New Essay Published in The Finch

3/15/2016

Apologies for my silence over the last few months. Television work and new writing have kept me busy.

I'm chirping up today to announce the publication of a new essay, "How Symbols Matter," now live at The Finch.

The Finch is a new art theory web-magazine that is being launched today. The site is gorgeously conceived and curated by artist-editor-designer duo Richard Benari and Lauren Henkins. It's a real trip.

Richard approached me a few months ago to know if I would be interested in writing something for the new publication. Through our discussion, it became clear that our thoughts and ideas were closely aligned and that we shared a concern for rethinking the arts in the face of the proliferation of signs that characterizes what Jean Baudrillard would have called our "hyperreal" world. I'm very grateful to Richard for this opportunity to expand on ideas I developed in the "Signs and Symbols" chapter of Reclaiming Art.

Hope you enjoy it.

Don Salmon link

3/22/2016 05:24:19 am

Really, no comments yet?

Wonderful article. I just mentioned it over at Bernardo Kastrup's forum, and made my way over here to tell you again directly.

I realize you're busy, but is there any way you might be able to say - even in a few words - how what you wrote here about art as symbol - not as communication but as a way to take us out of our mechanistic trance and receive the world as the ever New - relates to your views on panpsychism?

If not, I understand. in an case, again, great work!

J.F. Martel link

3/22/2016 09:01:27 am

Thanks, Don. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

My views on panpsychism are based on 1) the idea that multiplicity is ontologically prior to unity (there is no reason why we must reduce the Many to the One) and 2) a rejection of the principle of sufficient reason, with its insistence that entities must be explained in terms of one another (things can exist without reason or cause).

My belief is that everything humans conceptualize as belonging to mind is already present in matter -- and vice versa. So for me, to claim that "consciousness" is the ground of being is just as abstract as claiming that "matter" is. Panpsychism is for me a heuristic position and an ethical one, not a claim about the substrate. In fact I think there are good reasons to reject the very idea of a dogmatic metaphysics, by which I mean any metaphysics that postulates a substrate, ground, First Cause or "ontological primitive" of any kind.

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New Essay Published in The Finch

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