Learning Philosophy of Change

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science

Giorgio Bertini — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:23:15 +0000

The philosophy of the social sciences considers the underlying explanatory powers of the social (or human) sciences, such as history, economics, anthropology, politics, and sociology. The type of questions covered includes the methodological (the nature of observations, laws, theories, and explanations) to the ontological — whether or not these sciences can explain human nature in a way consistent with common-sense beliefs. This Handbook is a major, comprehensive look at the key ideas in the field, is guided by several principles. The first is that the philosophy of social science should be closely connected to, and informed by, developments in the sciences themselves. The second is that the volume should appeal to practicing social scientists as well as philosophers, with the contributors being both drawn from both ranks, and speaking to ongoing controversial issues in the field. Finally, the volume promotes connections across the social sciences, with greater internal discussion and interaction across disciplinary boundaries.

Read

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: philosophy, social science

Foucault and social media

Giorgio Bertini — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:03:01 +0000

The French philosopher Michel Foucault has a set of insights that can help clarify how social media affects us on a psychological level. Foucault died before the advent of the internet, yet his studies of social conditioning and identity formation in relation to power are applicable to life online. Seen from a Foucaultian perspective, social media is more than a vehicle for exchanging information. Social media is a vehicle for identity-formation. Social media involves ‘subjectivation’.

Read

Foucault and social media: the call of the crowd

Filed under: Foucault Tagged: foucault, social media

Swarms and norms: refiguring the multitude

Giorgio Bertini — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:49:53 +0000

Some years ago, I published an essay in the journal Radical Philosophy. It was called, ‘Refiguring the multitude: from exodus to the production of norms’. It was about swarms, though I didn’t know it at the time. Crucially, it was one of the first published responses to Multitude, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri’s sequel to their best-selling, Empire. If you are into Deleuze and social movements, this one is for you.

Multitude certainly resonates with the high-tech world of 2013. Empire and Multitude are books you should have on your shelf, whatever part of the political spectrum you inhabit. They are books about globalization. Hardt and Negri are essentially right. Of course, they are wrong in important respects too. It was a response to the failure of the anti-globalization movement that got started in the 1990s. I was looking for a theoretical trajectory that would enable me to continue on the line of flight that I’d experienced at the height of this movement, this time reflecting on how swarms and social movements could contribute to creating something, in the first case, a new set of norms.

Read

Filed under: Deleuze, Hardt, Negri Tagged: deleuze, hardt, negri

Cómo envejecer

Giorgio Bertini — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:18:27 +0000

Bertrand Russell: Psicológicamente, existen dos peligros contra los que hay que estar vigilante cuando se llega a viejo. Uno de ellos consiste en absorberse indebidamente en el pasado. No se debe vivir de memorias, lamentándonos por el buen tiempo pasado, tristes por los amigos que murieron. Nuestros pensamientos deben estar dirigidos hacia el futuro y hacia cosas en las que se pueda hacer algo. Esto no siempre es fácil; el propio pasado es un peso que va gradualmente creciendo. Es fácil pensar, para sí, que nuestras emociones solían ser más vividas de lo que son ahora, y nuestra mente más penetrante. Pero, si esto es cierto, debe olvidarse, y, si se olvida, probablemente no será cierto.

Otra cosa que se debe evitar es adherirse a la juventud con la esperanza de aspirar vigor de su vitalidad. Cuando sus hijos crezcan, querrán vivir sus propias vidas, y si usted continúa interesándose tanto por ellos como cuando eran pequeños, es muy probable que le consideren una carga, a no ser que posean una insensibilidad no corriente.

Leer

Filed under: Russell Tagged: russell

¿Para qué sirve la educación?

Giorgio Bertini — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:03:42 +0000

Humberto Maturana: “Quiero empezar con el “para qué” por una razón muy simple. Porque si uno se pregunta ¿sirve la educación actual a Chile y a su juventud?, uno está haciendo la pregunta desde el supuesto de que todos entienden lo que la pregunta pide. Pero ¿es cierto eso? La noción de servir es una noción relacional; algo sirve para algo en relación a un deseo, nada sirve en sí. En el fondo la pregunta es ¿qué queremos de la educación? Pienso que uno no puede considerar ninguna pregunta sobre el quehacer humano en lo que se refiere a su valor, a su utilidad, o a lo que uno puede obtener de él, si uno no se pregunta lo que quiere. Preguntarse si sirve la educación chilena exige responder a preguntas como: ¿qué queremos con la educación?, ¿qué es eso de educar?, ¿para qué queremos educar?, y, en último término, a la gran pregunta: ¿qué país queremos?”

Leer

Filed under: Maturana Tagged: education, maturana

Consent and Submission – Aspects of Gramsci’s Theory of the Political and Civil Society

Giorgio Bertini — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:07:44 +0000

This article examines the concept of civil society as developed in the Gramscian theory under the prism of its ideological correlations, that is, as the field of development and reproduction of consent and submission to the political. It is in the framework of this analysis that the question of whether the Gramscian theory can become a modern instrument of theoretical elaboration of the forms that civil society is taking today is raised. Moreover, the concept of the state and the role the concept of hegemony has in the analysis of the class struggle which takes on the character of “intellectual struggle” is considered. Furthermore the relationship between the meaning of hegemony and that of ideology is developed as well as that between consent and submission. Within the aforementioned analysis, the article attempts among other things to bring forward the multiple antinomies Gramsci faces and which extend throughout his theory.

Read

Filed under: Gramsci Tagged: gramsci

La Teoría Marxista hoy – Problemas y perspectivas

Giorgio Bertini — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:50:05 +0000

Con este libro, de autoría colectiva, pretendemos trascender el espacio de las aulas virtuales para llegar a un público mucho más amplio. Nos mueve el deseo de revitalizar y enriquecer el debate en torno del marxismo como imprescindible corpus teórico de nuestro tiempo y como no menos indispensable “guía para la acción”, como filosofía práctica que nos permite no sólo entender el mundo, sino ambién cambiarlo. Este volumen de CLACSO es el resultado de un esfuerzo institucional dirigido a construir un ámbito de formación interdisciplinaria que, nutrido en las distintas variantes del pensamiento crítico, facilite el siempre inacabado proceso formativo de los investigadores sociales.

Leer

Filed under: Marx Tagged: marx

Nuestro presente y nuestras teorías

Giorgio Bertini — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:12:17 +0000

Los seres vivos en tanto seres vivos somos sistemas autopoiéticos moleculares, y como tales no necesitamos teorías para vivir, el vivir simplemente nos sucede. El suceder del vivir no tiene propósito, ni cumple teorías, sólo ocurre cuando ocurre. Un amigo mío dedicado a la cibernética decía, “si uno ve un propósito en el operar de un sistema, el sistema tiene un propósito”. Aunque yo discrepaba con respecto a esto, nunca tuve la ocasión de conversarlo con él detenidamente, pero creo que en el fondo lo que él quería decir era: “si veo un propósito particular en el operar de un sistema histórico, lo voy a poder comprender mejor si lo trato como si operase con ese propósito.” En la mirada retrospectiva de un suceder histórico los seres humanos siempre podemos inventar un propósito para explicar el presente en el que lo observamos. De hecho aunque los biólogos podemos y hacemos esto al intentar explicar los distintos rasgos de los seres vivos en el momento que los observamos, lo hacemos porque sabemos que éstos son entes históricos cuyo presente es el resultado de su continua transformación evolutiva en torno a la conservación del vivir.

Leer

Filed under: Maturana Tagged: maturana

How to Begin Reading Deleuze? – Query, Challenge and Response

Giorgio Bertini — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:35:35 +0000

How to begin reading Deleuze is the title of a post published last year by John Protevi that was pretty echoed in the philosophical blogosphere, and that he wrote in response to a query that took place in Facebook. The query clearly posed a crucial issue that is still worth to retake for the sake of any possible consensus among those who already have achieved a broader panorama about Deleuze’s work. So, how to begin reading Deleuze? The question mainly refers about which book would serve as the best entry to get into Deleuze’s philosophy, presupposing that the beginner is also willing to read more of his books so to achieve this broader panorama as well, in a non-repellent way, and to meet Deleuze conceptually without getting truncated or blocked in the process.

Read

Filed under: Deleuze Tagged: deleuze

Thinking through Virtual Reality: Place, Non-Place and Situated Cognition

Giorgio Bertini — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:25:49 +0000

Critics and researchers apply various criteria to evaluate the efficacy of VR, including the conformity of VR environments to the character of place. I wish to add a further test: do VR environments enable thought? The paper thus applies to VR the controversial proposition advanced by Clark and others that thinking, i.e. human cognitive processes, are situated and spatial. As a further term in this mix I introduce the concept of non-place, as elucidated by Augé and propose that non-places can be characterized as unthinking spaces, i.e. spaces that provide little assistance to the thought processes of their occupants. Perhaps non-places only offer the possibilities afforded by a kind of cognitively impoverished instrumentalism. The conclusion from these propositions is that it is instructive to couch the problematics of VR environments in terms of non-places that do not easily accommodate thought, or thoughtful interaction, were it not that thought thrives on transitions, thresholds and boundary conditions between the strange and the familiar.

Read

Filed under: Augé Tagged: Augé, cognition, spaces, virtual