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

man septemberrrrr but i wanna read internet excerpts nowwwwwwww

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MD4Lv8NLL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

oh boy

j., you can! 12 of the poems have been published online (in The New Yorker, Poetry, Commonweal, The Economy, Hazlitt, Lemon Hound, & The Walrus).

well that sounds like a needless hassle, what am i, a poetry hunter-gatherer, this is late late web 2.0 capitalism, where's my commodity (that other people will buy and type from)

boo

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/he-who

you need to work on yr google skillz

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-springtime-chicago-november

also, website w/ links: michaelrobbinspoet.tumblr.com

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

he's me, & he's right. you don't have to be a theist to figure that out. read john mcdowell. also, lol at the usual atheist bigotry. see ya.

murk if you are actually M.R. you should know that Grado headphones are not acceptable in a library environment because they are "open" style headphones and thus leak sound, it's very annoying

you know, you're actually quite right about that. i bought some noise-canceling sennheisers recently & tho they're lower grade than the grados my ipod sounds better on them. also less leakage.

sorry for being cranky, but deciding not to read someone's work because of his philosophical or religious beliefs is just dumb, unless he's a nazi or something, & even then ...

there's no way i'm reading this whole thread

i could care less what kind of -eist anyone is, but apologetics games are just a travesty

and i would recommend some reading for you in turn if you haven't picked up teh ilx house tone yet

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