Univ. of Michigan Library

Keep an eye on the University of Michigan Library. They seem to be at the forefront of adapting to the new publishing environment. Here’s A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH MARIA BONN about their plans to offer many out-of-copyright books in print-on-demand format.

Composition of Philosophy. July 31 (B).

It’s finished. The end-of-July deadline was met, with about an hour and a half to spare. It’s cause for celebration, and I will take care of that starting in a few minutes.

Chapter 5 took a total of 4 hours, 49 minutes, so it looks like four-and-a-half hours for one of these chapters was standard. That’s not so bad, going from nothingness to a publishable short chapter in under 5 hours. I’m not disappointed with the total amount of time needed for each chapter.

Final statistics:

Introduction- 1:06 1,982 signes
Chapter 1- 6:31 24,713 signes
Chapter 2- 3:50 24,587 signes
Chapter 3- 4:36 24,293 signes
Chapter 4- 4:44 24,436 signes
Chapter 5- 4:49 24,327 signes

Total= 25 hours, 36 minutes for 70 double-spaced pages (20,722 words)

The first thing I did was send a copy of the file to my gmail account. What I will do when returning home from celebration is print a hard copy. That’s not only for purposes of additional backup (though it’s important; I’d be a wreck if I somehow lost all these pages and had to start over) but also because I want to do the first read-through in hard copy form. Problems can go unseen when scrolling on a computer page but then stand out glaringly on paper. Also, I like to make marginal notes about weak spots and about unanswered questions that will need to be addressed in the second half of the book, whose outlines are still only in the most germinal form.

I’m going to give myself 7-10 days to brainstorm and outline, and won’t be making regular Composition of Philosophy posts until the actual writing begins. However, I may make intermittent posts under this category if any good ideas about procedures occur to me.

Thanks for reading so far; this has been an interesting exercise, and I have learned a lot already from doing it.

one paragraph to go

Just one paragraph to go, and then I’ll be finished with 5D and thus with the first half of the book. But now, as is so often the case for humans, I’d rather just collapse and go to sleep– sometimes finishing things is disturbing. What to do next? I actually know what I’m going to do next, but it still takes a bit of strength to throw off an unpleasant burden and put things to rest.

I don’t remember if the final paragraphs of the dissertation went like this as well; probably not, because at that point I was pushing my luck with a deadline (one of my committee members was leaving for Europe for a year on a specific date) and couldn’t afford to linger over the closing.

Back in a bit…

“The Taxonomic Fallacy”

This seems like a good name for a widespread fallacy, a name that I’ve used about 4 times in the current project already.

It refers to the assumption that, if two or more modes of being have been identified, then they must be specially embodied in specific kinds of entity, rather than equally at work in all entities. In other words, listing categories of reality is not the same thing as giving a taxonomy of different kinds of objects.

Two examples come immediately to mind.

1. Heidegger’s Zuhandenheit/Vorhandenheit distinction. It is sometimes assumed (at times even by Heidegger himself) that Zuhandenheit belongs to a specific class of entities: notably drills, hammers, shovels, and the like, and perhaps also to other things that might intermittently be “used as a tool.” Meanwhile, other entities, such as Dasein, are said to have a kind of being completely different from that of the tool.

But the point of Heidegger’s philosophy is not to classify different types of entity, even if he slips into that language himself sometimes. The point is to define ready-to-hand and present-at-hand as two ways of being, and I have tried to show why any entity, including Dasein, must have both modes. Namely, an object can exist in its own right, or can exist in truncated and caricatured form in the experience of another object. A hammer is not “more” ready-to-hand than a chunk of dirt, even if the hammer is more useful; nor is a hammer “more” ready-to-hand than a person, even if ethics frowns on exploiting people but not hammers.

2. A more general and more damaging instance of the Taxonomic Fallacy is when it is assumed that the evident difference between human psychology and the causal behavior of atoms entails that human awareness (or sometimes animal awareness) involves a basic ontological rift in the cosmos.

My argument against this is the same as the one above against a typical reading of the tool-analysis. Namely, the basic difference is between objects in their own right and objects as encountered in relations with another. This must occur in any relation, and relations stretch to the very bottom of the inanimate realm, meaning that the key dualism occurs at an utterly more primitive level than our very complex human minds ever occupy.

In short, the (possibly correct) assumption that there is something special about human cognition compared with the lesser gifts of other entities does not imply that half of a primal ontological dualism can be granted only to one kind of entity– the human being. We are perhaps psychologically and cognitively and historically special as it is. To call ourselves ontologically special as well is merely a sign of vanity and greed.

legal battle for Skype

Just because most of you probably use it, as I do:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/07/31/skype.lawsuit.threat/index.html

another from The Onion

*lol*

Cambridge Cop Accidentally Arrests Henry Louis Gates Again During White House Meeting
JULY 31, 2009 | ISSUE 45•31

WASHINGTON—Upon arriving late to his meeting with President Barack Obama and famed African-American intellectual Henry Louis Gates, Cambridge police officer James Crowley once again detained the distinguished Harvard scholar after failing to recognize the man he had arrested just two weeks earlier, White House sources reported Thursday. “When I entered the Oval Office, I observed an unidentified black male sitting near Mr. Obama, and in the interest of the president’s safety, I attempted to ascertain the individual’s business at the White House,” Crowley said in a sworn statement following the arrest. “The suspect then became uncooperative and verbally abusive. I had no choice but to apprehend him at the scene for disorderly conduct.” Witnesses said that Sgt. Crowley, failing to recognize Gates on their flight to Logan Airport, arrested the tenured professor in midair, once again at the baggage claim, and twice during their shared cab ride back to Cambridge.

Rolling Rock

from The Onion, of course:

Man At Bar Has Incredibly Complicated Reason For Why He Enjoys Rolling Rock

IDAHO FALLS, ID—Misinterpreting a bartender’s raised eyebrow as an unspoken question, Kenny’s Bar patron Neil Plottman delivered a long, convoluted explanation Wednesday as to why he ordered a Rolling Rock beer. “Well, when I was in college in Philly, me and my friend used to drink this all the time,” Plottman said. “Plus there’s the whole supporting-local-businesses thing, and the cool ’33’ on the label there, which not a lot of people know is a Masonic thing. Not a bad beer, once you get used to it.” Plottman then ruined a game of darts by explaining to the uninterested players what he would drink if Rolling Rock wasn’t available and why he had to drink beer out of a mug instead of a pilsner glass.

a quick note on acknowledgments

Incidentally, I also just wrote a brief 5-line acknowledgment for this book. There was no way to avoid it, because two people in Egypt and two in France were the ones who made this book possible, and I would be an ingrate not to mention them.

Same with Prince of Networks, where the ANTHEM people and the February 2008 event at the LSE were such a vital part of the book’s life that it all had to be mentioned at the start.

But generally speaking, as stated at the front of Tool-Being, I do not like either acknowledgments sections or dedications. I’m not saying others have to agree with me about this, but let me explain why I don’t like them as a rule.

With a book there is only one relationship that counts: that between author and reader. No one is forced to read your book, just as no one is forced to listen to your long stories in a bar. There has to be something in it for the reader or listener. This means that you cannot bore, insult, or exclude your reader. You have to address your reader as an equal in some sense. You have to care about what your readers are thinking, and you have to wonder “am I boring them on this page?” Because you have no right to bore them.

It is my opinion that dedications and acknowledgments either bore or exclude the reader, or both.

Let’s start with dedications. I don’t want to be harsh, because there have been many moving book dedications written to parents, spouses, mentors, deceased friends, and so forth. Each author has to make this decision independently; I’m just sharing my own thoughts.

There are only a few basic possibilities with dedications. They tend to be brief. Perhaps they are so brief as to be incomprehensible to outsiders, with allusions to unknown people, and in that case there is a risk of boring the reader momentarily, and I hate to do it even for a moment.

What else could you do? Dedicate the book to someone of greater authority than yourself. But this is a form of borrowed glory, and also faintly intimidates the reader, since it would imply one’s close connection with a famous author, a connection from which most readers are excluded.

You could also dedicate it to someone with whom you have a very close personal relationship. But if I were to write, say, “For Irena,” this would really just amount to dropping public hints about a love life behind the scenes, which is a form of showing off. And even if it intrigued some readers who are curious about personal lives, it would simultaneously exclude them from the privileged information. It would be a tease, basically.

If by contrast a book is dedicated to a known spouse/partner of the author, the reader is by definition shut out of that uniquely intimate relationship. Thus, a screen has been briefly set up between author and reader. (And let me repeat, I am speaking only of my own authorial preferences here, and pass no judgment on this very personal decision made by others.)

As for acknowledgments, there are two kinds: the boring and the exclusive, both of them bad in my opinion.

If it’s just a long list of 40 or 50 names without explanation, those are incredibly boring for the reader. If you want people to know they’ve helped, you can just thank them warmly or give them gifts.

But there’s another kind of acknowledgment that bullies or intimidates the reader: “I’d like to thank Harvard University, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Director of the British Library for their helpful assistance with my project. I also benefitted greatly from Jacques Derrida for lending me the use of his seaside condominium during the latter stages of writing this book.” OK, now you’re a big-time player, and most of your readers are not. A barrier has been set up.

But there are times when you do have to thank people, as in the two cases I just mentioned. In the case of L’objet quadruple I’ve tried to avoid boring the reader by being extremely brief, and tried to avoid excluding the reader from my relations with four people by adding one sentence saying “This book is dedicated to my readers, both known and unknown.” Sort of an apology for losing track of my readers for two sentences while thanking other people who really needed it.

In the case of Prince of Networks, I don’t think that opening LSE section is boring, so no problem there. The worry is that readers might feel excluded. I took care of that by inviting them to join Erdélyi’s mailing list and assuring them that he’s very welcoming.

I also had to thank Bruno and Chantal Latour, who did contribute an awful lot to the physical writing of the book. Of course, the danger is that it just becomes a form of attaching oneself to a greater celebrity while excluding the reader from that same attachment. I dealt with that by invoking the fact that Latour started helping me when I was a completely anonymous, unaccomplished fresh Ph.D. Instead of addressing the reader from Latour’s dining room, where they might not feel invited, I address them from the crushing obscurity of a Chicago apartment ten years ago. And there’s nothing in that to intimidate the reader in the least.

Anyway, that’s my own approach to the problem. Others might and do reject it, but I think it is vitally important to treat the reader like an honored guest, not like a failure excluded from a party of luminaries.

Composition of Philosophy. July 31 (A).

The post title above says July 31 (A) because I’ve only finished off the difficult Section 4D so far. I’ll give a final report after finishing 5D, which will end the first half of the book on July 31 as hoped, leaving all of August to write the more difficult second half.

Chapter 4 took a total of 4 hours, 44 minutes (how appropriate) from zero to completion. That chapter also happens to be on the fourfold, but I swear I didn’t do that deliberately, or even know it was coming.

In any case, this yields the following statistics so far:

Introduction- 1:06 1,982 signes
Chapter 1- 6:31 24,713 signes
Chapter 2- 3:50 24,587 signes
Chapter 3- 4:36 24,293 signes
Chapter 4- 4:44 24,436 signes

As you can see, I’m doing well with length. These chapters are all just as long as they need to be: just under 25,000 signes apiece.

The tricky section 4D came together as soon as I remembered the constraints! That’s been the major lesson reinforced by this exercise: writing, like thinking, means recognizing the constraints of a situation and finding ways to open doors and windows nonetheless.

In the case of 4D, I was simply expecting to do too much in less than one thousand words. I was trying to outline difficult theoretical problems that are already going to be covered in the second half of the book in considerable detail. That having been recognized, 4D was reframed more in the spirit of “easing the reader toward what’s coming,” and once that phrase came to mind it only took and hour and fifteen minutes to finish off that previous beast of a section.

5D won’t be as tough as 4D, and of course now I am highly motivated to bring this stage of the project to a close.

In the next post a few hours from now, I’ll have some general reflections about the past couple of weeks. My initial impression is still that the actual writing hours were fairly efficient, but there were surprisingly few such hours per day, certainly far less than the norm for me during writing periods.

The reason that came to mind earlier was “I just haven’t been into it; I’ve done my best in forcing myself to move along despite being strangely not in the mood to be doing this right now.”

There’s a bit of that, sure. I came back from England unusually tired, and the summer can mess with sleep schedules. But now I think it’s more something else… Namely, the act of miniaturizing ideas is exhausting. You all know the length constraints on this project and the reasons for them. I’ve had to compress a lot of ideas into these first five chapters, and have had to compress most of the chapters far below their initial length.

And I’ve come to realize that, despite the great value and hopefully great outcome of this exercise, it is extremely tiring. You have to choose your words very carefully, and risks have to be taken with cutting certain transitions and user-friendly language. The Montfort/Bogost Atari book keeps coming back to mind because I am most identifying right now with those programmers who had to use every trick in the book to create interesting, playable games for a surprisingly weak machine.

More specifically, I identify with those programmers they discussed who had the unenviable task of porting known arcade games to the Atari. There were already numerous fans of Space Invaders and Pac-Man in the arcades, and the poor souls who had to do those games for the Atari had to recreate them using far feebler hardware. In the case of Space Invaders it worked well; in the case of Pac-Man it was rushed (just 6 weeks!), and generally viewed as a terrible failure.

I think the analogy is a good one. Compressing the existing ideas of all my published books into 70 double-spaced pages is about as tough as porting Space Invaders to the Atari (I won’t mention the Pac-Man port, because I want this one to turn out much better than that). Every possible trick has been needed to make those ideas leaner and crisper than they are in my existing books, so that they can fit into a small space, and still without losing anyone (most French readers won’t know the first thing about any of my writings).

In any case, I’ve never had to do anything like this before, and I think I was condemning myself too harshly on the “number of hours per day” front. Every time I finish revising just one of these sections (and they’re only about 3 pages apiece), I have to crash on the couch or go out for a coffee. It’s that demanding.

By contrast, with normal projects it’s possible to rip out 20-25 pages on a good day. Not with this one.

See you in a few hours, with a report on the finale of this stage of the project.

“thar’ she blows!”

All right, I couldn’t wait, and some of you might really enjoy remembering these selected Whitehead “Whales” or even hearing them for the first time. Looks like I marked 13 whales, not 7 or 8 as I remembered.

These all come from Part 1, Chapter 1 of Process and Reality, which is short enough that I won’t bother listing page numbers.

“In its use of this method natural science has shown a curious mixture of rationalism and irrationalism. Its prevalent tone of thought has been ardently rationalistic within its own borders, and dogmatically irrational beyond those borders. In practice such an attitude tends to become a dogmatic denial that there are any factors in the world not fully expressible in terms of its own primary notions devoid of further generalization. Such a denial is the self-denial of thought.”

“It has been remarked that a system of philosophy is never refuted, it is only abandoned. The reason is that logical contradictions, except as temporary slips of the mind –plentiful, though temporary– are the most gratuitous of errors; and usually they are trivial. Thus, after criticism, systems do not exhibit mere illogicalities. They suffer from inadequacy and incoherent.”

“In its turn every philosophy will suffer a deposition. But the bundle of philosophic systems expresses a variety of general truths about the universe, awaiting coordination and assignment of their various spheres of validity. Such progress in coordination is provided by the advance of philosophy; and in this sense philosophy has advanced from Plato onwards. According to this account of the achievement of rationalism, the chief error in philosophy is overstatement. The aim at generalization is sound, but the estimate of success is exaggerated.”

“But the accurate expression of the final generalities is the goal of discussion and not its origin. Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics; and even in mathematics the statement of the ultimate logical principles is beset with difficulties, as yet insuperable. The verification of a rationalistic scheme is to be sought in its general success, and not in the peculiar certainty, or initial clarity, of its first principles.”

“Metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities.”

“If we consider any scheme of philosophic categories as one complex assertion, and apply to it the logician’s alternative, true or false, the answer must be that the scheme is false. The same answer must be given to a like question respecting the existing formulated principles of any science.”

“The primary advantage thus gained [of arguing boldly and with rigid logic from a basic philosophic theory] is that experience is not interrogated with the benumbing repression of common sense.”

“In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.”

“Thus one aim of philosophy is to challenge the half-truths constituting the scientific first principles. The systematization of knowledge cannot be conducted in watertight compartments.”

“It is merely credulous to accept verbal phrases as adequate statements of propositions. The distinction between verbal phrases and and complete propositions is one of the reasons why the logicians’ rigid alternative, ‘true or false,’ is so largely irrelevant for the pursuit of knowledge.”

“Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.”

“Each phase of generalization exhibits its own peculiar simplicities which stand out just at that stage, and at no other stage. There are simplicities connected with the motion of a bar of steel which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the individual molecules; and there are certain simplicities concerning the behaviour of men which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the individual peculiarities of particular specimens…. These general truths, involved in the meaning of every particular notion respecting the actions of things, are the subject-matter for speculative philosophy.”

“Philosophy destroys its usefulness when it indulges in brilliant feats of explaining away.”