Shea Stevens

Extract from Balwin’s book reads: “I am not sure that the cultural level of the people is subject to a steady rise: in fact, quite unpredictable things happen when the bulk of the population attains what we think of as a high cultural level, e.g., pre-World War II Germany, or present-day Swe-den. And this, I think, is because the effort of a Schoenberg or a Picasso (or a William Faulkner or an Albert Camus) has nothing to do, at bottom, with physical comfort, or indeed with comfort of any other kind. But the aim of the people who rise to this high cultural level—who rise, that is, into the middle class—is precisely comfort for the body and the mind. The artistic objects by which they are surrounded cannot possibly fulfill their original function of disturbing the peace-which is still the only method by which the mind can be improved-they bear witness instead to the attainment of a certain level of economic stability and a certain thin measure of sophistication. But art and ideas come out of the passion and torment of experience: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one's aim is to be protected from the second.”

Reading James Baldwin and every page seems to glitter with wisdom.

Kurt Goldstein: The Organism - YouTube A four video series on The Organism by Kurt Goldstein

Here’s my series on The Organism. I also have a series on The Structure of Behavior as well where I make some more comparisons. It’s not perfect but I hope it’s helpful. Thanks for reaching out!

Super cool! For fans of Aristotle and philosophy of mind:

My quote of the day

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

Wokeness: a Retrospective In recent times my online sphere has had a fair few people make the claim that, in some sense, the culture has moved on from Woke. The d...

My Retrospective on Wokeness in detail! Blogs are for just saying stuff, after all. So here is my attempt to say what was distinctive (if anything) about a recent era of socio-cultural life, what (if anything) changed, and what (if anything) was to the good

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...

Enjoyed being part of a *packed* final session of @ishpssb2025.bsky.social where we all witnessed @asmeincke.bsky.social make a compelling case to @kevinlala.bsky.social (in the room!) as to why he should explicitly adopt a process ontology for the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis! 🌱🐋

We're happy to announce that the recordings from our recent Revitalizing Biophilosophy conference are all available for public viewing!

Watch the recordings: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

"... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs...."

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Some questions are truly deep: How do time and/or space emerge, if indeed they do? Why do quantum measurements of entangled systems seem to convey information faster than light?

All of these questions are considered perfectly respectable, more so than looking at quantum foundations per se. (4/n)

Cloud study - 1868 #artbots #monet
https://botfrens.com/collections/41/contents/3109724

[6] L To Calvisius. Thave been spending all my time here among my tablets and books as quietly as I could wish. "How is that possible," you ask, "in Rome?" Well, the Circensian games have been on, and that is a kind of spectacle which has not the slightest attraction for me. There is no novelty, no variety in it, nothing which one wants to see twice. Hence I am the more amazed that so many thousands of men * should be eager, like a pack of children, to see horses running time after time, and the charioteers bending over their cars. There might be some reason for their enthusiasm if it was the speed of the hors or the skill of the drivers that was the attraction, but it is the racing-colours which they favour, and the racing-colours that fire their love. If, in the middle of the course and during the race itself, the colours were to be changed, their enthusiasm and partisanship would change with them, and they would suddenly desert the drivers and the horses, whom they recognise afar and whose names they shout aloud. Such is the influence and authority vested i one cheap tunic, I don't say with the common crowd, - for that is even cheaper than the tunic, - but with certain men of position; and when I consider that they can sit for so long without growing tired, looking on at such a fruitless, cheerless, and tedious sport, I really feel a sort of pleasure in the thought that what they take delight in has no charm for me. Thus it is that I have been only too glad to pass my leisure time among my books during the race-meeting, while others have been wasting their days in the most idle occupations. Farewell.

[first lines Jerry: Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You're actually rooting for the clothes when you get right down to it. I mean, you are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt. They hate him now. "Boo! Different shirt. Booooo."

Pliny the Younger apparently thought sports were very stupid but it's funny that it's for the exact reason laid out in Seinfeld s6e12 ("The Label Maker")

Looks like it’s “what do people think about big questions day” in science today.

What’s life and what’s stuff?

My last one picked on philosophy, let me know pick on social science: "emergence"

Related: "more than the sum of its parts"

New Gallup: 60% of Americans now disapprove of Israel's military action in Gaza, and for the first time ever, in three decades of polling, a majority of Americans (52%) now have an unfavorable view of Benjamin Netanyahu.

news.gallup.com/poll/692948/...

In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide

“Two of the best-known Israeli human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” I agree. Sadly.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/w...

Goethe really is the OG.

I’m in awe

"All you do is read and write PDFs" Yeah but my PDFs were understood and liked by 3-5 people with institutional power and now, as long as I make a few more PDFs, I'll have a job forever

Oh Merleau-Ponty, you brilliant devil. (I just found a particularly exciting gem in his Nature course notes that provides additional support for a paper I wrote). It’s so lovely when you find a philosopher you completely vibe with.

Campbell Rider confirming eloquently that we need more Schelling at ISH! @campbellrider.bsky.social makes a compelling case that Schelling provides more resources to contemporary biology than Kant does, and that Schelling can be thought of as an 'organicist' 🌱🐋
@ishpssb2025.bsky.social

This was such a fun read and really resonates with my philosophy on the balance of the two perspectives (and the power of modeling as a tool to integrate them).

Oh, thank you! Very helpful.

Thanks! (Big fan of your work by the way.)

Oo thank you!

Has anyone written a history of the term “dialectic”? It’s a great word. I’d love to learn how its usage developed over time. I’m curious how recently it began to have a more general usage.

Been wanting to read this one for a while! Will order my copy now. 👏🏻

this is an extension of the authoritarian mindset and the aversion to complexity, "actually my politics, would solve all issues with no trade offs, immediately, and am being foiled by the perfidious liberals"

Colbert responds to Trump celebrating his cancellation:

This is mostly just my own grumpy preference but I’m contemplating spending the rest of my life entirely tuning out the existence of AI. Just entirely living in denial. It has its good points but I’ll let other people use it/ speculate about it to their hearts’ content. I’d like to opt out.

Truth? Falsity? These things are fleeting; fading and ephemeral. Citation count, that is what is eternal. And Descartes is doing great sub specie aeternitatis.