sphaleotas

Avello Publishing Journal falls prey to plagiarists

‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’, so they say. But can we be so sure?

With not inconsiderable surprise, Sphaleotas has discovered that the Charles S. Peirce Foundation, a hitherto respectable organisation dedicated to supporting education and research related to the work of the founder of American pragmatism, has flagrantly plagiarised the 2013 Avello Publishing Journal Conference’s web page in its Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress 2014 publicity material.

One would have to be blind not to notice that, onwards of the section ‘III. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: PANELS’, the Foundation brazenly cuts and pastes from Dr Wakefield’s Call for Papers, typographical errors and all.

It may seem harsh to some, but Sphaleotas feels duty bound to painstakingly enumerate these instances of theft on a line-by-line basis. Indeed, one wonders if this is simply the tip of a particularly lugubrious iceberg.

Jason Wakefield:

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: PANELS

Charles S. Peirce Foundation:

III. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: PANELS

Jason Wakefield:

A. Panels are 90 minute, open format, sessions. Panel organizers are free to propose any format (including the format described above) that is appropriate to the objectives for their panel. There must be at least two contributors, and their contributions must be consistent with the general guidelines on number of submissions and with the length requirement stated below. All contributors must have confirmed their participation to the panel organizer before submission.

Charles S. Peirce Foundation:

A. Panels are 90 minute, open format, sessions. Panel organizers are free to propose any format (including the format described above in §II.A) that is appropriate to the objectives for their panel. There must be at least two contributors, and their contributions must be consistent with the general guidelines on number of submissions (§I.D), and with the length requirement stated below. All contributors must have confirmed their participation to the panel organizer before submission.

Jason Wakefield:

B. Length: Length of the papers will depend on the panel format, but may not exceed 3000 words. It is the responsibility of the panel organizer to ensure that all planned activities can be completed within 90 minutes. If your proposed format does not allow at least 30 minutes for discussion, please include a justification for this in your proposal.

Charles S. Peirce Foundation:

B. Length: Length of the papers will depend on the panel format, but may not exceed 3000 words. It is the responsibility of the panel organizer to ensure that all planned activities can be completed within 90 minutes. If your proposed format does not allow at least 30 minutes for discussion, please include a justification for this in your proposal.

Jason Wakefield:

C. Deadline: 3 April 2013. This is a firm deadline: no panel submissions will be accepted if they carry a time stamp later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on that date.

Charles S. Peirce Foundation:

C. Deadline: 1 April 2013. This is a firm deadline: no panel submissions will be accepted if they carry a time stamp later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on that date.

Dr Wakefield’s largesse

There can be no sub-genre more intellectually exciting than the book review that sets the terms for future philosophical debate. One thinks immediately of Heidegger’s ‘Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers’ Psychologie der Weltanschauungen’ (1919), Chomsky’s ‘A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior’ (1959), Frege’s ‘Rezension von: Dr. E.G. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik’ (1894), Ryle’s ‘Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit’ (1929), Russell’s ‘Review of A. Meinong, Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie’ (1905) or indeed Hamann’s 1784 ‘Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft’.

Call For Papers

Over the course of the past few weeks, Jason Wakefield (left) has been on the receiving end of all manner of quite undeserved obloquy. Some say that his editorials and book reviews for the Avello Publishing Journal consist of a bewildering succession of non sequiturs. Others that his highfalutin high-theory allusions belie a cargo-cult like obliviousness to what actually constitutes rational argument and persuasion. Yet others, that his writing inexplicably crowbars in gratuitous, fawning references to the University of Cambridge and members of his journal’s editorial board at every turn, as if childishly basking in reflected glory. Some have even suggested Jason’s claim that he holds a Cambridge doctorate is a witting untruth.

Wrong, all wrong!

What, I ask you, do his detractors have in common? A trustafarian’s decadent disdain for entrepreneurial vision and sheer hard work, even where it is in the service of publishing world-class scholarship in continental philosophy from the likes of John Milbank or Catherine Malabou. Cowards to a man, do Jason’s detractors genuinely believe that editorial board members of the calibre of Professor Claire Colebrook, Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson, or indeed the aforementioned Professor Catherine Malabou would allow their names to be associated with the Avello Publishing Journal if Dr Wakefield’s work were anything other than exemplary? For that matter, would Oxford University Press have considered for an instant including Jason’s endorsement of Korsgaard’s The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology in its marketing material if it did not have complete confidence in this young Cambridge scholar’s judgement?

With a sense of quiet self-confidence proper to his intellect – Dr Wakefield disarmingly describes his interests as ‘diverse, much like the interests of a polymath (πολυμαθής) such as Leonardo Da Vinchi or Gottfried Leibniz’ – Jason is surely an example to us all, but where his Facebook calumniators laugh hyena-like at Jason’s efforts in the guise of DJ Luga Ayd, pointing impertinently to his work for the Playboy Girls of Hawaiian Tropic ‘Beach Party Booby Bus’ Yum Yum Models Party on behalf of Funky Bubblers Entertainment (of which Jason is the proud CEO, and Avello Publishing a wholly-owned subsidiary), Wakefield may nonetheless rest content that his unique project is the future face of peer reviewed open-access philosophy publishing.

Uncanny

Up Your Arts

In his recent article for Artforum, ‘Tedious Methods’, leading Brooklynite Jeff Nagy speaks to many of our concerns regarding Speculative Realism as but the mere ideological appendage of capitalist technoscience. Indeed, in this review of The Number and the Siren by Quentin Meillassoux, Mr Nagy has not shirked the gruelling labour of philosophical exegesis and, by means of a dense sequence of argument rarely seen in a trade paper (or indeed, outside of the more technically demanding elements of Frege’s œuvre), has irrefutably demonstrated the coterminous nature of ‘speculative realism’ and ‘financial speculation’ – where the new breed of charlatans, trailing an enthralled audience of shills that outnumbers even the throngs habitually met with at ‘fast poetry’ readings, would likely have been satisfied to draw conclusions from the mere fact that they share nine letters in common.

As sagely observed by Nagy, who did not enjoy math class at school, Meillassoux’s counting up of the words in Mallarmé’s poem falls far short of its purportedly innovative approach to the Riemann zeta function and arithmetic L-series: in fact it ‘is not so much mathematical as merely arithmetical, not so much a mathematization as an accounting’, and as such, therefore, given its cynical, abject relationship to the positive sciences and their political masters, a ‘sure bet’ and ‘infinite success’.

It would be wrong, however, to portray Nagy’s review-article as being somehow inaccessible to a philosophical lay readership, for he has been careful to leaven his critique with witheringly funny examples of where Speculative Realism’s objective, disinterested façade falls away, and we are all forced to conclude that it is all so much ‘money for old rope’.

Swing, Swing Together

Grotesque miscarriage of justice as politically-motivated sentence is handed down in the service of protecting the arcane rituals of a tiny, self-serving coterie of vain plutocrats:

Vegetables

There was, I think, a conflict—perhaps a productive one—at the heart of this enormous multidisciplinary show, and it can be located exactly in the tension between those two words. On the one hand, many of the artworks and the stories they told circled around collective traumas: those of Nazi Germany and, much more recently, those of Afghanistan or the countries involved in the Arab Spring. Indeed, Christov-Bakargiev’s focus on what she calls “collapse and recovery” is so familiar from recent cultural theory that it is almost a cliché to speak of a traumatic temporality at the very core of all avant-garde artistic developments. But on the other hand, such psychoanalytic language here collides with the idiom of a new, object-oriented philosophy that wants to liberate us once and for all from anthropocentrism and consider instead what the catalogue calls the “inanimate makers of the world.” In fact, Christov-Bakargiev’s project is in many ways perfectly in tune with the approaches today discussed as “speculative realism,” with its ambition to rid our thinking of the obsession with that historically overemphasized relationship between a perceiving subject and a known object. Instead, the argument goes, we should look into other equally exciting and productive relationships in the world, consisting of so many human and nonhuman actors, or “actants,” as Bruno Latour would put it. Philosopher Graham Harman goes so far as to claim: “Atoms and molecules are actants, as are children, raindrops, bullet trains, politicians, and numerals. All entities are on exactly the same ontological footing.” One can go further still: To quote from an interview with Christov-Bakargiev, “The question is not whether we give dogs or strawberries permission to vote, but how a strawberry can assert its political intention.”

http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=34514

No Cheating

Michael Day asserts that “Cardinal Martini caused controversy in his final days after refusing artificial feeding, contravening church policy on end-of-life issues” (4 September). This oversimplifies Catholic teaching.

According to Pope John Paul II, the administration of food and water should be understood as part of “the normal care due to the sick” and thus as “in principle” obligatory. A later statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took a similar approach.

However, if a person is imminently dying, and if artificial feeding would neither extend life nor bring relief from symptoms, then it is not obligatory, as both these statements in effect recognised. Catholics are not obliged to receive care or treatment that has become genuinely futile, though their aim in refusing it should not be to hasten death.

Prof David Albert Jones
Director, The Anscombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford

—— Letters to the Editor, The Independent, 2012-09-08. p. 40

No, really

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/08/olympics-spectator-parkinsons-arrest-smiling

Whatever happened to Orphan Drift?

“I am approaching galleries.”

They've Got an Awful Lot of Objects in Brazil

Latin American correspondent Pootle Escobar has drawn my attention to Professor Harman’s forthcoming appearances at conferences all entitled ‘The Secret Life of Objects’ in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Forteleza [sic].

Brassica as a Possible Object of Ethical Affirmation

Critical Plant Studies: Philosophy, Literature, Culture

ISSN: 2213-0659
E-ISSN: 2213-0667

Series Editor:
Michael Marder (IKERBASQUE / The University of the Basque Country, Vitoria)

The goal of the Critical Plant Studies, a new book series at Rodopi Press, is to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue, whereby philosophy and literature would learn from each other to think about, imagine, and describe, vegetal life with critical awareness, conceptual rigor, and ethical sensitivity. Literary works featuring plant imagery may be analyzed with reference to philosophical frameworks, while philosophical discussions of the meanings of vegetal life may be enriched and supported with the tools of literary criticism. Another dialogic dimension of the series entails a sustained engagement between Western and non-Western philosophies and religious traditions, representative of the human attitudes to plants. This “cross-pollination” of different fields of knowledge and experience will become possible thanks to the fundamental role plants play in human life, regardless of their backgrounding or neglect.

Ethically stated, the aim of the book series is to encourage an incremental shift of cultural attitudes from a purely instrumental to a respectful approach to vegetal beings. This is particularly important at the current time of the global environmental crisis, when massive de-forestation, seed patenting, and profit-driven agriculture threaten the very future of life on the planet. Not only will works included in the series shed light on the being of plants, but they will also assist us in critically thinking through the crucial issues and challenges of the contemporary world. Bioethics and genetic engineering, of which plants were the first examples; the role of spirituality and holism in the techno-scientific age; the reliance of our imagination and creativity on elements of the “natural” world; global food shortages and sustainable agricultural practices; the roots of our thinking and writing in other-than-human, vegetal processes, such as growth and decay, germination and branching out, fecundation and fruition—books included in Critical Plant Studies will, in one way or another, touch upon these and related themes central to the philosophy, literature, and culture of the twenty-first century.

Thus, we are looking to publish a mix of specialized manuscripts and introductory texts on the theory, literary criticism, and religious or aesthetic appreciation of plant life. Each title in the series will combine at least two of the disciplines listed above, with preference given to cutting-edge methodologies in comparative literature, comparative philosophy, comparative religious studies, etc., and trans-disciplinary approaches. Analyses of plant-related writings and artworks from any historical period and geographical area will be welcome.

Please, forward all queries and proposals to michael.marder@gmail.com

http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=PLANT

‘The liberation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.’

http://thepeerage.com/p198.htm#i1974.
http://www.thepeerage.com/p49057.htm#i490569.

Sphaleotas wishes to extend New Year’s Greetings to all our Mayan readers

Trapped for nine hours in a lift with Karen Armstrong?

Herman Philipse feels your pain.

1. Introduction

In this paper I attempt to substantiate the thesis that the core-beliefs of religions are irrational. These core-beliefs are the monotheist contention that there is one God or the polytheist opinion that there are a number of different gods. Outside mathematics, the word ‘irrational’ may signify two different things. Either it means that a sentient being is not endowed with reason, for instance if one speaks of ‘irrational animals’ such as slugs. Or it means that a belief or an action is contrary to reason, that is, unreasonable, utterly illogical, or absurd. I claim that all religious core-beliefs are irrational in this second sense. And of course, irrationality should be avoided.

It will be objected to my thesis that beliefs cannot be accused of being unreasonable unless they are situated within the province of reason. Could one not argue that religious beliefs are not located within this province because, as Pascal said, ‘the heart has reasons which reason does not grasp’? According to some religious authors, the domain of reason is somehow limited, and faith must be situated entirely, or in part, beyond the limits of human reason. I shall argue that even if faith transcends reason in this manner, the core-beliefs of religions are unreasonable.

That’s a relief.

Zero Tolerance

Race and Class

To begin with the first. In the Memoirs of Granville Sharp, lately published, there is an anecdote recorded of the young Prince Naimbanna, well worthy the attention of all unfledged sophists, and embryo politicians.

Let’s All Go Down The Strand

Urbi et Orbi

James Murdoch paid £100,000 to meet Pope
By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Friday, 15 July 2011

The Catholic Church has been criticised for accepting a six-figure donation from James Murdoch ahead of him being given a personal audience with Pope Benedict during last year’s papal visit. Mr Murdoch was among major donors who were invited to personally greet Pope Benedict after a special mass at Westminster Cathedral during the pontiff’s visit last September. It is believed that the Murdoch family paid a contribution towards the Papal visit of around £100,000.

The continuing scandal over phone hacking has placed religious institutions in a moral quandary. There have already been calls for the Church of England to divest its £3.8m shares in News Corp, a request which church leaders have so far resisted.

There is growing disquiet within the Catholic community over the Murdoch family’s close ties to the church in Britain, America and in Rome.

Although not a Catholic, James’s father Rupert was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory by the previous pontiff Pope John Paul II, one of the highest civilian honours the Vatican bestows on people. His wife at the time, Anna Torv, was a practising Catholic and the following year Mr Murdoch gave $10m to help build a cathedral in Los Angeles.

Unforgiven

Alfie Meadows has been ‘charged with violent disorder contrary to Section 2 Public Order Act 1986’.

Are You Serious?

Having sat in on many a Steve Goodman position paper, Sphaleotas wonders whether the VF 2.0’ll steering committee’s portrait of the CCRU as ‘psychedelic transhumanists’ might not be a case of one Aricept banana-smoothie too far.

[Update 2011-04-28]

Renowned creationist Steve Fuller has just been confirmed as a speaker – truly a ‘must-see’ for Texans and fans of Richard Seymour’s ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ blog!

Whitewashing the Back 40

Professor Lord Giddens of the LSE holds forth on a topic of present concern in this article from 2007.

Please Give It Up For The Man Who Made It All Possible

You Desire It. Buy It.

A Max Stirner for the nineties or cogent and consequential critic of all metaphysics heretofore? You decide!

That’s My Boy!

Object-Oriented Ontology: a Primer

Troubled by Cossacks? Don’t know what to do?

A quintessentially modern predicament, to be sure. We suggest: Go for the horse’s legs!

Suspicions Confirmed

Here.

Never had the Latin

Do it for Cyril

Like many Jesuits down the centuries, Barrett made no attempt to disguise his chafing at the Vatican’s hierarchical politics and social conservatism – going so far as to declare on the day of the attempted assassination of the Pope, in a bellow that filled a London restaurant, that “the only thing wrong with that bloody Turk was that he couldn’t shoot straight”. The religious affairs correspondent of The Sunday Times, seated at a nearby table, turned beetroot.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article995176.ece