Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on philosophy from the blog Base and Superstructure. My background is in academia, with a specific focus on feminism, philosophical issues in the social sciences, and social and political philosophy. I have also done work on historical figures such as J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. These posts incorporate some or all of these issues. The influences may be more or less explicit, depending on the topic. Philosophy can be intimidating, and so these posts present issues in a way that’s open to many people. There is also discussion of specific philosophical issues, and specific issues from a philosophical perspective, such as feminist accounts of pornography, Marxist and socialist accounts of the state and political economy, and the search for the best explanations for social and material phenomena.
Thanks to foodies, Epicureanism has been having a moment. We’ve got the Food Network, endless new restaurants serving up every flavor of hipster food, thoughtful reflection upon food, and a resurgence of everything from retro diners to creative new options for the wealthy elite.
It’s a great time to love food! And many of those who talk about food do so in terms of gustatory pleasure.
Thus enters the philosophy of Epicurus and Epicureanism.
Nathan J. Robinson wrote recently on AI and AI art in Current Affairs. His basic take? AI does lots of impressive things. But it’s not all that smart.
Robinson tried out AI art, ordering the AI to draw lots of things, even including a mimic of a Diego Rivera mural. It did competent and even interesting work. But it failed many times along the way. And nothing in the work stood out as particularly compelling or original. In my own opinion, most of it (and most AI art in general) looked like mid-level movie CGI.
And so, AI contains lots of technical prowess. But it’s not compelling, and it certainly doesn’t understand anything. It’s certainly not intelligent. And it’s work isn’t ‘good art.’
Robinson’s take is a sensible one. And, of course, it matches pretty well what I’ve said about AI in another post. Much like Robinson, I think the danger from AI come from its more run of the mill uses in automation than in all this nonsense about a ‘singularity’ or ‘super-intelligence.’
In short, Silicon Valley loves to talk a big game about moonshots. But it’s much more interested in eliminating jobs. That’s where criticism should focus.
In over 4 years of blogging, I’ve discussed lots of terminology, especially leftist terminology. I try to use terms in a consistent way that people within leftist debates understand.
However, like all analytic philosophers, I occasionally see the need to clarify terms. Some terms stand in need of tidying. Some of them a lot of it. Every now and then, I provide new (and hopefully better!) definitions for familiar terms. And at other times, I use more obscure terms, repurpose terms for new uses, or just create new ones.
And so, I find a need for a blog lexicon! I’ll use this post as an opportunity to collect lots of these terms in the same place. As a bonus, if I introduce additional terms in the future, I can add them to the lexicon.
In my very first post on this blog, I laid out for readers the Marxist term ‘base and superstructure.’ Lots of people new to leftist ideas could use a 101-level story about many of Marx’s key terms. And that especially goes for any term related to the analysis of economic relations over the course of history. In this post, I’ll approach the term ‘modes of production’ from a similar mindset.
Indeed, Marx didn’t just analyze capitalism and its social relations. He didn’t only talk about the transition from capitalism to a socialist society. He embedded all this within his broader theories of history. ‘Modes of production’ is a key term within Marx’s historical materialism.
So, I’ve been listening to (and greatly enjoying!) Mike Duncan’s podcast Revolutions. In particular, I’ve been listening to his series on the Russian Revolution(s). Along the way, Duncan provides a great deal of background on Marxist theory. That makes sense, given the central role Marxism plays in 1917.
Overall, Duncan very skillfully explains Marxism 101, especially thorny terms like ‘means of production,’ and so on. I’d recommend his podcast, along with my own tips for reading Marx.
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