Google Flu Diagnosis: Clustered atomization of Symptoms

“Ginsberg and Mohebbi explain that Google’s “model tries to filter out search queries that are more likely associated with topical searches rather than searches by those who may be experiencing symptoms.” Thus the spike shown in the graph [April 19 - 25] on the Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico Web page should correlate with actual [...]

The Fantasm of the Point: Vico, Plotinus, Campanella and even Badiou

(ca. 204-270 AD)  To return to the diagram of my last post on Plotinus I want to think along with a confluence of ideas that condense upon the very center of it, the infintesmal locus of “matter” which exists merely as a private, yet also which alternately can be considered as a radiating center (under a different [...]

The Cone of Plotinus: Ontologies of Profusion and Particularization

I believe it is helpful when understanding how Plotinus viewed the degrees of Being, how the problem of how the production of the Many from the One is to be resolved (referred to here), it is helpful to picture to two, end-to-end comes often used to illustrate conic sections, above. For Plotinus uses two kinds of complimentary [...]

The Bristling of Wheat, The Warming of the Thymos

I was talking with my wife today about how our Cattle Dog pup’s fur bristles with fear/excitment when she steps out at night and smells the air, to howl or bark. She was saying how we all know what this feels like, despite our species differences, and what came to mind were a wonderful word-image [...]

The Assurance of Hyundai: The Care of Corporation

In this marvelous take on the corporate saftey-net offered by Hyundai we experience both the rich, music-filled world-view of a partnership community, and the ludicrous ambiguity of a corporate sensibility that learned that it must invest in the health of its customers. Beautifully done. But also not the occasion to lose track that the corporate [...]

Radix Philosophy and Knowing Your Kant

The Talk Around the Pub It seems that the Kantian sore of Perverse Egalitariansm and Larval Subjects is festering a bit. It is it a symptomatic lesion in the Body of Philosophy, or just a bloggist scratch that got an impurity or two in it, and in need of a little antiseptic. It brings to [...]

Crescent to The Whole Creature

Beginning to read Wendy Wheeler’s The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. I have to say that when the level of my enthusiasm is this high during the first few pages of a book quite often I disappointed at its close. At the very least, the enthusiasm is quite high, and the potential [...]

How Sad is the Weeping Willow?: Human Projections and the Powers of Objects

The Powers of an Apple Larval Subjects in his debate with the Kantians over at Perverse Egalitarianism draws on what he sees as a Spinozist distinction, what he calls the “metaphysical” and “value” Considered metaphysically, the apple is value neutral. It just is what it is, much like Yahweh in the Bible. Metaphysically, if the [...]

Plotinus and the Degrees of Being Conception: Ennead V ii, 1

Ennead V ii, 1: On the Genesis and Order of Things Following The Proto The Hen is all things but not a single one [oudè hén]; for the arche of all things is not all things, but in that particular way it is all things, that is to say thither they run. Rather, they do not yet exist, but they [...]

Finding Spinoza: The Genetics of Reading

How Larval Subjects found Him I really enjoy when philosophy is written about like this, as a human experience with context in the world: That aside, when I was younger, perhaps around the age of 15 or 16, I discovered Spinoza’s Ethics. I am not sure why I found myself so obsessed with this book [...]