Ryle's 'logical geography'

I like the way Ryle apparently analogised philosophy to cartography.*

'Similarly, Ryle advocated that philosophy should chart the 'logical geography' of our concepts. In The Concept of Mind he argued that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body results from 'category-mistakes': it treats mental concepts which signify behavioural dispositions as if they referred to processes that are just like physical ones, only more ethereal. Ryle rejected Wittgenstein's therapeutic image according to which 'the philosopher treats a question like a disease' (1953: §255). Yet he accepted that philosophy is a meta-discipline which does not 'talk sense with concepts' but tries to 'talk sense about concepts' (1949: 9-10). The paradox of analysis disappears since the task is not to provide novel information about a realm extrinsic to us. According to Wittgenstein, philosophy reminds us of rules that we have mastered in practice but which mislead us in the course of philosophical reflections. According to Ryle, it takes us from the knowledge how to use words to an explicit knowledge that they are used according to certain rules. Either way, analysis is not a trivial pursuit, because the explanation of philosophically interesting concepts is complex and rich, especially when it places these concepts in their diverse contexts (everyday, scientific, philosophical).' p.43.

Hans-Johann Glock. 2008. What is analytic philosophy? Chapter 2. Historical survey. pp.21-60. CUP. Pb. 
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-general-interest/what-analytic-philosophy

* 'Ryle analogises philosophy to cartography. Competent speakers of a language, Ryle believes, are to a philosopher what ordinary villagers are to a mapmaker: the ordinary villager has a competent grasp of his village, and is familiar with its inhabitants and geography. But when asked to interpret a map of that knowledge, the villager will have difficulty until he is able to translate his practical knowledge into universal cartographic terms. The villager thinks of the village in personal and practical terms, while the mapmaker thinks of the village in neutral, public, cartographic terms.[20]: 440–2 '. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Ryle

I've wondered about 'cogeography' - combining cognition and geography, even care cartography. There is also of course psycho-politics, geo-psychiatry and psycho-geography ...

Hopefully a more current text would be more diverse.^

^Image: CUP.

See also:

Compass-ion and care cartography

A short & sweet tweet/X for . . .

         ... the challenge of a lifetime ...

    ... for several researchers mathematicians?

Listening to @BBCRadio4's 'The Kitchen Cabinet', reminded of Hodges' model #h2cm as a cabinet, space, place, or repository. A critical cabinet for at least two reasons:
#1. An aide-mémoire
for assessments, plans, interventions (as formulations too), evaluation. #Person 🧵1.

— Peter Jones (@h2cm) March 20, 2025

This thread, also written - copied out beforehand provides the basis for an enlarged post to follow.

New network in Environmental Humanities: H-EcoLit

supported by H-Net

Dear colleagues, 

Hello. Sorry for cross posting as I am sharing with you the below that may be of your interest. 

 

• newly launched network in Environmental Humanities: H-EcoLit supported by H-Net

You are welcome to register for free as member of our newly launched network called "H-EcoLit", supported by the H-Net of the Michigan State University:

https://networks.h-net.org/h-ecolit 

H-EcoLit is an international network of academics and researchers of all levels who study the fields of Environmental Humanities, Literary Theory and Cultural Criticism. The network seeks to explore issues beyond the traditional binary of nature-culture, and examines the changing status of subjectivity, agency, and citizenship, while envisioning matters for sustainable futures in a more-than-human world. H-EcoLit is aligned with the H-Net’s aims for supporting open access research, interdisciplinary projects, and ‘unites’ different voices across the globe. The intended audience includes academics, scholars of all levels and policy makers who are working on the Environmental Humanities, Literary and Cultural Studies, and related to Environmental Humanities areas.

Welcome to join us! Thank you!

• Publications edited and co-authored by Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki

1. Special Issue: "Critical Green Theories and Botanical Imaginaries: Exploring Human and More-than-human World Entanglements" published in Open Cultural Studies:

https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/culture/8/1/html  

2. Special Issue: "Ecologies of Life and Death in the Anthropocene" published in Lagoonscapes. The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities: 

https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/the-venice-journal-of-environmental-humanities/2024/2/  

3. Special Issue: "The Digital Environmental Humanities: Towards Theory and Praxis" published in HJEAS:

https://sciendo.com/issue/HJEAS/30/2  

4. our open access chapter titled "Toward Posthuman Aesthetics: The Flesh of the World in Auguste Rodin’s Le Penseur and The Thinking Robot" published in Nidesh Lawtoo's volume titled Mimetic Posthumanism. Homo Mimeticus 2.0 in Art, Philosophy and Technics at Brill:

https://brill.com/display/title/63101 

5. our chapter titled “The Poetics of Zombification in Ryan Mecum’s Dawn of Zombie Haiku” In Zombie Futures in Literature, Media and Culture. Pandemics, Society and the Evolution of the Undead in the 21st Century edited by Simon Bacon, published by Bloomsbury: 

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/zombie-futures-in-literature-media-and-culture-9781350285491/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2ke9BRjbumYjBJu_Pc9RJdnHVdnagHuCfHbyf9YOYcKp8YEELC0zSpKYQ_aem_Ah1fwQ0N-t8hZfEJlaY8Dw

[I note online events are included in an announcements page:

https://networks.h-net.org/group/12251094/announcements

PJ ]

We will keep in touch. Thank you!

Best regards, 

on behalf of the Editors

Nikoleta

--

Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki

Postdoctoral Researcher

Faculty of Philology, School of Philosophy, 

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

E-mail: nikzamp AT phil.uoa.gr

My source: SOPHERE list

CfP: The Future as a Problem. Between Philosophy and Cultural Studies

Trόpos

Trόpos. Rivista di Ermeneutica e critica filosofica

ed. by Gianni Vattimo and Gaetano Chiurazzi
2020, n. 1

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Future as a Problem. Between Philosophy and Cultural Studies

Edited by Daina Habdankaitė and Davide Sisto

The upcoming issue of Tropos will be dedicated to the concept of future, with a view to reconstructing its peculiar hermeneutics, which is, its theoretical meaning and many nuances.

The topics include but are not limited to:

- Future and technology: political, social and ethical problematics;
- Ontology of the future: classic and contemporary approaches;
- Virtuality and/or possibility in theory and/or in praxis;
- The future of philosophy as a philosophical problem.

Deadlines
Submission deadline: March 31, 2020
Results of blind reviews: April 30, 2020
Publication date: July 2020

Submission Guidelines
Papers should be submitted to:

- Daina Habdankaitė: d.habdankaite AT gmail.com
- Davide Sisto: da.sisto AT gmail.com
- Papers should be in English, French, or Italian.
- Papers should be prepared for blind review (double)
- Each submission should consist of two separate documents containing the following:

1) The full paper including:

- Title
- The full paper should not exceed 50,000 characters in total.
- An abstract of no more than 200 words - also including an English title
- 5 keywords

2) A separate cover letter including the following information:

- The title of the paper

- Your name, affiliation and contact information
- A biographical presentation of 50-60 words.

Presentation of the topic

A quick glance at the current political, social, technological and artistic reality reveals increasing popularity of the discourse about the future which is reconceptualized and scrutinized from both theoretical and practical approaches. As soon as it enters the theoretical field, the question of the future becomes a question of the future of philosophy, to the point that it has been said that the future of philosophy itself might be the philosophy of technology (J. C. Pitt). There is a prominent idea that the technological future will cause a revolution in interpersonal relations: the increasingly frequent interaction with AI (vocal assistants, chatbots, etc.) is generating new relationships between human beings and robots, causing problems that are still unclear, but are starting to attract the attention of scholars and researchers.

The omnipresence of digital objects, especially within social networks, has often determined a pathological nostalgia for the past: when the past tends to overlap with the present, making itself indistinguishable from the latter, we tend to look back and to not look in front of us. The inability to distinguish the present from the past is also connected to the modus essendi of contemporary neoliberalism, which in the name of "there is no alternative" forces us to spend all our energy in recovering the past: we would be not able to build a new future anymore since it appears impossible to be done a priori.

This tendency, according to which we refuse the unusual and keep alive the usual, has been described, in the context of Cultural Studies, as retromania (S. Reynolds), or as slow cancellation of the future (M. Fisher, F. Bifo Berardi) This general pessimism is also connected to the idea that we are approaching the end of the world. The economic and the environmental crisis, combined with the eternal and suffocating presence of the past, are determining the spread of apocalyptic philosophies that, starting from the cosmic pessimism of G. Anders, stress that the end of humanity is near (D. Danowski; E. Viveiros de Castro; E. Thacker; J. Bridle), or even that the end of the Earth itself is coming, to the point that the even the bringing a new life to the world is questioned from the moral standpoint (D. Benatar; T. Ligotti).

On the other hand, an optimistic view of our technological future can be also encountered. The present age focused on technological and digital enhancement has produced the diffusion of transhumanist ideas revolving around the vision of the entire humanity soon gaining access to the eternal life, sometimes in the form of the digital immortality, through which human beings are to be replaced with their digital identities (from avatars to holograms). In other words, there is hope for death to be defeated.

From a more general point of view, the future is a challenging philosophical problem, engaging discourses in the realms ranging from metaphysics and ontology to politics and ethics. After the spectrality of Derrida and virtuality of Deleuze, that have marked the discourse of the 20th century, new ontologies are being formed as either a direct response to the limits of deconstruction, a continuation of non-essence based ontology or an attempt to make a significant conceptual shift in contemporary metaphysics. With the rise of different versions of speculative realism (Q. Meillassoux, G. Harman, R. Brassier, I. H. Grant) and new materialisms (K. Barad, R. Braidotti, E. Grosz, J. Benett) classical philosophical notions of virtuality, potentiality, matter, technology, human and many others are being reshaped and rearticulated not without an attempt at building bridges with other discourses such as science, feminism, science fiction, visual arts, etc. The vast array of different takes on classic philosophical problems share a similar urge for reshaping philosophical discourse as such and very often reconceptualizing the question of the future turns out to be also an attempt at reimagining the future of philosophy itself.

...

General information
Publisher Website:
http://www.aracneeditrice.it/aracneweb/index.php/rivista.html?col=tropos
Journal Website:
http://troposonline.wordpress.com
Journal Email Address:
tropos.filosofia AT unito.it

Indexed in: Philosopher’s Index, Philosophy Research Index, Catalogo Italiano dei Periodici (ACNP)
Questions are welcome and should be directed at the editors of the current issue:

- Daina Habdankaitė d.habdankaite AT gmail.com
- Davide Sisto: da.sisto AT gmail.com

My source:

Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
Recent posts can also be read in a Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL/ Follow the list on Twitter @PhilosL. Follow the Department of Philosophy @LiverpoolPhilos