Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Panpsychism”

Episode 54: Lobsters, Pianos, and Hidden Gods

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:00:00 -0400

"All things feel," Pythagoas said. Panpsychism, the belief that consciousnes is a property of all things and not limited to the human brain, is back in vogue -- with good reason. The problem of how inert matter could give rise to subjectivity and feeling has proved insoluble under the dominant assumptions of a hard materialism. Recently, the American filmmaker Errol Morris presented his own brand of panpsychism in a long-form essay entitled, "The Pianist and the Lobster," published in the New York Times. The essay opens with an episode from the life of Sviatoslav Richter, namely a time where the famous Russian pianist couldn't perform without a plastic lobster waiting for him in the wings. In Morris's piece, the curious anecdote sounds the first note of what turns out to be a polyphony of thoughts and ideas on consciousness, agency, Nerval's image of the the "Hidden God," and the deep weirdness of music. Phil and JF use Morris's essay to create a polyphony of their own.

REFERENCES

Errol Morris, "The Pianist and the Lobster"

Sviatoslav Richter, Russian pianist
Nick Cave., Red Hand Files #53
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Bruno Monsaingeon (dir.), Richter: The Enigma
Bon Jovi, "Livin’ on a Prayer"
Brad Warner, "The Eyes of Dogen"
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Edgard Varèse, composer
Benjamin Libet, neuroscientist
Robin Hardy (dir), The Wicker Man
Frans De Waal, Mama’s Last Hug
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego
Tarot de Marseille - XVIII: The Moon
Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life
Carl Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry", The Red Book
Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods

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