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Category Archives: Nature
Nature and Normativity
Posted on December 8, 2009 by Tom
Here are two excellent essays, each taking opposing stances on how to answer questions centring on nature and normativity, alongside the roles of sciences and humanities in understanding reality. Both are admirably lucid and make a good case for their competing methodologies: firstly, an unashamed defence of 'scientism'; secondly, the demand to take the standpoint of practical reasoning seriously.
An excerpt from each, beginning with Alex Rosenberg's 'The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide To Reality':
What science has discovered about reality can't be packaged into whodunit narratives about motives and actions. The human mind is the product of a long process of selection for being able to scope out other people's motives. The way nature solved the problem of endowing us with that ability is by making us conspiracy theorists—we see motives everywhere in nature, and our curiosity is only satisfied when we learn the "meaning" of things—whose purposes they serve. The fundamental laws of nature are mostly timeless mathematical truths that work just as well backwards as forward, and in which purposes have no role. That's why most people have a hard time wrapping their minds around physics or chemistry. It's why science writers are always advised to get the science across to people by telling a story, and why it never really works. Science's laws and theories just don't come in stories with surprising starts, exciting middles and satisfying dénouements. That makes them hard to remember and hard to understand. Our demand for plotted narratives is the greatest obstacle to getting a grip on reality. It's also what greases the skids down the slippery slope to religion's "greatest story ever told." Scientism helps us see how mistaken the demand for stories instead of theories really is.
From Robert Pippin's 'Normative and Natural':
Normative questions, I mean, are irreducibly "first-personal" questions, and these questions are practically unavoidable and necessarily linked to the social practice of giving and demanding reasons for what we do, especially when something someone does affects, changes or limits what another would otherwise have been able to do. By irreducibly first-personal, I mean that whenever anyone faces a normative question (which is the stance from which normative issues are issues) – what ought to be believed or what ought to be done – no third-personal fact about "why one as a matter of fact has come to prefer this or that" can be relevant to what I must decide, unless (for good practical reasons) I count it as a relevant practical reason in the justification of what I decide. Knowing something about evolutionary psychology might contribute something to understanding the revenge culture in which Orestes finds himself in Aeschylus's Oresteia, and so why he feels pulled both to avenge his father's murder by his mother Clytemnestra, and also feels horrified at the prospect of killing his mother in cold blood. But none of that can be, would be, at all helpful to Orestes or anyone in his position. Knowing something about the evolutionary benefits of altruistic behavior might give us an interesting perspective on some particular altruistic act, but for the agent, first-personally, the question I must decide is whether I ought to act altruistically and if so why. I cannot simply stand by, as it were, and "wait" to see what my highly and complexly evolved neuro-biological system will do. "It" doesn't decide anything; I do, and this for reasons I must find compelling, or at least ones that outweigh countervailing considerations. It is in this sense that the first-personal perspective is strictly unavoidable. I am not a passenger on a vessel pulled hither and yon by impulses and desires; I have to steer.
Posted in Disenchantment, Links, Methodology, Nature, Normativity, Pippin, Realism	/ 3 Comments
Posted on September 28, 2009 by Tom
Modernity is often associated with disenchantment. But what does this mean? Ancient thinkers had tended to ascribe teleological principles to the natural world: the stone strives for its home at the centre of the earth; the eclipse communicates divine displeasure. The monotheistic traditions which then gained ascendancy in Europe and the Near East retained something of this, finding God's plan suffusing nature: God creates walnuts to resemble brains, signing to human reason that the former is good for the latter; gold and silver lie beneath the ground and the sun and stars shine in the heavens above, displaying a divinely ordained symmetry (both these latter examples are taken from Foucault's The Order of Things). But with the rise of the mathematical sciences, natural teleology and divine order came to be treated with increasing derision. Aristotle was to be banished to the libraries of the Schoolmen, and if God was to have daubed nature with language, he would speak to us in mathematics and not dainty allegories. For philosophers such as Descartes, matter was extension, and must yield its secrets to a physics taking mathematisable form. This approach to the natural world was further buttressed in the minds of natural philosophers by the successes of the Newtonian revolution. In biology, by 1828 even the demand for a vital force — said to divide the organic from inorganic — proved empty, Wöhler having proved that the organic could be synthesised from inorganic components.
Everywhere, meaning fell under the sword of mechanism, and myth and mysticism with it. But suspicion hung over this evacuated nature, for was it not also our home — perhaps even the very substance of our being? If so, what remained of freedom, providence, value, beauty or morality in all this? The very meaning of life appeared to be under threat, since there seemed to be no room for God, rational harmony or true righteousness amongst the icy torrents of indifferent particles. The height of the Enlightenment saw the most avid articulation of these worries, with Jacobi coining the term 'nihilism' to describe what he saw as Godless and fatalistic Critical philosophies, which in his eyes provided little more than a fig-leaf covering their destruction of a transcendent source of value.
In all this, there are both progressive and regressive currents. The rise of modern science has been a near-unparalleled breakthrough, on a par with the development of agriculture, city dwelling or the institution of constitutional legal codes. In so doing, it has rightly banished God-talk from natural philosophy and much else besides. So too, it has helped deaden the appeal of any view of freedom wherein it consists in some contra-casual power to intervene in the world (quantum mechanical gymnastics aside). But there is a risk of the burning light of science blinding us to the proper significance (or even existence) of certain equally natural phenomena. My own interests here settle on normativity — what we are committed, entitled or prohibited from thinking and doing; how we are subject to the 'force of the better reason'; why we not merely do but should follow certain rules and conventions — ethical, theoretical, aesthetic, affective — whilst rightly rejecting others. Often, attempts to understand normativity suffer from a scientism which extends far beyond a healthy respect for the natural sciences, and which commonly has its roots in a problematic conception of disenchanted nature.
In the face of the disenchantment of nature, we can easily succumb to that curious form of philosophical vertigo that Wittgenstein diagnoses so well. We then grasp about for a solid handhold. Confronting frigid nature, operating with lawful or law-like regularity, one response has been to cast aside concepts like freedom, obligation and representation as folk-psychological detritus which we can do without. For example, Stephen Stich has claimed:
intentional states and processes that are alluded to in our everyday descriptions and explanations of people's mental lives and their actions are myths. Like the gods that Homer invoked to explain the outcome of battles, or the witches that inquisitors invoked to explain local catastrophes, they do not exist. [quoted in a recent article by Dwyer]
This is the eliminativist approach: the world is nothing like the fantasies of religion and art had led us to believe — it is the indurate ground of animal life but not our 'home'. For the eliminativist, there is no need to sweeten the pill of the disenchantment brought on by the scientific mind-set. As Ray Brassier has recently written, "Philosophy should be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem."
Drawing back from eliminativism, another response has been to reconstruct those concepts suspected of anthropocentrism in a more respectable vocabulary for the naturalist. So, there is no need to ditch freedom, say, but let us just be clear what we mean by it, where this might legitimately be causation along certain biochemical pathways and not others, or action in light of knowledge of the conditions under which it was caused, or whatever natural-scientific form of description best approximates actual or ideal folk-psychological usage. The manifest image of humanity is not entirely wrongheaded, just naïve. Properly regimented, it captures something important about human patterns of understanding, behaviour and our place in the world. Let us call this view naturalistic revisionism.
Different again from eliminativism and revisionism is expressivism. The expressivist agrees that the world is a cold, dead place when contrasted with the animisms, platonisms and providentialisms of old. However, the human animal 'stains' and 'gilds' reality with its sentiments (to borrow Hume's terms). For the expressivist, it is we who project value on the world, and this can give us the resources to explain ethics, freedom and aesthetics outside of the tight net of the scientific naturalist's privileged nomenclature. There is nothing unnatural about our caring about (or disdaining) each other, our projects and our environments; but that need not force us to redescribe ourselves in natural-scientific terms alone — our passions have their own logic and significance that subsists upon but grows out of its natural base.
Yet another response to disenchantment has been to foreground not human emotion but reason and autonomy. For constructivists, the legacy of disenchantment has been to show us that we are alone in the world, with no divine firmament above or promontory below that would help us surveil a normative order. But unlike expressivists, we should look to our activity of trafficking with reasons stretching beyond our structures of passions. We forge obligations for ourselves through the exercise of autonomous legislative capacities, claiming ownership of our actions through drawing them into an unfolding plan which we grant authority over our desires, projects and identities as a whole. In doing so, we act with the dignity proper to creatures capable of self-determination, who are not merely buffeted around by events, beliefs or desires, but who manage to establish some sort of purchase and sovereignty over themselves and thereby lead their lives.
Now, you need not be a platonic boogeyman to be uneasy about this collection of options. My own thinking about these issues is heavily indebted to John McDowell. His suggestion that we need "a partial re-enchantment of nature," as with many of McDowell's trademark phrases, is a little unfortunate though. He stridently rejects the idea that 're-enchantmant' has a "crazily nostalgic" character which gives any ground towards a "regress into a pre-scientific superstition" which would encourage us to interpret the fall of a sparrow like we would a text. But nevertheless the associations surrounding 'enchantment' remain — something spooky gets evoked. Talk of 're-enchantment' is misleading, and a better McDowellian phrase would be resistance to the "interiorization of the space of reasons."
Disenchantment makes it seem like reasons are illusory or are at best absorbed into the activity of subjects. What we get is meaning, and the rational relations it makes intelligible, restricted to meaning-conferring subjects. At most, so understood, we project reasons into a world of rationally inert objects. The car-crash is then only a reason to phone an ambulance in light of human ethical practices; the ionized radiation in the cloud chamber only justifies belief in the presence of an alpha particle in light of the construction and testing of electromagnetic and particle theories. Now, there is something right and something wrong about all this. We cannot intelligibly think from a perspective of cosmic exile and must accept the finitude of our cognitive capacities (contra SR and OOO). All of our truck with value, reasons, justification must proceed from local and situated circumstances and continue to lean upon human forms of knowing and valuing. But that does not mean we should rest content with the idea that these are 'merely human' standards whose shadows fall upon an apathetic world. Our finitude, properly understood, ought not impugn normative realism, and we should not be carried away by the characterless world presented by natural science.
Nature is not exhausted by natural scientific description, and so it is misguided to require human interests for any more juice to be squeezed out of it. The predominantly nomothetic explanations offered by natural science are pearls without price, but they have no claim to speak for the totality of nature. Human life is obviously in some sense ontologically decomposable into organic compounds, atoms, quarks and electrons, and so on. But the explanatory matrix which most often befits it is normative and not immediately natural scientific (whatever the prospects of reductionsism about normativity). Again, there is nothing unnatural about humans as they fall under normative descriptions, appraised in terms of their intentions, virtue, beauty or freedom. We come to employ these concepts in the course of our biological maturation, supplemented by a process of socialisation which is no less a part of the natural history of humanity.
The temptation towards the modernist division between meaning-conferring subjectivity and intrinsically meaningless nature arises when we think that we can only have meaning on human terms — the human forge of meaning being the correlate to the frozen world of mechanism. If the logical space of nature and the logical space of reasons are irreconcilable, then this would seem to follow (assuming naturalistic revisionisms are moribund, which I think is very plausible). But this is only so if nature is also exhausted by natural scientific description. And it is not: natural events can be legitimately characterised in normative terms without a regression to pre-scientific rationalism. This is the sort of re-enchantment McDowell seeks, and rightly too. The claim to be defended is thus: "the natural world is in the space of logos." My optimism on this count is rarely shared though.
Posted in Disenchantment, Enlightenment, McDowell, Metaphysics, Methodology, Nature, Normativity, Realism	/ 10 Comments
On the Ontological Principle
In my previous post, I outlined Levi's Principle of Translation, which states that "all transportation is translation." This principle opposes the idea that objects are mere passive items which simply acquisece to influences upon them. Instead, onticology is an ontology of resistant objects, which struggle with each other. The point of these dramatic metaphors is to insist that influences must be taken up by objects, where this involves a 'fusion of differences'. For example, when oxygen and water cause iron to rust, then the iron itself is active here, entering into a network with the oxygen and water to produce the difference, rather than being a mere container for their effects.
One of the philosophical upshots of this principle is that objects are not simply vehicles of some set of differences. In other words, they are not inert items that can have a form imposed upon them and yet not redound upon the process of formation. I think Levi thinks this is significant because it is incompatible with certain types of correlationism, where a correlate would determine objects without being determined and with the object playing no role in its determination. (Again, I will stress that I think the concept of correlationism is a red herring.) In this way, it helps to avoid Levi's Hegemonic Fallacy, namely that difference cannot be reduced to 'one difference that makes all the difference' or 'the most important difference'.
I take the Hegemonic Fallacy to be Levi's main target. This is significant because it not only sets him against correlationism but also against the speculative realisms of people like Ray Brassier. Brassier embraces eliminativist lines of thought and would doubtless not shrink from the charge of scientism. Here, materialism would seem to introduce matter as 'one difference that makes all the difference.' In contrast, Levi is keen not to debunk the human and his ontology is oriented to be open ended and inquiry led: if it is found to make a difference, then it is real — whether it be Oedipus, evil, Edith Piath or an electron. This is captured in the Ontological Principle which results from the Ontic Principle: "Being is said in a single and same sense for all that is." Indeed, this is all that Levi thinks can be said about being qua being; thus, ontology must be pursued on the ontic level, dealing with beings themselves.
The Ontological Principle demands a flat ontology. One contrast here would be with vertical ontologies, where one sort of being overdetermine the rest. Correlationism and platonism would fit the bill here. However, Levi refuses to equate the univocality of being with a univocality of translations. In other words, no one type of being dominates others, and they all sit alongside each other, but that does not mean that every object must act and be acted upon in the same way. This comes out in this Deleuze passage which he quotes:
Being is said in a single and same sense […] of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modalities. Being is the same for all these modalities, but these modalities are not the same. — Difference and Repitition, p.36
So, we can make sense of existence at "different levels of scale" whereby each level is not reducible without remainder into another level. This idea — no reduction without remainder — Levi calls the Principle of Irreduction. One consequence of this principle is that "the relation between individuals is not one where one type of individual explains the rest without remainder, but where processes of translation must take place." Levi's example is DNA. It is a condition of my body existing and explains my anatomy, but cannot serve as an autonomous explanation since it must act upon resistant objects which take up that action according to their affections: "DNA, in unfolding, must nonetheless undergo translation as it transports itself […] and the body formed in translation with DNA produces its own differences."
It is at this point which I am interested in the explanatory consequences of onticology. This is because I am sympathetic to something like the Ontological Principle and also want to accomodate different explanatory modalities within it (note here that my concern is primarily explanatory rather than metaphysical, though I don't think I am guilty of Levi's Epistemic Fallacy). In my case, I want to hold onto a form of naturalism which does not degenerate into scientism. Thus, I reject supernatural entities, like divine beings, along with platonic Forms (sympathetic readings of Plato aside). But I also resist any hegemonic move on behalf of the natural sciences to act as final arbiter for acceptable forms of explanation. The main clash here come with our understanding of rational agency, which I think neither requires nor can be given an exhaustive explanation in natural-scientific terms. This is because many of the locutions which we (legitimately) use in explanations of rational agency — such as 'justified', 'perceptive' and 'immoral' — are not employed as empirical descriptions of behaviour but ascriptions of a standing in what Sellars calls the 'space of reasons.' A different mode of intelligibility is required to characterise the empirical properties of natural objects than to characterise rational proprieties like entitlement, permission or inaccuracy.
The claim that this sort of rational intelligibility is irreducible to empirical intelligibility can be expressed by saying that the space of reasons is sui generis. It is this claim which I think we need to maintain, where Levi's talk of the mind's translations not being special seemed to threaten it. He has now clarified his position, where his talk of the lack of the mind's specialness is only meant to stretch to it not being included in every relation. So, it seems that on these grounds there may be no source of objection to my approach, though there may be other reasons to object to it which stem from onticology. Nevertheless, in the next post I will fulfil my promise to say more about how we should understand the distinctively spontaneous translations of the subject, and how this bears upon metaphysical issues.
Posted in Bryant, Correlationism, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, Nature, Normativity, Realism	/ 1 Comment
Hunger and Historicity
Posted on May 12, 2009 by Tom
There's an excellent post up at Roughtheory on the historical dimension of Marx's materialism. Here's a snippet:
Firstly, the object is not an object in general, but a specific object which must be consumed in a specific manner, to be mediated in turn by production itself. Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down meat raw with the aid of hand, nail and tooth. Production thus produces not only the object but also the manner of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively.
The interweaving Marx attempts here is one of the most characteristic dimensions of his work. Hunger is something natural – something physical – but something no less historical for all that. Its historical manifestations – each of its historical manifestations – are no less natural for not being timeless invariants. Something can be an historical product – and yet deeply, profoundly, and inextricably embodied. Our activities – what we do, what we make – inform us, developing us, expressing us, creating us – and linking this self-creation intrinsically with the creation of what might superficially be taken as things wholly external to ourselves, but which Marx rather conceptualises as nonhuman objects participating in interactions with us.
Check out the whole thing here.
Posted in Historicity, Marx, Nature	/ 1 Comment
Realism and Correlationism: Kant and the Short Argument
Posted on April 28, 2009 by Tom
Meillassoux takes the correlationist to rely on the following argument:
thought cannot get outside itself in order to compare the world as it is 'in itself' to the world as it is 'for us', and thereby distinguish what is a function of our relation to the world from what belongs to the world alone. Such an enterprise is effectively self-contradictory, for at the moment when we think of a property as belonging to the world in itself, it is precisely the latter that we are thinking, and consequently this property is revealed to be essentially tied to our thinking about the world. (AF: 4)
This argument is a form of what Karl Ameriks calls the 'short argument' to idealism, which often gets attributed to Kant. However, Kant does not make this short argument. Ameriks traces this form of argument to Reinhold, and he notes that it does sometimes appear in the post-Kantian tradition. So, we find Reinhold claiming the following:
What is represented, as object, can come to consciousness and become represented only as modified through the form of representation, and not in a form independent of representation, as it is in itself. (Versuch: 240; quoted in Ameriks FoA: 129)
Reinhold takes it that a need to represent objects for them to be given to consciousness ensures that we cannot come into an epistemic relationship to those objects which could be disentangled from our representations:
The concept of a representation in general contradicts the representation of an object in its distinctive form independent of the form of representation, or the so-called thing in itself; that is, no thing in itself is representable. […]
[T]he object distinguished from the representation […] can only be represented under the form of representation and so in no way as a thing in itself. (Versuch: 244, 246)
So, for Reinhold, because we cannot get outside of our representations, then objects cannot be represented as they are in themselves.
If the correlationist — whatever 'originary correlation' they are meant to argue for, and whatever it means to say that they cannot consider its terms independently — has to rely upon this argument as it stands, they are in trouble. This is because the conclusion it argues for is trivial given the way key terms in the argument are understood. Reinhold is trying to prove that we cannot know things in themselves, where he takes knowledge to require that objects are represented to us. But if he tacitly understands 'things in themselves' just to be what is not representable, then the conclusion follows all too easily. Thus, on its own, this argument ought to convince no-one.
Meillassoux's presentation of the argument proceeds in a similar fashion. It seeks to establish an (underspecified) 'essential tie' between thought and things in themselves. Like Reinhold, this is meant to undermine the possibility of an epistemic relation to the world as it in itself independently of thought (one that the realist requires to distinguish primary and secondary qualities). The way that it does this is by simply noting that we cannot think of features of the world in itself without the world in itself being the object of that thought. Thus, we must always factor in a correlation between thought and the world in itself when attempting to reflect on the latter. Again, the shallowness of this argument ought to be transparent. Knowledge of the world in itself, as required by the realist, is denied to us because thinking is always present when thinking about the world in itself. However, this is only because here we are to understand knowledge of the world in itself as knowledge where thought is not present. The opposition is simply defined out of existence. Nothing is demonstrated by this argument, and it is no more contentful than Reinhold's efforts.
Even with Meillassoux's distinction between weak and strong correlationism, and the specification of different possible correlates than simply thought and world, I am not yet clear in my own mind what the status of the correlationist's claim that thought and world must be thought together is meant to be. So, I am hesitant to assert or deny that particular philosophers are correlationists. Besides, I am not sure how useful a discussion along the lines of 'is x really a correlationist?' would be. Still, insofar as transcendental idealism can be thought of as introducing some significant relation between thought and world, whether we understand this idealism as metaphysical, formal, methodological or whatever, then it may bear considering in this context.
However we understand the relation between objects and cognition in Kant, I have claimed that we do not find a 'short argument'. Yet, Kant does claim that objects conform to the conditions of cognition. So, we can ask, how does Kant's position differ from the 'short arguments' dismissed above? This ought not to be of mere historical interest insofar as it can furnish us with alternative arguments for either correlationism or a more plausible relative of it. Speculative realists have an interest in attending to other such strategies insofar as their own positions can develop in dialogue with a wider range of opposition than the colourless proponent of the short argument.
Transcendental idealism famously effects a Copernican turn. Instead of assuming that all our knowledge must conform to objects, Kant ventures a hypothesis: objects must conform to our knowledge. This claim has proven difficult to understand. It is clear that Kant is not asserting an empirical idealism, which holds that objects have a metaphysical dependence upon our epistemic activity or our 'representations'. Kant denies this when distinguishing his position from what he calls Berkeley's dogmatic idealism. In the Prolegomena, he calls his position formal idealism, and any dependence of objects upon our knowledge is restricted to the forms of our knowledge. In the Analytic of the first Critique, regarding the categories of the understanding, Kant denies he is engaged in a traditional metaphysical investigation of being qua being (A247=B303). However, it can appear that the Aesthetic claims that our forms of sensibility, namely space and time, are ontological conditions of objects (although Kantians such as Henry Allison and Graeme Bird forcefully argue against such a reading). Whatever the right interpretative approach here, obviously some important connection between formal conditions of knowledge and objects is being asserted. But why? The answer provides some possible motivations for something like a correlationist position which are not simply versions of the short argument.
Kant makes his speculative Copernican hypothesis because he is dissatisfied with metaphysics. When compared with mathematics, say, which also seeks knowledge which is not directly empirical, it can hardly be said to be on the 'sure path' of science. For Kant, this was illustrated by the hollowness of metaphysical inquiry into the nature of the soul, God and world, reflected in the the interminable debates in rational psychology, rational theology and rational cosmology which are diagnosed in the Transcendental Dialectic. The problem, he thinks, is that metaphysics has employed theoretical reason in illicit ways, beyond its proper bounds. Traditional metaphysicians have failed to take into account the anthropocentric forms of human cognition, and so constantly come to grief by asking of reason what it cannot deliver. However, this is merely a sketch of some of the territory. There is no swift move from registering the forms of human cognition and towards sealing us off from a non-human world. From the bare fact that it is our cognition, it does not follow that it cannot deliver things in themselves. To attribute such a short argument to Kant on this basis is to ignore the details of Kant's examination of cognition and his lengthy inquiry into metaphysics.
If transcendental idealism does ultimately count as a form of correlationism, this will be on the basis of the determinate limits on knowledge explored in Kant's inquiries. These include sensible conditions, intellectual conditions, cognitive conditions governing the relation of the sensible and intelligible (e.g. the discursivity thesis), and rational conditions pertaining to the proper use of practical and theoretical reason. Each is supported by argument and analysis, which vary in success. For example, the intellectual conditions on empirical knowledge include conformity to the categories of the understanding. These conditions on thought are backed by an examination of the forms of judgement, which many people have found problematic and dogmatic. This set of conditions will probably not be the most troubling for the speculative realist though (Kant allows that we can think the thing itself — though whether that is just as a limiting concept is debatable). Rather, it will be the sensible conditions which will be most problematic. These sensible conditions enable objects to be given. Thus, they provide the main receptive framework for cognition, where the understanding provides the main spontaneous framework. Objects are given to sensibility according to its forms, namely space and time. This can seem an unassuming empiricist move: we know about things through spatio-temporal experience. But it goes beyond this insofar as Kant's Copernican turn makes an a priori pure form of intuition logically prior to objects. Objects are given according to this pure intuition, such that they have formal properties in conformity with this pure form. This can be understood in more or less metaphysical terms. It is where realists will doubtless demur though, since it can seem to impugn the independence of objects from our cognitive apparatus.
Why does Kant embrace something like correlationism here? Some reasons are arguably idiosyncratic. For example, Kant thinks that we require pure forms of intuition to help apply the categories of the understanding (such as existence or plurality) to sensible objects — they bind the a priori and the empirical together 'schematically'. Also, given his understanding of geometry and arithmetic, pure forms are meant to explain the synthetic a priori status of mathematical knowledge.
What may have a wider resonance though is the role of forms of intuition in grounding Kant's revised metaphysics. Kant thinks that reason can be shown to fail when, like the rationalists, it strays from the path of possible experience. This was what led metaphysics into darkness. But if objects have to conform to the forms of intuition, then their formal properties can be grasped a priori. So, for any object which is given to us, we can justify limited metaphysical knowledge of it with reference to the pure forms, since nothing can be given that does not conform to these forms. Kant sums it up like this: "reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own." Now, by my lights, Kant's specific appeal to pure forms of intuition is not ultimately successful. But it does give a substantive argument for a correlationist-like understanding of the relation between objects and cognition. Furthermore, it outlines a strategy which I think can be made to work, albeit in a heavily revised form, with respect to the normative bases of cognition (and which, in time, I hope to outline).
A final thought on the question of metaphysics. The metaphysics which Kant seeks to cut down to size is an unbridled rationalism. But speculative realism has typically championed a kind of empirical metaphysics. It seeks to be porous with respect to scientific discovery: it is science which is to be the leading-edge of ontology. I have some limited sympathy with this approach with respect to certain theoretical endeavours, and agree that on the whole there is no need for a metaphysical grounding for science, provided by philosophy. However, I wonder quite how speculative realism will come to understand the status of its own metaphysical claims.
Alexei has raised the problem of normativity in this area: does a radical materialism have the resources to account for its own justification? We are all naturalists now — after a fashion, at least. But speculative realists have adopted a particularly strident form, which does not seem to be friendly to normativity. Just witness Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. Can it understand, or sufficiently redescribe, the context in which it puts forward its own theory, such that it can allow that such a theory is meaningful, justifiable and truth-apt, whilst cleaving to a sparse materialist metaphysics which admits values, if it all, only in an anti-realist fashion? I will have more to say about this at a later date.
Posted in Ameriks, Correlationism, Disenchantment, Epistemology, Idealism, Kant, Meillassoux, Metaphysics, Methodology, Nature, Normativity, Realism, Reinhold	/ 12 Comments
Realism and Correlationism: Some preliminaries
Over at Larval Subjects, Now-Times and Perverse Egalitarianism there has been a fractious debate regarding realism which has gone on for some time. This is in the wake of 'speculative realism' coming to increased prominence, under the influence of Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and Graham Harman. This realism has been contrasted with a correlationist position, which is taken to infect much contemporary philosophy.
Meillassoux introduced the term 'correlationism' to describe a non-realist position which claims that "we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other." (AF: 5) As Meillassoux also puts it, the correlationist denies that it is possible to 'consider' the realms of subjectivity and objectivity independently of one another. Of course, this could mean any number of things. Whether correlationism proves to be a useful philosophical category depends upon how this claim is spelled out.
Kant is supposed to be the paradigm correlationist. This is because Kant was meant to disallow us knowledge of any object subsisting 'in itself'. Instead, knowledge was to be restricted to objects as they are 'for us'. Thus, Kant is said to have eroded the pre-critical distinction between primary and secondary qualities, since even central candidates for the status of primary qualities (such as its mathematisable ones) must be "conceived as dependent upon the subject's relation to the given — as a form of representation." (AF: 4)
Does Kant's position get fairly characterised by the new realists? A lot of acrimony has resulted from the attempt to answer this question in discussions between Levi, Alexei and Mikhail. Both sides are now pretty entrenched, and that is when they are on speaking terms. I don't want to reignite these 'Kant wars' but I will offer some comments on this issue in the next few posts.
Firstly, Levi has expressed some dismay that this question has become a focal point at all. It is, he thinks, another sign of a kind of hermeneuticism endemic in continental philosophy, which drives philosophers into endless debates over the meaning of texts at the expense of assessing their truth. Of course, detailed textual work is often extremely valuable, but — the concern is — many philosophers have stopped reading the work of Kant, Heidegger or Deleuze as tools in a larger quest to understand the world, but have taken this activity to be an end-in-itself. It is true that this is a problem, and I am equally frustrated when scholars turn into scholastics. But I do not think the charge applies in this instance.
Levi claims that Kant is the 'inventor' of correlationism and is a central example of a correlationist (though by no means a unique one). Moreover, there is repeated reference to his position — and perhaps more importantly, his vocabulary — in contrasting correlationism and the new realism. If there is a dispute over Kant's position, where there is a risk of it being unclear, it is important to at least articulate this. Otherwise, the exposition of correlationism risks being unclear — where it has been to me, for one, until getting a handle on what reading of Kant is in play here (for example, regarding how 'in itself/for us' is being understood). More importantly though, Kant gives us a detailed and nuanced treatment of the ways in which being might be taken to be related to thought. If that account was buried under a problematic reading of him, then the substantive debate risks being all the poorer as a result. These two considerations should have some weight even amongst those for whom understanding Kant's own thought is a secondary consideration.
Secondly then, moving to the issue proper, I want to flag some of my concerns over the use made of Kant. In these matters, I am predominantly in agreement with Alexei, who I think has done a sterling job in this respect. I suspect this is because we are familiar with much of the same recent literature on Kant which brings out just how complex and well-crafted a project transcendental idealism is. Here, I am thinking of Kant scholars such as Henry Allison, Karl Ameriks, Graeme Bird, Fred Beiser, Allen Wood, Onora O'Neill and Paul Guyer. Though by no means united, the sophistication of their approaches to Kant is commendable, and their sustained attention to detail has shown how Kant was aware of many of the standard charges against him (subjectivism, a priorism, emptiness, etc.) and either responded to them or developed the resources to do so. The point is not to be an apologist for Kant but to do justice to the power of his thought insofar as it promises to help us understand the world. I think that it still can, even if I am not (just as Alexei and Mikhail are not) a paid-up Kantian.
In the posts that follow, I will concentrate on three cases, with an eye towards why the readings of Kant matter. (I won't address the recent hot topic concerning time and ancestrality, since I can't devote the energy to it, especially as tempers are flaring once again.). Again, the aim will be to show why a focus on Kant is not a morbid fixation but a useful piece of the puzzle. I want to show how the cases I'll look at bear upon substantive issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, even when abstracted from the historical issue of what Kant thought. Also, I shall try to counter the second-guessing of the motivations of critics of speculative realism, providing some symptomatological musings of my own. However, I also want to issue a plea for a bit of old-fashioned bourgeois civility, which would not go amiss on all sides. I've no interest in questioning other people's intelligence or integrity. This said, the next post will be about what Ameriks calls the 'short argument' to idealism, and which Meillassoux and Levi attribute to correlationists.
Posted in Bryant, Correlationism, Epistemology, Kant, Meillassoux, Metaphysics, Methodology, Nature, Realism	/ 8 Comments
Philosophical Therapy & Humanism
Posted on October 3, 2008 by Tom
At a workshop on Wittgenstein's methodology which I was at recently, Marie McGinn made a point of underlining the ethical stakes of much philosophical work undertaken in a Wittgensteinian spirit. I won't try and rehearse exactly what she said here, and will instead examine the topic of naturalism which she raised in this context, but some of what I will say, ultimately, I take to be deeply sympathetic to her view (but be that upon my own head and not hers).
The question of ethics came up here in light of Wittgenstein's remarks about philosophical problems arising when 'language goes on holiday' or is like 'an engine idling' rather than doing real work. For if we take philosophical problems to share this form — however diffuse their manifestation and origins — then it seems we are led to a conception of philosophy as a therapeutic set of practices which simply "bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use." (PI 116)
This makes philosophy look like a purely negative activity, and there are certainly places where Wittgenstein appears to embrace this idea. Take PI 118-9, for example:
Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.
The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or other piece of plain nonsense and of other bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of inquiry.
So conceived, philosophy returns us to the everyday. We get back to baseline. This is not something just to be sniffed at since the temptations to fall into philosophical error are deep (and such inclinations are not products of stupidity), and the baseline we get back to is not forever fixed but shifts as our linguistic usage does, requiring some acuity in grammatical investigations to recognise. Nevertheless, something important can seem to go missing here.
Such a philosophy can appear very conservative, lacking the sort of critical function which has animated much of the best philosophical work. For those of us with an affinity to Wittgenstein as well as the post-Kantian tradition, through Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt school, this presents something of a problem. How do we ensure that our philosophising respects the insights of a therapeutic approach and yet remains able to interrogate our everyday assumptions?
One attractive answer to that question would be to deepen our understanding of the sources of philosophical problems, not resting content with a linguistic turn alone. For language is, of course, a practice — one that takes place in a wider social world. Following this line, there may be room for a marriage of critical theory and therapeutic philosophy. For example, such an approach might try and trace a connection between the perennial temptation to forms of Cartesianism and the alienation engendered by the conditions of life in modernity. The upshot of such an approach would likely not be a philosophical therapy that tried to return the wayward philosopher to ordinary linguistic usage, but rather identified what social conditions would need to be changed in order to stem intuitive but misleading forms of thought. I don't know much Adorno, but my suggestion here I think might end up sharing some aspects of his approach.
Without going this far though, there are still important tasks that Wittgensteinian methodology can be put too. Here, perhaps the most important is holding the line against virulent forms of reductive naturalism. Recourse to grammatical investigation can be a tool in defending a kind of philosophical humanism: a position which takes human life to be just as substantial and respectable as the domain studied by the natural sciences. Our ordinary activities are shot through with appeals to values, to our dispositions, to the contingencies of our history (a history which no less unfolds in nature than that of supernovae or trilobites). Anatomising these sort of appeals in the manner of a grammatical investigator can help us understand the place of humanity in a natural world, and can be drawn on in resisting the rabid reductive naturalist who wants to evacuate meaning in favour of mechanism. Bare appeals to the phenomenology of human experience are cheap, but grammatical investigation in a Wittgensteinian vein can help draw out the underlying patterns of human activity in a more substantial way. This sort of rich understanding of the role of our human qualities as something which are (and should continue to be) drawn upon without embarrassment in our explanatory endeavours can be employed to stave off the sort of naturalist for whom all this is merely folk psychological self-delusion. It is, of course, not enough to say that 'this is just what we do' and expect the reductive naturalist to be satisfied, but this can be an important first step in resisting the breezy dismissal of human attitudes as no more than mere projections onto an indifferent world which a properly scientific cast of mind can see through.
Posted in Adorno, Disenchantment, Ethics, McGinn, Methodology, Nature, Wittgenstein	/ 3 Comments


FAIR HAVEN: January police blotter reports four arrests.
1-28-18- Derry J. Quigley, 25, Fair Haven was placed under arrest for contempt subsequent to a motor vehicle stop. Subject posted bail and was released. Ptl. Brooks Robinson was the arresting Officer.
1-28-18- James J. Marotta, 56, Union Beach was placed under arrest for DWI following a motor vehicle stop. Subject received summons for DWI, Reckless Driving, Failure to maintain lane and obstructed view. Subject was processed and released pending a Fair Haven Court appearance.
Posted on February 7, 2018 at 3:00 pm, filed under Crime, Fair Haven, Featured, Law & Justice, Security, Taxes and tagged arrest, contempt, Crime, dwi, Fair Haven, mischief, nj, police, theft, vandalism. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment. Email this story.


Conceived in the mid-1950s, the S-62 incorporated several new foaturos. The US Coast Guard was sufficiently interested to purchase the typo as tho HH-52A Seaguard. A singlo T-58 turbine, a relatively spacious fusolage and amphibious capability made tho S-62 an ideal search and rescue helicopter, particularly for coastal areas. It was capable of operating from almost any surface in just about any weather.
Ono or the prototypes performs a 'powor-off landing. As an amphibious helicopter, the HH-52 proved ideal in the coastal SAP role.
HH-52s operating from ice-broakors received а bnght orange scheme with a white stripe for greater conspicuity over the frozen sea.
First order for the S-62 came from Petroleum Helicopters, which purchased a single oxample for serving large offshore oil rigs located in the Gulf of Mexico.
This strange-looking machine is actually a South African example, modified to represent an 'enemy' gunship, possibly an Mi-24, tor film purposes.
As first delivered to tho US Coast Guard. HH-52S featured automatic stabilisation, towing equipment and other features tailored tor the rescuo mission.
HH-52s bused at Houston, Texas, frequently practised recovory ot tho NASA Apollo astronauts.
► First night of the Sikorsky S-62 took place on 22 May 19S8.
► A small number of Scaguards wero put on display In musoums after retirement.
Nino oxamptes wore built undor llconco (or service with Jopanose Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF).
► One US Coast Guard machino wa3 used in tho film Airport '77.
Antarctic in 1973. The aim ol this project was to improve icebreaking services, thus assisting the movement of maritime traffic through icy waterways.
Above: Toward the end of their service lives, HH-S2s were upgraded with Northrop forward – looking infra-red sensors, mounted in a small turret on the nose.


A lot of guys ignore the laugh, and that's about standards. I mean, if you're gonna get into the Evil League of Evil, you have to have a memorable laugh. What, do you think Bad Horse didn't work on his whinny? His terrible death-whinny?
Sometimes it is rather annoying to read a detective story which your friends haven't read. I mean of course when you think you have been terribly clever and worked it all out before the detective has. Because you cannot tell anyone what you think the solution is in case it is the right one. This is doubly true if you have had another theory earlier, which you have now had to abandon or revise. Any attempt at sharing your genius with the world at large must be so vague as to be completely useless as a corroboration when you close the book and say "hah! I was right!".
This is my main objection to A.A. Milne's (no, not Winnie the Pooh) The Red House Mystery. It is excellent. I find it a little shocking that nobody took the time to introduce me to it earlier (perhaps there is a reason why my edition of it is labelled "A rediscovered classic". Someone clearly forgot about it).
It does the formal detective story ("whodunnit") very well. Better, perhaps than any other formal detective story I have come across. Which may be why I got there before the detective did: contrary to popular belief, most formal detective stories don't really give you all that you need to know before the dénouement; they merely provide the illusion that they do. Usually, the coherence of the plot is a retroactive affair in which the reader looks back over what he (or, indeed, in these modern times, she) has read, compares it with the ending, and realises that there were clues to that (oh, dear, the butler did it) effect the whole time. It does not follow from this that one could have taken these clues and built the solution.
But in Milne's book the logic of the detective is constantly held up to scrutiny. A provisional explanation of events are given which sounds plausible enough (if a little boring), but is then undermined by new information that forces a revision. This happens a lot, but the core of the resolution is given very early on in true detective fiction style.
I enjoyed the detective character and his Watson, immensely. They are well aware of the tradition they are working within and frequently refer to Conan Doyle's characters as models to be interacted with or measured against. Even their conversation frequently ironically mimics that of Holmes/Watson. From this we can deduce that this is not a book which takes itself too seriously, and this increases the charm of it as far as I am concerned.
It should be written in English. ... It is, to me, a distressing thought that in nine-tenths of the detective stories of the world murderers are continually effecting egresses when they might just as easily go out. The sleuth, the hero and the many suspected all use this same strange tongue, and we may be forgiven for feeling that neither the natural excitement of killing the right man, nor the strain of suspecting the wrong one, is sufficient excuse for so steady a flow of bad language.
Well, Milne writes English. I hardly noticed I was reading it. It translated very seamlessly into a film in my imagination. There were occasional excellent wordings that I remarked on, but there were no egresses that I could find. Of course, the excellent wordings and the witty phrase could be said to be as much part of writing in English as keeping to plain language is. There is a style to it which made me want to drink gin & tonic and ideally sit in a park. In that respect it reminds me of Wodehouse, but that could give you entirely the wrong impression. Or the right one. One never knows.
My one problem with the book was that it seemed obsessed, at times, with the size of rooms and their relation to one another. It may be that this seemed unnecessary to me because I have never been the type to sit down and actually try to work out the solution (except through brilliant intuitive flashes, of course). I dare say someone who did would find it useful.
All in all, I recommend it. It was thoroughly enjoying and it made me feel smart.


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Home » The Looptail, The Travel Blog Powered By G Adventures » The people of Peru's Sacred Valley
The people of Peru's Sacred Valley
Whether it's trekking the Inca Trail to capture Peru from a distinctive angle, or travelling to Bhutan to contribute to its Gross National Happiness, Oana Dragan marries her passions for art and storytelling as a photographer and video producer for G Adventures.
In November of last year, Oana travelled to Peru's Sacred Valley on assignment, and along the way captured its wonderfully diverse people in a series of portraits.
She draws inspiration from the people she meets on her travels, capturing portraits and stories that evoke a sense of community and cause us to reconsider our place in the world. She believes that everyone has a story to tell — and photography is an ideal way to share it.
We met when we were shepherds. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"We met when we were shepherds. We were young children. He used to have pigs while I had sheep — and that is how we met each other. That's where we fell in love. After that we went our separate ways. He went to the valley looking for a job while I went to Cusco. I missed him a lot..."
I believe destiny brought us together. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan
"In Cusco, I learned Spanish — because I only knew how to speak in my mother tongue [Quechua]. I also learned how to cook and clean the house, so it was a very useful time for me. We met each other unexpectedly at a bar in the village of Pisac. I believe destiny brought us together as this wasn't planned. We met when we were children, fell in love, split for different reasons and then we were brought together again. So, from then on we remained together and eventually got married."
I missed out on a lot of love. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan
"When I was a little kid my mom used to drink a lot so she didn't take much care of me. I missed out on a lot of love. I also only studied until the theird grade, so I had no real education. It got to the point where I had to be sent away to live in an area close to the jungle. I was raised by a lot of different people. I hope to give my children what I didn't have. I make sure to play with my kids and give them lots of attention. I usually take them out farming with me."
I head to the market to sell my weaving products at my stand. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"I wake up at about 5am every morning, make breakfast and take the kids to the bus station so they can go to school. I then return and prepare a lunch box for my mother-in-law because she takes the sheep to feed in the mountains. After that, I head to the market to sell my weaving products at my stand. I spend about two hours there and then return to make lunch for my husband and I. He used to work as a portee, but is now cutting stone in the quarry to make houses. After that, I start weaving to make more products to sell. In the afternoon, the kids come back, we have dinner and go to bed early so we can start the day early again tomorrow."
When I farm, I think about the future of my children. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"When I farm, I think about the future of my children. I hope they become professionals. That they go to University and study. I want them to have a career. I want them to have options. Some people have no choices. When there is no good weather, farming is not so good. I want my children to have a better future. Not just farming. I want my children to become more than me."
Harvest is my favourite season. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"We have to be very careful with the procedure we use when farming. First, we water the land. After that, we work with tools to dig furrows and then we put down really good fertilizer. We use only natural fertilizer. Animal shit. Then we mix it very well. After that we plant the seed. Could be potatoes, could be corn, or it could be quinoa. We then cover it and add more water. Sometimes we use bulls to plow to help us seed. We rely mostly on the rain for the crops to grow. Harvest is my favourite season."
Making art is my gift. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"I'm happy because I am travelling all the time with my art all over South America. One of my favourite countries is Brazil. I am originally from a city close to Cusco. When I make my art, I am only focused on what I am doing. I started about eight or nince years ago. For two years, I was making musical instruments. I am grateful to god for giving me the opportunity to do this. For making me an artist. Making art is my gift. I want to keep travelling and learning more about different cultures and people. I'd like to have a family sometime in the future but for now I am just happy travelling.
Working makes me happy. Photo courtesy Oana Dragan.
"Working makes me happy. I've been doing this for 50 years. We are made of the Inca blood and we have a legacy to preserve. We pass down our traditions from one generation to another."
Cradle to the vast Incan Empire, the largest in pre-Colombian America, Peru's power and gold attracted the Spanish conquistadors who used it to fund their own vast empire in the Americas. As a result, colonial gems like magnificent Cusco were built on Incan foundations, making for a fascinating hybrid culture. G Adventures runs a number of departures in the Sacred Valley encompassing a wide range of dates and activities to cater to different tastes. We're thrilled at the prospect of showing you another side of [Peru{(https://www.gadventures.com/destinations/south-america/peru/) — check out our small group trips here.
Top 4 treks in Peru that aren't the Inca Trail
Want to forge your own path in Peru? Lace up your boots and check out these four lesser-known—yet no less a...
Best foods to try in Malaysia
Dive deep into the world of multi-ethnic gastronomy in Southeast Asia's culinary paradise.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Running the Dark Knight marathon
David Konow
AMC will be screening a mega-Dark Knight Marathon right before the release of Rises on July 20.
Frankly, I had a feeling something like this was coming after the Marvel movie marathon did so well, and you just know there is probably also a Dark Knight box set plan in the works just like there are for The Avengers.
And as we recently reported, there is also a big, insane Avengers box set on its way which will have The Avengers Blu-ray along with Captain America, Iron Man I and II, and The Incredible Hulk – all priced at a cool $153 with a September 25 release date.
Thankfully, there's only three Dark Knight flicks, so the caped crusader box set should be cheaper when it's ready. In any case, tickets for The Dark Knight marathon will go on sale June 11 at 12 pm EST (for a July 19 showing), and it will definitely be interesting to see how fast tickets move for it. And just like The Avengers, it's going to play right before The Dark Knight Rises goes live at midnight.
Checking with AMC, Collider confirmed the running time of The Dark Knight Rises will be 2 hours and 45 minutes, which as the site tells us, "You're probably looking at eight hours of Batman that ends around 8 am. That sounds as exhausting as it does heavenly." In comparison, Batman Begins was 140 minutes, and The Dark Knight ran 152 minutes.
This probably makes The Dark Knight Rises the longest superhero film, and I'll be curious to see if this will be like the first two Godfather films, where it's a case of "I could have sat through another hour of that," or a case of, "Could have been shorter." Interesting enough, there's no plans announced so far about doing anything with the first four Batman films, and perhaps its best that each phase of Batman remain separate entities.
Like watching a Star Wars marathon, it would certainly be interesting to compare the Tim Burton / Joel Schumacher day-glo Batmans to the new ones, and Batman and Robin should certainly make you appreciate the new caped crusaders more than ever, not that I recommend suffering through it again. It also makes me think of when Neil Young was putting his archives together. He didn't want to just include all the great stuff, but a lot of crap as well, because he figured it would make the great stuff even better.
Games The Avengers
Video: Julian Assange turns cypherpunk
More horror coming to television


We all make choices every day. Our decisions are unique to us, based on own perspective, our own past, and our own value system. Occasionally they are big choices with grand consequences to our lives. Those choices are usually well thought out and given great consideration. Why, then, are important decisions sometimes met with such disapproval from others?
It's a matter of perspective. Our own decisions are made from the most important perspective of all ... our own. Anyone making a judgment has a huge hurdle to clear. It's almost impossible, in fact. They must be able to completely understand the situation we are in that led to our decision. Knowing the facts, the history, and even the nuances, requires a great deal of information and knowledge. Things are rarely as simple as they may seem on the surface.
Many people make judgments about others actions only from their own perspective and using their own personal train of thought and value system. It's the cause of much of the intolerance in this world. Seeking instead to learn the details of others situations will lead to an understanding of their struggles, and ultimately to empathy. That's far better than judgment.
And by the way, this is one reason why the laws in our society should be based far more on guaranteeing individual rights and freedom of choice, and not on forcing a particular value system upon each of us. Codifying into law a value system is not the place of government.
See my related entry, A Path to Tolerance, and Beyond.


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Twilight Actor, Gregory Tyree Boyce And His Nigerian Girlfriend Found Dead At Their Home
By Ukamaka Doris May 19, 2020 2 Mins Read
Twilight fans are mourning the death of Gregory Tyree Boyce, 30, and his Nigerian girlfriend Natalie Adepoju, 27, after they were mysteriously found dead in their condo in Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Medical Examiner's office confirmed that the couple were found dead on May 13. The cause of their deaths have not been revealed.
A source told E! News that "Greg's cousin woke up and noticed that Greg's car was still at the house. He was worried because Greg was to be in LA.
His cousin went to check on him and found them." The source says that prior to his death, Gregory was "really focused and handling a lot of business."
"And though he had moved to Las Vegas to help his mother, the insider reveals Gregory "would commute to LA for acting jobs and to see his daughter."
A second source adds, "Greg was definitely a person who loved life and [was] super positive… super animated, really witty, he was the life of the party. I will definitely miss him. He was one of my funniest friends in LA and made my experience there really memorable."
Insiders told TMZ that an unknown white powdery substance was found at the scene, but authorities are yet to confirm.
Read Also I Don't Have A Girlfriend- Heavyweight Champion, Anthony Joshua Opens Up On Lovelife
Boyce was known for his role as Tyler Crowley in the first Twilight franchise movie.
His Nigerian girlfriend, Natalie Adepoju who has been dating the actor for just over a year has a young son named Egypt, while Boyce is survived by his 10-year-old daughter, Alaya.
In a statement shared to a GoFundMe, her family described her as being a "loving daughter, niece, sister, cousin, and friend."
They continued, "Natalie had so much life to live [and] we are saddened that her life was cut short. Natalie leaves behind her one and only baby boy Egypt, her father, two brothers and one sister, and a host of family and friends who love her dearly."
Gregory Tyree Boyce and girlfriendTwilight actor dies
Author Ukamaka Doris
Ukamaka Doris, a graduate of Mass Communication, from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka has a flair in writing and news reporting which led her into blogging. Previously, Ukamaka Doris has worked as an editor at primepost.ng and presenter at Unizik FM, 94.1, Awka. Ukamaka Doris can be contacted via phone call at 08167016206
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A unique identifier for an entity. If a key's partition ID or any of its path kinds or names are reserved/read-only, the key is reserved/read-only. A reserved/read-only key is forbidden in certain documented contexts.
Entities are partitioned into subsets, currently identified by a project ID and namespace ID. Queries are scoped to a single partition.
The entity path. An entity path consists of one or more elements composed of a kind and a string or numerical identifier, which identify entities. The first element identifies a root entity, the second element identifies a child of the root entity, the third element identifies a child of the second entity, and so forth. The entities identified by all prefixes of the path are called the element's ancestors.
An entity path is always fully complete: all of the entity's ancestors are required to be in the path along with the entity identifier itself. The only exception is that in some documented cases, the identifier in the last path element (for the entity) itself may be omitted. For example, the last path element of the key of Mutation.insert may have no identifier.
A path can never be empty, and a path can have at most 100 elements.
A (kind, ID/name) pair used to construct a key path.
If either name or ID is set, the element is complete. If neither is set, the element is incomplete.
// End of list of possible types for union field id_type.
The kind of the entity. A kind matching regex __.*__ is reserved/read-only. A kind must not contain more than 1500 bytes when UTF-8 encoded. Cannot be "".
The auto-allocated ID of the entity. Never equal to zero. Values less than zero are discouraged and may not be supported in the future.
The name of the entity. A name matching regex __.*__ is reserved/read-only. A name must not be more than 1500 bytes when UTF-8 encoded. Cannot be "".


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And with so many shows being rebooted and revived in recent years, many diehard fans have been wondering if the the show could be next. 1 Episode, Made in Hollywood Now 1 Episode (2008), Weekends at the D.L. 6 Episodes (2020-2020), Making It 1 Episode (2010), Tina Fey: The Mark Twain Prize 10 Episodes (2002-2008), Backstage 71 Episodes (2008-2011), Old Soul On Set With TV's Hottest Comedies Wendy 2008, Blades Of Glory Join Peacock to watch this episode for free. 1 Episode (2008), Screen Actors Guild Awards Another Who's your favorite? Gramma 2008, Hamlet 2 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Along with other members of the comedy group, Poehler is a founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. 1 Episode (2006), Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education 1 Episode (2010), 15th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards Bespectacled Characters (Part III: Animation), The Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show, Will Forte, Amy Poehler and Jerry Seinfeld, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, Blisteritos Presents Dad Academy Graduation Congraduritos Red Carpet Viewing Party, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen/Irritable Bowling Syndrome, Beastie Boys: Fight for Your Right Revisited, Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update Summer Edition, Nicholas Turturro/Joey Lauren Adams/Marcy Playground, Paul Reiser/Janeane Garofalo/Steve Winwood, Joan Cusack/John Tesh/Squirrel Nut Zippers, When Our Basketball Boys Win the Big Game, What the UCB Doesn't Want You to Know About the Del Close Marathon, Children of the Unicorn/My Way or the Bee Way, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Jimmy Fallon, Ménage à Trois Radio's Valentine's Day Sextacular, Thank You, Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon, Amy Poehler/Dr. + Comments Leave a Comment 1 Episode (2013), 65th Primetime Emmy Awards 1 Episode (2011), The Secret World Of Arrietty Movies & TV Shows Hello, Sign in ... (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). 1 Episode (2011), 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 1 Episode, 71st Emmy(R) Awards Wine Country stars Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, and Paula Pell select titles from their costars' filmographies to pair with their new Netflix comedy. 2 Episodes (2007-2017), The House Various / Weekend Update Anchor / Hillary Clinton / Self / Betty Caruso / Sharon Osbourne / Amber / Kelly Ripa / Kaitlin / Michael Jackson / Nancy Grace / Netti Bo Dance / Sally Needler / Amanda / Dakota Fanning / Kim Jong Il / Norah O'Donnell / Paula Abdul / Sharon Stone / Avril Lavigne / Charlie Bucket / Madonna / Self - Host / Zoe Anderton / Aiden Key / Amy / Amy Poehler / Ann Coulter / Arianne Zuker / Ashley Olsenberger / Barbie / Betty / Blossom / Britney Spears / Carolyn Kepcher / Carrie Bradshaw / Catherine Zeta-Jones / Christian Siriano / Clarice Starling / Daryn Kagan / David Pelletier / Dennis Kucinich / Dolly Parton / Draper's Co-Worker / Emily Saliers / Farrah Fawcett / Fergie / Future Lindsay Lohan / Gloria Wallace / Greta Van Susteren / H.W. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will return to host the Golden Globes in 2021. 1 Episode (2014), Access Hollywood Live 2011, Beastie Boys: Fight For Your Right Revisited Hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler; Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band performs. After studying improv at Chicago's Second City and ImprovOlympic in the early 1990s, she co-founded the improvisational-comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. Amy Poehler made a special cameo in Community season 2, but many viewers may have missed her appearance. ... To accommodate Amy Poehler's second pregnancy, ... Pregnancy Celebrity Pregnancies Kid TV And Movies… Top 25 Female Blondes In Comedy TV. Hamlet 2 (2008) Dana Marschz is a failed actor who has become a high school drama teacher. 4 Episodes (2015-2019), The Ellen DeGeneres Show 2007, The Ex 3 Episodes (2014-2014), 66th Primetime Emmy Awards Dan Harmon's comedy series premiered on NBC in September 2009, which was just a few months after Parks and Recreation made its debut on the same network. 1 Episode (2016), Maya & Marty 1 Episode (2015), ET Canada Leslie Knope 1 Episode (2011), Golden Globe Awards 11 Episodes (2008-2015), Today 1 Episode (2008), Entertainers 1 Episode (2010), The Women of SNL 1 Episode (2012), Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again Eleanor 4 Episodes (2009-2016), Kickin' It 1 Episode (2013), Saturday Night Live Poehler began flexing her funny bone while at Boston College as part of the comedy troupe My Mother's Fleabag and continued her quest for laughs in Chicago as a student at Second City and the ImprovOlympic Theatre. 1 Episode (2008), The Oscars Gretel [Voice] 17 Episodes (2018-2019), Russian Doll 7 Episodes (2009-2013), Conan Parks and Rec, of course, starred Poehler as Leslie Knope, a mid-level employee of the Parks and Recreation Department … 2007, Southland Tales Eleanor 2 Episodes (2012-2012), Hoodwinked Too! Browse Amy Poehler movies and TV shows available on Prime Video and begin streaming right away to your favorite device. 1 Episode (2020), Desus & Mero Amy Poehler is an American actress, voice artist, comedian, director, producer, and writer who started her career as part of the improvisational comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade and landed a half-hour sketch comedy series on Comedy Central in 1998. 1 Episode (2002), Wet Hot American Summer Angie Homily Parks and Recreation 1 Episode (2009), Kids' Choice Awards 1 Episode (2012), Night of Too Many Stars: America Comes Together for Autism Programs Truck Stop Waitress Jenny The group moved to New York City in 1996 where their act became a half-hour sketch comedy series on Comedy Central in 1998. 1 Episode (2012), New Year's Eve With Carson Daly Ruth Westheimer/Philip "Fish" Fisher, Countdown to Relaunch Special: Too Much Good Stuff, Peacock Presents: The At-Home Variety Show Featuring Seth MacFarlane, Amy Poehler & Kristen Kish Cook w/ First Responder, Jason Sudeikis/Sterling K. Brown/Kristen Bell/Ted Danson, Saturday Night Live at Home: Tom Hanks/Chris Martin, Tina Fey & Amy Poehler/Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Making It: Where Creativity Rules the Land, Moms Knows Best Week/Amy Poehler/Anjelica Huston, Amy Poehler/Ciara/View Your Deal: Feel Good Friday, Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler & Jason Mantzoukas/Adriana Trigiani, Amy Poehler/Harland Williams/Tomi Adeyemi/Ashley McBryde, Access True Crime Series/Stars Behind the Show, "The IMDb Show" on Location: Oscars Red Carpet Fashion, Turn Up The Volume/Legends: Ted Turner/Pop Art/Remembering Gilda, Will Ferrell & Amy Poehler/Mariska Hargitay, Amy Poehler/Ezra French/Stephen "tWitch" Boss, Amy Poehler & Asa Butterfield/Ellie Goulding, The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special, The House/Baby Driver/Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story/The Little Hours, PLACE YOUR BETS with WILL FERRELL and AMY POEHLER, The House - Unscripted - Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, The Paley Center Salutes NBC's 90th Anniversary, Sacha Baron Cohen, Stephen Fry, Amy Poehler, Romesh Ranganathan and Shawn Mendes, AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Steve Martin, Saturday Night Live: 40th Anniversary Special, Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Red Carpet Special, The 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, Amy Poehler/Sen. Sondra 2006, Arrested Development 1 Episode (2005), Saturday Night Live Misty Amy Poehler's ten best roles. 1 Episode (2013), Extra 1 Episode, Jimmy Kimmel Live Amy Poehler (left) and Maya Rudolph in "Wine Country." Photo: Colleen Hayes, Netflix "Wine Country" is a movie about the trials of female friendship. About Amy Poehler. 1 Episode, Hermanas 1 1 Episode (2012), 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards Sally O'Malley 1 Episode (2013), Screen Actors Guild Awards On Set With TV's Hottest Comedies, Betty White's 90th Birthday: A Tribute to America's Golden Girl, Night of Too Many Stars: America Comes Together for Autism Programs, Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education, Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education, Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash 2008, Resources for understanding systemic racism and inequality, From Barry Jenkins's Moonlight to Beyoncé's Homecoming, Things are going to get weird, and that's not a bad thing. 2004, Martin & Orloff 1 Episode (2011), Funniest Women on TV It's a movie about the awkwardness of middle age. 1 Episode, Household Name 1 Episode (2014), Late Show with David Letterman 28 Ways TV Shows Bared or Covered Pregnant Bellies. 2 Episodes (2017-2017), Kickin' It Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education, Cooler Than Ice: The Super-Sexy Costumes of Skating, 100 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Shrek But Were Afraid to Ask So We're Gonna Tell You Anyway Movie Special, Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse, Live from New York/The Governor/In Harm's Way, Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Halftime Special, At Home Edition: Staff Favorites - Kevin Hart/Justin Timberlake/Amy Poehler, A Better Way?/On Broadway: Tina Fey/Island Hopping/Going Home, Saturday Night Live: Thanksgiving Special, The Chris Gethard Show: Public Access Web Videos, The Best of the Chris Gethard Show: Season 1, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Will Ferrell - Volume 3, Saturday Night Live Presents: Sports All-Stars, Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash '08, Premiere på Shrek the Third og The Simpsons Movie, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Commercial Parodies, Saturday Night Live: The Best of David Spade, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Alec Baldwin, Saturday Night Live: Presidential Bash 2004, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Christopher Walken, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Tracy Morgan, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Will Ferrell - Volume 2, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Kattan. 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When Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly brought up the subject of having local hires and youth apprenticeships included in contracts for public works projects in Elk Grove earlier this month, he touched off a lively discussion about project labor agreements at the Elk Grove City Council meeting Wednesday.
The topic also led to the creation of two ad hoc committees to address different parts of his proposal. One committee will deal with youth and workforce development so that young people can be successful in working in the apprenticeships. The other committee will handle working on developing career pathways in building and construction trades on public works projects.
Mayor Ly and Council Member Stephanie Nguyen will serve on the first committee, and Vice Mayor Darren Suen and Council Member Patrick Hume will comprise the second taskforce.
Ly had opposed the creation of the two committees.
He said city staff would have more time to delve into the issue than the members of the two ad-hoc committees.
But Suen, who heads up the second committee, and who is aso running against Ly for mayor, thought the creation of the two committees was necessary.
His other rationale for having two committees was to give the other two City Council members (Stephanie Nguyen and Mayor Steve Ly) the chance to be involved. There are only two City Council Members allowed on a committee per Brown Act rules.
On May 9, Ly had brought up the suggestion on how to provide jobs and training for students.
"My feeling is this might be a good opportunity to start reviewing and taking an opportunity to ask and direct staff to bring back to council a community workforce training agreement (project labor agreement)," he said at the earlier meeting. Ly noted that he has seen an surge of students who didn't go to college be in limbo because they can't get jobs.
Ly also said at the May 9 meeting that he was interested in the quality of work that is provided through such apprenticeships and suggested that staff look at public works contracts valued at $500,000 and up.
That topic brought forth a slew of comment from union and non-union building representatives and at least a couple of contractors, who spoke out mostly against project labor agreements.
A project labor agreement (PLA) is an pre-hire agreement that can be used on both public and private projects, and the provisions are set by both parties to meet the needs of a particular project. Typically, they favor union shops. Employees hired for the project are referred through union hiring halls, non-union member pay union dues for the duration of the project, and the contractor follow union rules on work conditions.
Although Ly used the term "community workforce training agreement" to describe his proposal, many in the construction trade community interpreted that to mean "project labor agreements", especially when he spoke about requiring apprenticeships and prevailing wages in those contracts.
At least two representatives for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Northern California spoke out against the city adopting PLA's as they would not be able to take advantage of existing apprenticeship programs, some may not be union run.
Richard Markuson who represented the Western Electrical Contractors Association, as well as other trade groups, said there are no differences between apprenticeships offered by union shops and non-union companies, as all apprenticeships are regulated by state and federal laws.
He also noted that even if Elk Grove were to enact a PLA, it wouldn't accomplish some of Ly's goal, such as paying prevailing wages in the use of an apprentice.
As to the requirement about local hires, he noted that "they cannot be mandated" and even if the agreements set certain goals for local hires, unscrupulous employers can still bring in workers from outside the area and have them considered local workers.
Moreover, he noted that under the law that mandates the use of skilled and train workforce (apprentices), it has a provision which exempts projects operating under a PLA to report what portion of the workforce on the project are apprentices.
He also suggested that the city contact the 300 or so members of the Associated Builders and Contractors to see if they would be willing to bid on city projects if there was a PLA in place. "We suspect they would not," he said.
Eric Christen , Executive Director for the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, said his group was formed 20 years ago specifically to oppose PLAs.
But at least two union supporters were in favor of Mayor Ly's proposal, including Cherie Cabral, CQ a former Rio Vista City Council member who was representing the State Construction Trade Council and Labor Management Trust.
Important to note, when it came time for the Elk Grove City Council to discuss the issue and decide what to do next, it wasn't as clear-cut as Ly would make it out to be.
Council Member Steven Detrick said he was all in favor of encouraging more people to pursue careers in the building trades and to encourage companies to offer apprenticeships. He noted that he had gone through three apprenticeship programs himself, but he didn't think it was necessarily it was the city's place for the city to require them.
Ly didn't think that deferring to the schools to provide training and apprenticeships would be enough to get students jobs.
"Ideally, we would love to have schools step up to it and they can train as many students and prepare them to go into the trades, but if they cross that threshold, (it won't work) if we as a public entity using tax dollars are not making a requirement to make sure we engage in local hires," Ly said.
Suen said he would be happy to serve on a committee to explore careers in construction in public works programs for youths and others, such as veterans. He also noted that he had been working on the issue of apprenticeships with city staff for at least a month before Ly brought up the subject.
Ly asked if he shouldn't serve on the same committee if Suen wanted clarity on what he wanted the City Council to work on but Suen noted that Ly seemed to focus more on youth, and that Nguyen was also more interested in workforce development. Suen then suggested that Ly serve on the committee for that with Nguyen.
"I don't know how you can distinguish the difference," said Ly.
But Suen said it's clear there are two different topics. One focus is on career pathways in building trades. The other is on workforce development.
Nguyen also agreed that the issue should be split.
In the end, the Elk Grove City Council voted to form two ad hoc subcommittees.
Still Ly wanted to invoke chairman's privilege and ask city staff to sit down with the trades. He expressed his wish for them to to talk about requiring apprenticeships for local youths. However, that suggestion was turned down since it wasn't clear what the rest of the City Council wanted to do.
It was not clear how soon the committees would meet or report back to the Elk Grove City Council with their findings.
Ly wasn't happy with the arrangement.
Suen said he plans to have his committee meet next week. He noted that he and Detrick had started a committee to look into apprenticeships a year ago. However, work had fallen by the wayside until about a month ago, when Suen decided to pick it back up.
Author: Tillie FongTillie is a recovering news junkie and real life Lady Bird. She is a former staff writer for Rocky Mountain News in Colorado, and former on-call reporter for The Sacramento Bee.