on the pleasures of fruit

I’m just back from the juice place on 26th of July Street, the same place where I was revelling in the green melon juice for quite awhile in late May. It was consistently excellent for most of that time, but then the last bottle I purchased was disappointing– the melon wasn’t completely liquified, so there were tiny chunks that ruined the texture of the juice. A friend then advised me that the good season for the juice of those melons is very short.

For that reason I’ve switched over to their grapefruit juice, which is marvellous. (Their peach juice is miraculous, but peach just isn’t my favorite kind.) Egypt does have good citrus fruit. Our University even has a Desert Development Center that grows and sells citrus as one of its major activities.

One of the few pleasant moments of news coverage from Afghanistan immediately following 9/11 came during an exchange between an American reporter and a local tribal elder, who was enjoying and sharing strawberries during the interview.

The elder said something like: “Ah, strawberries! Afghanistan has such delicious strawberries! What are the delicious fruits of your own country?”

I liked it because it wasn’t the expected and basically harmless patriotic gloating that usually appears in such cases. The elder was simply relishing the berries, and inviting the reporter to share his own experiences from a home country that the elder would never see. I wish more human conversation had a similar structure.

a reader suggests

I won’t have time to check this until late tonight at least, but I’ll post it in case anyone wants to look into this. (It’s from a trustworthy source.)

“Like many people, I’m really enjoying your ‘The Composition of
Philosophy’ posts. I know you are very much a adherent to the religion
of the outline, so might I recommend a Mac program which I have been
using and is truly excellent – its called Scriviner and can be found
here http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html . Basically its
a writing program made actually for writers. Let me give you an
example, for my PHD yearly review I had to produce a fairly long bit
of writing. So to plan it, in the religion of the outline, I blocked
it out in Scrivener, then I can edit individually, or as a whole each
section I’ve blocked out. It facilitates, therefore, the direct move
from the outline to the text. It also has a spiffy full screen mode
which is very sexy indeed. Once I’ve basically done the writing, I
export it to Word for a final draft and adding footnotes etc –
technical stuff like footnotes tends to distract me from what is going
on in the text ‘I’ll just check that reference on Amazon’ etc.

Here are a couple of screen shots to show you what I mean.

The fullscreen mode, distraction free writing that is great to look at.

http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y4f/yearly-review-2009.scriv-economics-of-religion

Project in progress

http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y3c/yearly-review-2009.scriv-economics-as-queen-of-the-sciences
http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y3u/yearly-review-2009.scriv-economic-theology

A more conventional outline, very very easy to use. Probably more
similar to the way you do things now.
http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y35/yearly-review-2009.scriv-economics-as-queen-of-the-sciences

Selecting more than one section brings up this view as well. The
‘corkboard’. I can then add the notes to block out the outline – ie
what this section will do, what the main reference points are etc.
Obviously you can drag and drop to rearrange the order, add new
sections, subsections etc etc
http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y3s/yearly-review-2009.scriv

This function is really cool –
http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y4r/yearly-review-2009.scriv-introduction
Or you can do this, obviously, editing one section at a time –
http://skitch.com/dyad/b2y4f/yearly-review-2009.scriv-economics-of-religion

So as you can see, I think it would more than suit the way you do
things, if not speed them up a fair amount. I’m not on commission,
I’ve just found the program so useful that I thought you might like to
know. I should shave more time off your already lean workflow.”

the metaphysics videogame

And here is Ian Bogost responding to that notion over at Levi’s blog (I told you Levi had a rich post today):

“I meant to say something about the hypothetical metaphysics videogame.

Graham and I first talked about this shortly after our very first conversation, so it’s been in the ether for years now. There are many reasons to find this appealing — and also frightening, given the tremendous exercise in concretization necessary to construct a good videogame, one about ideas that are all normally very abstract.

Let me throw out a question. Presuming there were to exist such an artifact, what do we think it would most interestingly and usefully include? Would be best serve as a historical or pedagogical tool, one that might serve as an introduction to ontology? Or would it best serve as an argument (of the sort that I describe in my book Persuasive Games), for example a demonstrative statement-system against correlationism? Or would it best serve as a toolkit, a sandbox for the manipulation of new ideas, such that it might serve as a sort of ‘Simetaphysics’ itself? Or something else entirely?.”

Certainly, it could be any of these. But the toolkit is the option I was thinking of. I’m not quite ready to work on this yet, but it’s on my short- to medium-list of things that ought to be done.

I was reminded of this by Ian’s own blog remark, the other day, that we are too quick to assume that philosophers can only produce one object: written texts. In much the same way, it was long assumed that artists could only produce two objects: paint on canvas, and sculptures in marble.

We’re way beyond that notion in the arts, but in philosophy we still assume that written texts are the sole available medium. Why not a philosophy videogame? Notice that people can play videogames for countless hours at a stretch without losing interest. They can return to it for weeks or months, trying to master it. There must be some way to capitalize on the same sort of intense, adrenaline-fuelled enthusiasm for philosophical purposes. If done correctly, it could be a revolutionary step.

one other point re: Levi’s post

“Those who do not present their ideas, who do not render them available, who do not link, lose. Period… Indeed, one might even characterize him as homo networkus, as he seems to be all over the globe at once, presenting his ideas, forming relations, publishing, and blogging. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with his ontology, this has effects. Indeed, one wins a debate not simply by bringing others to their position, but simply by creating an environment where others begin to respond pro or con. In other words, shifts in discourse are governed as much by opposition as by the formation of consensus.”

Right. I never turn down an opportunity to link my ideas to something else. I still remember the demoralizing effects of working in total isolation for many years, and though this somehow fits our heroic model of the ascetic dragonslayer, it’s usually a load of rubbish. You have to be prepared to accept virtually every invitation that comes your way, whether to speak or write.

The “creating an environment” remark is also crucial. Somehow people have grown very moralistic in claiming that philosophy is a matter of “arguments.” Well, yes, you’d better have good reasons for believing what you believe. But as I’ve stated repeatedly on this blog, an “argument” is merely the final stage in that process. It is the social form of an idea, the form that can be easily transmitted in debate. But social debate is the merest surface of how thinking works, not the very heart of it. If you have an idea that is immediately expressible in clear language without further labor, I can guarantee that that idea is probably superficial, useful mostly as a weapon for defeating others in oral combat that interests no one other than the combatants.

Here I’m a McLuhanite– the background is virtually always more decisive than the explicit content in any situation. And that’s why rhetoric is crucial, because rhetoric sets the emotional background for any dispute. It deals with the unthematized assumptions that govern any disagreement, while dialectic merely flips the dominoes of surface-figures.

How did Emerson put it: “Who cares for Spinoza’s arguments?” Something like that. We still read Spinoza not because he made powerful arguments (though he may have made some). We still read him because his view of the universe was highly original.

This deserves another post, because there are frequent attacks on “originality” as being less important than “truth”. But this is based on a shallow assumption that true means “accurate propositional content” and originality means “unheard-of propositional content.” If that were the opposition, then obviously it’s better to take accuracy over the unheard-of, which might include the most ridiculous fictions. But I contest the very notion that explicit propositional content is the site of either truth or originality. But that’s a theme for another day, because it’s too central to philosophy to address in a couple of throwaway lines.

But I insist… The handful of people I have known who were the most devastating in philosophical “argument,” especially in oral argument, have drifted away from philosophy altogether. This is not coincidence. You can either be deeply interested in the subject matter, in which case it will be a constant, lifelong struggle to find the right words. Or you can be good at beating up other people in debate, in which case the words are what primarily count. It is very rare to find both sides in the same person. Socrates would be the most obvious example.

second, Middle Eastern or American?

This part of Levi’s post was interesting:

“Second, I wonder how we are to classify Harman’s work. Is Harman an American philosopher? Is he a Middle Eastern philosopher? Santayana– a tremendously underrated and unjustly ignored philosopher –was, of course, a European immigrant, but is classified as an American philosopher. Should we classify Graham as a Middle Eastern thinker? I don’t know. In certain respects this would be an affront to our other Iranian rising star, Reza Negarestani. On the other hand, we enter into becomings by falling into different milieus of individuation, and that is certainly what is going on with Harman. It would also be nice to see a mainstream– i.e., non-historiographical –expansion of the field of philosophical discourse, more centrally including Middle Eastern thought. After all, it helped to kick off the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and continues to be a vital force in the present. Always define structures by that which escapes them or their tendencies of becoming.”

Obviously I’m not Middle Eastern to the same degree as Reza. I’m a 6th generation Iowa boy of heavily Czech ancestry, mostly Protestant on both sides of the family. Hard to be less Middle Eastern than that.

However, I’ve not just been in Egypt as a technicality. The intellectual milieu here, past and present, has been quite important for me. I made a point of becoming competent Islamic philosophy after arriving here (I said competent, not expert, but I’ve taught the class on it) and the nature of the influence has been spelled out in some of my publications.

There’s also the fallen giant of Alexandria nearby, and along with the seaside wind and light I love so much, there’s nothing like having Alexandria just down the road to suggest taking neo-Platonism seriously again. And I do. I see speculative metaphysics in its wildest forms as belonging to the future rather than the past of humanity. I don’t see why I am obliged to sit around waiting for laboratory reports to decide what I think about the universe. (That’s not a slam at science, which I adore, but a slam at the science fascists, most of them not practicing scientists themselves, who don’t think philosophy has any higher mission than to clarify the epistemology of those who are making the discoveries.)

But it’s an interesting question, how we decide the nationality of a philosopher. To take one example, I’d call Santayana an American philosopher, but not Whitehead. Although Santayana was pretty “exotic” for an American university professor, he did spend much of his childhood in Boston. And though he left America permanently at some point, he evolved and worked at his best in the United States, though he was nowhere near as attached to the country as most Americans who are reading this.

Whitehead is an interesting case, since he didn’t really blossom qua philosopher until reaching Harvard. But come on, he was an Englishman to the core.

What about T.S. Eliot? I consider him an American with English affectations, though perhaps that’s too harsh… People do have the right to emigrate, after all, and Eliot did his poetic work in England.

Was Plotinus an “Egyptian” philosopher, or a “Roman” philosopher? I would say Egyptian. But if he had moved to Rome as a small boy without studying in Alexandria, I might change my mind. Many of the Roman Emperors, after all, were not Roman in the least, but Rome was their theater of action, and hence we call them Roman.

Ethnicity should not be a major part of the story. Whenever an international newspaper says “Cleopatra was actually Greek,” there’s always some annoyed educated Egyptian writing a good letter to the editor to point out that, whatever her DNA looked like, Cleopatra’s family had been in Egypt for generations, she grew up in Egypt, etc. Cleopatra was certainly Egyptian, as much as I’m American rather than Czech.

What I consider myself to be is an American expat. Maybe if I get to be about 60 and haven’t moved, it would be time to realize that the majority of my life had been spent in Egypt and the vast majority of my work done here, and perhaps I could count as Egyptian at that point. I now haven’t set foot in the USA for two-and-a-half years (a personal record for me).

first, Levi and ontography

You’re too kind, Levi. But it’s a very rich post.

A few points, beginning with the simple.

Levi, you’re perfectly free to use “ontography” if you want. I’m not even sure yet how much I’ll use it. Remember the purely accidental way in which this term arose… I happened to be at a big celebration in lovely Aldeburgh in Suffolk. It happens to have been one of the favorite haunts of ghost story writer M.R. James. One morning I walked to a bookshop in Aldeburgh and bought the Oxford collection of James ghost stories, because I thought they’d be fun to read on the beach with the waves crashing in (I took a movie of those waves on my laptop, but can’t get it to post so far; too large).

With another party guest I was discussing the filmed version of “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (set in a fictionalized Felixstowe, further south; “A Warning to the Curious” is the on set in a fictionalized Aldeburgh). In that film, the professor is an extremely pompous ordinary language philosopher, telling other hotel residents that he doesn’t know what they mean by certain words. We knew he wasn’t a philosopher in the story, but couldn’t remember exactly what he was. On the beach I opened up to the story, and laughed out loud when I saw that the character was a “Professor of Ontography.” That happened just 6 days ago. It wasn’t until the next day that I thought: “hey, it’s always possible to make a serious term out of a joke”.