Michael Robbins - Alien Vs. Predator (nb this book of poems is not about aliens, predators or their conflicts)

i don't think i require any reading recommendations. i'm familiar with the arguments for naturalism. they're woefully unconvincing. i've been writing articles attacking scientism for years. i'll take mcdowell & marilynne robinson & nagel & charles taylor & hart & mark johnston & anyone else from plato on who, theist or not, understands how conceptually thin bald naturalism is. the naivete of the scientistic worldview is astounding—uncannily like that of the most naive theistic construal available to the most benighted peasant in 15th-century europe.

but i also don't think i'll be sticking around. depressing to have my first interaction on here entail a conversation i've had literally hundreds of times.

as for the "house tone," if suggesting you read john mcdowell's "mind and world" violates it, good.

you weren't following my meaning at all. you think we're having a conversation that we're not having. the suggested reading would be ilx itself, for you, so you can pick up OUR tone(s). sheesh. i'm not gonna read your book or not read your book for any special reason having to do with you or anything you believe or don't, except your belief in writing funny poems.

https://www.beloit.edu/reason/images/348601.jpg

it's too late now that i know he thinks 'naturalism appears incoherent'

Yeah, mr, this was a joke. ilx has evolved it's own standards of rhetoric and evidence, although it often seems like knowing how to navigate those doesn't prevent arguments.

murk, can you elaborate on how memes entail intelligent design? I'm not seeing the argument. I think Dawkins would say that there definitely are strictly natural processes by which intentional contents can be selectively replicated. Certain intentional contents have the right features, or the right pragmatic consequences, to compel psychological uptake. This can be voluntary or not - what matters is how they appeal to the brain. Mutations occur because of shifting social and psychological conditions. Some intentional contents lose their appeal. Some are able to mutate enough to stay in circulation.

I'm not saying that it's the most fascinating theory in the world, but the leap to intelligent design makes no sense to me.

murk you should stay a while. & I like your poetry. i mean yes I spend some of this thread umming over it but that is a compliment in my head.

i see. i picked a fine time to be humorless. j., if you give me yr email address, i'll get yr address from you & make sure you receive a bound galley of the book when they're available.

jmm, more tk when i have a moment to spare.

but i also don't think i'll be sticking around. depressing to have my first interaction on here entail a conversation i've had literally hundreds of times

There's lots more interesting things to discuss around here than naturalism vs theism. Judging by the band references in your poems you might enjoy some of the threads on I Love Music (sister board).

yeah, i've lurked on the rolling metal & country threads for years. i know scott seward & chuck eddy a bit.

well then MIX IT UP a little!

i sent you a webmail, you probably want to check your spam filters etc.

i'm leery of mixing it up. see above—i lose my internet cool too easily.

woof, love the title of this thread.

a conversation i've had literally hundreds of times.

It would appear to be a compelling enough topic that each new encounter requires getting it out of the way. Once had, it needn't be repeated.

However, if your intent in participating in ILB is to seek intellectual stimulation of such a high order that you need not run over ground you've covered before elsewhere, or explain cherished ideas that you've developed over a long period of time, then prepare for disappointment. We are only human. Our only claim to intellectualism here is that we do not dismiss it out of hand, but rather we find the world of ideas worthwhile and reading of literature rewarding. We share that.

Once had, it needn't be repeated.

cmon aimless remember where you are

Right. I went for a long walk, thought a bit about this thread. It seems likely to me that MR aka murk may not have much to gain from engaging with ilx. Shocking conclusion, I know. If I'm wrong, then now that he's touched the ilx tarbaby, he'll be sticking around for sure. He won't be able to help it.

In the meantime, I will go to his link and try to find out how he is using 'naturalism'. The only use of this term in regard to lit that I can recall was to describe the Hamlin Garland-Theodore Dreiser-Frank Norris-Stephen Crane school of writing, and that's nowhere in the same neighborhood of how he's using it above, obviously. As a term of art in philosophy, I don't have it in my mental dictionary.

OK. Got it.

naturalism—the doctrine that there is nothing apart from the physical order, and certainly nothing supernatural—is an incorrigibly incoherent concept

I'll just point out the main thing to notice in approaching this quote is that "naturalism" is not interchangeable with "science". Science pragmatically limits itself to natural phenomena and does not pretend to address questions of transcendence. This allows it a remarkable coherence within its own sphere of inquiry. Neither Hart nor MR is calling scientific knowledge incoherent, but rather the attempt to apply that knowledge to questions that science wisely ignores and to dismiss or deny matters of transcendence on the very grounds that scientific knowledge does not shed light on them. Which is simply perverse.

However, this seems like a discussion more fit for I Love Everything more than I Love Books, in that ILE has cornered the market on threads upon this subject matter. We trod that sorry path again a couple of weeks ago on Are you an atheist?. I understand now why murk would want to sidestep that dreary exercise.

Yes, Aimless, this is what I say in the piece, & what Hart says. The problem is not with science but with scientism, an epistemically arrogant presumption to transcendent knowledge (God is a "delusion," &c.) that happens to be ironically faith-based. This is what I (& many others) accuse Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, et al., of practicing. They can't even get the arguments straight (e.g., Dawkins misunderstands Thomas's Aristotelian notion of "first cause"; Hitchens makes innumerable historical errors, &c.).

But Hart's & Eagleton's & Robinson's books exist, so I don't have to have these exactly-the-same-every-time discussions.

Does transcendent knowledge constitute a specific checklist of things or is it just demarcated as things that are currently untestable, or things thought to be never testable?

Things never thought to be testable, in the sense of "experimentally verifiable".

Transcendence does not easily fall into the category of "knowledge", as we are now used to defining that category, iow, in terms of verifiable, repeatable, tangible, shareable, measurable experiences. Generally speaking, it can be approached by two avenues: logical derivation from accepted axioms (much as mathematics can define and employ concepts that have no verifiable, physical counterparts) and direct mystical experience, which is unverifiable. If you'd like some sort of scientifically sound basis for this category, you're not going to get it, except by way of analogy.

Just as an exercise, I'd like you to refresh your acquaintance with Gödel, in case this frank admission of the unverifiability of transcendent knowledge gets you to feeling especially frisky and combative.

btw, as you may find out by reading the "Are you an atheist?" thread, I'm an atheist of the Zen Buddhist variety.

But must we trudge down this road again?

if you're sorting things like godel's incompleteness proof in transcendent knowledge, then that is actually an example of not necessarily science, but mathematical rigor placing limits on things, like it literally cages God, and could be used to directly contradict perceived mystical experiences that state the opposite (though I've never heard of any mystical experiences that weird and specific.)

There could be entire classes of philosophical questions that could arise from this sort of thing ("could God make a burrito so hot He could not eat it?") that could be answered conclusively.

wow yeah let's do this here

nah. take it to the atheist thread on ile and see if anyone nibbles. maybe alice liddell will come and take a bite and we can all fit down this rabbit hole.

"could God make a burrito so hot He could not eat it?"

A question that, once placed in the mind, is hard to remove, I'm finding.

God, like so many Busy Executives, has People who Do these Things for Him.

interventionist god can probably make and eat a burrito (in control of the forces of the world on a level of contemporary human time). could make it so hot that Itself could not eat it, wd pass on to something more in touch with its ain soph aur.

post-interventionist god, possibly not fully in charge of detail that was engendered from its primum mobile. would like to try and eat a burrito, probably couldn't make one. could certainly find one made too hot to eat ("What things have I wrought?" - poss a q of theodicy, tho its status may be unclear: "This burrito is too hot to eat! ergo, It is a production of the evil I allow but do not control. Just one more bit tho, 'sblood it tastes great." makes it more of a neo-platonic entity, not strictly part of xtian theology - not evil, not good - but something assimilated from outside. a communicative and alchemical tool)

conclusion - jaweh makes the burrito too hot to eat, elohim eats it.

or possibly the trinity was devised to solve this potential burrito problem. god proposes, Jesus disposes, Holy Spirit takes the taco.

in the pub fwiw.

^^ would subscribe

i corrupted the original text. sorry
http://underscoopfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/homer-simpson.jpg

If Scalia and Thomas have taught us anything, it is to respect the original text.

Zeus knows the proper way to resolve such paradoxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teumessian_fox

iirc God may create the soul of the burrito but its too-hot corporal form is the fault of Satan, and so the burrito must be reincarnated over and over until it achieves perfection and can be eaten by God.

"But it is precisely because He is omnipotent that there are certain things that He cannot do: just as we say that it is necessary, when we exercise will, that we do so of our own free will. When we say this, it is undoubtedly true, yet we do not thereby make our freedom of will subject to a necessity which takes away our freedom." — Augustine, City of God.

(Many "paradoxes" of this sort have been answered for, like, 1500 years.)

(Thomas Aquinas treats specifically of the hot burrito, but I can't remember where offhand.)

for such heresy he would have been burned at the bistec, from which there is no salsation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCO8qkEe9co

Another perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPekbB4kemg

Well, we've derailed this thread.

http://gdb.voanews.com/362347A9-BBC1-4422-91D2-4F9210E21940_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy9_cw0.jpg

(Sorry Aimless)

It was a group effort.

also I wrote this: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/03/dayal_patterson_s_history_of_black_metal_reviewed.single.html

i enjoyed that. I do not know anything about Black Metal, but I did like the cheerful attempt to chart a course around the book's shit prose.

I've only really begun to think through the implications of your dropping by here. Let's say I read your next book (which I will), and let's say I want to pop into ILX & say 'Yes, but…' and 'This is good, but then maybe…' (& this is how I respond to things I like), it could be awkward. Even if I slope off to another thread, then that's talking behind your back. So maybe I'll just post here, try to believe you both are/aren't present & see what happens.

I had a very similar transilvanian hunger experience.

also: I liked the article about music and character identification. it's probably the reason I liked that much despised Goon Squad novel.

I remain non-committal about AvP - and am determined to remain non-committal for SS to avoid awkwardness woof describes.

have just moved house tho and have just put AvP in the poetry shelf - between the wall and... hang on (am lying on bed upstairs and need to check)... Yeats! twixt a lough and a hard place.

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2014-03-06233700_zps546714c4.jpg

how do you feel about edward dorn, f.

i feel like i wish i could afford a copy of gunslinger

20 bucks delivered, doesn't seem that far out. also if you buy the new collected dorn brick then by weight you're only paying six, seven bucks for slinger

There have been plenty of years of my life when twenty bucks for a book was at the far edge of the possible. Not now, happily.

I paid 11 for Ashbery's Flow Chart last month, that was a splurge

how do you feel about edward dorn, f.

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 00:21 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really like it - the protean central voice and the presentation of time are done very well I think. it's a precise, clever performance, which it needs to be given the looseness of its environment and form. "Western frontier as appropriate place and set of characters with which to study the soul and it's journeys" is absolutely a premise I buy. it's witty, conversational and fun, and laced with song. i like Burroughs, but you allow a lot for the pleasure of listening to his discursive tone of voice - Gunslinger reminded me of Burroughs, but here the internal philosophy, structure and tale, such as it is, is in its own terms coherent, which gives it that overarching tension that long poems need. there's some brilliant set pieces, like this abstract gunfight between the Horse and a loose-tongued stranger:

The Stoned Horse said Slowly
not looking up
from his rolling and planning
Stranger you got a [i]pliable lip
you might get yourself described
if you stay on.

Come on!
Who's the horse, I mean who's
horse is that, we can't have
No Horse! in here.
It ain't proper
and I think I'm gonna
put a halter on you!

Uh uh, the Gunslinger breathed.
Anybody know the muthafucka
the Stoned Horse inquired
of the general air.
Hey, hear that the strange gasped
that's even a negra horse!

Maybe so, maybe not
the Gunslinger inhaled
but stranger you got an Attitude
a mile long
as his chair dropped forward
all four legs on the floor
and as the disputational .44
occurred in his hand and spun there
in that warp of relativity one sees
in the backward turning spokes
of a buckboard,

then came suddenly
to rest, the barrel utterly justified
with a line pointing
to the neighborhood of infinity.
The room froze harder.

Shit,
Slinger, Lil noticed, You've pointed
your .44 straight
out of town.
I keep tellin you
not to be so goddamn fancy
now that amacher's
got the drop on you!

Not so, Lil!
the Slinger observed.
Your vulgarity is flawless
but you are the slave
of appearances –-
this Stockholder will find
that his gun cannot speak
he'll find
that he has been Described
STRUM
the greenhorn pulled
the trigger and his store-bought iron
coughed out some cheap powder,
and then changed its mind,
muttering about having
been up too late last night.
Its embarrassed handler
looked, one eye wandering,
into the barrel
and then reholstered it and
stood there.

strum

The total .44
recurred in the Slinger's hand
and spun there
then came home like a sharp knock
and the intruder was described -
a plain, unassorted white citizen.

the successful unpunctuated distinction of speech and description is always i think a sign of writer invisibly in charge of their rhythms and tone (like Evelyn Waugh or PG Wodehouse's long pages of brief exchanges where the identity of the speaker remains fixed in the mind. It reminds me of what George Saintsbury in his book on English prose rhythm said about Malory's Morte d'Arthur:

[There are plenty of sentences in Malory beginning with "and"; but it is not the constant go-between and usher-of-all-work that it is in Mandeville.] The abundance of conversation gets him out of this difficulty at once; and he seems to have an instinctive knowledge - hardly shown before him, never reached after him till the time of the great novelists - of weaving conversation and narrative together. [...] His narrative order and his dialogue are so artistically adjusted that they dovetail into one another.

After all, this method and presentation is a 20th/21st C one, but Dorn does it very well. The closest analogue in some ways feels like the Pynchon of Mason & Dixon and Against the Day.

cost me £10, which didn't seem unreasonable - tho like Aimless I'm now in the happy position where I can spend that amount on a book without feeling a bit sick.

"a precise, clever performance, which it needs to be given the looseness of its environment and form" -- yeah, i think at the time i looked at it i wasn't really in the mood to read it charitably: like, my response was Yes I Get It And I Am Bored Of This Riff Now And I Am Only About Two Fifths Convinced Your Line Breaks Are Not Arbitrary. i think it's a lot like other pynchon performances too, like the occasional drops into pulp in GR.

when i read the north atlantic vortex pomes i found myself thinking mb i should have given slinger more of a shot; have forgotten what i liked about those, though. was enthused about the collected but i. the cover is carcanet's worst ever ii. fear of amassing further collective works i will not open, like geo. hill's collected e.g., which has been glaring at me resentfully from various piles and bookshelves, still totally unopened, since december