The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Renaissance Monkey: in-depth expertise in Jack-of-all-trading. I mostly comment on news of interest to me and occasionally engage in debates or troll passive-aggressively. Ask or Submit 2 mah authoritah! ;) !

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Kant famously believed his transcendental method disposed of the classical project of ontology. He argued that ontology was premised on a naive epistemological assumption according to which being (the thing in itself) would immediately be available to thought. Against ontology in this sense, Kant was eager to prove that everything that exists has to be constituted by thought, given that thought can only grasp what is compatible with the logical form of referring to something, which differs from the fact of being referred to. Instead of laying out the structure of being as such, he assigned philosophy the task of reflecting on the constitution of objects qua objects of thought.
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— Markus Gabriel, ‘Transcendental Ontology’ 

(Source: aidsnegligee)

Posted in markus gabriel kant philosophy ontology epistemology | 9 notes
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According to Camus our lives are rendered absurd by the no-knowability of whether or not there is a god; whether or not our lives have meaning (same question, different spin, not necessarily dependant on god). The question is then what to do when faced with this absurdity? Should we embrace nihilism or continue as if our lives have meaning? The conclusion of Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus is that “we must imagine Sisyphus happy.” It is not just that we must make this choice but that we can make no other. Choosing nihilism would be a meaningful reaction to conditions of absurdity because it would be our human choice. In Mearleu-Ponty’s phrase, we are condemned to meaning. (Here you can see the radical difference between Camus’ and Sartre’s Existentialism. For Satre we are condemned to be free. No such luck with Camus.) Pascal argued we should, logically, wager on God. Camus demonstrates that we have no choice but to wager on meaning. What that meaning might be we are welcome to fill out for ourselves.
— Talk:Albert Camus - Wikiquote
Posted in philosophy existentialism meaning nihilism god religion pascal wager sartre albert camus camus | 4 notes
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In a grandiose display of Foucauldian irony, one of the greatest anti-capitalist debates of our time has been reduced to an intellectual commodity. We wish to emphasize one important point. We do not contest Icarus Films’ exclusive legal right to distribute the debate within the narrow confines of our present legal order; what we do contest, however, is the very nature of that order as it prioritizes the private ownership of public knowledge over its widespread dissemination among the very public that helped to produce it. The creation and use of knowledge is a collective enterprise that cannot be jammed into the suffocating straitjacket of a privatized intellectual commodity. The video we shared was broadcast on Dutch public television in 1971. The production itself was paid for by Dutch taxpayers and made possible entirely by the creative input of two of the world’s most staunchly anti-capitalist thinkers, whose intellectual product was subsequently alienated by producer Fons Elders (a “professed anarchist” who also acted as the incapable moderator of the debate) and appropriated by international companies that did nothing to make the debate possible. Now the entire world is barred from seeing it just because this company owns an exclusive legal right to its distribution in North America. Again, our issue here is not with a distributor of great documentary films that clings on to a somewhat outdated business model in the hope of squeezing a few bucks out of a 40-year-old public debate. Our issue is with a system that forces the employees of such a company to chase us down the streets of cyberspace in order to satisfy the profit motive that the market imposes upon their boss. This is precisely the “private tyranny” of the marketplace decried by the great thinkers of the Left, including Chomsky and Foucault in this debate. Ironic, isn’t it? (via Chomsky-Foucault debate removed due to copyright | ROAR Magazine)

In a grandiose display of Foucauldian irony, one of the greatest anti-capitalist debates of our time has been reduced to an intellectual commodity.

We wish to emphasize one important point. We do not contest Icarus Films’ exclusive legal right to distribute the debate within the narrow confines of our present legal order; what we do contest, however, is the very nature of that order as it prioritizes the private ownership of public knowledge over its widespread dissemination among the very public that helped to produce it. The creation and use of knowledge is a collective enterprise that cannot be jammed into the suffocating straitjacket of a privatized intellectual commodity. The video we shared was broadcast on Dutch public television in 1971. The production itself was paid for by Dutch taxpayers and made possible entirely by the creative input of two of the world’s most staunchly anti-capitalist thinkers, whose intellectual product was subsequently alienated by producer Fons Elders (a “professed anarchist” who also acted as the incapable moderator of the debate) and appropriated by international companies that did nothing to make the debate possible. Now the entire world is barred from seeing it just because this company owns an exclusive legal right to its distribution in North America. Again, our issue here is not with a distributor of great documentary films that clings on to a somewhat outdated business model in the hope of squeezing a few bucks out of a 40-year-old public debate. Our issue is with a system that forces the employees of such a company to chase us down the streets of cyberspace in order to satisfy the profit motive that the market imposes upon their boss. This is precisely the “private tyranny” of the marketplace decried by the great thinkers of the Left, including Chomsky and Foucault in this debate. Ironic, isn’t it? (via Chomsky-Foucault debate removed due to copyright | ROAR Magazine)

Posted in chomsky copyright debate dutch copyleft intellectual property ip icarus icarus films anarchy anarchism freedom libertarian philosophy linguistics capitalism knowledge dissemination roar foucault noam chomsky michel foucault | 4 notes