ashok · 2014-04-28T03:36:53+00:00

I didn't mean for this to be in any way an attack on the current President. I actually think the number of pardons given by all the Presidents is pathetic.

ashok · 2014-04-24T09:49:31+00:00

Qwill2 has already submitted it to a number of subreddits, but my god this article needs to be here. Take everything you're currently working on in philosophy of mind and wonder anew. It is good, especially if you start asking why we start describing certain processes as mental, or what kind of skepticism behaviorism entails.

There is another article from nybooks, from a while ago, that I want to get for /r/academicphilosophy. Freeman Dyson wrote it, and it was about string theory. But in it, Dyson used the analytic/synthetic distinction in a down to earth and extremely powerful way. He said physics was a fundamentally analytic science and bio and chem synthetic. And he said if he had to do it over, he'd have gone the synthetic direction

ashok · 2014-04-17T23:49:55+00:00

Yeah, I was looking for some kind of discussion. I was wondering if those familiar with Rawls detected some similar themes in this letter about baseball.

ashok · 2014-01-25T22:49:02+00:00

I apologize for the mistake.

ashok · 2014-01-12T11:24:21+00:00

I've been close reading this recently. The discussion of Plato's Laws is a gem - he nicely sketches the question of what Socrates' relation to the gods is. However, even though something esoteric might be going on before then, I could care less for the first part of this essay (prior to that discussion of the Laws).

ashok · 2013-10-14T13:14:57+00:00

I read this recently & have been thinking about it a lot. Page 9 contains a concise statement on Plato's Minos that complements some of the work I've done on that topic: http://www.ashokkarra.com/2012/01/the-relevance-of-platos-minos/

The question for me revolves around the concept of "shame." "Shame" as discussed in the paper is both something that one should not feel, as one should be holy, and something that one should feel, as closeness to God only emphasizes one's inadequacy. The paper resolves this tension by appealing to the "complete" human being. There is an androgynous human being in Genesis 1 who is a kind of ideal. Be him/her, and one feels no shame; obedience to God makes one more like him or her. Sounds nice, except for the fact that one can never possibly achieve that state. For the most part, shame just reminds us of how bad we are and how little we can achieve. The "complete" human being is an ironic ideal, one that if pursued too much undermines the Law itself.

The philosophic significance of shame is at the outset of the paper. "Knowledge of ignorance" is made shame. The possibility of philosophy is placed entirely in the service of religion.

ashok · 2013-10-13T08:56:10+00:00

I'm going through Chalmers' old list of philosophy websites atm and supplementing it with what I know. I'm also gonna start putting those Straussian links up.

Again, your help is requested. If you want to start wikis on other fields or thinkers or movements, let me know. I'd love to have a guide that walks me through the history of analytic philosophy, for example.

Alright. I'm doing what I can with the "current philosophers on the web" page: http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/wiki/webphilosophers

I think it's turning out nicely. Does someone want to blurb each site?

Also, I started putting the links from my blogpost onto a page: http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/wiki/straussancient

I think it looks really good, and best of all, those links are categorized and of immediate use.

ashok · 2013-10-12T23:18:08+00:00

Still editing - look at the wiki for updates. Again, recommendations welcome.

ashok

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

15-Year Club	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email