Day 18: R is for Reification

So two little ideas today, which do you prefer? Eagle eyed observers will note that Being is already objectified so the joke is a bit redundant, but y'know I couldn't think of anything else for R....;-)

My understanding is that Reification (in the Marxist sense, which is the one am referencing) is a sort of objectification or solidification of things which are in fact fluid. Hence the cuboid Being in the right hand corner.

here is the obligatory wiki-link to the subject in question, for those of you who are interested in finding out more.

S for Scottish Enlightenment tomorrow. Beam me up Scotty.

Becca x

Day 16: P is for Play!

Reference: Being & Time, XXVII p310 (I've mislaid my copy of B&T but as soon as I find it i'll update the reference!)

N is for Night of the Living.....errrr

The odd history of Jeremy Bentham's stuffed corpse can be found at his wikipedia site ----------------------------> Here.  (under 'Auto-icon') There are also rumours that a rival university King's college, once stole his head from the atheistic UCL and proceeded to play a game of football with it.

I imagine that had JB actually got a say in the matter, the vote of 22 football players would have meant that the football game won out on Utilitarian grounds....See above...

Tired now. Been up all night doing this.

See you laterz

becca x

Being & Nothingness in 'A Dialectical Love Story'

I would defend to the death your right to say the most ridiculous things, really I would.

Voltaire is probably right, but at the same time...mneh.

becca x

A Pedantic Ripost to the Guru Josh Infinity Project

Hello there. Here's my post for this Monday, at a much more reasonable time than last week! I saw this video at the gym the other day. Apparently it's from 2008 but I hadn't heard it before although it is said to have 'taken the world by storm' or got 22 MILLION hits on youtube, which I guess is about the same thing. And yet, as so often happens in popular culture, the lyrics contain a ridiculous use of the word 'infinity.' (See the cartoon). Another example is in cult-classic movie Forbidden Planet, where the oh-so-super-intelligent scientist claims that the aliens managed to increase their energy supply: 'almost literally to the the power of infinity'. This latter example is made even more amusing by the use of the word 'almost' at the beginning!

Now I don't want to come across as a snob, if anything I'm just a pedant, but the philosophical and mathematical point of the term infinity is that it represents that which is beyond what we can describe or calculate, and as this can't have a conceivable upper limit then infinity cannot be said to be fixed point or a quantity! Rather it's a quality: so  you can't multiply by the power of infinity anymore than you can multiply by the power of blue. Also the question of how we can know that infinity really exists when it is precisely that which exceeds and resists knowledge is a question that has been pondered by many philosophers and theologians. I don't think any of these thinkers thought that the answer might be 'Guru Josh'...

Now I suppose Guru Josh is being a bit more ''poetic'' than the writers of Forbidden Planet, but nonetheless

this sort of hippy mumbo-jumbo just serves to distract from how exciting the notion of the Infinite is, whether in astronomy or the Negative Theologians for example: Pseudo-Dionysus, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and then in all the philosophers influenced by the latter, including Heidegger. Gordon Finlayson, a lecturer at my old uni thinks we can even find a type of Negative Theology in Adorno. He presents a persuasive argument in 'On not Being Silent in the Darkness: Adorno's Singular Apophaticism' Adorno and Religion, ed. M. Waggoner, Indiana University Presss (forthcoming 2009). (Check me out with my 'proper' citations and everything!)

Hum. This post started off as a joke but  I got a bit serious at the end there...In any case infinity is a serious issue, and cartoons like this need to be seen as the pathetic attempt for easy laughs that they are....

Join me in my quest for linguistic precision in popular culture!

becca xo

Sketches

well, it's not a monday, but i have been doing a few little sketches, and got over-excited by my extra-curricular work and thought i'd show you, dearest internet users.

so over <-----there is a sketch of The Cat in the hat, which i will alter for copyright purposes in my upcoming Being & Tim 'Schrodinger's Cat in the Hat'! For those of you who follow my Twitter account, this is the quantum mechanics i've been attempting to get my head around! And it's trying to get it to rhyme which is the real kicker...still, keep you eyes on this page, I reckon it'll be ready sooooonish. Go here if you wish to prepare yourself!

And here ----> is another cartoon sketch of the two characters I hope you are familiar with now, Data Entry Pig and Becca Bumface. (They're going to get their own blog soon, called 'Friends on Benefits', one of those ''social satires'' of the world of work and the benefit system. Ho ho) Here Becca Bumface is attempting to simplify Nietzsche's notion of the Apollonian/Dionysiac. (That's the Birth Of Tragedy in front of her there...!) You can read more about this here, and make your own decision if Art Garfunkel really does represent the orgiastic and ecstatic elements of the Dionysian. So, just another sketch really, for my own amusement...and to mock my friend who said it...!

see you tomorrow kids! becca xo

More Beckett!

Well, I was thinking of going all ''low-brow'' today (!), but then my friend Jimmy (on the left with the ukulele) came up with these two ideas, continuing the Beckettian theme of the last post, and it must be added, further limiting the people who will find this funny. So these two are dedicated to all you weightlifting philosophy cartoon fans out there! For everyone else look here! Jimmy seems to think the second one was particularly funny, it being a reference to a Beckett quotation from Waiting for Godot again. I don't know how famous it is, nor how funny it is, but Jimmy insisted. And you can see from the photo that he's a dangerous man.

Let me know your thoughts anyway!

See you Thursday,

becca xo

Grey Mice Think Alike

When my dad was about the age he is in this picture, he did a test where he was asked to fill in the sentence 'G___ M___ think alike'. As you might have guessed, he thought that the answer was grey mice, which I've always thought really cute, and have finally got round to illustrating. He probably didn't imagine that they were talking about Derrida, but I thought it was funnier that way...Oh, and I'm also working on some ideas for new non-philosophical comics, so if you like inappropriate humour about illness and/or social satire featuring pigs in ruffs, then stay tuned! Happy Secular Chocolate-Scoffing Weekend! beccaxo

Well-Being

In 'How to bluff your way in Philosophy' Jim Hankinson describes the main characteristics of Eastern Philosophy in a section called 'How to Be a Mystic':

'1/ Invent a few meaningless paradoxes (such as 'The only true light is the darkness' or 'Each step forward is a step backwards').
2/. Have a line in pointless proverbs (like 'He who talks with the goldfish is lucky to receive an answer', or 'the taller the tree, the thinner the fruit').
3/ Profess a belief in at least one palpable metaphysical absurdity, such as that Everything is All One, or that Ordinary Reality is merely a Base Illusion in Comparison with the True Light of the Godhead. Remember to Talk in Capital Letters.
4/ Intimate in an obscure way that the Road to Enlightenment, though Long and Hard, is Ultimately Traversable, and hint that a good method of traversing it is by entering on a Close Physical Relationship with yourself.
5/ At all times wear a Benign Smile, for practical purposes indistinguishable from the Inane Grin' (1999:56)

I have nothing to add.

beccaxo

The Shortest Summary of Being and Time Ever!

You might remember Dasein from an earlier post, here he is again in glorious technicolor! Dasein is a Heideggerian term from Being & Time by Martin Heidegger, the book that 'spawned' Being & Tim! In Being & Time Heidegger attempts to show that any attempt to understand our Being is already regulated by certain concepts. It's helpful to point out that his work exists in the same vein as Kierkegaard's: again an investigation of Being is already dictated by our position as beings. Heidegger says, 'But even if we ask, 'What is Being'?, we keep within an understanding of the 'is',' (1962: 25). Anyway, to cut a long story short, moods are one of the categories necessary to our understanding of our Being, 'in every case Dasein always has some mood' (1962:173).Which is why Dasein is so touchy...(but I think Being might have forgotten his birthday as well.)

becca xo

Super Kant!

I kept meaning to re-do this cartoon, so it looked more dc/marvel/film noir- i think if kant had been a super-hero he would have taken the same serious attitude to it as he did to everything else: but hopefully the point comes across anyway! New episodes of Super Kant are on the drawing board, including the feature length motion picture, 'The Return of the Repressed!' beccax