basically some departments should have a logic requirement as harm reduction for the rest of the major lol

i agree with this in most departments, but i do think there are some where just as a fact about how the classes get taught, if students early in the major don't have some exposure to logic early on they're gonna get very little out of the lectures because their professors just are that way.

in any case sorry for sending so much, this sounds like a cool project!

ofc spinoza wouldn't be down for beauty as something that inheres in the object and vindicates better/worse judgements about things in themselves. not at allll. but he maybe should say beauty is a sort of affective experience after all. one we ideally overcome in getting to intellectual love of god.

a spinozist can see beauty as involving these passive affects (perhaps the best move for pleasant art objects is to say they bring about "titillation" in particular actually), and so to the extent you and i have different tastes and feel strong beauty-feelings that'll change our understandings

one thing that slightly problematizes what you're saying with respect to beauty is that spinoza seems to suggest things which might bring about the strongest passive affects in us are especially capable of bringing about active ones once we come to understand them.

i find spinoza's story about knowledge feels the most right to me when im thinking about understanding other people or art objects or philosophy, and it's a little further of a stretch the rest of the time. im inclined to think he aestheticizes reason as much as he rationalizes aesthetics.

so i do agree that spinoza collapses ethical/aesthetic engagement (and, while we are at it, rational and political engagement as well—there's only one sort of normativity for spinoza, there's no gap between epistemology and ethics and politics).

spinozist understanding involves thinking through genealogies. knowing how it is this object came to be here in front of you, who made it, how, why, what it does, why it elicits some feelings in you and others, etc. importantly, this is also the way he reads the bible in the TTP.

plays some (but perhaps not any special, or unique, or especially helpful) role in that. this all said, his epistemology is highly general and so he should say that the best way to engage with art objects is the same way you should engage with science or philosophy or understanding other people.

at other times, he seems to suggest that a rich diversity of different experiences is required to give proper nourishment to the body/mind (he has a fun example about eating nice food and going to plays). spinoza's psychology emphasizes building out connections in the causal/conceptual web, and art

i think spinoza in some moments is a plato-style philistine. as far as i can tell he seems inclined to say about art objects what he has to say about religious faith—it's sometimes useful instrumentally to keep people not smart enough to do philosophy away from some serious ethical errors.

give up on violence, security, heteropatriarchal masculinity, guilt—embrace others in trust and understanding and care—even if it gets you killed tomorrow. that's chainsawman babyyyy

denji did it! he was freed from being the protagonist of the story "chainsaw man", the battle shounen action hero, and in doing so he is now happy. the end of Chainsaw Man is the end of chainsaw man. now he's just some guy enjoying food & working a shit job. and we can get the real hero (power)

chainsawman ending is perfect. excited and exhausted for all the right wing sicko readers to absolutely despise it

i love the game so so much but it made me giggle when they introduced the default unity flashlight mechanic in the 10 minute epilogue at the very end of the game

1000xRESIST is crazy because the creators were like "what if we wrote one of the best pieces of feminist sci-fi literature ever BUT it's a video game made in unity"

YES this paper is so good that's a great shout

got a class dropped on my lap with like two weeks to make a syllabus and everything.... so if anyone has any interesting thoughts on cool papers on the theme of ~ethical dimensions of personal decisions~.... let me know

practicing this skill is a lot of why i like noise/field recording!

i always get everything bagels o7 o7

The bagel-with-peanut-butter approach is steeped in the liberal fantasy that breakfast will set you free, but in a world where that's no longer true (if it ever was), to me it reads as decadence

helpful reframing genuinely!!

god gives his strongest soldiers conditions under which soul-rotting coping mechanisms are soooo adaptive

uh oh

i liked the parts of it i read as an undergrad. i parted with the continental milieu a while ago but i still have some fondness for deleuze

nancy cartwright is the first atheist philosopher

being a metaphysician with nonevil politics and being a trans woman is so frustrating because so many people make completely insane assumptions about me. important fact: more formal does not equal more evil (an assumption unfortunately representative on the pro and anti evil sides of the discipline)

john worrall
bas van fraassen
nancy cartwright
mark wilson

tiny bit of plagiarism vs poverty for 90% of artists and also probably a tiny bit of plagiarism