Mini-Heap
More interesting stuff for the Heap…
Discussion welcome.
- The LA Review of Books is publishing a six-essay series on philosophy’s importance in trying times — series editor George Yancy (Emory) introduces it
- Trans philosophy and how it’s discussed in the profession and in classrooms — Talia Mae Bettcher (CSU Los Angeles) is the guest on a recent episode of the Hotel Bar Sessions podcast
- You have 300° vision, all your nutrition comes from flowers, you can see ultraviolet light, you have the ability to sense magnetic waves and electric fields, and you can fly — “Given all this, what’s in your mind?,” asks Lars Chittka (Queen Mary U.)
- We have made “the end goal of mourning the psychological well-being of the bereaved,” but have overlooked how this may come at the expense of preserving our valuable relations with the deceased — Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode (Warsaw) on the meaning of mourning
- “Thought happens in space between the things we can capture into form” — Amy Kurzweil on words, images, thought, and artificial intelligence
- “Morality is objective, but it neither requires nor admits of a foundation. It just kind of floats there” — part of understanding this, says Andrew Sepielli (Toronto), is seeing that “treating normative-ethical enquiry as representational” is a mistake
- Philosophers associated with the Normative Orders research network (Goethe University)–Habermas and others–comment on the Israel-Hamas conflict and other academics respond
Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.
The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.
Here’s a new interview with Piers Turner about John Stuart Mill and free speech. https://youtu.be/Ngpu6qMBnos?si=pGHAij5tdihVgyi4
Sorry to be unusually personal but: My child (16 years old) passed away unexpectedly about a month ago and that article about mourning was a very important thing for me to read. It has been only a month but I have been very deeply bothered about feeling a pressure to “move on.” I don’t mean to trivialize that idea or insist that it’s fundamentally invalid, but moving on feels right now like a betrayal. I both have recognized that’s a common feeling, and that many people attempt to find a way not to see it as a betrayal, and that this is absolutely not something I’d criticize them for either publically or to my self–and at the same time, have strongly felt that that is Not For Me.
I will never abandon my child.
This article begins to help me further articulate that feeling and decide more about its importance.
When I pass by my dear child’s remains, I place my hand on top of the urn and squeeze. I am holding his hand. I am telling him it will be okay. Right now I believe I will never cease doing this, for the rest of my life.
I am hoping during these times (at all times but especially during these times) despite my lack of belief in an afterlife that somehow he is feeling loved, whether by me or in some other way. I am okay with having an impossible, incoherent hope like this. I believe right now that I will hope for this for the rest of my life.
(And again, I have to emphasize: I don’t believe that ‘moving on’ has to amount to ‘abandoning’ the deceased loved one. I am talking about my own experience and process, not something I think has to apply, in the same words in the same way, to every person going through what I am going through.)
Thank you for sharing this article.