The first academic conference I attended was the Lake Ontario Visionary Establishment (L.O.V.E.) of 2008. It was probably the most decisive conference in my career, even though (or because) I was a 3rd-year undergraduate student. My then mentor, Michael Chan-Reynolds, was one of the organizers and he drove us (his small lab) to the conference in Niagara Falls. It was a 2-day event, so we spent the night at the.. Read More
One vs. Two
One more passage from Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love In the final analysis, religions don’t speak of love. Because they are only interested in it as a source of intensity, in the subjective state it alone can create, in order to direct that intensity towards faith and the Church and encourage this subjective state to accept the sovereignty of God. The main outcome is that Christianity substitutes devout, passive,.. Read More
Psychology without People
In a recent general critique of Psychology, Catherine Raeff (2019) follows up on Michael Billig’s (2013) analysis, pointing out that psychological science, in its currently dominant style, is a science of things and not of people. In brief, it is a science–or a collection of sciences–in which people (supposedly the primary targets of investigation) are absent. By focusing on things, e.g., traits, scores, sub-personal cognitive or neural functions, we tend.. Read More
No Longer Chance
Alain Badiou on Love. Badiou takes the recognition of difference to be an essential feature of love, the recognition of two different subjects, different points of view on reality, and the subsequent construction of a new reality based on that difference. Such a difference is, in every case, new. That is why love that is real is always of interest to the whole of humanity, however humble, however hidden, that.. Read More
Peirce Series: Preface
“Postscript” would be more accurate than “preface” since I am writing this at the end of the thread. I’ll be continuing my reading of Peirce, though my upcoming summer posts will not continue in this thread. I am, however, thinking about proposing a different kind of series about Peirce to another outlet, e.g., Psychology Today. What I have done here is the following: Pragmatic Maxim Settled Opinion Principles of Inquiry.. Read More