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pete wolfendale Profile picture
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11 Jan, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Reminder of my opinion of most philosophical uses of the term 'consciousness'.
The main thing I've written on this is 'Mysterianism and Quietism in the Philosophy of Mind', which probably has my best thought experiment (so far): (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/tfe…)
But you will find the themes explored here also pursued in 'Varieties of Rule Following' (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/12/27/tfe…), which tries to demolish the other major pillar of Wittgenstein's quietist legacy, in an explicitly computational fashion.
This in turn leads quite naturally to some deeper thoughts on the philosophy of action and its relation to software specification and system design in 'Incompetence, Malice, and Evil' (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/tfe…), which engages a little with Badiou's theory of evil.
Finally, to close the Carnapian circle that @lastpositivist's theory of informal omega inconsistency has spun me around, it's worth pointing you at this wonderful bit of Carnapiana, courtesy of @timcrane102: Image
In case you're wondering, this is literally a practical demonstration of a game theoretic conception of approach to existential quantification that brings out liminal fallacies generated by its indefinite, dynamic character by establishing Pyrrhonian equipollence. Smart bastard.

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More from @deontologistics

pete wolfendale Profile picture
13 Jan
It's hard to believe it's been four years since Mark left. What a day to talk about the meaninglessness of death. If there's one thing Meillassoux is right about, it's that nothing less than the complete and total resurrection of the restless dead could make death meaningful.
Who wouldn't want to hear what he had to say about the absolute fucking state of this place (Earth)? That excuse to hear his insights might be a reason to hate this state just a little less. But we can't, and so it doesn't. How I wish it were otherwise.
Mark's death wasn't uniquely his own. There was nothing authentic about it. It was the same desperately sad story that you will hear over and over again throughout your life as unquenchable misery pulls meaningful people into an indifferent void.
Read 25 tweets
pete wolfendale Profile picture
13 Jan
I know I'm being pretty harsh on Agamben, but I actually agree with him that we need a critique of healthcare provision (both physical and mental), because the systems established to gate access to diagnosis/treatment often diminish autonomy as much as they enable it.
But we need to be able to look at the concrete details of these institutions without giving ourselves a free pass to ignore the discourses of medicine, psychology, and psychiatry whenever we want. Bad critique is epistemically capricious where good critique is responsible.
This is as good at time as any to repost some unrolled threads from 2019 in which I talk about expanding Mark Fisher's work on the politics of mental health to healthcare more generally (threadreaderapp.com/thread/1181998…) and discuss bipolar disorder specifically (threadreaderapp.com/thread/1173211…).
Read 6 tweets
pete wolfendale Profile picture
12 Jan
I'm strongly committed to the virtue of sincerity, but we are all put in positions in which we bend the truth to fit the shape of our discursive context, in ways that produce misunderstandings we can't anticipate. Sometimes (good) rules of thumb get read as (bad) iron laws.
Here's the most common white lie I tell students, friends, and strangers alike: there are no bad questions. I say this to disinhibit people, so they begin asking questions, and so the process of asking them will refine them and take us in an interesting dialectical direction.
This solicitation of thought in process, in which imperfections are encouraged as a way to draw out and develop ideas, is a crucial feature of the generosity required to perform Socratic midwifery properly, rather than 'own the [libs/trads/etc.]'. It's about sincerity, not irony.
Read 61 tweets
pete wolfendale Profile picture
12 Jan
Here's a meta-thread organising the Laruelle thread ('Non-Laruelle') into chapters, which will be expanded as it continues to expand. Chapters will be subdivided into parts.
The beginning of the overall thread is here (), and chapter/part links will go to the first tweet in each section. There may be a few accidental forks her and there, but the thread is linear for the most part.
Preface ('On Skilful Ignorance'):
Read 8 tweets
pete wolfendale Profile picture
11 Jan
Time to post a few more pieces of inspirational art in a final fit of procrastination.
I get pretty critical of certain strands of Marxism, and prefer to present myself as a left-accelerationist (in contexts where that's understood) or as a what @michaeljswalker 'class war social democrat' (in those where it isn't), but I try never to dismiss communism outright.
I may see myself as more an Owenite than a Marxist in some respects, but I cannot listen to this song without something stirring within me, and I recommend it to anyone quick to dismiss communists because of the historical arc of state communism in C20th:
Read 36 tweets
pete wolfendale Profile picture
11 Jan
I think we tend to overplay the weirdness of the way internet meme culture intersects with post-neoliberal politics, because we see history from the inside, which produces extreme dissonance between our familiarity with a meme in one context and its appropriation by another.
This produced a bunch of hysterical overreactions to the appropriation of Pepe by the alt-right, and the memetic war machine of the Boogaloo Bois, when historically they’re pretty normal. Grass roots movements use any symbolic resources to hand when building social networks.
This is one way in which a counter-culture bootstraps itself, by creating systems for authenticating in group speech for passing information amd organising. This is what makes it cohere as a platform for action. Divergence from the mainstream culture is a feature not a bug.
Read 7 tweets

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