This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the simulacrum, which Deleuze formulated in the context of his reading of Nietzsche’s project of “overturning Platonism.” The essential Platonic distinction, Deleuze argues, is more profound than the speculative distinction between model and copy, original and image. The deeper, practical distinction moves between two kinds of images or eidolon, for which the Platonic Idea is meant to provide a concrete criterion of selection “Copies” or icons (eikones) are well-grounded claimants to the transcendent (...) Idea, authenticated by their internal resemblance to the Idea, whereas “simulacra” (phantasmata) are like false claimants, built on a dissimilarity and implying an essential perversion or deviation from the Idea. If the goal of Platonism is the triumph of icons over simulacra, the inversion of Platonism would entail an affirmation of the simulacrum as such, which must thus be given its own concept. Deleuze consequently defines the simulacrum in terms of an internal dissimilitude or “disparateness,” which in turn implies a new conception of Ideas, no longer as self-identical qualities (the auto kath’hauto), but rather as constituting a pure concept of difference. An inverted Platonism would necessarily be based on a purely immanent and differential conception of Ideas. Starting from this new conception of the Idea, Deleuze proposes to take up the Platonic project anew, rethinking the fundamental figures of Platonism (selection, repetition, ungrounding, the question-problem complex) on a purely differential basis. In this sense, Deleuze’s inverted Platonism can at the same time be seen as a rejuvenated Platonism and even a completed Platonism. (shrink)

The very paucity of bridge principles in physics is important for increasing the explanatory power of fundamental theories, given that physics usually employs a few well‐understood principles to model many different aspects of physical processes. However, this also implies that the fundamental laws of physics do not govern objects in the real world, but rather only objects in models. Consequently, the proper account of explanation in science is the ‘simulacrum’ view. On this account, to explain is to construct a (...) model that fits the phenomenon into the basic framework of the theory, and then to derive analogues for its phenomenological laws. (shrink)

As an atypical product of mass culture, the acclaimed series Westworld presents us with a layered dystopian narrative formed around several political issues relevant to our contemporary society. It uses a pastiche of the American history, staged as the Wild West­themed amusement park, presented in the form of simulacrum. As a reference with no referent, this park uses a network of historical signifiers to construct a space for the externalisation of fantasies of its clients, consequently commodifying the imaginary itself, (...) and creating surplus value for its owners. Simultaneously, within its reach, conscious androids conduct all of the necessary labour for its unimpeded functioning, although their consciousness and labour are not recognised and accepted. Because they structurally occupy a position of slaves in relation to humans, I will analyse this series as a political allegory on the master­slave dialectics established in the very heart of hyperreality that suggests a possibility of the return of the real, based on the rebellion of the androids. I intend to show how, because of the model of consciousness it maintains, the series is unable to fulfil what it implies. (shrink)

Lady Gaga’s celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of monstrosity, as well as by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the relatively underexplored live show, an elucidation is afforded of what is really monstrous about (...) Lady Gaga. The main argument put forward is that monstrosity as sign seeks to appropriate the horizon of unlimited semiosis as radical alterity and openness to signifying possibilities. In this context it is held that Gaga effectively delimits her unique semioscape; however, any claims to monstrosity are undercut by the inherent limits of a representationalist approach in sufficiently engulfing this concept. Gaga is monstrous for her community insofar as she demands of her fans to project their semiosic horizon onto her as a simulacrum of infinite semiosis. However, this simulacrum may only be evinced in a feigned manner as a (dis)simulacrum. The analysis of imagery from seminal live shows during 2011–2012 shows that Gaga’s presumed monstrosity is more akin to hyperdifferentiation as simultaneous employment of heterogeneous and potentially dissonant inter pares cultural representations. The article concludes with a problematisation of audience effects in the light of Gaga’s adoption of a schematic and post-representationalist strategy in the event of her strategy’s emulation by competitive artists. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen’s short piece on the possibility of resurrection via simulacrum from 1978 has been regularly condemned for its overall implausibility. However, this paper argues that van Inwagen’s thesis has been unfairly criticized and remains a live and salutary option. It begins by summarizing the metaphysics of the simulacrum theory of the resurrection alongside the motivation for such a theory. Next, it challenges the four main criticisms against the van Inwagen styled simulacrum model. First, it argues (...) that while van Inwagen’s model may appear unnecessary or irrelevant for those that reject his metaphysics of human persons, an account like his is necessary for those that desire to maintain the traditional metaphysics of resurrection (e.g., the resurrection of the “self-same” body). Second, it argues that his model does not implicate God in mass deception or irreverence for the dead. Third, it rejects the idea that van Inwagen’s model is analogous to the implausibility of young earth creationism and its required claims like dinosaur bones being given the appearance of age. Fourth, it argues that his model is not metaphysically impossible for scenarios where someone is simultaneously killed and destroyed, such as in nuclear blasts. (shrink)

Aesthetization, or aestheticization, has recently become a new key word in scholarly debates about culture and society, roughly concerned with the kind of phenomenon that pictorial turn describes. It is not that `aesthetization', in its literal sense, is making the unaesthetic aesthetic, nor does it point to the sort of topics typical of an aestheticized human life as favored by some traditional Chinese intellectuals; rather it is about a transaesthetization. This process differs not just in the range and extent of (...) aesthetization, but in its essence and nature: reality will no longer exist when it is transaesthetized and what is left is an aesthetic realm only; in other words, there will be no reality, but purely the `hyperreal'. Accordingly, transaesthetization can then often be associated with the concept of simulacrum, or the proliferation of images; it would thus result from the expansion of simulacra. However, there arises the problem that simulacrum is not identical with image. Assuming that the beauty of image consists in its rich connotations and its presentation at the level of form, it is doubtful that transaesthetization is configured merely by the simulacral. Why, and how could it be so? (shrink)

This essay presents a model-theoretic account of dispositional properties, according to which dispositions are not ordinary properties of real entities; dispositions capture the behavior of abstract, idealized models. This account has several payoffs. First, it saves the simple conditional analysis of dispositions. Second, it preserves the general connection between dispositions and regularities, despite the fact that some dispositions are not grounded in actual regularities. Finally, it brings together the analysis and the explanation of dispositions under a unified framework.

The purpose of this paper is to show that in Western postmodernism, both religion and the university are under the sign of simulacra. Friedrich Nietzsche’s “death of God” instigates a discussion of postmodernism and a simulacrum of religion. According to Jean Baudrillard and the theory of the Three Orders of the Simulacra, reality died and “hyperreality” took its place and now governs our existence. If, for Michel Foucault, the religious phenomenon today is outside theological beliefs and traditions, oriented towards (...) the body, power and panoptic supervision, for Jacques Derrida the phenomenon appears more as a negative theology of deconstruction. The theoretical objective seeks to explore the mutations that have occurred both in the academic environment and in religion under the phenomenon of globalisation and the technologisation of humanity. Here, the study of religion in universities is a third order simulacrum, the consequence of which is the illusion of knowledge and the unconditional independence of humanity, manipulated by technological evolution. The methodology used is Derridarian decon­struction, Nietzschean nihilism and the Baudrillardian criticism of the postmodern consumerist system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 225-244 [Access article in PDF] Sophistic Travel: Inheriting the Simulacrum Through Plato's "The Sophist" John Muckelbauer Was it not Plato himself who pointed out the direction for the reversal of Platonism? ------Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense 1. Developing an itinerary: guides and lineages A single question marks our departure, a question that, while apparently straightforward, has assumed so many shapes and disguises (...) that it would not be unjust to claim it has infected all of Western history. In its current manifestation, however, we will take our cue from Plato in phrasing it thus: What is a Sophist? When Plato first formulated the question in these terms, he well understood that its self-evident simplicity could be deceptive and that its effects might proliferate uncontrollably. As Jacques Derrida comments, "The question of what the Sophists really were is an enormous question" (Olson 17). In Plato's case, attempting to "hunt down" the Sophist led from a disturbing journey through the world of images to an unsettling encounter with the existence of nonbeing.Of course, the issue of Plato's distaste for sophistry is well-covered ground, so well-covered, in fact, that nearly all contemporary rhetorical scholarship that attempts to assert the value of sophistic rhetoric does so by reproducing an antagonism between sophistry and Platonism (see, e.g., Poulokos, Jarratt, Vickers). 1 A particularly interesting example, simply because it is so persistently skeptical of most conventional assumptions about sophistry, is G. B. Kerford's The Sophistic Movement. It is an excellent and careful treatment of sophistry in which he insists on the importance of approaching the Sophists without prior assumptions as to their relationship to the history of thought or politics--something that he shows has been far too prevalent in previous appropriations. Nevertheless, in his treatment of Plato's dialogue the Sophist, he writes, "It is clear that [Plato's] characterizations [End Page 225] in the Sophist constitute an outright condemnation" (5). Given the wealth of readings of different dialogues that express sentiments similar to Kerford's, the antagonistic structure of Platonic-Sophistic relations is apparently quite certain; it is something we know.It is also true that as a result of the many forays across the terrain of this antagonism, we know a great many other things about the relationship between Plato and sophistry. We know, for instance, that Plato was an idealist who abhorred the Sophist's interest in practical discursive wisdom. We know, as well, that Plato was a reactionary aristocrat who resented the Sophists for selling speeches and encouraging democracy. Without question, the many trips across this oppositional territory have been important expeditions for both Philosophy and Rhetoric, providing each discourse with a sense of its own distinct identity. 2 At very least, the mutual suspicion that often characterizes contemporary relations between these two disciplines is symptomatic of our inheritance of this Platonic mantra.It is, of course, quite difficult to avoid repeating this mantra of opposition between Philosophy and Rhetoric. Any attempt to champion one of the terms--even the supposedly underprivileged one, Rhetoric--overtly reproduces this opposition. But so too do most efforts to reduce one term to the other (i.e., claims stating that Philosophy is inevitably rhetorical) insofar as they must begin with the assumption that they know what rhetoric is; in other words, they must begin with what may schematically be characterized as a philosophical relation to rhetoric and to philosophy. Said differently, the two common disciplinary strategies that generate the opposition between rhetoric and philosophy, (1) championing the Sophists over Plato and (2) claiming that Plato is rhetorical, both effectively privilege the very notion of philosophy that they are attempting to discredit, i.e., one that is based on the notion of a preexistent, recognizable, and knowable identity, a fundamental truth.Given the renewed scholarly interest in the Sophists as early rhetoricians, it is curious that very few and very brief rhetorical engagements exist with the Platonic dialogue the Sophist--largely, one suspects, either because everyone already "knows" that it contains yet another... (shrink)

While many of the most important figures in the history of philosophy have employed the concept of the simulacrum in one way or another, a detailed study of this usage has yet to be written. In this essay, I will attempt to tell the story of a sequence in that history of that usage, by focusing on one of Deleuze's case studies of the concept of the simulacrum. To do so, I will focus primarily on one the appendices (...) to The Logic of Sense: ‘Lucretius and the Simulacrum’. In order to understand what I will call the Deleuze–Lucretius encounter, I will proceed as follows. After a few initial guiding remarks regarding the general project of the ‘inversion of Platonism’, we will outline some of the most fundamental features of atomistic physics. This will allow us to discuss Lucretius’ thoughts on the clinamen, the swerve. This, in turn, leads directly to the concept of the simulacrum. With such a picture of Lucretian physics in hand, I will pivot to a discussion of Lucretius’ ethics. The ethics consists of a critique of superstition in terms of a general project of demystification. Although this sequence will concentrate mostly on what became one of the appendices to The Logic of Sense, I will end by looking at the more general usage of Lucretian atomism, especially as it functions in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense. (shrink)

This comparative analysis of multiple variants of the aesthetics of simulacrum as equal and autonomous participants in the postmodern polylogue presents a principle of creation of a 'third reality', which unites foreign and Russian elements. Making an artifact out of an artifact leads to a theory of artistic relativism. This type of simulacra give artistic cross-cultural results with an additional aesthetic effect representing fragments of a postmodern mosaic culture.

Education for Sustainable Development is a broad and varied field of study replete with compelling advocacies for a more humane world. Across a majority of its instances however, ESD might yet be seen to labour in stealth fidelity to a mode of political economy and model of human-nature relations complicit with planetary ecocide. This essay draws largely from the thinking of Jean Baudrillard in an effort to identify the implications of ESD’s mainstay commitments, particularly as expressed in the field’s lingering (...) fidelities to anthropocentric production and modes of protagonistic optimism. Such alliances are contrasted by the immanence of inhuman planetary difference as it might habilitate more eco-centric approaches and attitudes for thinking the very possibility of sustainable development in the present era of rapid ecological transformation. (shrink)

With the recent deaths of both Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, it is an opportune moment to consider their respective contributions to social and cultural theory. The purpose of this article is not to establish an unbridgeable gap which allows no communication between Baudrillard and Derrida's thought. Rather, I will argue that there is an underlying assumption which brings them into close proximity: the idea that the dialectical order of the social, and its relationship to human mortality, has been radically (...) altered by the media-technological systems through which `the real' is represented. Baudrillard's concept of simulation attempts to show how the mass media have become the exclusive condition through which the social is staged, and that there is nothing outside of their operational logics. Derrida's conception of the spectre, on the contrary, presents a `quasi-messianic' figure which haunts the system of simulation; it is s/he who arrives through the intensification of social performativity which Baudrillard understands as completely self-referential. My aim is to show that the most political way of approaching Baudrillard is to read him as a kind of `evil genius' of simulation; as a provocation to acknowledge the spectral bodies who hover between life and death within the system of the hyperreal. (shrink)

This article argues for a new interpretation of the relation between Deleuze’s engagements with Nietzsche and Plato in the first chapter of Différence et répétition (1968). It (a) argues scholarship has overlooked important features of this relation, (b) reconstructs the text’s motivating problem of the reduction of difference to identity, (c) rethinks Deleuze’s use of “faire la différence” to show its methodological significance relative to Nietzsche and Plato, (d) proposes an account of the basic movement of differential being or becoming (...) figured as the Nietzschean “test” of the eternal return, (e) examines Deleuze’s derivation of the concept of simulacrum from Platonism for his revisionist theory of beings, and (f) proposes a solution to a problem unresolved in existing interpretations of the text: namely, how the text’s theory of beings as simulacra and its theory of being or becoming as the differential movement of the eternal return can have systematic unity. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, science cannot verify its theories empirically, but it can falsify them, and that suffices to account for scientific progress. For Popper, a law or theory remains a pure conjecture, probability equal to zero, however massively corroborated empirically it may be. But it does just seem to be the case that science does verify empirically laws and theories. We trust our lives to such verifications when we fly in aeroplanes, cross bridges and take modern medicines. We can (...) do some justice to this apparent capacity of science to verify if we make a number of improvements to Popper’s philosophy of science. The key step is to recognize that physics, in accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a big metaphysical assumption about the nature of the universe. The outcome is a conception of scientific method which facilitates the criticism and improvement of metaphysical assumptions of physics. This view provides, not verification, but a perfect simulacrum of verification indistinguishable from the real thing. (shrink)

This paper offers an introduction to poststructuralist interpretivist research in information systems, through a poststructuralist theoretical reading of the phenomenon and experience of social networking websites, such as Facebook. This is undertaken through an exploration of how loyally a social networking profile can represent the essence of an individual, and whether Platonic notions of essence, and loyalty of copy, are disturbed by the nature of a social networking profile, in ways described by poststructuralist thinker Deleuze’s notions of the reversal of (...) Platonism. In bringing a poststructuralist critique to such hugely successful and popular social information systems, the paper attempts to further open up the black box of the computer ‘user’, extend interpretive approaches to information systems research to embrace poststructuralism, and explore how notions of the Self might be reflected through engagement with information system (IS), and how an IS appreciation of the phenomenon of global social networking may benefit from embracing such a poststructuralist approach. (shrink)

Deleuze adopts Nietzsche's manifesto for an overturning of Platonism. However, the consensus view is that Deleuze's project is best understood as a revision not a repudiation of Platonism. Deleuze's engagement with Platonism centres on The Sophist. Out of Plato's concept of phantasm, Deleuze fashions a new concept: simulacrum. In Difference and Repetition, simulacra are invited to rise and affirm their rights; and yet Deleuze later abandons the concept entirely. Why? Although suitable for the purposes of critique, it became otiose (...) in wider applications. More generally, and against the consensus view, I argue that the trajectory of the concept of the simulacrum is emblematic of Deleuze's anti-Platonism. (shrink)

Carroll's uniqueness is to have allowed nothing to pass through sense, but to have played out everything in nonsense, since the diversity of nonsenses is enough to give an account of the entire uni...

Stephen Davis's detailed assessment of the doctrine of the general resurrection suggests that it is the claim that those who have died will persist into a subsequent, embodied life by means of a divine miracle. The dualist's account of resurrection depends on the possibility that the identity of a person over time is preserved by the persistence of a simple immaterial substance with no necessary connection to a particular physical or psychological career. This chapter argues that the seemingly preposterous (...) class='Hi'>simulacrum model fails to offer animalists such as van Inwagen an account of the metaphysical possibility of resurrection. Thus the constitution view of persons is unsuccessful in offering the materialist an account of how an individual might die and yet appear again at the Resurrection. However, while dualist accounts ground personal identity in the persistence of a simple immaterial substance (a soul), the uninformativeness of the constitution view has a different and problematic source. (shrink)

This paper uses Lawrence Venuti's writings on foreignising translation as a point of departure to examine the relevance of Deleuze's work to the discipline of translation studies. It begins by using Deleuze's earlier work to define translation as a problem of difference, drawing on concepts such as the simulacrum, the Virtual and the Actual, before using ideas from his collaborative works with Guattari, such as the minor and the nomad, to consider more practical aspects in terms of language. It (...) concludes by introducing the concept of the texture of prose as a means to apply these ideas to literary texts. (shrink)

The article deals with the role of Russian culture in the period of the RF war against Ukraine. The history is considered as the basic structure that shapes the discursive foundation of identity. Historical narratives as well as the cultural background of imperial identity and risks of the full scale representation of Russian culture in the Ukrainian social consciousness are analyzed. The two tendencies are also comprehended — junk science foundation of geopolitical projects and devalu- ation of the historically formed (...) senses. So the communicative action is penetrated by the strategic action bazed on the false reality fundament, this significant element of the war of the world. The vivid example of junk science is the neoeurasian ideology, that defines the strategy of Kremlin informational attack on the Ukrainian identity. Standoff between the identities takes place in the course of the imperial mobilization project development. The symbiosis of governmental authorities and artists plays the key role in its realization. The author outlines the main features of the strategic effect of penetration into the core of communicative process and the false reality building. Also the author develops the thought that the heartbreaking and impetuous change of con- tradictory narratives are the one of the fundamental resources of information war. In particular it deals with the great Russian Simulacrum as the vivid example of the instrumental reason that is in the base of the information war against Ukraine. It is also defined the historical origin of the simulacra as the instrument of the Russian special services and the role of their partners — the iconic figures of the Russian literature — in the projects of the public opinion manipulation. (shrink)

The urgency of the research is that the simulacra of the virtual-online culture of the information society and the conditions for its formation are analyzed. The term "simulacrum" by J. Baudrillard is related to the virtual-online culture of the information society, because a person uses substitutes, copies of things, and not their originals. Setting objectives. This problem is caused by the fact that today the personality is formed in an artificially created virtual world that distorts the personality and forms (...) its torn and inappropriate image. This type of society as a virtual-online one needs its interpretation and analysis of a new conceptual-categorical apparatus. Analysis of recent research and publications. These are works by J. Baudrillard "Simulacra and simulations", as well as R. Simmel, R. Bart, R. Deborah, G. Bataille, G. Lacan, M. McLuhan, M. Foucault, G. Deleuzae, J. Derrida.The questions of the philosophy of postmodernism and the theory of simulacra of J. Baudrillard are considered in the works of such researchers: A. Gritsanov, N. Katsuk, A. Dyakov, N. Zinchenko, N. Mankovskaya, O. Pechenkina, O. Scalatska, V. Ferroni and others. The question of the simulacrum is considered by J. Baudrillard in a number of works: "Symbolic Exchange and Death", "Seduction", "Simulacra and Simulation", "Transparency of Evil" and others. The selection of unexplored parts of the general problem is the conceptualization of the concept of "simulacrum" and its discovery in the virtual-online information society. The basis of the research is the conceptualization of the basic patterns of simulacra and the virtual-online culture of the information society, which is a scientific novelty. Setting the objective - the usage of approaches, in particular, structural-synergistic and practical synergetic methodology that makes it possible to analyze the simulacra of postmodern as complex constuctions. Presenting main material. The analysis of formation and development of online-virtual culture of personality which uses simulacra; the definition of "simulacrum" is presented; an analysis was made of the fact that the game constituent has become a dominant component of the modern virtual world, and the game itself became a marker of the postmodern society with the performing "I"-game in the middle; the definition of "online virtual culture" is given in the context of which "I" is implemented; the network society is shown as a new type of culture of virtual reality. Conclusions - the simulacra of the virtual-online culture of the information society in the conceptual survey of postmodernists has been formed. (shrink)

박물관은 지금까지 주로 과거를 저장하고 전시하는 수동적인 공간으로 인식되어왔다. 따라서 박물관을 현재 그리고 미래와의 연관성 안에서 이해하는 연구는 부족한 실정이다. 특히, 박물관, 그 중에서도 추모 박물관들이 다수 존재함에도 불구하고, “두 번 다시는(Never Again)”의 메시지는 박물관 공간 안에서만 공허하게 울릴 뿐 전시된 과거의 끔찍했던 인권탄압은 전 세계적으로 반복되고 있다. 본 연구는 바로 이러한 추모 박물관의 과거와 현재 사이에 부재하는 연결고리에 집중하여 현대사회에서 박물관이 어떻게 소비되고 있는지 논의하고, 이를 통해 박물관 분석에 관한 새로운 접근방식을 모색하고자 한다.BR과거를 전시하는 박물관을 현재에 위치시키기 위해 본 (...) 연구는 과거와 현재의 다리 역할을 하는 방문자들의 경험을 쫓아 박물관을 탐색한다. 기존 박물관 연구는 전시와 그 전시를 기획한 배경 그리고 인물들에 관심을 집중한 반면 방문객들의 경험에 대해서는 무관심한 경향이 있다. 따라서 현재를 살고 있는 방문객들이 과거의 공간인 박물관을 어떻게 경험하는지 살핌으로서 과거에 머물러 있던 박물관에 대한 논의를 확장하여 현대사회에서 박물관이 어떠한 위치에 있으며 영향을 주는지 살펴보고자 한다. 다시 말해, 지금까지의 박물관 연구가 박물관 자체에 머물러 있었다면, 본 연구는 사회라는 넓은 틀 안에서 박물관의 역할을 분석함으로써 박물관에 대한 논의를 확대시키고자 하며 이를 통해 박물관의 사회적 역할을 재조명하려고 한다.BR이를 위해 추모 박물관은 두 갈래로 논의된다. 첫 번째로, 보드리야르(Jean Baudrillard)의 시뮬라크럼(Simulacrum) 이론을 통해 박물관 전시와 방문객들의 경험을 분석하고, 그의 현대 소비사회에 대한 이론을 바탕으로 추모 박물관이 소비사회 중심에 살고 있는 방문객들에 의해 어떻게 즐겁게 소비되고 있는지 논의한다. 두 번째로, 사라 아메드(Sara Ahmed)의 행복함(Happiness)에 대한 이론을 통해 추모 박물관이 어떻게 인권유린의 역사를 해피엔딩이라는 “완벽한 결말”로 왜곡시킴으로서 현재까지 지속되고 있는 사회갈등을 의도치 않게 감추는지 논의한다. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of the visual, namely, the analysis of the possibility and means of expressing the surrounding world through the concepts of photography and simulation, which are widely used in modern studies of visual culture. Through the expressions of authenticity, the authenticity and aura of Walter Benjamin, the simulacrum and simulation of Jean Baudrillard, an image of the city and an understanding of its reality in general and individual parts in particular arise. The interpretations of a (...) separate space by individual human units of the city with their own meanings and understanding of authenticity are the result of the visualization by the subject-bearer of a specific image of the urban space. (shrink)

As an art theoretician, and as a father, I focus on the social and political consequences of Vanderbeeken’s postmodernist negative theology. I express doubts about the relevance of a poetics of catastrophe that conflates any possible alternative to the alleged technocracy under the sign of the simulacrum. To my opinion, the discourse about the virtual and the real are in a deadlock. Following the lead of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, I rephrase these critical doubts in Luddite terms: should we (...) imagine a counterattack as radical as the alleged dystopian nightmare dreamed up and sketched out by Vanderbeeken? I try to show that this line of thinking risks to result in a bold and speculative logic where ethical nuance collapses and, ultimately, the relationship between art, theory and the social culture is reduced to metaphorical analogy. To make this point I retake a critical, phenomenologically inspired reaction by Vivian Sobchack to Baudrillard’s account of Crash, J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel on techno-fetishism. My argument is that the scar that marks Sobchack’s ‘technobody’ might here stand for an alternative that approaches our technological condition not as a discursive machine but as a social pragmatics with deep ethical implications. (shrink)

The fact that real-world decisions made by artificial intelligences (AI) are often ethically loaded has led a number of authorities to advocate the development of “moral machines”. I argue that the project of building “ethics” “into” machines presupposes a flawed understanding of the nature of ethics. Drawing on the work of the Australian philosopher, Raimond Gaita, I argue that ethical dilemmas are problems for particular people and not (just) problems for everyone who faces a similar situation. Moreover, the force of (...) an ethical claim depends in part on the life history of the person who is making it. For both these reasons, machines could at best be engineered to provide a shallow simulacrum of ethics, which would have limited utility in confronting the ethical and policy dilemmas associated with AI. (shrink)

Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, is in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix. Simulations never existed as a book before it was "translated" into English. Actually it came from two different bookCovers written at different times by Jean Baudrillard. The first part of Simulations, and most provocative because it made a fiction of (...) theory, was "The Procession of Simulacra." It had first been published in Simulacre et Simulations. The second part, written much earlier and in a more academic mode, came from L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort. It was a half-earnest, half-parodical attempt to "historicize" his own conceit by providing it with some kind of genealogy of the three orders of appearance: the Counterfeit attached to the classical period; Production for the industrial era; and Simulation, controlled by the code. It was Baudrillard's version of Foucault's Order of Things and his ironical commentary of the history of truth. The book opens on a quote from Ecclesiastes asserting flatly that "the simulacrum is true." It was certainly true in Baudrillard's book, but otherwise apocryphal.One of the most influential essays of the 20th century, Simulations was put together in 1983 in order to be published as the first little black book of Semiotext's new Foreign Agents Series. Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, was in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix.In effect Baudrillard's essay was upholding the only reality there was in a world that keeps hiding the fact that it has none. Simulacrum is its own pure simulacrum and the simulacrum is true. In his celebrated analysis of Disneyland, Baudrillard demonstrates that its childish imaginary is neither true nor false, it is there to make us believe that the rest of America is real, when in fact America is a Disneyland. It is of the order of the hyper-real and of simulation. Few people at the time realized that Baudrillard's simulacrum itself wasn't a thing, but a "deterrence machine," just like Disneyland, meant to reveal the fact that the real is no longer real and illusion no longer possible. But the more impossible the illusion of reality becomes, the more impossible it is to separate true from false and the real from its artificial resurrection, the more panic-stricken the production of the real is. (shrink)

This article explores the origins of the problematic of political community by considering it in relation to the founding principles of `modern thought'. These principles are identified with the extirpation of moral values and ends from nature, in keeping with the rise of a `disenchanted' and mechanical scientific world-view. The transition from an `ancient' to a `modern' world-view is elaborated by drawing upon the work of Hans Blumenberg and Leo Strauss. The `demoralization' of nature, it is claimed, projects the formation (...) of the political commons into the space of history, a space within which community must be produced via artifice on the part of the willing subject. This Leitbild of modern community is examined through a reading of Hobbes's Leviathan which, it is claimed, stands as the founding attempt to remember the political commons from the sphere of human immanence, without recourse to natural or theological externality. However, it is argued, nature occupies an intermediary and ambiguous position in Hobbes's thought, at once transcended and reinscribed into political life as a `hedonist anthropology' that defines the human animal. Further, Hobbes's insistence that conventionally produced standards need be misrecognized as necessary and non-contingent undermines their legitimacy from the standpoint of human autonomy. This failure to break decisively with the appeal to nature leads to a political community that is at best a simulacrum, far removed from the vision of ethical unity that characterizes the classical conception of the polis and political life. Yet, it is argued, Hobbes's strategy nevertheless presents the key to subsequent attempts to complete a political `revolt' against nature, as developed in the thought of Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. (shrink)

Before I even begin, before even a preface or an epigraph, allow me to make two confessions or concessions. Both of them have to do with the fable and the phantasm, that is to say, with the spectral. The fabulous and the phantasmatic have a feature in common: stricto sensu and in the classical sense of these terms, they do not pertain to either the true or the false, the veracious or the mendacious. They are related, rather, to an irreducible (...) species of the simulacrum or of virtuality. To be sure, they are not truths or true statements as such, but neither are they errors or deceptions, false witnesses or perjuries. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright (1983, 1999) argues that (1) the fundamental laws of physics are true when and only when appropriate ceteris paribus modifiers are attached and that (2) ceteris paribus modifiers describe conditions that are almost never satisfied. She concludes that when the fundamental laws of physics are true, they don't apply in the real world, but only in highly idealized counterfactual situations. In this paper, we argue that (1) and (2) together with an assumption about contraposition entail the opposite conclusion (...) — that the fundamental laws of physics do apply in the real world. Cartwright extracts from her thesis about the inapplicability of fundamental laws the conclusion that they cannot figure in covering-law explanations. We construct a different argument for a related conclusion — that forward-directed idealized dynamical laws cannot provide covering-law explanations that are causal. This argument is neutral on whether the assumption about contraposition is true. We then discuss Cartwright's simulacrum account of explanation, which seeks to describe how idealized laws can be explanatory. (shrink)

This book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leavesbehind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digitaltechnology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferentalterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response.Writing in the shadow of Marshall McLuhan, Baudrillard insists that the content of communication iscompletely without meaning: the only thing that is communicated is communication itself. He sees themasses writhing in (...) an orgiastic ecstasy of communications. Baudrillard navigates the Object'smaelstrom with the euphoria of the astronaut reentering Earth's atmosphere with no possibility ofassistance from Mission Control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of TeachingGayatri Chakravorty Spivak (bio)It is practically persuasive that the eruption of the ethical interrupts and postpones the epistemological—the undertaking to construct the other as object of knowledge, an undertaking never to be given up. Lévinas is the generic name associated with such a position. A beautiful passage from Otherwise than Being lays it out, although neither interruption nor postponement (...) is mentioned. That connection is made by Derrida [Adieu 51-59].Here, then, is Lévinas, for whom Kant's critical perspectivization of the subject and the rigorous limits of pure theoretical reason seem to have been displaced by the structuralist hermeneutics of suspicion. For Lévinas, structuralism did not attend to what in Kant was the mechanism that interrupted the constrained and rigorous workings of pure reason: "The interests that Kant discovered in theoretical reason itself, he subordinated to practical reason, become mere reason. It is just these interests that are contested by structuralism, which is perhaps to be defined by the primacy of theoretical reason" [Otherwise than Being 58; trans. modified].The relationship between the postponement of the epistemological in Lévinas and the subordination of pure reason in Kant is a rich theme, beyond the scope of this essay. Let us return to what Lévinas will perceive as a general contemporary hermeneutics of suspicion, related to the primacy of theoretical reason: "The suspicions engendered by psychoanalysis, sociology and politics weigh on human identity such that we never know to whom we are speaking and what we are dealing with when we build our ideas on the basis of the human fact."1 The political calculus thematizes this suspicion into an entire code of strategy defined as varieties of game theory and rational choice. This can be verified across cultural difference, backwards through history, and in today's global academic discourse. Over against this Lévinas posits the ethical with astonishing humility: "but we do not need this knowledge in the relationship in which the other is the one next to me [le prochain]" [Otherwise 59].Kant thought that the ethical commonality of being (gemeines Wesen—repeatedly mistranslated as "the ethical state") cannot form the basis of a state. Surprisingly, there is a clear line from the face-to-face of the ethical to the state in Lévinas.2 It has long [End Page 17] been my habit to scavenge and tinker in the field of practical philosophy. I will conserve from Kant the discontinuity between the ethical and the political, from Lévinas the discontinuity between the ethical and the epistemological. I will suggest that the discontinuities between the ethical and the epistemological and political fields are tamed in the nestling of logic and rhetoric in fiction.3Enabled by such a suggestion, I can move to another bit of prose on that page in Lévinas: "for reasons not at all transcendental but purely logical, the object-man must figure at the beginning of all knowing."The figure of the "I" as object: this representation of the holy man in Lévinas does not match our colloquial and literal expectations. My general suggestion, that the protocol of fiction gives us a practical simulacrum of the graver discontinuities inhabiting (and operating?) the ethico-epistemic and the ethico-political, can, however, take such a figure on board. I will continue to want to say that fiction offers us an experience of the discontinuities that remain in place "in real life." That would be a description of fiction as an event—an indeterminate "sharing" between writer and reader, where the effort of reading is to taste the impossible status of being figured as object in the web of the other. Reading, in this special sense, is sacred.In this essay I consider not only fiction as event but also fiction as task. I locate in Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and J. M. Coetzee (1940-) representations of what may be read as versions of the "I" figured as object and weave the representations together as a warning text for postcolonial political ambitions.4 I am obviously using "text" as "web," coming from Latin texere—"to... (shrink)

The use of findings from conversation analysis in the design of human-computer interfaces and especially in the design of computer-human speech dialogues is a matter of considerable controversy. For example, in “Going up a Blind Alley” (Button, 1990) and “On Simulacrums of Conversation” (Button and Sharrock, 1995), Button argues that conversation analysis is of only limited use in the computational modelling of interaction. He suggests that computers will never be able to “converse” with humans because of the fundamentally different ways (...) in which humans and computers use rules in the production of language.We show in this paper that these arguments are neither necessary nor sufficient to rule out the possibility of computers which can be said to converse. They depend on a view about the nature of rules which is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of computation. The way in which mathematical systems such as Context Free Grammars use rules is very different from the use of the rules in principle-based approaches to language or the “micro-rules” of neural networks. If there is a problem with conversing computers, it lies more with the true nature of the interaction that is taking place and with considerations about the nature of cognition than with the construction and use of rules. (shrink)

Late Edmund Husserl’s examination of the crisis of the European sciences is the point of departure of this paper. Husserl’s views about wrong objectivisation and naturalization of reason in science and philosophy have prepared the ground for dissatisfaction with reason in various trends of 20th century Social and Political Philosophy. This intellectual climate has naturally bred the radical criticism against the social project of Enlightenment practiced by the first generation Frankfurt School. Later on, the Modern reason misfortunes in social and (...) political sphere are epitomized by Emanuel Levinas’ uprising against fundamentalontology for the sake of responsibility to the Other as well as by Julia Kristeva’s appeal to reestablish the social contract on new sensibility and new rationality. Finally, Jean Boaudrillard puts the univocal diagnosis that reason has surrendered to the code of consumerist simulacrum. In the second part of the paper, some suggestions proposed by the above philosophers (except for Baudrillard) about resolving the deadlock prepared by the Modern reason are viewed briefly. A conclusion is made that Baudrillard’s pessimistic position seems to be the most plausible and relevant in the current socio‐political and philosophical climate. (shrink)

Can computer systems ever be considered moral agents? This paper considers two factors that are explored in the recent philosophical literature. First, there are the important domains in which computers are allowed to act, made possible by their greater functional capacities. Second, there is the claim that these functional capacities appear to embody relevant human abilities, such as autonomy and responsibility. I argue that neither the first (Domain-Function) factor nor the second (Simulacrum) factor gets at the central issue in (...) the case for computer moral agency: whether they can have the kinds of intentional states that cause their decisions and actions. I give an account that builds on traditional action theory and allows us to conceive of computers as genuine moral agents in virtue of their own causally efficacious intentional states. These states can cause harm or benefit to moral patients, but do not depend on computer consciousness or intelligence. (shrink)

There is a widespread, popular view—and one I basically endorse—that Nietzsche is, in one sense of the word, a nihilist. As Arthur Danto put it some time ago, according to Nietzsche, “there is nothing in [the world] which might sensibly be supposed to have value.” As interpreters of Nietzsche, though, we cannot simply stop here. Nietzsche's higher men, Übermenschen, “genuine philosophers”, free spirits—the types Nietzsche wants to bring forth from the human, all-too-human herds he sees around him with the fish (...) hooks, as he says, of his books—seem to engage in what looks like valuing. These free spirits are supposed to revalue the old values—revaluing, as is clear from the texts, is not simply to remove the old values from circulation (Nietzsche uses “umwerten” and not “entwerten”)—and they are supposed to create new values. And, of course, Nietzsche himself, free spirit that he is, takes on the task of revaluing all values and seems to assert many a strident evaluation. So we need to say more here. What are Nietzsche and his free spirits up to when they engage in what looks, for all the world, like a practice of valuing? What is the practice of valuing Nietzsche is recommending for his free spirits? I argue for two claims: (i) First, we end up facing an interpretive puzzle when we attempt to explain how Nietzsche's free spirits are supposed to engage in a practice of valuing. (ii) Second, we can solve the interpretive puzzle by taking Nietzsche's free spirits to be engaged in a fictionalist simulacrum of valuing. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen's brand of materialism leads him to speculate that God actually removes the deceased at the moment of death and replaces the corpse with a simulacrum that decays or is cremated. Dean Zimmerman offers an account of resurrection that is loyal to Peter van Inwagen's commitment to a materialist metaphysics, with its stress on the earlier life processes of an organism immanently causing its later ones, while maintaining that resurrection is possible without involving God in any ‘body (...) snatching’. My contention is that Zimmerman's account is metaphysically impossible. His alleged ‘solution’ is at odds with the principles governing the ways in which an organism can assimilate new parts. Instead of providing a scenario where we can be resurrected, Zimmerman has merely sketched a scenario where we are duplicated. An alternative materialist account of resurrection is offered, one in which immanent causation is not necessary. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, but by (...) means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss Deleuze’s account of the reversal of Platonism in chapter one of Difference and Repetition, tying it together with Merleau-Ponty’s work on perception. In Difference and Repetition, there are only two references to Merleau-Ponty – one in the note on Heidegger that was added at the insistence of his examiners, and one brief mention in a footnote. Nonetheless, as we shall see, many of the discussions of the origin of representation, as well as the relation (...) of the determinate to the indeterminate in the structure of difference, and the nature of depth, draw heavily on Merleau-Ponty’s work. While there has been some recognition of this influence, I want to draw out some specific points where Deleuze draws on Merleau-Ponty within chapter one of Difference and Repetition. On the other side, as far as I am aware, there is no sustained discussion of Plato in Merleau-Ponty’s work. In showing how Deleuze takes up Merleau-Ponty in his explicit project of reversing Plato, I want to show that the move to a philosophy of the simulacrum is synonymous with Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. I will begin by talking about Plato and representation, which ends the chapter, before returning to the beginning of the chapter to look at the nature of difference, then turning to the question of how representation covers over difference. I want to conclude by looking at what Deleuze considers to be the limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s account. (shrink)