Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Idealism”

Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 11:30:00 -0400

"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace the metaphysical expanses that reveal themselves to many who dare dip a toe outside the materialist lifeboat we've been rowing away in for a couple of centuries now. In this conversation, Phil and JF talk to the eminent scholar of religion about the life-changing epiphanies that have convinced many a hardboiled materialist that bouncing billiard balls is probably not the best metaphor for what is actually going on in the universe. In essence, this is a conversation about stories, about the fictions we tell ourselves to make sense -- or nonsense -- of our world.

REFERENCES

Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Weird Studies, Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis

Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Episode 32: Orbis Tertius: Borges on Magic, Conspiracy and Idealism

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 11:15:00 -0400

Jorge Luis Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a metaphysical detective story, an armchair conspiracy thriller, and a masterpiece of weird fiction. In this tale penned by a true literary magician, Phil and JF see an opportunity to talk about magic, hyperstition, non-linear time, and the power of metaphysics to reshape the world. When Phil questions his co-host's animus against idealist doctrines, the discussion turns to dreams, cybernetics, and information theory, before reaching common ground with the dumbfound appreciation of radical mystery.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Ficciones
Weird Studies, Episode 29, "On Lovecraft"
George Berkley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
John Crowley, the Aegypt tetralogy
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia - Urn Burial
Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)
William James, A Pluralistic Universe
Karl Schroeder, "Degrees of Freedom"
Weird Studies, Episode 26, "Living in a Glass Age"
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Dogen, Genjokoan

Episode 17: Does 'Consciousness' Exist? - Part One

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 10:00:00 -0400

In this first part of their discussion of William James' classic essay in radical empiricism, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", Phil and JF talk about the various ways we use the slippery C-word in contemporary culture. The episode touches on the political charge of the concept of consciousness, the unholy marriage of materialism and idealism ("Kant is the ultimate hipster"), the role of consciousness in the workings of the weird -- basically, anything but the essay in question. That will come in part two.

Header image by Miguel Bolacha, Wikimedia Commons

REFERENCES

William James, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?"
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Daniel Pinchbeck, author and founder of Reality Sandwich
Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
Matt Cardin - author and editor, creator of The Teeming Brain

Episode 8: On Graham Harman's "The Third Table"

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 13:00:00 -0400

JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of his closet, we discover that JF's kids are better at this weird studies stuff than their old man, and the conversation veers through Harman's Lovecraftian "weird realism," Zen's "just sit" meditation, panpsychism, Martin Buber's I and Thou, experimental filmmaking, and more.

WORKS AND IDEAS CITED IN THIS EPISODE

Graham Harman, "The Third Table"
Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects
Martin Heidegger, Being in Time
J. F. Martel, "Ramble on the Real"
Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World
Graham Harman, "Objects and the Arts" (lecture)
Bernardo Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Walden, A Game – A computer game based on Heny David Thoreau’s classic work, Walden
South Park, “Guitar Queer-O” (season 11, episode 13)
Wikipedia entry on art critic David Hickey
Heraclitus, Fragments
Martin Buber, I and Thou
The concept of “substantial form” in Aristotle’s philosophy
Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"
Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things
William James, "Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?"
Andy Warhol’s minimalist films Empire and Sleep
Wikipedia entry on filmmaker Terrence Malick
Neil Jordan (director), The End of the Affair (based on the novel by Graham Greene)
J. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (painting)
Matthew Akers (director), David Blaine: Beyond Magic
The Duffer Brothers (directors), Stranger Things 2