Philosopher submits gibberish fake abstract and gets accepted on theological conferences

Philosopher submits gibberish fake abstract and gets accepted on theological conferences

Jerry Coyne, over at Why Evolution Is True (a great blog), has talked about a real gem of a hoax, based on the original Sokal hoax. The Sokal affair was famous int he academic world and is summed up by wiki as follows:

The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax,^[1] was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmoderncultural studies. In subsequent publications, Sokal claimed that the submission was an experiment to test the journal’s intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether such a journal would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”^[2]

The article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“, published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue, proposed thatquantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.^[3][4] On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as “a pastiche of Left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense . . . structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics”.^[2]

The resultant academic and public quarrels concerned the scholarly merit of humanistic commentary about the physical sciences; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics, including whether Sokal was right or wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether the journal had exercised the appropriate intellectual rigorbefore publishing the pseudoscientific article.

Coyne relates how a Belgian philosopher of religion who is none too keen on religion did the very same thing to a couple of theological conferences. The philosopher, Maarten Boudry, has attracted Coyne’s regard:

Boudry has spent a lot of time showing that religion and science are incompatible, attacking the distinction between “metaphysical naturalism” and “methodological naturalism” (a distinction much beloved by accommodationists), and generally pwning “Sophisticated Theologians™.”

Both conferences that Boudry submitted his fake abstract to straight away accepted him to speak. Here is the utter nonsense that they stamped with their approval:

The Paradoxes of Darwinian Disorder. Towards an Ontological Reaffirmation of Order and Transcendence.
Robert A. Maundy,  College of the Holy Cross, Reno, Nevada

In the Darwinian perspective, order is not immanent in reality, but it is a self-affirming aspect of reality in so far as it is experienced by situated subjects. However, it is not so much reality that is self-affirming, but the creative order structuring reality which manifests itself to us. Being-whole, as opposed to being-one, underwrites our fundamental sense of locatedness and particularity in the universe. The valuation of order qua meaningful order, rather than order-in-itself, has been thoroughly objectified in the Darwinian worldview. This process of de-contextualization and reification of meaning has ultimately led to the establishment of ‘dis-order’ rather than ‘this-order’. As a result, Darwinian materialism confronts us with an eradication of meaning from the phenomenological experience of reality. Negative theology however suggests a revaluation of disorder as a necessary precondition of order, as that without which order could not be thought of in an orderly fashion. In that sense, dis-order dissolves into the manifestations of order transcending the materialist realm. Indeed, order becomes only transparent qua order in so far as it is situated against a background of chaos and meaninglessness. This binary opposition between order and dis-order, or between order and that which disrupts order, embodies a central paradox of Darwinian thinking. As Whitehead suggests, reality is not composed of disordered material substances, but as serially-ordered events that are experienced in a subjectively meaningful way. The question is not what structures order, but what structure is imposed on our transcendent conception of order. By narrowly focusing on the disorderly state of present-being, or the “incoherence of a primordial multiplicity”, as John Haught put it, Darwinian materialists lose sense of the ultimate order unfolding in the not-yet-being. Contrary to what Dawkins asserts, if we reframe our sense of locatedness of existence within a the space of radical contingency of spiritual destiny, then absolute order reemerges as an ontological possibility. The discourse of dis-order always already incorporates a creative moment that allows the self to transcend the context in which it finds itself, but also to find solace and responsiveness in an absolute Order which both engenders and withholds meaning. Creation is the condition of possibility of discourse which, in turn, evokes itself as presenting creation itself. Darwinian discourse is therefore just an emanation of the absolute discourse of dis-order, and not the other way around, as crude materialists such as Dawkins suggest.

As Coyne puts it:

This shows once again the appeal of religious gibberish to the educated believer, and demonstrates that conference organizers either don’t read what they publish, or do read it and think that if it’s opaque then it must be profound.

 Theology. It can sometimes sound like complete bollocks. Or is it that complete bollocks sometimes sounds like theology?

- See more at: http://skepticink.com/tippling/2013/02/26/philosopher-submits-gibberish-fake-abstract-and-gets-accepted-on-theological-conferences/#sthash.6f4RBWPQ.dpuf

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Nietzsche Meets The iPhone

Nietzsche meets the iPhone

By Justin Whitaker

The BBC has a story this week titled “Can filming one second every day change your life?“ (click for video) It makes for a useful meditation for the new year. The story features Cesar Kuriyama, who began filming one second of each day at the age of 30. What began as a one year project promises to be a life-long occupation. As he states in the video, “Trying to make the best movie possible is making me live the best life possible.”

This brought to mind one of my favorite philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who wrote in his last (and widely misunderstood) work, “The Will to Power” (1901) that you should “Live your life as a work of art.”

Life as Art

“Live your life as a work of art,” urged the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He did not have a story in mind but more an art like sculpture, in which one lives by creating a shape for oneself, “building character.” developing what we call style.’ The German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling saw the whole of life as God’s work of art. (We are in effect God’s apprentices.) Artists often describe their sense of mission in life as simply “to create.” but it is the activity itself that counts for then as much as the results of their efforts. The ideal of this view is appropriately to live beautifully or, if that is not possible, to live at least with style, “with class” we might say. From this view, life is to be evaluated as an artwork—as moving, inspiring, well designed, dramatic, or colorful, or as clumsy uninspired and uninspiring, or easily forgettable.

- via The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy by Solomon and Higgins.

Like an artist with her brush strokes, we should be conscious and intentional with every moment of our lives. Even if so much of our life becomes routine, we must know it as routine. And a routine, simply due to the number of hours we spend at it, should be perfectible.

Nietzsche’s work is often aphoristic and obscure, and in fact many (conservative/analytic) philosophers would hardly call his work “philosophy.” I think there is some truth in this and recommend that he is read through the interpretive lens of someone like the late Robert C Solomon. Solomon, who taught at the University of Texas-Austin, was the adviser for one of my own philosophy professors, David Sherman. Both understood the importance of historical grounding when teaching philosophy, which brings a sort of humility to the enterprise because it brings the philosopher’s words out of the clouds and back to the ground from which they, after all, came.

In this way we can see all philosophers as in an “all too human” progression which is merely historical and incremental and abandon any fantasies or false projections that one or another got it all right (the same goes for religion as well). All is a work in progress. Even Nietzsche, who might so strongly reject this understanding, is but a layer in our philosophical geology.

As Solomon writes elsewhere, Nietzsche isn’t really in such stark opposition to previous philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, but rather he is attempting to make their systems consistent (to himself and his day).

Generosity and kindness are marks of nobility (of strong Will to Power), the strong need rarely resort to cruelty. At times. Nietzsche goes so far as to say it is the duty of the strong to protect the week.

Nietzsche’s Will to Power Is thus far removed from the common imagery of military strength—the most powerful are not the politician and soldier, but the artist, the philosopher, and the aesthete. Will to Power Is ultimately control over one’s self; it is not license but restraint; not power to hurt or destroy but power to create.

- Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-century Backgrounds

Reading that, Nietzsche doesn’t sound too far from the Buddha, either.

So, in so far as iphone can unleash our power to create, I think Nietzsche would be pleased.

And the Buddha?

The Buddhist too might ponder the karma of his devices, as Rohan Gunatillake did recently for wired magazine, UK (here):

“For too long has the narrative around digital and the mind been negative. Pop tech is constantly being accused of fragmenting our attention, ruining our concentration and at worst dehumanising us. This may well be true. But is it because all of that is intrinsic to technology, or because we’ve just not designed our technologies with the mind in mind?

The convergence of three trends … suggests we will benefit from a new wave of digital tools that not only reduce stress but lead to genuine insight, wisdom and compassion.”

Will devices actually begin to liberate us from the frustrations of greed, aversion, and delusion – frustrations that are to begin with so intimately tied up with the stuff in our lives?

Maybe.

But to be on the safe side, go easy on the Angry Birds.

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Slavoj Zizek And The Role of The Philosopher

Slavoj Zizek and the role of the philosopher

Zizek “disrupts” ideological structures, the underside of acceptable philosophical, religious and political discourses.

Zizek (left) is “what Jacques Derrida was to the 80s” – the thinker of our age [Getty]

There are many important and active philosophers today: Judith Butler in the United States, Simon Critchley in England, Victoria Camps in Spain, Jean-Luc Nancy in France, Chantal Mouffe in Belgium, Gianni Vattimo in Italy, Peter Sloterdijk in Germany and in Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek, not to mention others working in Brazil, Australia and China.

None is better than the others. All are simply different, pursue different philosophical traditions, write in different styles and, most of all, propose different interpretations.

While all these philosophers have become points of references within the philosophical community, few have managed to overcome its boundaries and become public intellectuals intensely engaged in our cultural and political life as did Hannah Arendt (with the Eichmann trial), Jean-Paul Sartre (in the protests of May 1968) and Michel Foucault (with the Iranian revolution).

These philosophers became public intellectuals not simply because of their original philosophical projects or the exceptional political events of their epochs, but rather because their thoughts were drawn by these events. But how can an intellectual respond to the events of his epoch in order to contribute in a productive manner?

In order to respond, as Edward Said once said, the intellectual has to be “an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society”, that is, free from academic, religious and political establishments; otherwise, he or she will simply submit to the inevitability of events.

He exposes himself to criticism

If Slavoj Zizek perfectly fits Said’s description, it is not because he is unemployed, in exile, and at the margins of society, but rather because he writes as if he were. His theoretical books, political positions and public appearances are a disruption not only of the common academic style, but also of the idea of the philosopher or intellectual as someone to be idealised and deferred to.

A perfect example of this is presented in a scene from a documentary where the Slovenian philosopher brilliantly explains (while half-naked in his bed) that philosophy “is a very modest discipline, it asks different questions from science, for example, how does the philosopher approach the problem of freedom? The problem is not whether we are free or not; it asks simpler questions which we call hermeneutic questions, hence, what it means to be free… philosophy does not ask whether there is truth, no, the question is what do you mean when you say this is true”.

The surprise from seeing a thinker offer such a clear definition of philosophy does not come from the casual setting; rather, we have become too accustomed to elegant intellectuals hiding behind complicated definitions of philosophy in their university offices. Zizek instead prefers to be honest and expose himself to criticism in order to state clearly and dogmatically his philosophical and political positions.

His ability to fuse together Martin Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology”, Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” and Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” in order to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.

While many believe that globalisation made the Slovenian philosopher more popular than John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse, or Jurgen Habermas, it was actually his ability to disrupt our neoliberal democratic surety through the same events that characterise it.

Zizek’s disruptions begin as soon as we watch him deliver a lecture (which always draws large crowds) where he decomposes our sense of reality (using material as diverse as Hegel’s dialectical materialism, Lacan’s psychoanalysis and David Lynch’s films) in order to reactualise the dialectical method in philosophy.

For example, against the realist, who conceives truth as a permanent content that serves as an infallible corrective for all our thoughts and actions, the Slovenian philosopher indicates how this access to reality is only possible through what remains unthought, that is, symbolisation, the parallax gap, or the struggle for truth. The status of reality “is purely parallactic and, as such, non-substantial: It is just a gap between two points of perspective, perceptible only in the shift from the one to the other”.

The aim of Zizek’s philosophy (similar to hermeneutics) is to show that not only our understanding is dialectical but reality is as well: Every “field of ‘reality’ (every ‘world’) is always already enframed, seen through an invisible frame”. This dialectical stance allows the Slovenian thinker to call for changes through ideological reversals; that is, he shows that in order to overcome capitalism it is first necessary to abandon “all forms of resistance which help the system reproduce itself by ensuring our participation in it”.

This is why events like the Arab Spring, the OWS protests and the protests in Greece should not be read as “part of the continuum of past and present” but rather as “fragments of a utopian future that lies dormant in the present as its hidden potential”. This future, according to Zizek, will be communist.

The thinker of our age

Although Zizek has become a distinguished academic professor (in several European and American universities), the author of more than 70 books (such as The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Parallax View, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously), the editor of successful series (Insurrections, Sic, Short Circuits), a sharp cultural critic (in media articles and documentaries such as The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology) and a courageous political activist (in addition to having run for president in Slovenia’s first democratic election in 1990 and also a supporter of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation and the Palestinian cause), he is constantly criticised either for “endlessly reiterating an essentially empty vision” or for releasing more books “than he can read“.

“His ability to fuse together Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology’… to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.”

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1659202291001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAmtVJIFk~,TVGOQ5ZTwJaOnnPgAFUa3RPnyd849QP8&bctid=1247618890001

Predictably, most of these criticisms are directed not against his theoretical project but his political views, that is, communism. After all, 1989 was not only the year the Soviet Union dissolved, but also when the Slovenian philosopher’s first book in English appeared; in other words, in the year communism ended, Zizek (and many other philosophers) began to endorse it.

He still has not received an international prize, but not because he is not a serious or original philosopher, but rather because such prizes are given to the intellectuals who follow the predominant ideology, not those who disrupt it.

Today, whether we like him or not, Zizek is, as the Observer points out, “what Jacques Derrida was to the 80s”, that is, the thinker of our age. While Derrida’s intellectual operation focused on “deconstructing” our linguistic frames of reference, Zizek instead “disrupts” our ideological structures, the underside of acceptable philosophical, religious and political discourses.

Although it’s impossible to cover all the Slovenian philosophers’ meditations, which span from Schelling’s idealism through Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis and John Milbank’s theology, it is worth venturing into the political disruptions he has created (which I will comment upon in a later post) in order to further understand how he has changed the role of the philosopher, a role, as he writes in his two latest books (Less Than Nothing and Mapping Ideology) that must “articulate the space for a revolt” independently because when a revolutionary movement is denounced as ideological, “one can be sure that its inversion is no less ideological”.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. His books include The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), The Remains of Being (2009), and, most recently, Hermeneutic Communism (2011, co-authored with G Vattimo), all published by Columbia University Press.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Santiago Zabala Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. His books include The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), The Remains of Being (2009), and, most recently, Hermeneutic Communism (2011, coauthored with G. Vattimo), all published by Columbia University Press.

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