From Worldmaking to Lifeforming I

Instructor: J.-P. Caron Date & Time: Sundays, November 15, 22, December 6, 13 14:00 - 16:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: In The way the world is, Nelson Goodman argues for relinquishing the idea of a singular world to be described adequately by philosophy, science, or to be pictured by our artistic practices. Instead, he argued for the idea that there isn’t such a thing as a world independent of any symbolizing activities. The question concerning how such a world could be can possibly receive no answer that does not already presuppose some descriptive framework of our own making. What Goodman had in mind, though, was not the abandonment of knowledge as such, but a redefinition of this notion. “Worldmaking” is the term he coined for the activity of knowing-through-reconstruction that was developed in his later writings. This has consequences for the concept of an epistemological Given, on which any foundationalist picture of knowledge rests. Knowledge is always already enmeshed in the symbolizing activities that are part and parcel of our forms of life. But what about the remaking of forms of life themselves? With the de-absolutization of a metaphysical foundation proposed in and through the works of Carnap, Sellars and Goodman comes the priority of conceptualizing practices embedded in a contingently constituted form of life. The contingent character of this form of life- which acquires post-facto necessity for us- is then pit against its role as a condition for knowledge. This Seminar intends to tackle this double character of Forms of Life within worldmaking practices. It offers an introduction to worldmaking while reflecting on Wittgensteinian forms of life as materials for reconfiguration. The political valence of worldmaking practices as means for reconfiguring the social world hangs upon such questions.

Session 1: The critique of transcendental structures
A quick and brisk introduction to the idea of worldmaking Session 2: World and Worlds: the question of realism, perspectivism and of the reality of perspectives. / Session 3: The deprivatisation of mind, the switch from self-evident truths to their axiomatic alternatives and their effects upon Forms of Life. / Session 4: Scale and forms of life, gatherthing sthe conclusions of the Seminar pertaining to the issues of realism and the subject position by engaging the problem of scales in the concept of sensibility.

 

IMAGE: Jura Shust, Baptism of Fire, 2017

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