First, MOCA is doing an Arshile Gorky retrospectve. It would make for an interesting discussion, as Gorky’s work is in many ways typically modern, and therefore, somewhat inaccessible to a lot of people. People will probably have strong opinions on whether or not they liked his work, in any case. Gombrich’s essay offers an interesting inroad into thinking through abstraction and purely formal representation.

We will meet for the Arshile Gorky retrospectve on Thursday, July 29 @6pm at MOCA. MOCA is open til 8pm and free.

Next, the discussion on E.H. Gombrich’s essay ” Meditations on a Hobby Horse” will take place on the next day, Friday, July 30 @5:30pm at 466 E. Mariposa Street, Altadena, CA 91001. You can download then print the essay here. To combat the heat, bring your favorite beverage and a swim suit for the pool.

The movie’s setting is in the Province of Judea c. 30 CE, the same timeframe as the classic films Ben Hur and the Robe. Political rule of this region was maintained under an “ethnarch” , where an area was governed by military prefects. Of these the most famous is Pontius Pilate. When Herod the Great died, Augustus divided the kingdom between the three surviving sons, Herod Antipas (Galilee), Herod Philip I (Golan Heights), and Herod Archelaus (Samaria, Judea, and Edom) .

The Zealots were an anti-Romanist group who sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the holy land by force of arms .

“Life of Brian” was filmed in Tunisia and released in 1979. Directed by Terry Jones and featuring John Cleese, the most vocal of the comedy troupe, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969 to 1974).

(Back row:) Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, (Front row:) Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin of Monty Python, 1969

The film exhibits the comedy troupe’s penchant for being drawn to the taboo nature of mocking established religion. And there was quite a bit of backlash for it. Note the difference between blasphemy and heresy: blasphemy is considered the contradicting of teachings of the church, whereas heresy is taking something true and saying it is something else. Monty Python is not challenging the doctrines of the church, but its practitioneers. The group is also parodying misrepresentations in religion. Note the stoning scene involving the use of the supposedly sacred word “Jehovah!”

From Wikipedia: “The alleged representation of Christ proved controversial. Protests against the film were organised based on its perceived blasphemy. On its initial release in the UK, the film was banned by several town councils – some of which had no cinemas within their boundaries, or had not even seen the film for themselves.”

The film makes fun of the ancient world, its mythology, culture and history, all of which have been the subject of cinema practically since the invention of the medium.

These notes were compiled from from the Spring 2008 course CLAS 380 Myth, History and the Movies, Department of Classics, SFSU, Dr. Michael Anderson.

// Here is the link to Nancy Cartwright’s discussion group and paper (to which I referred most of my material and criticism):

*Causality: Metaphysics and Methods – Discussion Papers: www2.lse.ac.uk/CPNSS/CPNSS-DPS/causalityDPseries.aspx

*”From Causation to Explanation and Back” by Nancy Cartwright/ PDF … The download link is located midway in the page, about 9th from the bottom …

// Some key points extracted from the text:
– Cartwright: Hume taught that discussion of “causation” was metaphysics and should be disregarded, as did the Logical Positivists. But Carnap salvaged some important metaphysical concepts, urging that there are many concepts that appear to be in the ‘material mode’ but would be more perspicuously expressed in the ‘formal mode’ — ie, there are many concepts that seem to be directly about the world but are really instead about our own theories and descriptions of the world. Various concepts of causation came to be treated in this way.
– Cartwright: In the eager attempt (due to influence of Hume & Positivists) to rid science of the concept of causality, One standard strategy has been to ‘reduce it away’, ie, to eliminate all use of causal notions and define causation purely in terms of “regular association” plus some other non-causal concepts like “temporal succession” and “spatio-temporal contiguity”. Nowadays the demand for absolutely regular association has given way.
– Cartwright: We have seen a number of accounts of “causal-explanatory relevance”, and I noted that there are also a variety of different accounts of “singular causal explanation” on offer. Which is the correct one? I shall suggest that probably they all are – each for a different kind of causal relation.
– Cartwright: At the level of general causal relevance, I am a strong advocate of causal diversity. We need a background model of the kind of causal system we are dealing with and of the way by which the putative cause is supposed to operate before we can devise a test, or a characterisation, for it. This means that settling matters of causal relevance requires either a lot of antecedent knowledge or a reasonable success at bootstrapping. This makes causal testing difficult, but not impossible. To proceed, however, we need far better accounts of the kinds of causal systems we may encounter and the variety of ways that a cause may operate within them.
– Cartwright: This need is the basis for the three-year project “Causality: Metaphysics and Methods” now underway at LSE, funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Board.

– Question 1: How can Cartwright’s proposal for causal diversity in scientific explanation adequately address the historical problems associated with causation if such considerations are still formulated within a “causal” framework?
– Question 2: If we can come to terms with metaphysics playing a viable (though limited) role in the philosophy of science, then why couldn’t we expand the explanatory programme toward a wholistic approach (ie, where causation is but only a single component) that leans toward a phenomenological account of our world? That is, a phenomenological account of the diverse phenomena of our world may conceivably expand the explanatory programme beyond the confines of causation (at the same time, expanding the scope of empiricism). So by formulating a new approach to scientific explanation through a causal framework (which is how I am reading Cartwright’s proposal), are we not just shuffling around the same old causal problems into a new and diverse arrangement?

Thanks again, and see everyone at the next club function!

James@CSULA

We will be using Carl Hempel’s 1967 article on Scientific Explanation as the point of reference for our discussion. A link to Hempel’s article is included in this post.

We will discuss the ideas behind Hempel’s theory of scientific explanation and generate discussion on why other theories of explanation have challenged and replaced his, and why scientific explanation is still a problem for the philosopher of science today.

** Also, don’t forget that there is a general meeting at Dolcini’s Cafe the very same day (Wednesday the 24th) from 3:15-4:15pm.

Hope to see you there! Sincerely,

James @ the CSULA Philosophy Club

1967_hempel_scientific_explanation

It’s based on “Is GOD a Taoist?” from The Tao is silent by Raymond M. Smullyan. (C) 1977 by Raymond M. Smullyan.

Manuel de Landa speaking about the importance of Gilles Deleuze in the 21st century and the fundamentals of materialism in a seminar entitled Gilles Deleuze and Science at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Questioning the role of structuralism and the post-modern position in philosophy, de Landa argues for a view of a materialist world autonomously removed from the concepts of our own mind. His challenge, he says, is to remove a transcendental plane from material objects, that is to remove the concept of essence from the world, without giving rise to a metaphysical position. Towards this, de Landa used the analogy of the battlefield as an example of the social material space to illustrate a plane of existence of extreme materiality.

… or you may check out a shorter video of Manuel DeLanda lecturing about The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Public Open Video Lecture at European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program. Saas-Fee, Switzerland 2007.

… watcha you guys think?

Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Time: 3:15pm – 5:00pm*
Location: University Student Union 307 (Pasadena Room)
Topic: Whitehead’s Cosmic Epochs and Contemporary Cosmology

Please join us Tuesday, March 2 as Leemon McHenry (CSUN) offers a lecture/PowerPoint presentation on process philosophy and, particularly, Whitehead’s cosmology. …To read an introductory essay on metaphyics written by Dr. McHenry, click here. See pages 43-46 and the section entitled “Events vs. Substances” for a few basic arguments that motivate process philosophy. Note, however, that Dr. McHenry’s talk Tuesday will go beyond these basics. His abstract:

Recent developments in cosmology and particle physics have led to speculation that our universe is merely one of a multitude of universes. While this notion, the multiverse theory, is highly contested as a legitimate scientific theory, it has nonetheless struck many physicists as a necessary consequence of the effort to construct a final theory. In his masterpiece, Process and Reality (1929), Alfred North Whitehead advanced a cosmology as part of his more general metaphysics of process. Part of this project involved a theory of cosmic epochs which bears a remarkable affinity to current cosmological speculation. This talk demonstrates how the basic framework of a multiverse theory is already present in Whitehead’s cosmology.

*Immediately following the lecture, stay for a finger-food reception to be held in the same room. It will be an interesting talk. Hope you can attend!

Here is the PDF containing all the information presented at our meeting on Feb. 10th, 2010:
0210_phil_honor_society