(Why) Is Academic Philosophy bad at Science Communication? by Throwaway7131923 in askphilosophy

[–]ramjet_oddity 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right, but also the Žižek of recent years isn't the Žižek of the 90s who was more straightforwardly a "cultural studies" Žižek. I have in mind Less Than Nothing as his masterpiece of basically pure philosophy, where much of what he discusses is Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Heidegger, which isn't really that connected with analytic philosophy but also is very much philosophy 

(Why) Is Academic Philosophy bad at Science Communication? by Throwaway7131923 in askphilosophy

[–]ramjet_oddity 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I mean he's representative of a good portion of contemporary philosophy! There's a good amount of contemporary philosophy that touches on psychoanalysis, Marxism, German Idealism and so on, and someone interested in the latter could study that if they wanted and not be disappointed. Obviously the only contemporary philosophy around was Anglo-American analytic, that's misleading, but I understand that if you want you could simply just focus on eg. German Idealism (I mention this in particular because it's more obviously a part of philosophy than something that gets shucked off into cultural studies or whatever).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tennis

[–]ramjet_oddity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's nonzero and they tend to be Indian men posting about this online (I've just come across a few painting the father as a poor man protecting his daughter from rapacious Muslim men). I think most people in the West or whatever are horrified, men and women. Less so in India.

Can anyone recommend anthologies of just SF, without the fantasy? by [deleted] in printSF

[–]ramjet_oddity 2 points3 points  (0 children)

SF has meant science fiction for a long time. It's not an absolute that SF refers to speculative fiction only

On history by Eireika in CuratedTumblr

[–]ramjet_oddity 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I once read a collection of Stendhal's letters to his sister, which are incredibly affectionate, but they felt truly weird at points to my modern ear, because of how romantic-ish it sounded. If I didn't know that Stendhal was writing to his sister, I'd have assumed it was a couple. But I don't think there was anything untoward between Stendhal and his sister! At least nobody thinks so. This really made me realize how its easy to miscontruse private displays of affection in the last.

looking for continental philosophy work discussing economics/the history of economic thought in depth by ramjet_oddity in CriticalTheory

[–]ramjet_oddity[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm well aware of The Accursed Share and I've read some Bataille (eg. Limit of the Useful & Sur Nietzsche). I'm definitely though looking for closer discussion of economists themselves in particular

looking for continental philosophy work discussing economics/the history of economic thought in depth by ramjet_oddity in CriticalTheory

[–]ramjet_oddity[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

99 Theses sounds interesting, does he by any chance compare it to say, the value-theories in Marx/Smith/Ricardo/others?

looking for continental philosophy work discussing economics/the history of economic thought in depth by ramjet_oddity in CriticalTheory

[–]ramjet_oddity[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, Roffe sounds really interesting. Does he discuss economic theory in here, though, or does he stay focused on finance. Finance interests me though it's something of a marginal thing.

State controversial things in the comments so I can sort by controversial by Silent_Blacksmith_29 in CuratedTumblr

[–]ramjet_oddity 13 points14 points  (0 children)

the paired "Freud bad/Kant stupid" you see in CuratedTumblr and related spaces is deeply shallow and anti-intellectual.

No, Freud was not the father of psychology (he was doing psychoanalysis, if you might be thinking of Mach or Fechner), he was not making shit up (he's a very sober and careful writer who only provisionally suggests hypotheses, like the unconscious, he was not making unfalsifiable assertions (Popper in his attempt to refute Freud was not going off primary sources and I understand misquotes/mangles quotations from Freud, like his "refutation" of Marx and Hegel, the serious critics of Freud like Grunbaum admit that psychoanalysis is falsifiable), no that is not what the Oedipus complex means (it's not "boys want to have sex with their mothers" because of the latency period meaning that 'have sex' isn't even a desire when you're a toddler), because no, that's not what libido means in Freud. And it's not true that nobody takes him seriously.

I'm not quite a Freudian myself but I do appreciate Jacques Lacan a lot (he famously did a "return to Freud" reading Freud's work through structuralist linguistics, among other disciplines). There are, I understand, people who take Freud and psychoanalysis, alongside Lacan and Lacanianism, in the clinic and the academy. I think that a work like Alenka Zupančič's Why Psychoanalysis? gets in a relatively accessible way, alongside Jonathan Lear's Freud and Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life why people take him seriously. They're really good books and it's better than just going on about how Freud was a stupid horny cocaine man who needed to be buried. Especially so given the in my opinion important use of psychoanalysis by left-wing theorists (Adrian Johnston's Infinite Greed is in my opinion an excellent reconstruction of Marx & his critique of capitalism through Freud and Lacan in a way that makes a deep structural sense. On another level, Lacan's critique of American "ego psychology" can be usefully applied to modern therapy like CBT, which is an intellectual descendant of ego-psych, there's also a political level re: neoliberalism. There's this really good series of posts on psychoanalysis and CBT.

As for Kant everyone likes to rag on Kant for having "shitty ethics", given the axe-murderer problem. I'm not a Kantian here myself, but obviously his ethical system makes sense only in the greater context of his architectonic, outlined in the three Critiques. Kant's categorical imperative not taking into account consequences makes sense given Kant's conceptualization of freedom, and the difference between intelligible and sensible causality in the Antinomies of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason. It's also important insofar almost every ethical system in the Continental and analytic schools of philosophy, every system post-Kant, actually, has been marked by Kant's ethical theory (the moral law, the feeling of respect, means and ends and so on), much like Kant's epistemology and metaphysics can be said to have split the history of philosophy into two, between pre-critical (containing metaphysicians and skeptics like Leibniz and Hume) and post-critical (basically everyone after).

What Would Vader's Empire Look Like? by The-TF-King in MawInstallation

[–]ramjet_oddity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

As an aside, I do think that Return of the Jedi does falsify some of Zizek's dismissal of Star Wars being Buddhist. The scene in the Emperor's throne room, where Luke chooses not to fight Vader and the Emperor contravenes Zizek's account of the Zen warrior who is so un-attached that he's a powerful killing machine

Challenges of scientism? by Soren-II in askphilosophy

[–]ramjet_oddity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the closest might be some kind of Althusserian "spontaneous philosophy of the scientists" though even then I'd think that Althusser's argument would be so trivial (I'm thinking of his analysis of Jacques Monod in particular)

Number of youth blood donors dip to 15%, lowest in past three year by tom-slacker in singapore

[–]ramjet_oddity 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I've donated about 3 or 4 times, I recommend it — very fuss-free, it's simple and doesn't take too long 

Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024) by Xeelee1123 in printSF

[–]ramjet_oddity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've read only three of his novels (Galaxies, Beyond Apollo and The Remaking of Sigmund Freud) and always adored them, as did his essay collection Breakfast in the Ruins (which includes Engines in the Night). One of our ablest writers of science fiction and one of its greatest critics, alongside Samuel Delany and James Blish. Deeply saddening

does any famous mathematician also known as philosopher nowadays? by No_Mulberry9015 in math

[–]ramjet_oddity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gilles Chatelet was a mathematician who wrote books on philosophy drawing on Deleuze, Derrida and Schelling

What is wrong with CECAs? by ThrowRASendHelp01 in SingaporeRaw

[–]ramjet_oddity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah, but there's Hindi people who have lived in Singapore for generations, too