cognition
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The Tuning-In Relationship (2023), Part 3
Here’s the part where the paper gets at least a little bit technical, as Schutz draws from Husserl’s account of the internal consciousness of time in establishing the tuning-in relationship at the heart of making music together. The implications for human social interaction in general, and for ethics in particular, are striking. In a nutshell,… Continue reading
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The Tuning-In Relationship (2023), Part 2
Picking up from the story of the young engineer who needed to find the groove of a fraught meeting at work, I turn to set up the main argument of my 2023 paper on music and ethics. The Tuning-In Relationship These reflections on the plight of the young engineer point toward the possibility that ethical… Continue reading
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The Tuning-In Relationship (2023), Part 1
A few years ago I finally made good on a long-ago promise to look into a possible connection – at least a parallel, perhaps something more – between music and ethics. In a 2015 post on teaching my older child how to drive, for example, I wrote: I picked up on the connection between music… Continue reading
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Transitory Places (2012), Part 3
The landscape of New Zealand is especially dynamic. The Karori Sanctuary in Wellington is caught in a kind of biogeographic storm pulling it on into the future even as its managers attempt to pull it back into the past. The possibility of an abrupt, radical transition in the landscape, even at a very short time-scale,… Continue reading
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Transitory Places (2012), Part 2
In this section, I develop on the idea that project may serve as a basic element of ethical inquiry, an idea in which I now have renewed interest. Following from my 2010 book, The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth, I connect project with place, with the twist that places tend not to remain as they have… Continue reading
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Transitory Places (2012), Part 1
To help trace the path from my earlier work in environmental philosophy to the present moment, I’m going to rummage around in the archive a bit to find and offer up serialized versions of some older papers and notes. First up is the final typescript of a paper inspired by moment from my time in… Continue reading
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On Sleeping through the Night, Part 1
Continuing the serialization of my recent manuscript – “On Sleeping through the Night: Ecology, Economy and Ethics of a Vital Human Project.” – with the first main section. 1. The Peculiarity of Sleep as a Project As far as we know, all – or very nearly all – animals spend some fraction of their lives… Continue reading
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Of Stone Tools and Sustainability
In some of my earlier blog posts I began to toy with the idea of exploring a parallel or an affinity between music and ethics. It’s not that music makes us ethical or – as Plato supposed – that certain kind of music might draw people toward virtue or toward vice. It is rather that… Continue reading