Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters
April 8, 2018 10:56 PM Subscribe
I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other.
I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts.
ending a trans-world relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.
I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts.
ending a trans-world relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.
*Incredulous Stare*
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 12:18 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 12:18 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
I just read this article and it is very similar to things I've heard my philosopher friends say.
In fact I already sent it to teaspoon before even reading metafilter.
(For clarity, the main article is about "Why I left academic philosophy" and the article uses the pullquotes above as an example of the problem. )
I'm speaking second hand, but I've been told by philosophers of a sort of stylistic darwinism amongst philosophers. Because paid jobs are so hard to come by they tend to go to those that write papers (because of, amongst other things the Research Assesment Framework thing) and journals tend to publish mainstream philosophy papers, which means excessive referencing of philosophers no matter how tangential (often because a more senior academic really like, say Spinoza or Nietze or something, so you have to relate back to that for no good reason). So to get a job you have to write these dense overly technical examinations of ideas. Therefore the whole species of philosophers are driven more and more into this niche.
I went to a philosophy conference once, as a guest, and it was full of the most appalling nonsense. Questions from the (predominantly male) audience were all along the lines of "Your paper on the weather pattern reality vs simulation and the map/territory distinction as a popperian 3rd world construct is really very similar to my recent paper on Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn*. I'm concerned that Derrida's take on that would invalidate some of your foundational axioms? Have you considered that?"
Anyway, I suggested once to an epistemologist philosopher that they write a paper about the whole of academic philosophy publishing was bullshit for basically this reason. They said that they'd like to, but would have to be far more senior before they could get away with doing that. Which is kind of the problem. If a philosopher of epistemology can't critique the entire mechanism of how a society codifies knowledge then there's something of a problem.
*This is a tiny philosophy joke, because I went looking for obscure philosophers on wikipedia and discovered the term obscurantism which is derived from a satire based on a discussion between these two 16th century dudes.
But the point being that no one would know that, and the questioner knows that no one would know that, but now you feel dumb because now you have to admit that you don't know something, and it's basically a dick move, but was also every single question at that conference.
Actually the whole page on Obscurantism is really good, and suggests that this has been an issue since Aristotle
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:14 AM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
In fact I already sent it to teaspoon before even reading metafilter.
(For clarity, the main article is about "Why I left academic philosophy" and the article uses the pullquotes above as an example of the problem. )
I'm speaking second hand, but I've been told by philosophers of a sort of stylistic darwinism amongst philosophers. Because paid jobs are so hard to come by they tend to go to those that write papers (because of, amongst other things the Research Assesment Framework thing) and journals tend to publish mainstream philosophy papers, which means excessive referencing of philosophers no matter how tangential (often because a more senior academic really like, say Spinoza or Nietze or something, so you have to relate back to that for no good reason). So to get a job you have to write these dense overly technical examinations of ideas. Therefore the whole species of philosophers are driven more and more into this niche.
I went to a philosophy conference once, as a guest, and it was full of the most appalling nonsense. Questions from the (predominantly male) audience were all along the lines of "Your paper on the weather pattern reality vs simulation and the map/territory distinction as a popperian 3rd world construct is really very similar to my recent paper on Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn*. I'm concerned that Derrida's take on that would invalidate some of your foundational axioms? Have you considered that?"
Anyway, I suggested once to an epistemologist philosopher that they write a paper about the whole of academic philosophy publishing was bullshit for basically this reason. They said that they'd like to, but would have to be far more senior before they could get away with doing that. Which is kind of the problem. If a philosopher of epistemology can't critique the entire mechanism of how a society codifies knowledge then there's something of a problem.
*This is a tiny philosophy joke, because I went looking for obscure philosophers on wikipedia and discovered the term obscurantism which is derived from a satire based on a discussion between these two 16th century dudes.
But the point being that no one would know that, and the questioner knows that no one would know that, but now you feel dumb because now you have to admit that you don't know something, and it's basically a dick move, but was also every single question at that conference.
Actually the whole page on Obscurantism is really good, and suggests that this has been an issue since Aristotle
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:14 AM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
Re: the second link: there's a middle ground between ghosting someone and telling them why you're not interested in continuing to see them after that first internet date. That middle ground is simply telling them upfront that you're not interested in continuing to see them. Although, Williams' point about safety issues is totally valid and I don't begrudge anyone who ghosts someone because they think that any contact would put their safety at risk.
posted by eviemath at 3:29 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by eviemath at 3:29 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
In a follow-up, I will present evidence that Mai Minakami from the 2011 anime Nichijou is a modal realist.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:33 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:33 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
Possible Girls reads like a mediocre reductio-ad-absurdum science fiction story, which would have been much better written by Jorge Luis Borges and/or Ted Chiang and/or China Miéville. (Those would be three very different stories, wouldn't they?)
Something something Roger Zelazny something.
posted by erniepan at 3:49 AM on April 9, 2018
Then I thought of my possible girlfriend, and smiled at the thought of someone out there who loved me and desired to be loved by me. In quick succession I realized that she knew I was thinking of her – after all, she knew every temporal part of me down to a microphysical description! She knew everything I was saying and doing. I felt more motivated to act like a worthy man. My posture straightened.Ooh! Ooh! A subtle and ironic stab at religion! How transgressive!
Something something Roger Zelazny something.
posted by erniepan at 3:49 AM on April 9, 2018
The argument in Williams's essay reminds me of the frustrations expressed in Richard Rorty's "Trotsky And The Wild Orchids."
Makes me wonder if she's read Rorty - I'd assume one couldn't get to PhD level study of philosophy without encountering his work but then again, all my degrees are in English Lit.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:36 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Makes me wonder if she's read Rorty - I'd assume one couldn't get to PhD level study of philosophy without encountering his work but then again, all my degrees are in English Lit.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:36 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
That article reads like an anxiety attack I had once.
posted by idiopath at 5:48 AM on April 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 5:48 AM on April 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
The deeper into the world of abstraction the better. The less connected to real world issues the more pure it is.
This...isn't really true anymore. And I say that as someone with a PhD in (analytic) philosophy, who can identify with the author's general sense of dissatisfaction and boredom.
Sure, you can find that attitude in spades if you're looking for it, and there's a lingering, vestigial sense of safety around issues/questions that are fully cloistered and without application to practical/applied concerns.
But on the whole, I think most philosophers would agree that there's a trend toward at least aspiring to greater social relevance. If you look at the young philosophers getting hired these days, if they do something super abstract in the philosophy of language, they'll also have a research project on, say, applying that to hate speech (for example). (Even if that's just job market posturing, it tells you something that candidates and search committees see it as a good posture to adopt.)
Obviously it's a different question whether analytic philosophers' efforts in that direction are worthwhile contributions to whatever discourse you deem to be Real Worldy enough. But the author's generalization about what is valued in philosophy and what is shunned seems a bit out-of-date and strawy.
posted by Beardman at 6:40 AM on April 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
This...isn't really true anymore. And I say that as someone with a PhD in (analytic) philosophy, who can identify with the author's general sense of dissatisfaction and boredom.
Sure, you can find that attitude in spades if you're looking for it, and there's a lingering, vestigial sense of safety around issues/questions that are fully cloistered and without application to practical/applied concerns.
But on the whole, I think most philosophers would agree that there's a trend toward at least aspiring to greater social relevance. If you look at the young philosophers getting hired these days, if they do something super abstract in the philosophy of language, they'll also have a research project on, say, applying that to hate speech (for example). (Even if that's just job market posturing, it tells you something that candidates and search committees see it as a good posture to adopt.)
Obviously it's a different question whether analytic philosophers' efforts in that direction are worthwhile contributions to whatever discourse you deem to be Real Worldy enough. But the author's generalization about what is valued in philosophy and what is shunned seems a bit out-of-date and strawy.
posted by Beardman at 6:40 AM on April 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
I think I should just come out and put it bluntly, this entire post was actually an excuse to post the third link, which I didn't have a frame for, so what you should do is forget about this post and go and look at the ContraPoints YouTube channel because I've been binge watching it and I currently hurt from laughter and knowledge.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 6:57 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 6:57 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
sometimes i think philosophy is proof that the prefrontal cortex was a grievous error
posted by murphy slaw at 7:45 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by murphy slaw at 7:45 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
> The argument in Williams's essay reminds me of the frustrations expressed in Richard Rorty's "Trotsky And The Wild Orchids."
Thanks very much for that; I have always enjoyed reading Rorty but never knew quite where he was coming from, and now I not only know but am willing to subscribe to his newsletter. He's a man after my own heart: "Dewey thought, as I now do, that there was nothing bigger, more permanent and more reliable, behind our sense of moral obligation to those in pain than a certain contingent historical phenomenon - the gradual spread of the sense that the pain of others matters, regardless of whether they are of the same family, tribe, colour, religion, nation or intelligence as oneself." And look how prescient he was—this was published in 1992:
Dude, that's not a sensible way to post. Most people, myself certainly included, assume that the first link is the main one; if I look at only one link (and that's usually the case, unless I'm really interested in the topic), that's the one I'll click on. Personally, I prefer it if there's only one link, but I realize lots of people like multilink posts and they're a feature of the site now. But put your main link first or a lot of people will never get to it.
posted by languagehat at 8:05 AM on April 9, 2018 [8 favorites]
Thanks very much for that; I have always enjoyed reading Rorty but never knew quite where he was coming from, and now I not only know but am willing to subscribe to his newsletter. He's a man after my own heart: "Dewey thought, as I now do, that there was nothing bigger, more permanent and more reliable, behind our sense of moral obligation to those in pain than a certain contingent historical phenomenon - the gradual spread of the sense that the pain of others matters, regardless of whether they are of the same family, tribe, colour, religion, nation or intelligence as oneself." And look how prescient he was—this was published in 1992:
At the moment there are two cultural wars being waged in the United States. The first is the one described in detail by my colleague James Davison Hunter in his comprehensive and informative Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. This war - between the people Hunter calls 'progressivists' and those he calls 'orthodox' - is important. It will decide whether our country continues along the trajectory defined by the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, the building of the land-grant colleges, female suffrage, the New Deal, Brown v. Board of Education, the building of the community colleges, Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legislation, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement. Continuing along this trajectory would mean that America might continue to set an example of increasing tolerance and increasing equality. But it may be that this trajectory could be continued only while Americans' average real income continued to rise. So 1973 may have been the beginning of the end: the end both of rising economic expectations and of the political consensus that emerged from the New Deal. The future of American politics may be just a series of increasingly blatant and increasingly successful variations on the Willie Horton spots. Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here may become an increasingly plausible scenario.> I think I should just come out and put it bluntly, this entire post was actually an excuse to post the third link
Dude, that's not a sensible way to post. Most people, myself certainly included, assume that the first link is the main one; if I look at only one link (and that's usually the case, unless I'm really interested in the topic), that's the one I'll click on. Personally, I prefer it if there's only one link, but I realize lots of people like multilink posts and they're a feature of the site now. But put your main link first or a lot of people will never get to it.
posted by languagehat at 8:05 AM on April 9, 2018 [8 favorites]
Yeah I'll make a more substantive one at some point soon.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:28 AM on April 9, 2018
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:28 AM on April 9, 2018
Yeah - if like me anyone's curious about the pullquote it's the abstract of the paper Possible Girls by Neil Sinhababu, in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (a real journal) in 2008. It's (obviously?) a joke/stunt to get people interested and get them to come to talks - this is part of his thing, he's trying to be fun/appealing etc. Modal realism is a really easy thing to make wacky jokes out of.
I can see several problems in academic philosophy that this paper illustrates, but transphilosopher isn't really making those points or saying anything specific about this paper at all. (Which is fine, but it's weird to use that pullquote then.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:26 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
I can see several problems in academic philosophy that this paper illustrates, but transphilosopher isn't really making those points or saying anything specific about this paper at all. (Which is fine, but it's weird to use that pullquote then.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:26 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
The Possible Girls paper might help me articulate personal reasons that I've grown to have an overfamiliar contempt for "many worlds" type philosophies.
My mother ran away when I was four (she had her reasons - she married too young, to a bully who was not her intellectual equal). I was just old enough to remember her leaving. I learned all about being loved by someone far away who has no causal relationship to one's self. About finding solace in an abstract and theoretical relationship (or even an entire world - I got occasional glimpses into the exciting reality she fled to, as a leftist academic with artist and punk friends at college). A relationship that I usually had no access to, and certainly couldn't rely on to offer me meaningful support for my needs. I had made the comparison to Christianity (and my own path to atheism), but hadn't seen how this also related to my escapism, my tendency to get lost in ideas and books and imaginary worlds. And finally, as an adult, my disillusionment with intellectual escape, imaginary worlds, far away and theoretical love.
Maybe this is a mundane insight. Surely every one of us who gets lost in ideas (and even more so, seeks out more and more difficult and complex ideas to lose ourselves in) finds them more comforting than the imperfect world we are stuck in already. I guess as escapist and avoidant techniques go, overcomplex and obscurantist ideas are more intrinsically rewarding than a drug habit at least.
posted by idiopath at 10:19 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
My mother ran away when I was four (she had her reasons - she married too young, to a bully who was not her intellectual equal). I was just old enough to remember her leaving. I learned all about being loved by someone far away who has no causal relationship to one's self. About finding solace in an abstract and theoretical relationship (or even an entire world - I got occasional glimpses into the exciting reality she fled to, as a leftist academic with artist and punk friends at college). A relationship that I usually had no access to, and certainly couldn't rely on to offer me meaningful support for my needs. I had made the comparison to Christianity (and my own path to atheism), but hadn't seen how this also related to my escapism, my tendency to get lost in ideas and books and imaginary worlds. And finally, as an adult, my disillusionment with intellectual escape, imaginary worlds, far away and theoretical love.
Maybe this is a mundane insight. Surely every one of us who gets lost in ideas (and even more so, seeks out more and more difficult and complex ideas to lose ourselves in) finds them more comforting than the imperfect world we are stuck in already. I guess as escapist and avoidant techniques go, overcomplex and obscurantist ideas are more intrinsically rewarding than a drug habit at least.
posted by idiopath at 10:19 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Better than a drug habit, certainly, and also better than going down the path of hardline fundamentalism or extremism of whatever stripe. Because that's another popular outcome, when the linkage between external and internal realities become uncoupled. It becomes seductively easy to start believing that external reality is "wrong" while the subjective/internal reality is "right" and the two need to be squared by changing the latter instead of the former.
There's probably an argument to be made about extremist/violent Millenarianism as an attempt to realize a fourth order of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation framework, where reality gets pounded into the shape of the simulation which the adherents have already created in their own minds; they must envision and simulate internally what they want to make manifest, so a certain level of internal idealization is necessary.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:35 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
There's probably an argument to be made about extremist/violent Millenarianism as an attempt to realize a fourth order of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation framework, where reality gets pounded into the shape of the simulation which the adherents have already created in their own minds; they must envision and simulate internally what they want to make manifest, so a certain level of internal idealization is necessary.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:35 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
I know that you linked to the article in the first comment, which is great, but I thought people might have missed that's what it was, so figured I would link again and talk a little about the journal/author.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:11 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:11 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
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See also Everley and Everley (April 1958)
posted by Segundus at 11:48 PM on April 8, 2018