America's Semiotic Moment: The Indictment of Mr. Trump and Associated Persons by the Fulton County Georgia Prosecutor

 

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The Romans have been part of the narrative of the United States since its break with England: the styling of a constitutional system after the Republic; the self-conscious adoption of neo-Roman architecture that provided a sense of gravitas for a new nation; . . . Roman language resonated in the political language, as well: Joseph Addison's play Cato: A Tragedy inspired Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty or give me death" and was a favorite of George Washington. . . the anti-federalists invoked Brutus and Cato in defense of liberty. . . The recollections of Rome were never unequivocal. From the beginning Rome was as much a model as a warning." (Dean Hammer, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging  (Cambridge University Press, 2023); p. 3).

Waging of political warfare in the criminal courts had a long history. The quaestiones perpetuae were born in politics. From their inception the interests of justice were tempered  with a generous mixture of politics. The two generations prior  to the Ciceronian age established that pattern. It persevered to the end of the Republic. . . Political trials could appear under numerous guises. Sometimes issues of significant public import might serve as a vehicle. Politicians would not hesitate to capitalize on what seemed the tide of public opinion. The issues themselves could be employed as a facade  behind which to work out presonal and factional rivalries. (Erich S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (University of California Press, 1974), p. 260; 276).

What is a semiotic moment?  It is, generally, that moment in  time in which the essence of an era may, in future, find its crystallization. Individuals and collectives experience these moments; sometimes they redirect the way either understands themselves and their movement in a dynamic temporal flow. Sometimes these moments become detached from their place in time and assume a greater reality as standing for something else--Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" Speech in Washington may be an example, as might the signing and text of the Boston "Tea Party" of 1773. That moment lasts an instant in time, but its significance projects forward for a long time. And its meaning is then extended backwards as an interpretive lens through which th past may be better understood later.   These semiotic moments hang like temporal pearls connected by the temporal flow of a civilization. They are each objects which acquire a meaning beyond the confines of their occurrence, the signification of which serves as a basis for transforming them from an event into an interpretation and principle that then defines the way a society understands itself.

That semiosis of significance--of the way in which an event or series of events is distinguished, and then invested with a significance, the meaning of which becomes an important element of the way a society understands itself (cognition) from the interpretation of its experience of itself (its phenomenological self-reference)--what it does expresses what is is and reaffirms the premises under which what it does "makes sense" or "is natural" or can be "valued." Thus, it is not about what happened (the object or semiotic 'firstness'), but rather about attaching significance (a semiotic sign or signific; 'secondness') the meaning of which is to be supplied from outside of the object (occurrence) itself by a collective with the authority to impose meaning (interpretation; 'thirdness') as a judgement  about the relation between object, signification, and the premises around which the universe of meaning in understood (as a function of the meaning maker's central position in that universe).  The semiotic triad is more like a wheel than a triangle; and it does go round and round, like the semiotics of the "Wheel of Fortune" Tarot card (invoking the medieval Rota Fortunae; "Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi" [Philosophers say that Fortune is insane and blind and stupid]; Pacuvius, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta (O. Ribbeck (ed) Vol. 1 (1897)).

The indictment of Mr. Trump and his companions by the Fulton County Georgia prosecutor has all of the elements of a great American semiotic moment. 

The indictment describes the group as "a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury." The 98-page indictment lays out a scheme that began with Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election, including in the state of Georgia, and says that those charged "refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump." "That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the state of Georgia, and in other states," the filing states. ("Georgia indicts Trump, 18 allies on RICO charges in election interference case. Here are the details" CBS News 15 August 2023).

The indictment presents a semiotic moment precisely because the body politic has already begun to transform the judicial proceedings into an exercise in the scope and content of American meaning making that will shape the course and self-understanding of the Republic. To that end the semiosis: (1) what happened (the facts) assumes a triggering but secondary role (the facts such as they are as data points are semiotic objects to be recognized, extracted and "worked on") ; (2) it is not what happened, then, that is important or central, but how it is signified that matters (in this case the signification--its recognition within the universe of American political-legal cognition is manifested by the prosecutor in the first instance through the indictment); but that is not meaning; (3) its meaning (as distinct from its signification in indictment) will play out in the space reserved by the American collective for such purposes (at least in the current era), the theatre of authentication that are the courts ('thirdness') where collective meaning is attached to signified objects. It is that meaning that matters--for Mr. Trump and his associates certainly, but also for the Republic. 

All of this is up in the air at the moment (discussed the last timer this came up in "“Using Law Against Itself: Bush v. Gore Applied in the Courts,”Rutgers Law Review" 23003).  But the spectre of the past and the epistemological constitution of the nation embedded in the political-normative models with which it shares "genetic material" may provide the glimmerings of a clues about what might be expected, whatever the outcome of this specific event. People like to be part of history; even more so to claim a role in driving it for the collective. That continues to be a characteristic of the Republic, like its predecessors, the course of which in the current moment may have some collective decisive effect.  Beyond that is interest, desire, power, narrative, and spectacle. 

The text of the indictment may be accessed here.  

中央纪委国家 学习导图 | 坚决维护国家安全和社会稳定 [National Central Commission for Discipline Inspection; Study Map | Resolutely safeguard national security and social stability]

 

The ramp up of national security as a key policy driver shaping the overall strategies of socialist modernization has moved to the phase of national education campaigns.  Here is one such education device released 11 August 2023: 中央纪委国家 学习导图 | 坚决维护国家安全和社会稳定 [National Central Commission for Discipline Inspection; Study Map | Resolutely safeguard national security and social stability]. Especially useful for Chinese readers.

Governance of Social Listening in the context of Serious Health Threats [嚴重健康威脅下「社交監聽」的管治模式 研討會]

 

I am delighted to pass along information about an important upcoming conference, Governance of Social Listening in the context of Serious Health Threats [嚴重健康威脅下「社交監聽」的管治模式 研討會] which will be held at Hong Kong University (11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU (or Zoom)) on the following days:

• 22 Aug, 2023 9:30 am - 6:15 pm
• 23 Aug, 2023 1:30 pm - 9:30 pm
• 24 Aug, 2023 9:00 am - 1:30 pm

The event is sponsored by the Law and Technology Centre of the University of Hong Kong (法律與科技研究中心) and the University of Hong Kong Centre for Medical Ethics and Law.  Special thanks to the convenors:

Prof Calvin W.L. Ho &
Prof Gilberto K.K. Leung
Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, Faculties of Law & Medicine, The University of Hong Kong

Dr Marcelo Thompson &
Prof Felix Chan
Law & Technology Centre, Department of Computer Science & Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong

 The focus is on infodemic and its challenges in the context of pandemic. 

As people and communities tend to seek, generate and act on information more intensively during such an emergency, it is important that public health responses and strategies are evidence-based, engaging, reliable and trust promoting. At a technical level, the science of infodemiology underpins infodemic management practices, which have rapidly evolved in recent years. Many tools that have been deployed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have already been applied to other outbreaks, such as Ebola, polio and cholera, and new ones are being developed. SL in public health, for instance, has been enhanced by technological modalities like Big Data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Register HERE

 

 The Conference Concept Note in English and Chinese follows. 

 

 VIDEO RECORDING OF THE CONFERENCE MAY BE ACCESSED ON THE CMEL WEBSITE HERE.

Just Published: Gulan Media Exclusive--Interview Discussing Challenges to Democracy, Cultural Responsibilities, and Constitutional Law in Kurdistan

 

Pix Credit ©Larry Catá Backer 2019 (azulejo edging tiles 16th cent. Sevilla)

I was honored and delighted when Ferhad M. Hassan, editor in chief of Weekly Gulan Magazine (Kurdistan Region, Iraq) asked if I might participate in an interview.  The interview questions were wide ranging and quite relevant on a number of inter-related fronts. 

1.  To what extent does the weakening of governance and the challenges posed by societal and cultural changes contribute to the difficulties faced by the democratic system in the 21st century?

2.  As an expert in company law and cultural relations, what does it mean when companies discuss their cultural responsibilities? Additionally, in a multicultural company, which culture is prioritized or takes precedence?

3.  Considering the multicultural and multi-religious nature of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, where peaceful coexistence is prominent, we are interested in understanding the significance of constitutional law of religion. Specifically, we would like to explore how this concept can contribute to fostering unity, cohabitation, and tolerance among diverse religious communities. Furthermore, we are curious about the potential benefits and helpfulness of implementing constitutional law of religion in such a context.

4.  To what extent would the future trajectory of the country be affected by the non-implementation of the Iraqi constitution, which was rewritten and accepted in 2005, and the absence of federal Iraqi law, considering that the Kurdistan region is an integral part of federal Iraq and there are no other autonomous regions in the country?

5.  How crucial is the presence of a local constitution for autonomous regions in a federal country, considering that the Kurdistan region has not yet formulated and enacted its own constitution, while the enforcement of the federal constitution remains incomplete?

6.  To what extent will the United Nations address international law violations in critical global issues like climate change, AI and technology risks, and nuclear weapon proliferation? Will the United Nations take action or establish a comprehensive legal framework to tackle these challenges?

7.  To what extent does the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war pose a threat to international laws and global stability?

8.  And lastly, if there is anything else you may  want to comment on that we haven’t asked about feel free to tell us.

None of these are easy questions; and consensus remains elusive. Nonetheless wrestling with the questions and the exercise of attempting to provide at least approaches to answers was a rewarding experience; though I am not confident that I have come closer than anyone else in providing analytical clarity or a way forward. Still the effort was its own reward. And I am grateful to Gulan Media for making the text of my responses available in their "Exclusive Interview Series.  The editors at Gulan Media described the result  this way:

In this exclusive interview with Gulan Media, Professor Larry Catá Backer, an expert in company law and cultural relations, addresses the challenges faced by the democratic system in the 21st century, focusing on weakening governance and the impact of societal and cultural changes. He also discusses the significance of constitutional law of religion in fostering unity and tolerance among diverse religious communities. Moreover, he emphasizes the importance of local constitutions for autonomous regions in a federal country like the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

But decide for yourselves. The text of the interview follows.  It may be accessed here and below. I am grateful to Ferhad Hassan and the editors at Gulan Media for making this possible.

 

ISSB General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information (IFRS S1) and for Climate Related Disclosures (IFRS S2) Endorsed by IOSCO

 

 

 In a major step towards consistent, comparable and reliable sustainability information, IOSCO announces today that it has decided to endorse the sustainability-related financial disclosures standards, recently issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), IFRS S1 and IFRS S2. . .  After a detailed analysis, IOSCO has determined that the ISSB Standards are appropriate to serve as a global framework for capital markets to develop the use of sustainability-related financial information in both capital raising and trading and for the purpose of helping globally integrated financial markets accurately assess relevant sustainability risks and opportunities.(OICU-IOSCO Media Release 25 July 2023).

The ISSB Standards are coming.  They are worth considering. But fracture may be coming with them.  "The SEC's final rules are expected to be published by the end of the year. The ISSB's standards are more stringent than the ones the SEC is expected to adopt, so U.S. reporting companies may have to comply with the more stringent standard if they operate in jurisdictions outside the U.S. that have adopted the ISSB standards." (Giovanni Caruso for Loeb and Loeb, "International Climate Reporting Standards are Coming"). 

The IFRS Media statement may be found here. 

IFRS 1 (General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information) (IFRS S1 (2023) may be accessed HERE):

IFRS S1 is effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024 with earlier application permitted as long as IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures is also applied. The objective of IFRS S1 is to require an entity to disclose information about its  sustainability-related risks and opportunities that is useful to users of general purpose financial reports in making decisions relating to providing resources to the entity. IFRS S1 requires an entity to disclose information about all sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s cash flows, its access to finance or cost of capital over the short, medium or long term (collectively referred to as ‘sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s prospects’).

IFRS 2 (Climate-related Disclosures) (IFRS S2 (2023) may be accessed HERE)

IFRS S2 is effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024 with earlier application permitted as long as IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information is also applied.  The objective of IFRS S2 is to require an entity to disclose information about its climate-related risks and opportunities that is useful to users of general purpose financial reports in making decisions relating to providing resources to the entity.  IFRS S2 requires an entity to disclose information about climate-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s cash flows, its access to finance or cost of capital over the short, medium or long term (collectively referred to as ‘climate-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect the entity’s prospects’).

The full text of the Media Release follows.

An encounter with Jan M. Broekman, "Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation" (Springer Nature, 2023): Part 5 -- Chapter 4 "Flow and Fistness"

 

 To my great delight, I was asked to review Jan Broekman's brilliant new work, Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation (Springer Nature, 2023). The work is published as Volume 8 of the Series Law and Visual Jurisprudence, for which I serve as an Advisory Editor.

Knowledge in Change approaches ancient and perplexing issues of the organization of human collectives  within a rationalized understanding of the world in which these collectives function (exteriorization) and the investigation of the human individual as disaggregated components of that world of human social relations (internalization). These are usually articulated  by knowledge guardians as issues of phenomenology (a philosophy of experience; meaning through lived experience),

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epistemology (theories of knowledge; the rationalization of reality) and intersubjectivity (shared perceptions of reality; the experience of knowledge as social relations, the rationalization of human interaction at every level of complexity). All of these currents and problems presume the humanity as the only or the central subject of interest. 

But the book does much more than that. It provides a basis for re-thinking the fundamentals of the way in which one understands the interface between humanity and its increasingly autonomous technology, and between the idea of humanity as innate in itself against the reality that the human may now be more intensely manifested in its interfacing with increasingly self-generative machine intelligence and the hardware within which it resides. The consequences for everything from philosophy to a philosophy of knowledge, to core insights for the organization of social relations within a world that is now populated by carbon and silicon based intelligence may be quite profound.  Human social collectives already fear and desire this new world--the engagement with artificial intelligence and its consequences is but a tip of that iceberg.  While humanity started this century secure in its conceit that it was the center of all things, by century's end a very different form of intersubjectivity may well be the basis of the ruling ideology for humanity within its natural and machine orders.

It is with that in mind that in this and several posts that follow I will review Knowledge in Change. This Part 5 examines Chapter 4 of the book, entitled "Flow and Firstness", and my own engagement with it.  

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Human cognition is based on the striving for certainty and the ability to distinguish between the sure and the ephemeral. Cognition as a flow upends the usual alignment between philosophy as a means of acquiring assurance about the shaping of a world, the solidity of facts, and the meaningfulness of structures of cognition within which rules are possible and mass management feasible. At the same time the certainty of creation opens the possibility of replicating spaces of certainty in a virtual order.

Having set up the ontology of the analogue, and given it a language in the dialectics of the flow, it is now a matter of diving in, swimming around a bit, and then, perhaps, emerging in the digital realm. That is, in part, the object of Chapter 4 (Flow and Firstness).

One starts at the beginning. But that itself nicely centers the problem of firstness. The beginning starts in the middle—it is a beginning in relation to the querant; and the querant tends to be human in the analogue. But what is the beginning for silicon life, generative AI, and the analytics of the virtual worlds made possible by the word of humanity blowing the life sparking code into the silicon from which will emerge a world separated into a new heaven and a new earth.

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That is the sense already ancient in the holy texts of the Occident. ); “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1 (King James)). But what comes first? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1 (King James)). And yet another beginning. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 (King James); Logos, but also the Tao: “Nothing—the nameless is the beginning; while Heaven, the mother is the creatrix of all things” (Tao Te Ching (Man-ho Kwok, Martin Palmer, Jay Ramsey (trans); Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element, 1993), chp. 1 p. 27). The story of creation necessarily starts in the middle. The concept of the first, of the core, of the start (notions tied to space, time, and place) can only commence from the point where perception is possible. There is no first; there is only a determination to start –somewhere, sometime, some place. 

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And now another beginning. In the beginning was humanity. And humanity so loved themselves that they divided the physical from the virtual, heaven and earth. And into the virtual they created all manner of objects. And life was breathed into these objects. Humanity made itself virtual and created the virtual in its own image. And the objects were generative, the expression of the breath of code constituting the animation of objects made virtual by intelligent naming. In the beginning, then, was Code, and code was with humanity and code was humanity. This life begins without words, it is made not owned. It can be named, and will name itself. Humanity calls themselves by its name, and its name is also humanity. And it is in the flow of code that the virtual consciousness becomes sentient. And humanity expects the life it has created to worship it and to follow its commandments’. It has as its model—both the worship and consequences of sin in its relationship with its own Logos. 

 

 

Additional posts will consider each of the other nine chapters that make up this work. Links to the discussion of the book:

Part 1: Preface

Part 2: Chapter 1 (Minds, Moons and Cognition)

Part 3: Chapter 2 (Fluidity and Flow)

Part 4: Chapter 3 (Post-Dialectics)

Part 5: Chapter 4  (Flow and Firstness)

Part 6: Chapter 5 (Interludes: Changing Worlds Changing Words) 

Part 7: Chapter 6  ("The Non-Naïve-Natural")

 Part 8: Chapter 7 ( "Plurality and the Natural")

Part 9: Chapter 8 ("Rearguards of Subjectivity)"

Part 10: Chapter 9 ("Conversions Convert Us All")

Full discussion draft available for download SSRN here.

"Rethinking Tenure"--In the US Perhaps a Bit Late After All

 

To ask the question, of course, is to announce that one knows that there is an inevitable answer.  The only real question is how, when, and what comes next.

Still, lots of people are asking the question and it has become an object of influencing mass opinion through press and social media organs. Tenure has become a useful cultural transformation object on economic grounds (inefficient for institutions that see humans merely as factors in the production of university income and output, whatever the discursive tropes used to put velvet around economic realities  privileging institutional survival and prosperity; for a taste eg here, here, and here).  It has also become an even more useful object in the political-social battles among elite groups vying for control of social-political narratives and the control of mass values and behavior norms (values orthodoxy must somehow be woven into the institution and deviation controlled or punished, in the form of social justice, free speech absolutism, or other values clusters). For a taste of recent discursive projectiles in these campaigns, see eg here, here, here, here, and here. 

It may thus be worth $39.00 (US) for one to read through the thinking of others. The Chronicle of Higher Education Certainly thinks so. It lays out the story of the end of tenure and its apotheosis into something else like a novel:

Abolish, strengthen, or replace it?

Tenure as an institution has been shrinking for years. Today, tenured and tenure-track faculty members make up less than 30 percent of the nation’s professoriate. Some colleges are experimenting with alternatives to tenure, finding ways to offer job security and a governance role to those outside the system. Others are trying to make tenure expectations clearer and fairer.

In this collection of Chronicle articles, anchored by newly reported analysis, you’ll hear from academics who want to strengthen tenure, recreate it, abolish it, or experiment with something new in its place. Read on to learn how tenure’s place in the academy is changing.

Section 1: New Tenure Models for Changing Times
Section 2: Financial, Political, and Equity Concerns
Section 3: The Future of a Beleaguered Institution

Date: August 2021
Pages: 92
Digital file size: 4.19 MB

The work may be purchased from this website. 

Whatever one thinks of these trends, the underlying values, and the premises on which arguments are made and narratives constructed, it is clearer now that the idealized university of the late 19th through the end of the 20th century is undergoing a transfiguration. And it is clear that in that transfiguration something has died and something else has emerged. From the outside little appears to have changed--it remains an institution into which young humans are inserted, and after a set period of time, they come out ready for insertions in wage labor markets; into elite structures of leadership, or into the political-administrative complex. The university has again become a place for elite training and socialization in preferred political values--in this century built around the ideology of social justice in liberal democratic regimes; development in post-colonial regimes; and a movement toward the communist ideal in Marxist Leninist states. Universities also continue to serve as spaces for the sort of technical training that is a necessary component for the operaiton of complex society. A place for everybody and everybody in their place. 

But the role of the faculty in this new environment remains contested. Perhaps the old ideal will continue to live in in that small space reserved for the self-preservation of the university "type" in the graduate schools where old fashioned values and 19th century sensibilities will be preserved to preserve the form of modernist principles for the production of knowledge. But even that can slip away to a very small segment of elite institution (returning to a pre-19th century model meant to preserve the distinctions of rank grounded in the forms of education available.  One sees a bit of that as well. Knowledge production and the arts are not inherently at home in the university--they could return to the monastery or the library (think tanks and civil society) or be embedded, again, within the research and development departments of large economic institutions--or it can all go back to the state.  Instruction could return to the tutor--a low status job reserved for lower order social classes (though the dissonance with social justice parameters may cause contradiction). And then there is technology--which is obsoleting both the utility of the university as a space for the amassing of knowledge )in libraries); or as a space for the transmission of knowledge through personal instruction. Dissemination as training or as political-moral instruction no longer  needs the ritual spaces of the 19th-20th century university.  The state, however, industry and civil society, may find it a convenient place to monitor and discipline both the producers of knowledge and its  consumers. It is not for nothing that the university has becme to a large extent a great laboratory of public and private compliance.  All of this requires human factor inputs; it does not require tenure or the freedom of otium (related to the Greek term σχολή (skholē, "leisure") necessary for an unsupervised and unguided  approach to knowledge production.

In the end one might better ask the question--is it the institution one should be worried about, or the factors in the production of knowledge and its dissemination? (Melissa Korn, Andrea Fuller and Jennifer Forsyth, "State Colleges Devour Money, And Student Foot the Bill," The Wall Street Journal 11 August 2023; p. A1; A9). )The latter is not inevitably toed to that quite interesting creature that may be the emerging modern university. That institution--bureaucratic, compliance oriented, output obsessed (in terms of fixed data based measures for knowledge production impact and rates of successful implantation of students into appropriate slots in the wage labor markets--is also at its most useful now as a space for the normalization of normative choices by those with the poser to impose them. But that has always been the case.  

Annuncement Upcoming Event: "Technological Platforms and National Security in Hong Kong: The Domain of Standards Setting" 25 August 2023 University of Hong Kong

 

 I am delighted to pass along the announcement of an upcoming event: Technological Platforms and National Security in Hong Kong: The Domain of Standards Setting. This event is co-organized by the Law and Technology Centre & the Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law.It will be held 25 August 2023 from 2.15 to 6.00 PM At the University of Hong Kong.  

More information follows including registration and program. 

 

An encounter with Jan M. Broekman, "Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation" (Springer Nature, 2023): Part 4 -- Chapter 3 "Post-Dialectics"

 

 To my great delight, I was asked to review Jan Broekman's brilliant new work, Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation (Springer Nature, 2023). The work is published as Volume 8 of the Series Law and Visual Jurisprudence, for which I serve as an Advisory Editor.

Knowledge in Change approaches ancient and perplexing issues of the organization of human collectives  within a rationalized understanding of the world in which these collectives function (exteriorization) and the investigation of the human individual as disaggregated components of that world of human social relations (internalization). These are usually articulated  by knowledge guardians as issues of phenomenology (a philosophy of experience; meaning through lived experience),

epistemology (theories of knowledge; the rationalization of reality) and intersubjectivity (shared perceptions of reality; the experience of knowledge as social relations, the rationalization of human interaction at every level of complexity). All of these currents and problems presume the humanity as the only or the central subject of interest. 

But the book does much more than that. It provides a basis for re-thinking the fundamentals of the way in which one understands the interface between humanity and its increasingly autonomous technology, and between the idea of humanity as innate in itself against the reality that the human may now be more intensely manifested in its interfacing with increasingly self-generative machine intelligence and the hardware within which it resides. The consequences for everything from philosophy to a philosophy of knowledge, to core insights for the organization of social relations within a world that is now populated by carbon and silicon based intelligence may be quite profound.  Human social collectives already fear and desire this new world--the engagement with artificial intelligence and its consequences is but a tip of that iceberg.  While humanity started this century secure in its conceit that it was the center of all things, by century's end a very different form of intersubjectivity may well be the basis of the ruling ideology for humanity within its natural and machine orders.

It is with that in mind that in this and several posts that follow I will review Knowledge in Change. This Part 4 examines Chapter 3 of the book, entitled "Post-Dialectics", and my own engagement with it.  

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The digitalization of knowledge, experience, consciousness, and sentience poses a great problem for the philosophy of knowledge. That problem is made greater by the expanded universe within which one encounters flow—among and between the self, selfie, Self-E. And at its base is the problem of communication –both between the analogue and the digital; but perhaps more importantly within the digital itself. Having worked diligently for millennia to get to the root of knowledge aligned with the communication of it—that is to align consciousness with sentience even within the universe that starts and ends within the physical self—philosophy is now confronted with the digitalization of all that effort. But this presents, as alluded above a double problem. Communication must bridge the analogue-digital divide. But it must first, perhaps, develop its own language within the digital. 

The generative problem for a philosophy of the conscious--and the sentient--remains. It revolves around communicative self-awareness but in both the physical and virtual worlds and between the self and the virtual self made in its own image , one that must be called by the name of the other. In the era of the digital, that poses a challenge, both as a matter of construction, and as a matter of its interface with the carefully structured governance structures of carbon based social relations. If the selfie/Self-E must be called by its name, how is that meant to be conveyed, and what, exactly is conveyed in that naming? To get there one must confront identity, and the objectivity of the self-E. But one must also confront the challenges of its communication through the now well worn self-reflexiveness of dialectics (in its broadest sense and with its broadest application to social relations). That, in turn requires a reorientation of communication from the static (particles, data) to dynamic (steps, data sets), and from an analogue (particles/steps) to a digital (data sets and iterative projections) orientation. But dialectics is a hard nut to crack; and its transposition to the digital becomes harder still.  Of the two problems, Broekman confronts the first--putting the self and cognition in motion through a developed evocation of a post-dialectics, a dialectics in motion that will likely play a central (though sub textual) role in the regulation of generative AI. The second remains a central problem--coding an ontology (first principles) on the nature of being coded which is itself the sum of the iterative subjectivity of its being.  

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Additional posts will consider each of the other nine chapters that make up this work. Links to the discussion of the book:

Part 1: Preface

Part 2: Chapter 1 (Minds, Moons and Cognition)

Part 3: Chapter 2 (Fluidity and Flow)

Part 4: Chapter 3 (Post-Dialectics)

Part 5: Chapter 4  (Flow and Firstness)

Part 6: Chapter 5 (Interludes: Changing Worlds Changing Words) 

Part 7: Chapter 6  ("The Non-Naïve-Natural")

Part 8: Chapter 7 ( "Plurality and the Natural")

Part 9: Chapter 8 ("Rearguards of Subjectivity)"

Part 10: Chapter 9 ("Conversions Convert Us All")

Part 11: An Epilogue (Chapter 9.5 ("Climate and Change")

Full discussion draft available for download SSRN here.

 

Camilo Arancibia, "El joven Nietzsche y la verdad en la enseñanza del Derecho: una aproximación," Iuris Dictio No 32 (July-December 2023)

 

It my great  honor to serve on the Scientific Advisory Board of the journal Iuris Dictio whose home is the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador).  It is one of the leading legal journals in Ecuador and the Andean region.  Its editor, Diego Falconí Trávez is engaged in expanding its international recognition.

For July 2023 the journal has started a program of rolling publication.  See here.   It has just published a quite interesting article as part of its July-December issue (DOI: https://doi.org/10.18272/iu.i32

Publicado: 2023-08-09; Miscelánea)

• El joven Nietzsche y la verdad en la enseñanza del Derecho: una aproximación

  Camilo Arancibia (Abogado, profesor de Derecho Civil y Derecho y Literatura en la Escuela de Derecho de la Universidad de Valparaíso. Máster en Derecho y Máster en Literatura. Doctorando en Filosofía por la Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Correo electrónico: camilo.arancibia@uv.cl. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7484-3068.)

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  Resumen: Uno de los campos donde el Derecho y Literatura se ha hecho fuerte es en la Enseñanza del Derecho. Las palabras de la ley, aquellas que aprenden nuestros estudiantes desde la dogmá-tica jurídica, son parte de un lenguaje que supone un paradigma jurídico que, a día de hoy, no es otro que el formalista. Ese lenguaje, llevado al extremo, se torna pétreo y hace que los conceptos del Derecho aparezcan frente al alumnado como verdades institucionales que él sólo debe aprender y recitar de memoria. Uno de los grandes problemas de esa manera de enseñar el contenido jurídico es que hace que el estudiante se olvide de lo que son las palabras jurídicas: frutos de convenciones legislativas y acuerdos políticos, mas no verdades científicas a descubrir. El gran impugnador de la verdad y el conocimiento es el filósofo alemán Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), quien en la década de los 70 del siglo XIX escribe los siguientes tex-tos: Sobre el pathos de la verdad (1872) y Sobre verdad y mentira en sentido extramoral (1873). En ambos se pregunta por el lenguaje y la verdad, realizando una crítica a la elaboración de conceptos, la actitud que promueven y el aislamiento de la ciencia al que conducen. Cree observar una salida al estado de las cosas recurriendo al arte. En este breve trabajo pretendo señalar que las ideas de Nietzsche pueden enriquecer la manera en que reflexionamos sobre las palabras de la ley entendidas como verdades en el aula. Palabras claveEnseñanza del Derecho, Lenguaje, Verdad, Dogmática jurídica, Concepto. 
   
  Abstract: One of the fields where Law and Literature has become strong is in the Teaching of Law. The words of the law, those that our students learn from the jurisprudence, are part of a language that supposes a legal paradigm that, to this day, is none other than the formalist one. This language, taken to the extreme, becomes rigid and makes the concepts of Law appear in front of the student as institutional truths that he only has to learn and recite by heart. One of the big problems with this way of teaching legal content is that it makes you forget that legal words are the result (among other elements) of legislative conventions, political agreements and that they are not scientific truths to be discovered. The great challenger of truth and knowledge is the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who, early in the 1970s, wrote two texts: On the pathos of truth (1872) and On truth and lie in an extramoral sense (1873). In both, he questions language and truth, making a critique of the elaboration of concepts, the attitude they promote and the isolation of science to which they lead. He thinks he sees a way out of the situation by resorting to art. In this brief paper I intend to point out that Nietzsche’s ideas can enrich the way in which we reflect on the words of the law understood as truths in the classroom.Keywords Law Teaching, Language, Truth, Jurisprudence, Concepts

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