skandalon

We never know anything about anyone. I used to think the same think about your marriage, and look what happened to you and Delia. It’s hard enough keeping track of ourselves. Once it comes to other people, we don’t have a clue.

✖ Via Leviathan by Paul Auster, New York: Penguin Books, 1992, p. 107

It reminds me of a line of dialogue in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) (I’ll quote from memory):

On croit savoir, et puis non, jamais.

Previously on Skandalon: Paul Auster’s Leviathan

• Aug 02, 2010 link notes tagged: art novel book Auster couple life knowledge other ignorance understanding stand

Un jeune collègue, bon spécialiste de Kant, étudiant la philosophie kantienne dans ses rapports avec la biologie et la médecine du 18e siècle, m’avait signalé un texte, de l’espèce de ceux qui engendre à la fois la satisfaction d’une belle rencontre et la confusion d’une ignorance à l’abri de laquelle on croyait pouvoir s’attribuer un brin d’originalité

✖ Via Le normal et le pathologique by Georges Canguilhem, PUF, coll. Quadrige, Paris, [1966] 2003, p. 171

You’ll find a review of the English translation for The normal and the pathological here. And here’s Canguilhem’s obituary by David Macey.

• Aug 01, 2010 link notes tagged: philosophy originality author book repetition confusion ignorance wisdom

No one can say where a book comes from, least of all the person who writes it. Books are born out of ignorance, and if they go on living after they are written, it’s only to the degree that they cannot be understood.

✖ Via Leviathan by Paul Auster, New York: Penguin, 1992, p. 40

• Jul 19, 2010 link notes tagged: art novel author Paul Auster book creation representation ignorance knwoledge

An anosognosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand they won’t do it. And you ask them why, and they’ll say, “Well, I’m tired,” or “I don’t need a pencil.” They literally aren’t alerted to their own paralysis. There is some monitoring system on the right side of the brain that has been damaged, as well as the damage that’s related to the paralysis on the left side. There is also something similar called “hemispatial neglect.” It has to do with a kind of brain damage where people literally cannot see or they can’t pay attention to one side of their environment. If they’re men, they literally only shave one half of their face. And they’re not aware about the other half. If you put food in front of them, they’ll eat half of what’s on the plate and then complain that there’s too little food. You could think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect as a psychological version of this physiological problem. If you have, for lack of a better term, damage to your expertise or imperfection in your knowledge or skill, you’re left literally not knowing that you have that damage. It was an analogy for us

✖ Via The New York Times: “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1), David Dunning interviewd by Errol Morris, June 20th, 2010

Errol Morris’ essay on the Dunning-Kruger effect.

• Jun 22, 2010 link notes tagged: Dunning-Kruger anasognosia anxiety blind spot cognitive bias confusion epistemology ignorance information knowledge science unknown Errol Morris

In March 2003, Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the “unknown knowns,” the things we don’t know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself,” as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” - the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values. Thus, Bush was wrong. What we get when we see the photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners is precisely a direct insight into “American values,” into the core of an obscene enjoyment that sustains the American way of life.

✖ Via “What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib” by Slavoj Zizek, May 21st, 2004

First heard of this text via Errol Morris Twitter account. Errol Morris is still thinking about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

• May 08, 2010 link notes tagged: Agamben America Freud Iraq United-States communication homo sacer ignorance knowledge life philosophy science self torture unconscious value zombie cognitive bias Dunning-Kruger

Et c’est ainsi qu’à la fin du XXe siècle, au début de ce XXIe siècle, il arrive assez souvent que l’on entende des philosophes dire, soit avec un air presque effarouché, soit avec une espèce d’autosatisfaction, avec une jouissance très semblable à celle du M. Homais de Madame Bovary : “Moi, la technique, je n’y ai jamais rien compris”, ce qui veut toujours dire aussi : “Et je ne ferai jamais rien pour y comprendre quelque chose.” “J’ai un ordinateur et un téléphone portable, et je ne comprends absolument pas comment ça marche” : on entend souvent dire cela avec une espèce de contentement de soi complètement idiot et assez misérable ― comme si le fait de ne pas comprendre comment un système technique fonctionne était quelque chose dont on pouvait se vanter.

✖ Via Philosopher par accident by Bernard Stiegler (interviewed by Elie During), Paris : Galilee, 2004, 16 (more)

Previously on Skandalon : Bernard Stiegler

• Apr 30, 2010 link notes tagged: technology communication philosophy machine computer knowledge modernity time ignorance

The knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion

✖ Via The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872, § 7 (tr. by Ian Johnston, 2009)

Compare with a similar observation by Paul Valery.

• Feb 02, 2010 link notes [via] tagged: philosophy book action knowledge ignorance