Finishing my lectures in epistemology and the final section on non-human knowledge. After stuff on capture and modulation (cf post below from last weekend on white blindness) in the context of process philosophy, we discussed the idea that knowledge is always an (explicit or implicit alliance) involving the knowers and the known. The known is not therefore a passive element that is merely captured or inspected but rather something that takes part in the process by acting in order to form a society (in Tardean sense) of knowledge that assembles a network. This assembling is what took place between Pasteur and the medicine and the science of his time and with the microbes in Latour's description. To present a theory is to present a network with strong and weak links - vulnerable to different tests of force. Knowledge is an assembling (an alliance) that has proven to be reliable (the J factor, in a rough JTB account of knowledge) that helps bringing about (or sponsoring) something so that it makes something be the case (the T factor). Instead of beliefs, we would have alliances as non-representational items that aggregates knower and known for as much as it resists tests of force. The J factor here would make the account externalist in the sense that it is enough for the actants to build on reliable connections.
Indexicalism is out: l https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-indexicalism.html The book symposium took place two weeks ago with talks by Sofya Gevorkyan/Carlos Segovia, Paul Livingston, Gerson Brea, Steven Shaviro, Chris RayAlexander, Janina Moninska, Germán Prosperi, Gabriela Lafetá, Andrea Vidal, Elzahrã Osman, Graham Harman, Charles Johns, Jon Cogburn, Otavio Maciel, Aha Else, JP Caron, Michel Weber and John Bova. My very preliminary response to some of their talks about the book follows. (Texts will appear in a special issue of Cosmos & History soon). RESPONSES : ON SAYING PARADOXICAL THINGS Hilan Bensusan First of all, I want to thank everyone for their contributions. You all created a network of discussions that made the book worth publishing. Thanks. Response to Shaviro: To engage in a general account of how things are is to risk paradox. Totality, with its different figures including the impersonal one that enables a symmetrical view from nowhere
Non human knowledge has always been a topic of interest for me. I'd be curious to attend a few seminars or lectures on the topic in the future. Hopefully I'll get the time to do it!
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