Tweet

More from @Helenreflects

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

9 Jun

I'm going to do a thread on Bernard De Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds (1686), a series of dialogues between a Marquise and a philosopher that offers a startling and disorienting vision of a myriad of inhabited worlds 1/

I recommend listening to this subtle performance of Marin Marais' Voix Humaines while you read this thread, performed by Brandon Acker and Craig Trompeter 2/

We have dialogues over five evenings between a philosopher and a Marquise. At the time that de Fontenelle wrote, it was unusual to have a woman feature in a philosophical dialogue. Women were commonly thought to be inferior to men (in virtue, physical ability, intelligence) 3/

Read 38 tweets

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

8 May

I suppose the audience for this is quite niche, but I'm going to go ahead and summarize a very early hard SF story namely Kepler's Somnium (Dream).
Background Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) was a German Renaissance astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician. 1/

He is wrote the Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae in which he formulated heliocentrism (based on Copernicus, but with elliptic trajectories). Now, heliocentrism was a total game changer because it opened the possbility to a plurality of worlds 2/

To get a sense of how radical and shocking, one reason heliocentrism faced such difficulty is that we would expect a parallax among the fixed stars. Since we don't that must mean the cosmos is truly enormous, and the stars very far away. Copernicus' reply: it is simply so. 3/

Read 20 tweets

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

7 May

Reading Scruton on environmental philosophy. It's a clearly, lucidly written book, a lot of Heidegger though and I just don't think nationalism and environmental conservation are going to work, ultimately.

OMG this book is so anti-EU. (!!) I still find it super-useful to see this articulated though, so I appreciate the book. I would answer to Scruton that well nation states got a big push (funds, people giving their lives), of course they're doing well.

Also, not all is well. We are confronted with global stuff (pandemic, and climate change, hello) and nation states are simply not up to the job. And the failings of nation states are weirdly incapsulated in the resurgent nationalism cf this excellent piece theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/…

Read 4 tweets

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

17 Apr

Watching the Penn&Teller masterclass on magic, here are their philosophical views on the practice.
Though the word has supernatural P&T overtones, they are thorough naturalists. "No-one leaves the theater believing something that we ourselves do not think is true on purpose." 1/

Penn: "illusion" = visual effect to accomplish a trick, e.g., mirror to make something appear different. Smart thing = the tricks.--tricks "involve intellectual engagements on the part of the audience" and involves "exploring epistemology" (how do we know what is true?" 2/

"[magic] is the heaviest philosophical ideas you can possibly have, dealt with in the silliest way"--it is playground for serious epistemological topics such as what to believe and what not (so Teller), you can play because there are no (dire) consequences. 3/

Read 6 tweets

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

17 Apr

Some recent Uber drives and conversations (so long ago I was in an Uber!) about the vaccines make me think about misinformation and how important epistemic rights are. Many of these drivers had deeply mistaken, distorted beliefs about the vaccines and were hesitant to get them 1/

In this paper Lani Watson characterizes epistemic rights as a subset of human rights, more specifically "right to information, the right to know, the right to true and justified beliefs, the right to understand, and the right to truth" 2/

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

The Uber drivers I spoke to had distorted, mistaken beliefs about vaccines namely: that they would not be efficacious, that they weren't tested rigorously, that it was some scheme by Bill Gates, that they were unnecessary for them etc. All these beliefs are circulating 3/

Read 10 tweets

Helen De Cruz

@Helenreflects

11 Apr

@CT_Bergstrom

@CT_Bergstrom Pfff the philosophical community has discussed this amply. If only he read some philosophy then at least he would be read up on it. This is an excellent paper on the topic
bostonreview.net/race-philosoph…

@CT_Bergstrom

@CT_Bergstrom Since I think few people will click through, let me just highlight a few important passages of this piece. The authors,
@RDembroff
and Dee Payton, argue that there is an asymmetry between being transgender and being transracial 1/

@CT_Bergstrom

@CT_Bergstrom @RDembroff They write "... it is a mistake to base this asymmetry on notions about who “really is” a woman or who “really is” Black. The social world is a dynamic and ever-changing place...."2/

Read 10 tweets

Share this page!

Helen De Cruz

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @Helenreflects

Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?