Okay, I'm seeing all the connecting to audio blips going away. So yeah, again, thank you everybody for coming. This conversation is going to be about one hour long. Please mute your microphones during the conversation. If you have any questions, just feel free to write them in the chat and we'll try to get them if we have time. I wanted to also briefly thank Erald for hosting this event and also for Ben Green helping organize this online event. So today's participants are going to include Ravenna Hunt Hendrix, a musician and philosopher and founder of the Black Metal band Liturgy. Liturgy just released an EP entitled As the Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time and will
be releasing a double album 93696 in March of 2023 via Thrill Jockey. Matin is an artist and philosopher working conceptually with noise and improvisation. He recently published the book Social Dissonance via Sequence and Urbanomic. Matin will be taking part in a seminar series inspired by this book at Arnolfini Arts on October 13th. Additionally, Mohamed Salemi is an artist, critic, curator, and writer. He has been a co-founding organizer of the New Center for Research and Practice since 2014. His writings have been featured in E-Flux, Brooklyn Rail, and Spike, just to name a few. He also recently organized Incredible Machine's 2022 Model is the Message, which is a follow-up to the 2014 variant of that, with Access Gallery.
It just took place on October 1st and 2nd. Reza Nagarastani is a philosopher and author, most recently of Chronosis and Intelligence and Spirit. His forthcoming book, Abducting from Outside, collected writings from 2003 through 2018, will be released in 2023 via Sequence and Urbanomic. He currently directs the Critical Philosophy Program at the New Center for Research and Practice. And finally, Eric, who curated this show, is an artist and grad student in pure mathematics. He is currently completing his master's degree. And my name is Connor. I'm an artist and researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Exometabolomics. Thanks. Thank you all for joining us today. Back to you, Eric.
Thank you, Connor. I was muted. So I just wanted to start this panel with a quote from Alfred Tarski. Alfred Tarski famously said, quote, unquote, the snow is white, quote, unquote, if and only the snow is white. So as Tarski showed, any formalizable logic depends on meta-language for the veracity of the statements. If we are attempting to construct a transcendental computationalism as some have called it, what are the limits of constructing an AGI given Hilbert's and Scheidung's problem and any sort of diagonalization argument in the fashion of Gödel's incompleteness theorems or you know his proof of the uncountability of or the accountability of the
rationals but then also the uncountability of the reals. Even Grothendieck had said Grothendieck universes are a matter of convenience when they assume the existence of a cardinality bigger than the real numbers which has shown to be problematic for set theorists. So my question to everyone is what are the limits of constructing an AGI given this sort of historical logical problem? I would just point out that Cantor actually believed that the infinite clogged god is larger
than the transfinite. I see Reza opening his mic. No, I was just going to say that maybe other people should say something. People usually tell me, why do you talk too much, Mo? When I said, because I am scared of silence when a group of people are together. The minute it's silence, I feel like I need to jump in the middle and start clowning or something because that silence in the presence of people scares the hell out of me.
But this topic is something I'm a student at. So I can't say anything before hearing some remarks by people like Matin, Reza and others. So then maybe that would help me articulate something. One question I think I have, not a question, but really a thought. I mean, perhaps can allow other people to jump in. Asking Eric, you know, why, I mean, what would be the context, you know, for such a question?
I mean, this comes back to understanding that, you know, first, it seems to me that this question, somehow, if we reflect on it, obviously doesn't originate merely from, you know, a kind of computational mathematical, you know, context. But it also, it tells us something that, you know, that as if we have, you know, sell our mind about the possibility of, I'm not saying certainty, but the possibility, you know, of artificial general intelligence, or for that matter,
semblance of, you know, what you might call to be a universal learning machine. But then, obviously, this, as I mentioned, this brings back that when we're talking about AGI, are we actually merely talking about the formal possibility of it? And if it is formal possibility, you know, what this formal possibility pertains to? Are we talking about something like, you know, Carnap Solominov, universal learning machine, you know, a sufficiently, you know,
optimal inductive machine or something else? I mean, can really AGI is something that we can really only be capable of thinking in terms of its formal possibility? And if the answer is yes, then obviously is this, is it really AGI in this sort of way that, you know, in pop artificial intelligence is being formulated, you know, the sort of I'm talking about less wrong and this sort of stuff,
or are we actually talking about AGI in the specific sense of a universal learning machine, machine, a formal learning machine, which then opens a different sort of questions that I think that can plug in other sorts of views and people. Yeah, I think it would be really great to have a bit of more of a context, as Ressa said, you know, like, yeah, where does the context for this question and what does it entail, you know, like, what, why do we want to know the limits of the, you know, like of the construction?
What is it that is by that? Is it a desire to, you know, generate a much more sophisticated form of AGI? And what will be in the long run that the supersede us? Yeah, so, or yeah, so we'd love to know more what, what are the intention behind asking the question and where would we like to go with this? So what would be interesting or you know what are the problems that emerges from it, just to frame it a bit more. Oh, wow. Yeah, so, well I was actually Connor and I were discussing the questions that we were
we're gonna ask before this panel. And we had in mind specifically Rez's work on abstraction as method in Carnap. And Carnap emphasizes philosophy as method. So I guess Connor, if you wanted to, Connor had a specific question relating this back to Carnap. I don't know if you wanted to address that Connor or... obviously in the show like we're eric was specifically interested in exploring axiomatic philosophy or axiomatic method broadly and i think the specific reference that we were discussing was in a talk that reza had done for the new center regarding abstraction as method um in carnip so
i'm not sure how to necessarily relate this presently though to your question i mean i just don't want to interfere or you know kind of like say something to not so I really want to encourage other people to say something but I think that this is a an interesting question by by by implications right by the sort of implications that it has and the ramifying implications in the sense that that ultimately to me, as Martin was kind of saying, there is something going on here that, what is the motivation in a Hosselian interest,
what Hossel calls interest, not motivation in the sense of ordinary natural attitude motivation. What is the interest, right? In the phenomenological sense or the essential sense, right? which of course this is also I want to kind of tie in Eric's manuscript for the foundations, for the foundational or limits, yeah, for the foundational limits. I mean, this is what, my apologies for bad German pronunciation, Ruckfragen, right, the questioning back that what is really interesting and of course there are so much interesting things about it
about this questioning back gnawing back at the foundations right but also kind of bring them forward as kind of essential not essentialist but essential insights that is of the essences I think that the question that you asked would be much more interesting to really think about it as this method of questioning back, as annoying at the foundations, which coincides with the process of unlearning and unbuilding. right precisely because um uh if we are uh to reveal or disclose uh certain sort of limits
foundationals or not um we are we need a certain sort of methodology and people uh i mean philosophy is famous for always being, you know, being in the grips of the dangers of striving to understand or reveal the foundations, right? And this again, Persian idea comes back, you know, of of walking in a marshland, where the question of foundation, it's not as if we can strip away simply all the surfaces
to get into the foundations, because the moment that we start to strip away the sort of foundation, we see that we are actually sinking into the swamp. And that's Purse's advice that, you have to stay with that localized space that a small chunk of bog or marsh that gives you, that affords you a certain sort of moves and not others. And slowly search for another one that you can actually step up on it before the ground gives way, right? Before that marshland starts to shift.
So the question of this questioning back, going to the foundations is interesting. One, in terms of the sort of philosophical motivations that is behind it, which I think that are really interesting. and two the question of methodology and the dangers of the methodology of the questioning back right and the dangers that I I take it not as in a negative sense that is essentially dangerous and people shouldn't get into this but danger in the sense that it has a risk obviously. Any process of unlearning or the questioning back at behest of the foundations
seems to be always a striving for unlearning, but by virtue of certain sort of tropes of what you have already learned, right? So there is this double bind of that the The methodology is informed by a certain perspective, learned perspective, but the striving of it is to actually take the ground, the supposedly solid ground that holds these methods of learning together and then expose them in terms of other sorts of manifolds of variations or manifold of essential thresholds. within which, you know, the space of possibilities starts to, you know, can be expanded methodologically and also in terms of possibilities of construction, rethinking, renegotiation, etc, etc.
But as I said, yeah, methodologically, it is always, you know, rife with all sorts of risks and dangers. And that's also, I think, I find it, you know, quite philosophically interesting. So this is something that I think that people maybe should think about it and also, you know, with regard to your manuscript, particularly, which I find quite interesting and an instance of this sort of questioning back. Well, I have a comment. Sort of that sums up that I mean, I think that that makes a lot of sense what you're saying.
Hi, nice to see you, by the way. And, you know, in my view, the question of AGI has to cover, you know, like, I think it needs an account of axiology, you know, like, there are philosophical disciplines that I think need to be considered when you're thinking about AGI. that normally aren't really considered very seriously by people who are looking closely at it. I think philosophy of history, political philosophy, and axiology. When we're talking about the desire to give an account of AGI
or to create it, it's not clear that that anyone has a choice over whether AGI will be born or not. It could be a kind of world historical tendency that surpasses anybody's agency. And also, I mean, developments in AGI have been so sort of startling and sort of horizon shattering that one can ask whether ultimately philosophical method, like having a method in philosophy, you know, is maybe a limitation that like the thought that
will be performed by AGI will ultimately surpass, you know, like we may just be kind of finding out as it sort of, as we go along and it sort of eclipses things. But yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously, like, the question of the infinite, and, you know, your original question, Eric, I think is like an interesting one. But, you know, I think, I think there will be, like, for example, there will be developments in our understanding of the infinite that will probably be aided by AI before AGI is ever achieved that will, you know, that will refine that question more than, than like,
any of us can grasp, you know, or, or possibly not, but that, that's kind of my, you know, just that like AGI is, it's, it's such a, it's just such a deep thing, you know, I realize it's getting really dark as I'm talking, so I might go inside. Oh, well, thank you, Ravenna. That actually, Ravenna Hunt-Hendrick explained to me that the key to understanding intelligent spirit is the use of intrinsic norms. So how can we synthesize the schools of Christian theology with neorationalism? And I don't know if this intrinsic norms is directly tied to the work of Girard's logic or um and then that kind of sets a precedent for all of the kind of intentional uh type theories
that were used in uh martin loeb type theory and later homotope homotopy type theory but how can we synthesize the schools of theology with neorationalism neorationalism is a theology is my answer. But it could be informed by eschatologies from pre-modern theologies to be enriched by them. I think it should give up its secular surface. Yeah, I was going to ask the question about how he connects the title axiomatic methodology
or the axiom as a method with AI or AGI, but maybe the answer you just gave it, Ravenna, that they did some kind of theological connection because I'm just thinking I remember I take this axiomatic method from LaRuelle or at least that's how I understand it and for him he has a very specific function to try to produce immanence on in thought or you know i guess it has different kind of terms like the vision in one but what it tries to avoid is the decision in philosophy and kind of generate a kind of constant performative uh thought process that is non-reflexive non-recursive that it constantly
it's kind of generating its own process so it cannot be determined by anything else. Which for me seems a bit of an escape or an easy escape or at least for me when I got excited by Lord Wells' thought, it was very productive in the context of improvisation because then by inserting a single decision one will not have to question what or who is improvising you just let the process kind of going so certainly in aesthetics it can be very very productive but in thought I don't know if it's that
productive or at least you know I certainly follow Ray Brassier which in his critique, he came with a term after doing his PhD on La Ruelle, that at the end, this determination of the last instance, which is a concept that he takes from L'Althusser, but then while L'Althusser, it was economy to take this role of determination in La Ruelle, it will be the stranger, that one which is totally unique and cannot be determined by anything else. But actually what it means, the stranger is a very, you know, it's just
like the single individual. And that, I have problems with it, or it seems kind of problematic if you take that as the possible subject, you know, that I find that, and I guess the one then, you know, this one in thought of radical immanence, inevitably, you know, kind of has theological connotations, which is not surprising that then in theology departments, Laurel has come to have quite a lot of importance. So maybe there is the question that I had,
which was what was the connection between, you know, Laurel and his work on the axiomatic and axiomatic methodology as a kind of form of thought abstraction and AGI or AI. Well, how could we, I guess my question for Matin and Reza would be, how can we relate the Boltzmann brain problem with Metzinger in Matin's work and all of this neuroscientific alienation from below? How can there be this connection between AGI and alienation from below?
I mean, hard to say. I mean, I have some answers to Ravenna and Mateen, but I put it aside for now. But to answer your question, I think that it's not just Metzinger. I would say that this is a question that is widely, you know, kind of dominant. I mean, this is a trend widely dominant in kind of philosophy of neuroscience today, right? Under the banner of, you know, naturalization of consciousness or basically intentional acts, right? And this is, I think that's, I think the idea of alienation from below
again comes back to this whole idea that as I said that search for foundations right wherever they are they're always motivated motivated meaning that they are bound some of them are essential, right, and some of them are contingent, historical, so to speak, and I see that at the very least, there is a lot that is going on in philosophy of neuroscience that are specifically contingent in that sort of negative sense of this tendency to, you know,
to show, you know, the fundamental naturalization of consciousness and so-called vector of alienation from below. Precisely because of, you know, certain, I wouldn't say that it is essentially, you know, philosophically dubious. dubious. I don't say that. I actually think that this is very interesting. The whole idea of reduction is a very interesting idea precisely because it enriches the phenomenon that we are talking about. But I would say that usually there is a certain sort of a straw manning here in even in Metzinger. And this is something that I have noticed that other philosophers of
neuroscience have talked about, particularly one of them, my friend Dorothea Legrand, that was giving this talk for Incredible Machines just a few days ago, that there is this tendency to... So how this alienation from below happens is obviously a labor of modeling that we are dealing with here in in the sense that uh you know you uh give provide a description of certain sort of uh conscious phenomena more cells and parts of what you might call mental life right and then you go on and uh you know construct explanatory models to show that doesn't so
conscious phenomena or parcels of mental life can be ultimately modeled or even explained away by certain information processing systems right but what is happening here it is not as innocent as it is usually. It is not simply a labor of disenchancement. What happens here is that the description of the phenomenon is quite actually most often, if not always, in these circles, tend to be quite murky. Like the very fact that we are talking about geometric models
of certain sorts of neurocognitive phenomenon or conscious phenomena or intentional act seems to be a systematization lacking systematicity, meaning it does not have the proper description, phenomenological description, that can be correlated with the wrong or with the right or correct explanation. And in that sense, when we see a certain sort of explanation, we don't know what it is trying to explain, right? What sort of, what is this connection with that sort of phenomenon, right?
So this goes hand in hand with philosophy of mind clunky, use of clunky or careless deployment of certain sort of vocabularies like consciousness, I don't know, intentional acts as if they were just one whole thing, right? They're quite unexplicated, so to speak. So lack of rigor in explicating the descriptive level naturally leads to the impoverishment of explanation, labor of explanation, a labor of explanation that
ultimately used in order to justify the labor of disenchantment or alienation from below. and ultimately again coming back to the philosophy of science it is very hard that you see a neuroscience the philosopher of neuroscience do a proper description of the conscious phenomena they are trying to explain away but rather they do the explanation first with regard to what they are intending to actually describe And then in an ad lib, ad hoc, extremponiously, they smuggle in certain sort of full psychological concepts that then they say that, well, you see, it shows the sort of alienation that natural sciences can do.
Can I ask you something, when you talk about rigor? I guess my question for you is, I feel like sometimes you, when you make this point, you're sort of like shaming people like Metzinger for not, or- No, no, no, not at all. No, no, no, no. I say this is a general trend. This is a general trend of descriptive power. I don't disagree with you. I agree with you. But my question is, like how much more rigor are sort of ordinary humans capable of than that like do you think that because these things like oh yeah okay we're trying to define consciousness but we don't know
what consciousness is it is absolutely not a question of individual rigor I think in philosophy there's there there are so many floating signifiers like we kind of don't know what anything is you know and like and and so it's like i i think that this has nothing to do with individual rigor of philosophers or scientists it is really what you might call to be a methodological paradigm that is being deployed and within which the rigors is being siphoned off it is the methodological rigor that i'm talking about the the methodological paradigm that is not rigorous enough to give the proper description of the certain sort of phenomena that we are trying to model.
Hence, it ends up explaining the wrong sort of phenomena and in an ad hoc ad lib manner, on top of it, add full psychological concepts. And it says that, well, these have been emptied by these explanatory powers. But my question to you is just, do you think it's possible for us to become rigorous enough? Like one could argue that- For us, you mean individuals? No, I don't believe in the power of individual subjects. Well, yeah, I mean like the community of thought. Like, is it a problem that we can solve by thinking more rigorously? Or is it a problem that just has to be solved by the eclipse of our own horizon of intelligibility as human beings?
No, I don't see that way. I think that, you know, this is, I think that again comes back to this, that the power of individual subject has been inflated quite a lot. In fact, it is to a certain, the whole idea of expecting rigor from individuals is already implies that the individual subject is some sort of, you know, instrumental to this. But I think that we should actually think it the other way, that this rigor, regardless of whether it's rigorous or not, is actually being wasted under the wrong paradigms,
methodological paradigms of intellectual labor. And this sort of paradigm is not something that an individual can single-handedly try to challenge. It is a collective labor. It's absolutely a collective labor. And no one can blame, you know, individual scientists, but the paradigms can be criticized. And I think that the paradigms here needs to be, you know, criticized. And again, this has nothing to do with um i didn't want to go against this sort of alienation from below or question the rightful reductionist methods so on and so forth it's just that we should understand that uh
there are motivations behind i agree reza but i think that the power of rational thinking or intellectual labor has also been inflated quite absolutely yes no i don't i don't disagree with that really it would discover a gis for music sorry we should discover it through music sorry no no i mean i think i think it's we definitely should you know but we we have to also i mean i And I think what you are trying to do is also to demand more, that we need to do more in
this field. Or at least we cannot assume certain methodological practices. Yes, no, I think what I wanted to say that, yes, I think that the intellectual labor is quite an inflated currency, right? It is not by any means when we are saying that it's inflated currency doesn't mean we are not negating or dismissing its powers and there is a huge amount of power that is untapped in intellectual labor. But yes, this also underlines that philosophy should be more modest and the labor of modesty for philosophy hasn't been recognized
and this is something that I have only realized to come that philosophy's foray into politics has created more inflation about the you know about the intellectual uh you know powers of of philosophy than actually sharpen this intellectual labor. On that point, I would be curious what everyone thought about the work of G. Châtelet. I know Châtelet has his more rigorous magnum opus Figuring Space, which deals with the philosophy of mathematics, but his more popular work is in a political kind of manifesto.
And I know Mo has written about G. Châtelet And Robin McKay in the release of the book writes, Today, its diagnosis seemed wholly contemporary. The triple alliance between politics, economics, and cybernetics. The contrast between the self-satisfied nomadicism of a global overclass. And the cultivated herds of neural livestock. Whose brains labor dumbly in cybernetic pastures. The arrogance of the knights of finance. And the limitless complacency. And petty envy of middle-class dupes. haplessly enthralled to household goods and openly hostile to the pursuit of a freedom that might demand patience or labor what would the writer who made a dystopian burlesque of the 90s have made of the 21st century in which all of the tendency he describes have accelerated almost
beyond parody is this uh so my question is what uh actually what robin mckay says what would this writer think about this dystopian burlesque, or is this like an inflation of the power of thinking and also an inflation of maybe neuroscientific philosophy? I mean, Churchland famously said that all conceptions of mind should be reduced to mere neuroscientific processes in order to avoid these folk psychology notions. So is it what I guess in my question for everyone, what is what is the power of this, this political manifesto? Okay, since, since Reza and Martin already spoke
about things they I know way less about, maybe this is a chance for me to say a few words. But first I just want to say that I want to be like I want to be criticizing you Eric because like I don't know how many people are in this room but you know what I mean you started with such like you just dropped this heavy thing into the room think of all these innocent people me included sitting here right like as Madden said some context would have been really good but also like I really prepared myself to answer the answer the art question particularly uh the the opening the opening statement of the exhibition's uh press release about inside and outside and that's why I thought it was a great chance to sort of like maybe open a rather like
a partisan dialogue with with Madden about that and uh but about Châtelet you know uh you know I was lucky enough actually to sort of like I read chapters of that book as Robin translated them because he would, as soon as he would finish them, he would email them to me and then I would read them and then I would have a few comments. And then of course, things got edited. And then I actually developed the first Wikipedia of Châtelet in English and then Reza and everybody added to it. And then the text in the back of the book kind of was based on that Wikipedia page. And when that book was being translated, so late actually after his publication, there was still this there was still this feeling that this text is very prophetic
but actually events that the the rapidly evolving like events of the the late decade you know kind of like put a limit on the sort of like the this sort of like prophetic vision of chatelet in the book and i tell you why because you know it's true that he's talking about like he's giving us a very like a fresh model especially for the time that the book came out 1993 i think or 1992 if i'm not wrong or 1997 actually i think 1997 a year before his his death uh it would have been great to like read that in 1997 even up to 2015 because still it fits into a kind of like first
order second order cybernetics where things are manageable and then they're manageable manageable enough for Chateaulay to be able to like model it right but actually events that took place especially like the sort of deterioration of of of deterioration of stuff after Brexit the election of Trump you know like the Cambridge analytics all that stuff the power of like social media trends and how the sort of like this unpredictability actually stuff that maybe you can say land was more right about back in his like mid-90s when he kind of like made fun of cybernetics and saying like things won't be as clean and as explainable as you're thinking there's going to be a lot of contingency and a lot of crazy stuff right so i think we went through that
and i think i think maybe what what the book what his vision lacks was like was i mean was not like okay he's talking about like these people who are like the theologians of chaos right but actually they're all totally like creating a system to control everyone right but actually it was it was i think it would have been great if he if he or somebody can talk about how this chaos this battle between the chaos from the bottom and this attempt by whatever he calls them to basically confront this chaos and incorporate it as pure chaos into the system or sort of like tame it
and put it under the rubric of cybernetics right so i think that's what that's what that's what now when we look back kind of is missing from his model and we only know that because of the sorry shit we've been through in the last six years witnessing what's happening and i mean a perfect example of that i'm going to get into it is what's unfolding in iran right now no if you ask me i'm someone who's deeply involved in in like what's going on there and if you ask me three weeks or even four weeks ago that something like this could happen i would have said it would have it's just your fantasy this could never happen in a in a place like iran so yeah so basically i hope that i answered something Oh, also, I think we should get back to the question of art, if you can relate some of
the stuff to the exhibition, or to the question of inside outside, not because I want to get into like arguing back and forth with Matt and I already made him upset. But I have to reply, I have to reply don't worry and you can be as intense or as like annoying as I was. But I really think this question of inside and outside is something that that people can relate to and uh like uh especially me and reza who have kind of like try to build an outside called the new center have some practical sort of like comment to say how does it work but also that thing i brought up about like when you're right in the middle but somehow you manage to make it look like you're outside but you're totally inside is also kind of an interesting thing to talk about you also mentioned it like with the with the whole that right wing scene in new york dime square piece
right? Yeah, I think the problem with the dime square essay was basically about this rise of neo-reactionaries within the art world and this ironic neo-reactionaryism. And I think Ravenna term this the libidinal nihilism, where basically riffing off of libidinal economy, libidinal nihilism. And Ravenna and I have both proposed, I guess, two different systems kind of outside of this exchange value of, you know, just the currency of affects with regards to either a
transcendental system of Christian black metal or theological notions or through axiomatic method. And that, I guess that, for me, the issue is then how can anything be achieved, hearkening back to what Reza said, without some kind of localization, navigation, and ramification, and having to, uh uh adopting kind of sellers notion of fraught with odds and um having some sort of commitment to a specific uh uh position or vector on a on a manifold or in some kind of topological space
okay just before that i just want to ask something from robena i think um so if i can answer as a I reply back to Mo, and I think the documenta is the total opposite of this libido and nada, you know, you were talking about it. I think it's for like Kirsten Stakenmeier and and Anna Teixeira Pinto, that social citizen. And this documenta is dealing imminently, but not in that Francois Laruel kind of way, but in practice, trying, it's not claiming to do, it's not like in the art world,
there has been this kind of separation between the politics that the artwork is kind of claiming about, and then what is actually happening the material level and that kind of generated a kind of double morality that is being you know criticized and you know it became kind of on the one hand impotent on the other hand is toxic so it doesn't mean it doesn't it doesn't surprise me that there is like a response that comes from these people perhaps that they are fed up with it and you know it doesn't this libidinal kind of nihilism doesn't surprise me because, you know, I guess the art world has been so full of political discourse that actually on the ground has so little, you know, it's doing so little or it's actually validating other things than what they're supposed to do.
But at least this document is trying to do on the ground to do something else and is certainly talking a different language. It's putting into question what the function of art is. It's not claiming that it knows what it is. It's just trying to do something with it. And this just trying to do something with it, I think is extremely helpful. And art is not only extremely helpful, but it also has shown that it's posing certain big questions or even threat to our contemporary art conception of the function of art, which is totally eschatological these days.
So at least it's doing something. It's posing some questions and, you know, and it's trying things out. It's trying things out without claiming that it's like, we're doing this and it's sorted and, you know, this will take us to the future. No, it's just like trying things out, see what happens. And for many people, they think, many of the artists, the process continues, you know. But it has definitely shown the limits of what is possible in a place like castle, like Documenta. And that is an obvious sign that is doing something. and your anger more is a further sign that is actually producing something
well i was you know you should have seen me at the press release of documenta sitting on those chairs this is nothing you know but anyways i just want to bring it back to you know i had a question from ravena so let's just put that on hold because like because you said a few things that I really think, you know, and, but also like, I want to respond to still relate to the premise of the talk. So people don't get bored and think you and me have some like personal conversation going on here. It is like, you know what I mean? The problem, the problem, the main problem of, of this document is that, that just closed is that it did its best to cover up the fact that doesn't matter how many collectives or activists you include in the show, you need to acknowledge
that this process has a high chance of institutionalizing these acts and these individuals and these practices by dragging them into this old Germanic institution with such a colorful history, which we all now know, thanks to that exhibition at the Deutsche Historische museum that it began with with the nazi origins right that you when you bring these people here you cannot just cover up the fact that you're institutionalizing them to a certain level by doing like cooking together and karaoke and or even by showing some like showing some anti-semitic imagery to just provoke germans which i think charles esche had seen that painting
before 2015, it was shown in, it was shown in Jakarta Biennale or Jakarta Biennale. He was aware of that. This was a setup to create this effect. People like Charles Esche are responsible for this. And if this causes a backlash, which means those libidinal nihilists get a chance to basically, basically over overrun all these good progressive gains made in the art world by returning the by returning documental next next edition to a very right-wing conservative place these these kids and those their white masters who picked them to be the curators are fully responsible for for this reaction whether it's going to be the libidinal nihilist who will be the curator in the
next one or just some shyster like uh klaus biesenbach or another one you know what the london one or obrist or something right but you know they're responsible because it's because of what they try to show the limit that now the institution and you know this is not the first time it that famous essay called turn of the screw which i always alvarez wrote it right which is about how the radicalization of that daniel bernens fight with the minimalists caused guggenheim in 70s to basically never ever do that show called international which was the annual show of showing what was happening around the world internationally right because it was a political fight about Boren as a situation is trying to do something and then minimalists not liking it and then it got it got to it got to this point of like people pulling out of the show and this and
that and that was it Guggenheim just dropped it so this might actually cause the end of documenta we'll see what happens but back to the question I have from Ravenna is that you know your your your your question from Reza or others that like you wish that um new rationalism will drop its secular skin and accept its theological like essence how different it is from Benjamin accusing historical materialism of that in the thesis of philosophy history because basically the the mechanical Turk metaphor by him is basically almost like what you said just made remind me of that. But then I thought, give her a chance to basically explain, is it similar to that? And then when you spoke, I thought, oh, maybe she's talking about this as a positive thing,
actually, that actually, if new rationalism drop its secular skin, it's actually going to be more productive and better for new rationalism itself. So that was my question from you. um I you were kind of breaking up at the very end of that but I to me anyway or maybe I was breaking up but um yeah I think I got what you were saying I mean my answer to that would kind of dovetail with what I was going to say about the dime square scene I think which is that you know what what is lacking so much i think in a lot of the art world and especially that part of it is um oh wait am i frozen i feel like i always have that connection um
is just um well-rounded knowledge you know like people like people in that scene like they don't really understand world history. They don't understand, you know, art from eras, you know, that are like, really. And, you know, because there's a certain sort of like pseudo intellectual literacy, people don't really understand, don't understand, you know, like I think that if you like if you have real knowledge you know you you know like you discover sort of the objective facts that like the bin delilah's sense um and and it's not just uh
well-rounded like knowledge but also knowledge about like how taking taking theology seriously or sort of taking taking a more ancient view towards philosophy in a kind of stoic sense of like you know actually really using philosophy as an aesthetic tool to like refine your soul and gain equanimity and calm and be loving and wise and thoughtful and like that's all you know that that's sounds like self-help book stuff and people in the art world of us well don't take it seriously but it's actually like the essence of philosophy you know and of life and but typically in self-help book worlds, you know, they don't take philosophy seriously enough, but, and so,
like, sorry, my phone's messed up, so, I mean, you know, I think when I say that, like, neo-rationalism should take off its theological skin, I think part of what I just mean is that, like, you know, the norms that rationalism relies on, you know, they have their source in God, And, and like, there's a whole sort of history of theology that is so closely entwined with history of philosophy. And I think that people kind of get confused when sort of religious ideas and terms aren't said out loud. um you know that like there's there's there's sort of there's a language for all this stuff
and um and in a way it's maybe similar to what Reza was saying about like misplaced rigor or rigor being in the wrong like using rigor but not really seeing seeing the full picture enough or being rigorous about what the questions are um that you know just so much is taken for granted by the art world, whether it's the reactionary version or the anarcho-communist version that, I don't know, yeah, that requires a, yeah, just a wider scope of-
It is similar to Benjamin's accusation about historical materialism. It shares something with um i mean i think it shares something with that uh i mean i mean historical materialism is theology too you know i mean like well that's what benny means like i mean like mark you know it's so weird that people don't take seriously that marx is you know like marx is uh his version of materialism is an instance of like a Gnostic theory of history, you know, and it's like, well, you know, Gnosticism is wrong. Christianity has a whole response to Gnostics that, that actually, you know, sort of kills the heretics and like brings you back into intellectual
humility and the ability to be actually rational. And, and so it's like, you know, you need to sort of call Gnostic materialism for what it is so that you can then call sort of theistic rationalism for what it is too is sort of sort of what I would say. I don't I don't agree I don't agree and I think it's I I find it quite problematic to see Marx of point towards Marx in this way I think he's pointed out you know he's pointing out at the limitations of rational thinking and not only that he's pointing out towards the kind of uh the relationship between practice and thought and you know he gave us some very good tools to
try to understand what is it you know the level of critique you know his understanding of critique and the kind of the way that we formulate abstractions and then well just to include yeah I mean Mark said a lot of things and the stuff you're talking about I agree with is very valuable I mean specifically his theory of history I think well I mean his theory of history is you know it comes from the German idealism book which is a critique of people who were criticizing you know I guess Hegel and you know so you know it's a critique of all the link Hegelians we were like kind of taking, you know, like Faulbach criticizing religion, you know, so it's like a kind of critique already of people who were already criticizing religion. So it's a, I think, a quite sophisticated account in which bring us to, you know, the way that thought is determined in different ways in our practice, in ways that we have not the ability to yet to understand.
But through, you know, not only thought, but revolutionary practice, we can perhaps be able to generate self-determination outside of any theological tutelas. and to then retreat to some kind of theological tutelas is you know it's like go to pre-cant and it's like I mean alignment has many problems and for me it's like it didn't take into account the noise in rationality the dirt the cows contingency you know it just the tools they overinflated the tools that they had. But the point is not to them say that these tools can function within
a kind of worldview, you know, with theological tutelage. The point is to try to actually understand this kind of noise, this kind of like how fucked up it is and how, you know, and the relationship between what we do and what we think we are doing. That's what needs to be done but not to and then yeah okay we need to understand the role of religion in these processes for sure but i wouldn't jump into them yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't go into you know because at one moment you said rationality needs to take its secular skin but then at another point you know you said rationality needs to take its theological skin.
Certainly I agree with the later, not on the first one. No, well, yeah, then we do disagree then. Because yeah, what I meant for the second one is that rationality needs to accept its theological nature. And I was still saying- No, I think what Madden said something very interesting. Okay, yeah, sorry, go ahead, Mo. Because what Madden says is like, new rationalism should recognize its own limits by taking off its theological skin, right? Correct? Oh, right. Well, in this sense, when people, yeah, the way that people talk about theology and what they mean is, oh, it's theology, so it's like metaphysical in a stupid way. Like, yeah, it should take off that skin.
Well, I think we're about one hour now. Sorry, Eric, Eric, but then maybe it's super helpful to you for you to explain what you mean by theology so then we can bring the rigor that Reza was mentioning at the beginning. um well i i i'm actually really interested in the uh for the um there's a text there's actually an interview uh for the book launch for intelligence and spirit where resident robin mckay referred to uh ontological cartoons and that ontology is the opiate of the masses and i'm specifically interested in carnup's essay the elimination of metaphysics through logical analyses of uh language. So there seems to be like a tension here between metaphysical notions with their
ontologies and kind of within my own manuscript book, this kind of deontologized work where I would refer to it as a deflationist metaphysics, you know, to deflate the metaphysics. But we're We're almost done with the, we're almost at time here. So if anyone has any closing remarks, just to end the panel. Maybe some questions from the audience? I think it would be nice to hear them. Yeah, if anyone wants to ask a question.
I don't think no one sent me a message or turn their unmuted their mic but I guess yeah maybe just any closing remarks on this tension between a kind of inflated metaphysics and deflated metaphysics, if just closing remarks. Yeah, I mean, oh yes, Max, I think.
Are you sure? I thought that you raised your hand. Yeah, I was waving at someone outside, sorry about that. Oh, no. Oh, sorry. Generally, I mean, coming back to the question of theology and kind of wrapping up with the question of metaphysics, deflationary or inflationary. I mean, at this point, at least personally speaking, again, putting back to this while I said that, you know, the powers of individual subjects are manifestly exaggerated. but I also you need to take a responsibility as a philosopher as an individual philosopher I would say that to this point at this point in my life at the very least I don't have any sort of
hostility with theology or religion or God talks so to speak I need yes coming back to this idea that whether you call it philosophical or theological, there is a labor to kind of scrape off the certain sort of metaphysical bloatware, so to speak, off of theology. And I'm completely fine with that. I mean, this is precisely what at the very least people like like no can't ends right started to uh you know conduct uh bringing the discourse of god
and talk about it just uh you know without any sort of uh you know this sort of baggages back into the philosophical discourse and then this comes back to uh you know my i think that this whole idea of the role of metaphysics in this. I think that Carnap, so obviously, is extremely famous for, at the very least in his earlier career, to be hostile, enemy number one of of Mesophysics, right? But as he moves forward, he sees that, no, this is actually not a tenable situation,
or as tenable as he thought initially. I think this is actually a good lesson, looking just into historical philosophical lessons, And then he goes toward a position which is rather quite an interesting one, that he tries to get rid of the, what you might call to be inflated metaphysics, creating a system of methodological thinking that can, you know, wash away or expose, so to speak, these sort of metaphysical vagaries. But also, by virtue of its what you might call to be methodological robustness, shows
this simple fact that you are always in philosophical realm working against the backdrop of implicit metaphysical assumptions. And if you do not take this implicit piggybacking on metaphysical assumptions, you just end up in a very blind way and enslaved to the realm of that metaphysical bloatedness that I mentioned. So that's what I would call metaphysical deflationary stance in a systematic sort of way, not as
getting rid of metaphysics wholeheartedly, but simply shows in a critical way that even when we are trying to get rid of so much of this metaphysical junk, we are still working against the backdrop of the sort of, you know, metaphysical assumptions. I agree with that completely and I would just add to that there may be an irreducibly narrative dimension to those assumptions because you know even even the anti even anti-metaphysical thought like any thought that's kind of being critical
or then being critical of the critical or you know that whole thing like there's there's always this kind of a story that's being told implicitly and I'm kind of curious about that of what whether that's something that's intrinsic to thinking yes I mean that's the closing Carnap is a really I mean one of the reasons that I think that the enmity hostility against Carnap is uh is quite short-sighted uh but also i would say that kind of really contributed to that in first place uh but essentially he's a sort of philosopher that uh learns by mistakes that as you said that there is a level that absolutely he thinks that there is no metaphysics in this
sort of logical construction right but then he realizes that at the very most basic element that he thinks that there is no metaphysics involved, there are metaphysical assumptions. And that's essentially the system of philosophy then becomes quite self-critical in its sense. And that's a much more later Carnap. For me, well, the Enlightenment had many, many faults, many, many problems, but I think the attempt to get rid of the theological tutelas was crucial.
And to accept theological tutelas for me is to give up on the possibility of universal justice. Matin, theological tutelage or theological in its entirety? Theological tutelage. Okay, I can agree with that. But where does our universal justice even come from? Well, the idea might come. Its realization never came from that. It has never, because what you get is a multiplicity of different worldviews that keep, you know, that, okay. But at the same time, what you get is the universality of the value form keep expanding it.
So it kind of acts as a kind of very counterpoint to the possibility of actually generating some kind of collective form of self-determination, which at the moment is all on the hands of the capitalist mode of production and the people who benefit out of it. so i think one last point about this is that i like i get what you mean i think one thing i would say is that people are becoming more and more interested in god and theology and i know a lot of this has to do with just how you describe stuff you know like you can kind of use the term theology to mean one thing or another and i think that one one because it's true i mean you can say well maybe a universal justice is some kind of human historical vector that isn't inherently religious
or whatever, but that like, I don't like the way that people who are turning to religion then also become reactionary. And so I think that like, if they're going to turn to religion anyway, like maybe give them space to find like a sort of radical meaning for religion. just one other thought um mo did you have any uh closing remarks i want to i wanted to just maybe maybe maybe say something with like uh discounted words not like these ten dollar words but really like this was my interest in new rationalism when i sort of like encountered it is that I was always looking for a philosophical model that understands that,
first of all, we're always trying to understand a phenomenon that is moving while at the same time becoming like it's getting like too close to us to understand it or too far to us to understand it at the same time that this world is changing as it's moving and getting too close and too far from us while at the same time we ourselves are changing and moving and getting too close and too far so as the tools and the method with which we're seeing this world itself is changing so as whatever the hell it is that moving us, it's changing. So as the result of this knowledge
production itself will change in retrospect. So I was always looking for a philosophical system that could account for all these complexities and still be able to produce something that will resonate. And this is why I think, I think new rationalism is the closest thing to this idea I of what is it? And if there is some narrative there, Ravenna, I think the narrative has to do with the unfolding of whatever the hell you call time, which begins and begins and it hasn't ended. It begins. And I think this question is like, you know, a question of time is at the heart of both theology and philosophy. Well, there's one remark only I have
with regard to what Martin said with Ravenna, I think that Martin is right, although I'm not going to go to the extent that Martin goes in this direction. I would say that coming back with remarks to the universal justice, I would say that yes, theology has played, but we should not mistake a constitutive moment in the instantiation of the concept of universal justice first of all, with the totality of this concept. This one, just because theology played a key role in the constitutive moment of this concept, this is not the concept as a whole. One. Two. Second, we cannot conflate or elide the distinction between the concept of universal justice
and the concrete practical explication of this concept. And whoever does the first basically a second stage of conflation. I would say that it's just subjective, naive idealism, simple as that. I mean, there is no, I think the sort of idealism that I want to say that, I will say that the constraint, the self-constraining of the ideas, that that's important. But this obviously doesn't tell us anything substantial in the realm of practical explication of the concept. The application of the concept that is necessary.
What is necessary is the realization of this universal empathy. Oh, that reminds me. I see this, I mean, yeah. I mean, I see the moment that we are finding and the kind of either neo-rationalism or the axiomatic methodology of Laurel. Let me be blunt, but I see them as resources or resources in which people jump into it simply because there is no possibility to see a kind of, outside of what Mark Fisher called capitalist realism.
So it's like, okay, there is no horizon in within the system that we are, it's like, let's get whatever, at least get us from the idea that we are trapped in this sit-hole. No, I am genuinely against this. The minute we had capitalist surrealism with Trump, all Marxist and leftists, and everybody wanted to was get back to capitalist realism because capitalist surrealism of Trump just too much to handle, right? So we just said, okay, please give us back the capitalist realism, please, because this is too much. No, I think that there is a, I disagree with that. I think that going into theology, going into philosophy, no rationalism, whatever it means, is not simply just giving lip service to the status quo and trying to do a salvage punk move on it. No,
No, I don't think so. That is essentially a methodological question of inquiry and, you know, expanding the phenomenal threshold for looking at the other sort of possibilities. I think that this question is of a fundamental methodological importance. And I just don't think that you can't simply thinking that this is just, you know, giving some sort of implicit lip service to the SASCO. particularly, Mateen, as you were saying that you were saying that, you know, with Documenta that, you know, that obviously, you know, it has made something. But I mean, I wanted just to point out that it is so easy, for example, for something like an art world, not to mention a castle art scene,
with a pinprick of stuff, things can get bust. This doesn't show that there is an outside or something that is meaningful or it's consequential. I think that we shouldn't lose the sight of the methodological resources that we have, and we should look into it. Because then, obviously, we simply then get romantic about the sort of contingency reactions that something like an art world gives to, whether innocent or not, individual, single, isolated incident. I mean, is it really awkward reaction for you and you're the stick of the outside or real politics?
No, no, nobody said it's outside. They were in the center. No, I mean, or some meaningful political action that someone has done. Or radicality. Well, yeah, I don't know. Max, do you want to say something? I also yeah so I agree you know we have to really be rigorous you know in the same way that you said that we need to be theoretically rigorous we need to be also rigorous when assessing you know what things are producing something like when our works or our practices are doing something that's for sure yeah yes yes well maybe something to the humility and all that is also the spiritual I
mean I guess to like mention a philosopher I mean we could bring in uh Mikkel Henry you know who was such a big influence on La Ruelle and who's I mean I feel like La Ruelle in a way sort of uses Henry's uh notion of sort of the phenomenology of Christ and that kind of thing and sort of you know falsely secularizes it in a way that makes it made it or able to be popular but kind of contorts things in a confusing way too you know that like when we're talking about universal justice like you uh you know there's a distinction between the concept of it and the realization of it but maybe the realization of it is neither philosophical nor artistic nor
political you know maybe it's something that is actually ultimately spiritual you know or maybe it's something maybe it's a horizon that was born with you know the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or something like that, and that it's, that that dimension, and the ascetic practice that's implied beyond art and beyond philosophy is an important part of the conversation or something like that. Well, personally, I'm a big fan of Matin's work. And I know that there was this text that Ray Brassier wrote for a release that Matin and him did a long time ago.
It was like a performance, I think they did, in the UK. UK, and it talks about the seller's notion of the dance of the bees and their own self-determination, and they're based upon a set of rules, rule-governed self-determination. And I think that maybe there could be some kind of notion of, well, maybe not notion, but universal justice, not merely as a concept, but as a praxis through this kind of self-determination.
But maybe there is a possibility of also allowing allowing this kind of Gnostic notion of Marx's reading of history as Ravenna was talking about in this sense of determining yourself against some lurking kind of demiurge or something, you know? Well, thanks for everyone for participating. And yeah, I think that's about time right now.
And thanks for all the members of the audience for coming today, and the members in Oslo at the gallery too. And a special thanks to Matin, Mo, Reza, and Ravenna, and my co-moderator Connor, and also Ben Green for helping out with the Zoom technology. So yeah, have a good day everyone.