In Episode 10 of Deakinstruction, Tim Deane-Freeman talks to Meg McCamley and Tim Neal about his new book , which places Deleuze’s philosophy in dialogue with both cinema and the concept of information. In this context, they discuss philosophy, film, TV and social control, and the broader challenge of embracing a kind of thought which eschews recognition in order to confront the radically new. Tim Deane-Freeman is a sessional lecturer in philosophy at Deakin, and Meg McCamley and Tim Neal are both Deakin PhD candidates.

Deakin Philosophy’s Dr Cathy Legg has just published a piece in The Conversation, titled “Your world is different from a pigeon’s – but a new theory explains how we can still live in the same reality“:

As we explain it, reality is grasped through pragmatic agreement. This means individuals align their expectations about what others will do in similar lived situations. […] This highlights a key characteristic of pragmatist philosophy. It does not define cognition as a kind of consciousness, an idea that has led to apparently insoluble philosophical problems. Rather, pragmatists view knowledge of reality as implicit in what we can do, most especially what we can do with others.

The article is based on Dr Legg and André Sant’Anna’s newly-published paper in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, “Pragmatic Realism: Towards a Reconciliation of Enactivism and Realism” (Open Access), which argues for a Peircean model of inquiry-based enactivist realism, which makes the investigation of other species’ minds possible. 

The Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy provides a broad intellectual forum for scholars working within or in communication with continental philosophy and European philosophical traditions. We welcome proposals for papers, panels and streams from scholars working in any discipline, from diverse backgrounds, and at any stage of their career. 

The 2024 annual conference will be held at Deakin University (Geelong Waterfront) from the 2nd to the 4th of December. There will also be options for online participation.

Keynote Speakers:

• Camisha Russell (University of Oregon)
• Laura Roberts (Flinders University)
• Massimiliano Tomba (UC Santa Cruz)

Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 July. 

Conference fees, including Registration and Conference Dinner tickets are listed here
Registrations will open in the coming months.

For more details, as well as submission guidelines, please go to www.ascp.org.au/conference

All queries about the conference should be sent to conference@ascp.org.au

We’re pleased to release a new episode of our Deakinstruction podcast: “AI and the Future of Philosophical Labour,” featuring Christopher Mayes, Tom Corbin (Macquarie/Deakin), Marilyn Stendera (Wollongong) and Jean-Philippe Deranty (Macquarie):

In December 2023 Deakin University hosted the 47^th annual conference of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle. This conference featured 33 presentations, 3 invited lectures and 2 keynote addresses, and brought together some 90 scholars from around the world (both in-person and online) for some rich and lively discussion. Thanks to support from the Australasian Association of Philosophy, we’re pleased to be able to share the recordings for the conference’s two keynote lectures in the links below.

• Prof. Shaun Gallagher: Caught in the Fabric of the world: Between embryology and the tapestry of autopoietic nature

• Prof. Alia Al-Saji: Opacity, Sociality, and Colonial Duration: Is it time to think critical phenomenology through Palestine?

Warm congratulations to three Deakin philosophy PhD students who graduated at a ceremony held at the Waterfront Campus on Wednesday 14th February 2023: 

• Dr Danica Janse van Vuuren, for her thesis “A Phenomenology of Feelings of Worthlessness and Suicidality in Some Cases of Depression” supervised by Prof. Jack Reynolds and A/Prof. Patrick Stokes, with Dr. Tamara Kayali Browne
• Dr Brian Macallan, for his thesis “Freedom as a Centralising Motif in the Work
  of Henri Bergson” supervised by Dr Sean Bowden with Prof. Jack Reynolds
• [in absentia] Dr Max Lowdin, for his thesis “Sign and Idea: Spinoza and Deleuze” supervised by Dr Sean Bowden with Prof. Jack Reynolds

Dr Danica Janse van Vuuren (centre) with Prof. Jack Reynolds (left) and A/Prof. Patrick Stokes (right) after the ceremony (photo courtesy of Tim Neal)

Dr Brian Macallan celebrating his PhD conferral (photo courtesy of Brian)

Referendum, I – What do I do when I vote?

The Referendum vote in Australia on 14 October 2023 will be, like every mass-decision exercise or election in major democracies, an opportunity for a particular form of self-expression by millions of human beings. The temptation for journalists and political scientists to treat the prospective Referendum outcome as though it were (will be) the utterance of a single entity – ‘the Australian electorate’, ‘the public’, or (even more improbably) ‘the Australian nation’ – is of course extremely strong, if not overwhelming.

Thinking of the citizenry of any modern nation state as being a unitary entity which ‘speaks its mind’ from time to time is a convenience in which many people indulge; but it is only ever a convenience — a thought tool which runs the danger, if over-used, of hiding what is actually going on, subjectively and psychologically, in the minds of diverse people including, at the end of the day, ourselves. This diverse quality is crucial to remember, particularly in political debates, for at the end of the day for each one of us – the ‘you’ and ‘I’ of whoever reads or writes this article – can always be ‘in two minds’ about any question, no matter what it is.

Another challenge for political scientists and journalists – and again, this applies also to most if not all human beings – is how to reckon with the degree of emotion that enters into political questions.

This emotional intensification need not be a sign of people becoming ‘irrational’ or unreasonable; it can be and often is a sign of the passionate attachments that people feel towards their own sense of place, belonging, community, ‘country’. Inevitably, in public argument a tendency for many people, especially in the heightened emotional environment around a public vote, is to diminish the rationality of those who choose a different answer. Again, it is an understandable human failing that we do this, but it works against the possibility of negotiation and dialogue with others on controversial questions. If we speak only with the like-minded – those who share our view on the issue of the day – we self-evidently diminish the possibility of influencing towards our own way of thinking any of those who think differently.

In considering this problem, framed as it is by the diversity of humans (and I speak here only of the diversity of their opinions), and also by the powerful influence of emotion entering into ‘rational’ debates, a remark by the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski about 40 years ago remains germane. In a comment often quoted in the blogosphere, Kolakowski wrote that:

I rather tend to accept the law of the infinite cornucopia which applies not only to philosophy but to all general theories in the human and social sciences: it states that there is never a shortage of arguments to support any doctrine you want to believe in for whatever reasons. These arguments, however, are not entirely barren. They have helped in elucidating the status quaestionis and in explaining why these questions matter.

The precise ‘questions’ that Kolakowski was addressing in the book that he was writing at the time were the traditional – and traditionally hotly contested – matters of the philosophy of religion. Yet as his remark about ‘general theories’ in the human and social sciences suggests, this ‘law of the infinite cornucopia’ has a much wider application. The image of ‘choice’ that it presents – I want to make my case, and I may choose this argument or that argument, depending on the audience, their mood, or perhaps my mood – is undoubtedly a normal part of the human experience of arguing, of trying to persuade, and it can, with equal certainty, be easily applied in political debates, including debates over the 2023 Referendum in Australia. For example, I wish to support ‘Yes’ (or ‘No’) in voting and I wish to influence my neighbours to agree with me and to vote the same way. Which argument or arguments should I use? What will work best? This, again, is a human and normal way to think about being a citizen in a democracy. It leads us to consider what is going on when we choose the arguments that we use to express our opinion on a question to others, whether neighbours, family or friends.

A reverse side to the argument about the infinite cornucopia of choices – the wide range of options we all have to support whatever theory of action we want to adopt – is that in the real world of interacting human beings, reason alone does not carry the day in a great many argument contests. Prejudice and self-deception can play their roles. Even among highly trained reasoners – lawyers, for example, or even judges – it is not unknown for contests of reasoning to end up in split decisions and mistaken decisions, with factors other than logical argument apparently getting involved. There are many historical examples we can think of: one that I often think of is the 1857 decision of the US Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, effectively upholding the institution of black slavery despite overwhelming reasonable arguments against it. The Justices voted 7:2 in favour.

A conclusion we can draw is that sheer will – the expression of a desire – plays an important role in political choices, despite the fact that we may, habitually, regard these choices as matters of reason alone. And this will is fluid. This is the first point that I think we can and should agree on in relation to the Referendum. What do you or I want? What do or I you wish for? These questions may be fruitful in discussions across the Yes-No divide, because they may give all of us (on both sides) the chance to activate the emotion, locate the emotion, or somehow the will, the wish that we have to shape (or establish) the kind of collectivity that we want to live in and bequeath to others, in making the choice that we make when we vote.

Guest post by Geri Gray

This is an abridged version of a longer piece that can be found via Geri’s linkedin. 

Deakin is proud to host the 47th Annual Meeting of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, 4-6 December 2023. The theme for IPMC47 is “Merleau-Ponty and Embodiment: Between the Cognitive, Aesthetic, and Socio-Political”:

Merleau-Ponty’s seminal work on embodiment has been of enduring interest and influence in a wide range of fields. It has, for example, played a significant role in research on embodied cognition and enactivism, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, affectivity, movement, art, place, and more. Although sometimes criticized for providing an account of embodiment that is too general, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical foregrounding of embodiment has also facilitated critical phenomenological studies attending to the specificities of how particular bodies inhabit social and political environments, through considerations of race, gender, disability, aging, and illness. This year’s meeting of the IMPC seeks to bring together these rich and varied strands of enquiry, in order to think with, against, and beyond Merleau-Ponty’s own contributions on the lived body.

A full program for the event can be downloaded here.

To read abstracts for the General Program click here.

To read abstracts for the Rethinking Racism through Embodiment and Place stream click here.

For further details and to register please visit the conference’s Eventbrite Page.

Deakin PhD student Margaret Penhall-Jones recently gave a “Philosophy Cafe” session on Jean-Paul Sartre at Adelaide City Library. 

 You can watch the video of Margaret’s presentation here: 

47^th International Merleau-Ponty Circle Conference

Merleau-Ponty and Embodiment: Between the Cognitive, Aesthetic, and Socio-Political

In-person and virtual (hybrid)

4-6 December 2023

Deakin University, Melbourne (Narrm), Australia 

The conference will feature two keynote addresses:

• Associate Professor Alia Al-Saji (McGill University): Opacity, Reversibility, and the Colonial Duration of Perception
• Professor Shaun Gallagher (Memphis, Wollongong): Caught in the Fabric of the World: Between Embryology and Extended Mind

Invited Speakers include:

• Kym Maclaren
• Joel Reynolds
• Claude Romano 

This year’s meeting of IMPC will take place in Melbourne (Narrm), Australia, on the traditional and unceded lands of the Kulin Nation. The conference is being directed by Helen Ngo and Jack Reynolds. It will be held at the centrally located and accessible Deakin Downtown campus,

There is also a special substream throughout the event on “Rethinking Racism Through Embodiment and Place”, supported by Dr Ngo’s ARC DECRA.