The Last Post (maybe)
I recently read William Gibson’s Zero History, and it convinced me of the need to do some kinds of creative work privately, for integrity, among other reasons. So, while I will be working along the lines indicated in the previous post, I won’t be blogging about either the writing process or the ideas. I might even remove what’s on the site now. Gibson’s an influential chap!
For different reasons, I won’t be doing anything academic either, such as attending (much less seeking to speak at) The Difference that Makes a Difference: an interdisciplinary workshop on information and technology in September at the Open University (which I was thinking about doing). I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a fundamental mismatch between my approach to philosophy and the one that’s currently dominant in the analytic tradition. While that is my background, and I feel much more comfortable with it than with the Continental variety, I don’t like the quasi-scientific tendency to focus on ever finer detail. My approach is much more synthetic, attempting to integrate big ideas into ever-bigger pictures—putting together a jigsaw puzzle, rather than examining the pieces under a microscope. This means that the typical reaction to my ideas among academics is to see them as wildly over-ambitious and not worth taking seriously. Thus my decision to go over the heads of the professionals.
As I’m not into blogging on purely personal stuff, that leaves me with nothing to blog about, so this might well be The Last Post! 
June 7, 2011
Posted in: announcements, literature
3 Responses
“I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a fundamental mismatch between my approach to philosophy and the one that’s currently dominant in the analytic tradition.”
That’s not, by itself, a reason for not participating in the Workshop. On the contrary, it could be a reason that you should be there, in order to put forward a different perspective.
However, “the typical reaction to my ideas among academics is to see them as wildly over-ambitious and not worth taking seriously” would be disheartening, I can see.
BTW, did you watch the BBC2 series “All watched over by machines of loving grace”? If you didn’t, I recommend them on iPlayer http://bbc.in/lUDuMq
I hope you won’t remove what you’ve put up in public. You just never know how your ideas may contribute towards clarification of humans’ thinking about consciousness. And what effects, beyond thinking, that that might have.
Michael: Thanks, that’s encouraging.
David: That’s encouraging too, especially coming from one of the organisers! I’m now thinking again about submitting an abstract. Re the BBC series, I have doubts about Adam Curtis’ ideology, but given your recommendation, I will watch it. Thanks.
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