Indice dei contenuti per August 2017 in New Philosopher

“A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.”Ludwig Wittgenstein Watching a newborn adapt to his surroundings, it’s clear from the moment we emerge that communication is essential to our survival. We make noise to ensure we get what we need to flourish: mother’s milk, attention, and warmth in our early days; variations of these as we proceed through our lives. As our skill in communicating develops – as we learn to manipulate sounds, symbols, gestures, and images – so too does our ability to convey to others what we want, what we think, what we feel. Mastery of these methods of communication equates to power: the power to inform and influence, as well as to manipulate and deceive. What…

According to SIL Ethnologue, there are 6,909 living languages; Mandarin is in top spot with approximately one billion native speakers. 6.1 per cent of languages are “nearly extinct”. Due to the pilot and air traffic control confusing the words ‘left’ and ‘right’, Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 crashed in September 1997, killing everybody on board. In 1858, the first message was successfully sent from England across the transatlantic cable. It read: “Europe and America are united by telegraphy. Glory to God in the highest; on Earth, peace and good will toward men.” In Manchester, UK, there could be up to 200 languages spoken at any given time. This would make Manchester the most linguistically diverse city in Europe. The world’s most translated author is Agatha Christie, whose work has been translated…

LONDON, England, Sep. 20 —At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear…

TORONTO, Canada, Sep. 20 —All media of communications… create environments that numb our powers of attention by sheer pervasiveness… Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.…

Growing up I had heard my father laugh, but in Chile I heard something new, something honest, guttural, joyful. At home in New York, my parents spoke to each other in Spanish and to us kids in English. I was jealous of my parents; I could detect in their exchanges a timbre that was absent from their English communication. But in Chile I realised this difference was more than linguistic: Spanish was simply the medium through which my parents’ bodies could come home. For three weeks a year, their native tongues could enthusiastically spin and modulate pitch and volume as only Chileans can when they make song out of ordinary conversation. And they could laugh. In Chilean Spanish, my parents are visibly, audibly, and existentially different than they are in…

Nietzsche wrote about language as a “herd signal”. Communication existed to preserve the group, he noted, not to articulate verities. Certain phrases are epitaphs for good debate. The conversation might continue, but in a deadened form: a petty spat, or a series of monologues. For example: “that’s just your opinion”, “check your privilege” and “as an x, I’m offended”. They often reveal the speaker’s lack of goodwill or good faith, or they demonstrate what philosophers call “incommensurability”: the participants have not only competing ideas and values, but also competing standards of ideas and values. They’re talking past each other. But there is more: they’re sometimes talking past one another – to an audience. The point is not to persuade, but to grandstand. Interestingly, one recent phrase for this behaviour can…

Letters can take many forms: a love letter from Beethoven, a reply to a snake oil salesman from Twain, an epistle from Tesla, or a form letter for hungover Chinese officials. Nov. 20. 1905 J. H. Todd 1212 Webster St. San Francisco, Cal. Dear Sir, Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to…

Major wars, 10,000+ deaths in current or past calendar year. Wars, 1,000-9,999 deaths in current or past calendar year. Minor conflicts, 100-999 deaths in current or past calendar year. Skirmishes and clashes, fewer than 100 deaths in current or past calendar year.…

1. The imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium; 2. A letter or message containing information or news; 3. The successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings; 4. Social contact. As plural ‘communications’: 1. Means of sending or receiving information, such as telephone lines or computers; 2. The field of study concerned with the transmission of information; 3. Means of travelling or of transporting goods, such as roads or railways. Origin: Late Middle English: from Old French comunicacion, from Latin communicatio(n-), from the verb communicare ‘to share’. Source: Oxford English Dictionary…

Why do adults lie so much? There are a few reasons why we lie to other people, but two of the big ones are to control people and to protect them. Some lies try to control people in one way or another. Given we make decisions based on the information we have, people can change the way we behave by giving us the wrong information. For example, if you’re told someone said something mean about you, then you might stop being her friend. And if an adult wanted you to stop being friends with someone they could do so by telling you a lie. Some people lie to protect themselves. If you’ve ever broken something by accident, you’ve probably been tempted to tell a lie to avoid getting into trouble.…

I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is called among them “the universal artist.” He told us “he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life”. He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to sow…

When instinctive philosophy follows the more secure course prescribed by healthy common sense, it treats us to a rhetorical mélange of commonplace truths. When it is charged with the triviality of what it offers, it assures us, in reply, that the fullness and richness of its meaning lie deep down in its own heart, and that others must feel this too, since with such phrases as the “heart’s natural innocence”, “purity of conscience”, and so on, it supposes it has expressed things that are ultimate and final, to which no one can take exception, and about which nothing further can be required. But the very problem in hand was just that the best must not be left behind hidden away in secret, but be brought out of the depths and…

Tasmanian Writers and Readers Festival Hobart, Australia 6-17 September 2017 The Tasmanian Writers and Readers Festival unites writers and readers through masterclasses, children’s shows, comedy, and spoken word events. The biennial festival draws some of the leading names in Australian literature, with previous events featuring Helen Garner, Bob Brown, Julian Burnside, Peter Singer, Anne Summers, Michael Leunig, and Don Watson. The festival occupies various spaces across the historic Hadley’s Orient Hotel, and encourages all members of the community to engage with their fellow readers and writers through the power of storytelling. taswriters.org/twrf Cambridge Festival of Ideas University of Cambridge, UK 16 – 29 October 2017 2017 marks the tenth year of the Festival of Ideas. With hundreds of free events over two weeks, the Cambridge Festival of Ideas is one…

What is your demon? The mentor that sometimes becomes the tormentor in my mind. What is the most important part of your education? Beginning every day admitting to myself that I know nothing at all, open to growing each day by any means necessary. Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life? Socrates, Freud, and Jung – tied. What do you doubt most? That when tempted, we will do the right thing. What do people accuse you of? Overworking, and being obsessive-compulsive about order, cleanliness, and discipline – which I consider a spiritual practice. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? I know I can only change me. But I also believe we lead by example, so I do believe by changing…

A recipe for disaster The average Briton now spends five hours a week watching TV food programs, and only four hours a week cooking. It is an age of virtual eating. newphilosopher.com/ articles/a-recipe-for-disaster/ Not eating things I harbour the fantasy of one day opening a chain of upscale Kant Diet restaurants, open for dinner only, serving nothing. newphilosopher.com/ articles/3717/ New Philosopher online store Visit the online store for previous issues of New Philosopher magazine, subscriptions as well as gift ideas. newphilosopher.com/ products-page/magazines/ Fad diets More surprisingly, less radical weight-loss techniques can up your chances of achieving room temperature before your due date. newphilosopher.com/ articles/fad-diets/ NewPhilosopher Writing Prize Entries are open for the NP Prize for Philosophical Writing. Enter now to win $1,000…

WEIMAR, German Empire, Sep. 20 —That which Heraclitus avoided, however, is still the same as that which we shun today: the noise and democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their latest news of the “Empire” … their market business of “today” – for we philosophers need to be spared one thing above all: everything to do with “today”. We reverence what is still, cold, noble, distant, past, and in general everything in the face of which the soul does not have to defend itself and wrap itself up.…

PHILADELPHIA, USA, Sep. 20 —The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely to impose necessary illusions to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may be essential to survival.…

With disconcerting accuracy, McLuhan foretold many of the ways human interaction would be changed by new media, the media he called ‘electronic’. Some thinkers have the power of prophecy. They are like seismographs detecting early tremors of cultural change, its scale, its repercussions, the damage it will cause to the status quo. They may make mistakes of detail, but they accurately predict the major developments to which the rest of us are oblivious until many years later. The accuracy of their predictions is only retrospectively justified, of course, and we conveniently forget false predictions. It’s even possible that some prophets stimulate the changes they describe. But the best of them have built-in Zeitgeist-detectors. Marshall McLuhan was the Nostradamus of the digital revolution in communication. With disconcerting accuracy, he foretold many…

BREANA MCCULLOUGH TOP FIVE BOOKS Top five books 1. Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom 2. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo 3. The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz 4. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Judith Butler 5. Fire Race: A Karuk Coyote Tale of How Fire Came to the People, Jonathan London FAVOURITE PHILOSOPHER: Simone de Beauvoir FAVOURITE QUOTE: “Bathos, not Pathos” – Johanna Hedva DOCUMENTARY TO RECOMMEND: Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things by Matt D’Avella. FAVOURITE ARTWORK: Sorrow by Vincent van Gogh. FAVOURITE PIECE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC: Hard to say being a classical musician. Today it is Má vlast by Bedřich Smetana. What is philosophy for you? A chance to breathe in important thoughts and let them settle. It is the time…

Talking to a ‘smart’ assistant is a bit like training a dog, only there’s less affection. Since moving to San Francisco a year ago, I’ve felt the frequency of my communication with machines and algorithms increase tenfold. An algorithm, accompanied by a grinning robot, chooses my lunch three times a week; a bot notifies me of its arrival at the office. My job is to make software sound friendly and empathetic, which is to say I’m paid to make machines sound more human. Despite sitting within metres of my coworkers, everyone works, chats, and exchanges GIFs on a social network created especially for our workplace. I’ve gone whole days speaking nothing more than a few sentence fragments aloud. Office relations are harmonious except for when it comes to matters of…

Our century has made a religion of communication, enshrining the idea that we ought to be constantly on tap, endlessly engaged in some or other form of exchanging information and perpetually contributing our due quotient to the sum of nonstop chatter – as if communicating with each other were a moral good, and not merely so much white noise. Our phones have become our oracles. Instant messaging is our hotline to higher communion. In silence we can find an assured retreat from the intolerable din, but it would be a mistake to think that the allure of silence is primarily that of passive withdrawal, like a child sulking because they don’t want to play with all the other kids. Silence is not what is left once the chatter has died…

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Peter Steiner “In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.” Cato “That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself.” Hannah More “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media... than by the content.” Marshall McLuhan “Be quiet, unless your speech be better than silence.” Salvator Rosa “The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.” Voltaire “Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind.” Homer “But this is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.” Euripides “It is never so difficult to speak as when we are ashamed of our silence.” François de La Rochefoucauld “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” Plato “I think television has betrayed the…

The Propagandist Edward L. Bernays 1891–1995 Manufacturing personalities “The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial. Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilised to manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man. The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also…

Someone I know has just told me that the wife of a good friend had an affair a few years ago. The thing is that my friend and his wife seem happy together, as do their children; they are a solid family unit. The source of information is good, in that I can trust the person telling me, but he heard from someone else rather than ‘knowing’ for himself. What to do now that I have this information? Do I follow the lead to the original source to find out if it’s true? Do I confront my friend’s wife? Tell my friend? Forget about it? If it isn’t true I risk looking like a meddling fool; if it is, I risk breaking up a marriage and family. How important is…

The breakup of a high-profile Hollywood couple in 2004 was an underappreciated moment. When asked about it in an interview, one of the pair responded with an unexpectedly profound question: “How do you make love stay?” When we fall in love, it does feel like it will stay forever. It’s one of the reasons we’re so inclined to leap into long-term commitments such as marriage, mortgages, and kids. Yet, neuroscientists are finding what we already know through experience: passion fades. The hormones that go into hyperdrive when we fall in love – such as dopamine and oxytocin – wear off within six to 18 months. When we start a new romantic relationship, it might well be the case that we think there is no one else in the world nearly…

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Nicholas Carr Nicholas Carr writes about technology and culture for The Atlantic,The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and is the author of the acclaimed books The Glass Cage, The Shallows, and The Big Switch. The Shallows was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and in 2015 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Mariana Alessandri Mariana Alessandri is Assistant Professor of Continental Philosophy, Existentialism, Philosophy of Religion, and Spanish-language Philosophy at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. She has written for The New York Times, Philosophy Today, Womankind magazine, Times Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education and many academic journals. Her teaching interests include Existentialism and…

Just as a factory pumping out pollutants degrades that air for everyone, so a TV blasting cable news into an airport lounge degrades the attentional capacities of everyone nearby. For at least the past two decades, we’ve been complaining of information overload, a modern affliction that allegedly leaves us chronically distracted, exhausted, and stressed. But I’d encourage you to put down your smartphone for a moment and reflect on what a strange notion this is. Consider the last time you went on a hike in the country. Aren’t mountains, forests, and river banks positively suffused with ‘information’? You could dedicate an entire career to studying the nuances of birdsong, or the shapes of clouds; like the painter David Hockney, you could return to the same stretch of hedgerow season after…

NEW YORK CITY, USA, Sep. 20 —Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns – when the article or book appears – his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and “the public’s right to know”; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur…

common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet”. They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority. BEACONSFIELD, England, Sep. 20 —It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters…

As my deafness progressed, English became like an untrustworthy friend, one who is nice to your face but talks about you behind your back. “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein What is a mother tongue and how do you get one? What if my own tongue is useless to me, the enemy of my language? To be born deaf is, for many, to inherit a kind of motherlessness – approximately ninety per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many of whom, when meeting their child, are meeting a deaf person for the first time. The mother’s language is, in those first months, a physical impossibility, and later something to be accessed only via therapy, training, surgery, and guesswork. In America,…

It was a time of deep divisions, much like our day. Hatred seemed intractable and the curse of bias rife, when a sharecropper’s daughter in the American South stood up for a Ku Klux Klan leader and against all odds, they became enduring friends. I set out recently in pursuit of this legendary moment, seeking a foothold of understanding into how such courage could emerge from bloodshed and blindness. In the North Carolina city of Durham, I walked back in time with Ann Atwater to those searing days a half-century ago when two so unlike drew together and as the Klan chief later said, “the whole world was openin’ up.” Each age has its unsung heroes, each in a way repeats our sins. I was searching for clues to how…

Note: Should you have difficulty with this essay at any point, refer to the comments at the end for assistance. If one examines the deconstructive paradigm of expression, one is faced with a choice: either accept postcultural textual theory or conclude that the law is capable of deconstruction. The premise of Derridaist reading suggests that context is created by communication, but only if Derrida’s analysis of subconceptual discourse is valid; otherwise, consciousness is used in the service of the status quo. But Foucault uses the term ‘Derridaist reading’ to denote the genre, and subsequent futility, of capitalist society. “Sexual identity is intrinsically unattainable,” says Sontag. In Heaven and Earth, Stone reiterates Sartreist existentialism; in JFK, however, he examines postcultural textual theory. Therefore, many materialisms concerning the deconstructive paradigm of expression…

There is nothing so modern as the convenience of viewing the suffering of others from the comfort of one’s home. Turn on the television or scroll through social media and take your pick: the aerial bombardment of civilian populations, the shipwrecking of refugee boats, executions, floggings. Why do we subject ourselves to such daily ordeals? On one level, for the sheer spectacle of it – as far as entertainment goes, footage of atrocities and summer blockbusters have long been interchangeable; in fact, an all too common response to visions of terror is to exclaim, “it was just like a movie”. But if depictions of real suffering were merely for titillation, there would be no justification for it; the manufactured kind would serve just as well. The real attraction of such…

Sophie Scott is a British neuroscientist, Wellcome Trust senior fellow, and Professor at University College London (UCL), researching the neuroscience of voices, speech, and laughter. She is also Deputy Director of UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a member of the British Psychological Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the Experimental Psychology Society. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012. Scott’s research interests include the neurobiology of speech perception, the evolution of speech, the difference between intelligibility and comprehension, and profiles of recovery in aphasia. NW: Just to start, we think of most communication with the voice as being through words. Is that a fair picture of how we interact with each other? SS: Well, it’s obviously the case…

Imagine if you found yourself in a world where everyone always says the exact opposite of what they mean. When things are going badly they say things are great, and when all’s fine and dandy they say things are dreadful. This would be disorienting at first, but after a while you’d get used to it. You’d gradually learn how to use this new language and start assuming ‘wonderful’ means ‘terrible’ and ‘terrible’ means ‘wonderful’. So far, so good. But now imagine that these linguistic reversals aren’t total, or reliable. Instead, people sometimes use language in the usual way, and sometimes backwards. Sometimes ‘wonderful’ means wonderful and sometimes it means dreadful instead. This sounds unworkable. Except that’s precisely the world we do live in, and we seem to manage just fine.…

The Image Daniel J. Boorstin Pseudo-events “Pseudo-events spawn other pseudo-events in geometric progression… As the press conference (itself a pseudo-event) became formalised, there grew up the institutionalised leak. As the leak becomes formalised still other devices will appear. Of course the shrewd politician or the enterprising newsman knows this and knows how to take advantage of it. Seldom for outright deception; more often simply to make more ‘news’, to provide more ‘information’, or to ‘improve communication’.” The Ecstasy of Communication Jean Baudrillard His own bubble “To each his own bubble; that is the law today. Just as we have reached the limits of geographic space which is reduced daily as a result of our increasing mobility made possible by airplanes and the media, to the point where all trips have…

Collective attention Attention is a resource; a person has only so much of it. And yet we’ve auctioned off more and more of our public space to private commercial interests, with their constant demands on us to look at the products on display or simply absorb some bit of corporate messaging. Lately, our self-appointed disrupters have opened up a new frontier of capitalism, complete with its own frontier ethic: to boldly dig up and monetise every bit of private head space by appropriating our collective attention. In the process, we’ve sacrificed silence – the condition of not being addressed. And just as clean air makes it possible to breathe, silence makes it possible to think. nytimes.com/2015/03/08/opinion/ sunday/the-cost-of-paying-attention.  html?_r=0 Talking in whistles Joining just a handful of other communities,…

Everyone, it seems, hates jargon. The word itself has always been derogatory, with its original use in medieval English meaning, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has it: “The inarticulate utterance of birds, or a vocal sound resembling it; twittering, chattering.” But what exactly are we saying when we complain about it? The very term ‘jargon’ is an example of what people have variously called evaluative-descriptive terms, framing, or Unspeak: it makes an argument under the guise of mere naming. To label something jargon is to imply at least two separate claims, one descriptive (this is technical language) and one normative (this is bad). In addition, it is often implied that this language does not actually mean anything at all, that the person using it is dishonestly trying to hide…