page 56, line 5. Two case studies.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to post the 5th sentence from page 56 of Gibbon. Not bad, not bad…

“When the throne was vacant by the murder of Caligula, the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol, condemned the memory of the Caesars, gave the watchword ‘liberty’ to the few cohorts who faintly adhered to their standard, and during eight and forty hours, acted as the independent chiefs of a free commonwealth.”

And here is the 5th sentence of page 56 of Suárez, the other book nearest me:

“[Albertus Magnus] opposes Avicenna, who affirms that it is the metaphysician’s task to demonstrate the existence of a first principle; meanwhile, according to the objection of Averroes, there is no science that demonstrates the existence of its object, and God, or the first principle, is the object of the whole of philosophy.”

The Straussians would probably have a field day with that last point by Averroes.

blank page

Anyone remember the recent Facebook stunt where you were supposed to grab the book nearest to you and post the 5th sentence from page 56 for all to see?

When I was called upon to participate in this game, there was actually a book literally in my hands, What is Philosophy? by the usually fluid José Ortega y Gasset. But the 5th sentence on page 56 turned out to be atypically dull in that case, and I regretted the missed opportunity.

SPOONERIZED ALLITERATIONS, however, found that Prince of Networks was the closest book at hand– and it turns out page 56 of the book is a blank page between chapters.

another post on other media

aleatorist joins the Ian/Levi fray.

another thought on the videogame question

And here’s something else that has been on my mind since even before the recent spate of reflections on this theme.

Imagine that, somehow, this were to come to pass, and philosophers were designing game environments 100 years from now rather than writing books. Let’s say that this became the standard genre of philosophizing.

The philosophers of the past would then need to be translated into the new medium in order not to lose relevance. But what would be the standards for a “good” or “boring” Spinoza videogame environment, for instance?

We already have this issue to some extent with film adaptations of literary work. Most such adaptations are bad, but there are a few masterpieces out there, and even some notable improvements.

Bogost on the metaphysics videogame

If anyone can bring a serious philosophy videogame to life, Ian Bogost would be that person. AND NOW HE’S GETTING SERIOUS.

Funny to see some snippets from our early correspondence. I remembered the conversation, of course, but not the exact words.

Especially interesting is this claim by Bogost:

“If film was the medium of the 20th century, then videogames are the medium of the 21st.”

This sounds right to me, though Bogost will be able to spell out the reasons much better than I can.

If a medium suddenly starts drawing lots of new money, inspires fanatical devotion and near-obsessive behavior, and taps the imagination of thousands of gifted designers, then it needs to be taken seriously rather than being written off as “commercial” or “lowbrow.” Just as the theater was once viewed as the haunt of lowlifes before being retransformed into high culture, it’s possible to imagine that the great philosophical works of the year 2100 would be videogames rather than books. I still can’t visualize exactly what they would look like, but am starting to get more of a feel for the principle involved.

Constantine’s wardrobe becomes dubious

All right, this is too good not to post. Constantine is nearing death. Gibbon, who obviously doesn’t care much for the Emperor, sends him into the night with a final raised eyebrow– about his late clothing style. Being on Gibbon’s bad side is not a fortunate position, not even for the dead.

“…the emperor himself, though he still retained the obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. The dress and manners, which, towards the decline of life, he chose to affect, served only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the skillful artists of the times; a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold.”

Gibbon on horses

I’m posting this passage for the sole reason that it is beautiful:

“…the plains that stretch from the foot of Mount Argaeus to the banks of the Sarus bred a generous race of horses, renowned above all others in the ancient world for their majestic shape and incomparable swiftness. These sacred animals, destined for the service of the palace and the Imperial games, were protected by the laws from the profanation of a vulgar master.”

I know things get much worse after Constantine dies, but I’m ready to move on into the Empire’s phases of greater decadence. Constantine is starting to bore me a bit.

agreed with Levi on this

This is from another of his responses to glen’s comment on the “Flat Ontology” post (check below for the link).

“I think one of the key points here– and I’m in a rush so I can’t develop it as much as I would like –is that OOP is not a representational realism. That is, it is not the epistemological thesis that objects themselves are like we experience them. Rather, the human-world relation is one way in which two different objects grasp one another. The manner in which a dog encounters a tree or water encounters wood is entirely different and has its own structure of translation. In other words, it seems to me that both my position and Graham’s is already making the point you’re making.”

I’m often surprised at how quickly people assume that realism = a correspondence theory of truth.

Then there is a completely twisted use of the term, as when people call Berkeley, freakin’ Berkeley, a “direct realist.” Why? Precisely because he’s not a realist, and therefore what you see is what you get, so you’ve got as much reality already as it’s possible to have as soon as you open your eyes.

But granted, realism has so many different meanings that I’ve backed away from the term a bit. Even more confusing is that political realism, a.k.a. Realpolitik, isn’t a metaphysical realism at all, since it scoffs at the hypocrisy of holding that there are any values other than those of immanent power.

it was fun while it lasted

If you try to watch the video of DeWayne Wise’s great catch, this message now comes up: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by MLB Advanced Media.”

And in fact, I was pretty surprised that such a crisp piece of baseball footage was accessible on YouTube so quickly.

Composition of Philosophy. July 24.

Let me quote a few numbers from Chapter 1 of the book, which is now in final form. By “final” I don’t mean that I will never make further changes to it. “Final” simply means that if I had to submit Chapter 1 to press right now, I’d feel pretty good about it.

Chapter 1 is now an even 4,100 words, exactly the target.

It took a total of 6 hours and 31 minutes to write. At first that seemed like too much for what is essentially a mere 14-page article, but then I realized that this is pretty reasonable… The Chapter had no existence whatsoever as anything but an outline, and now, after a total of six-and-a-half hours of work, it’s ready for press in my opinion. That’s less than a full work day, so I guess it was fairly efficient. But it’s not clear that the other chapters will go so quickly.

Now, on the all-important question of the French signes… Even though my French version of MS Word counts only caractères, which means blank spaces are not counted, my old American version of AppleWorks does count the blank spaces, giving me the number of signes that PUF uses to pay the translator.

In the phone call the other night, I was told the book should run to 250,000 signes, as opposed to the 262,000 I’d been told earlier.

Forgetting the very brief introduction for now, with 10 chapters in the book, each one should have the approximate length of 25,000 signes.

AppleWorks tells me that Chapter 1 has 24,713. Good.

I’ll post again on this topic if by some chance I finish off the revisions of Chapter 2.