On Present Concerns

Jon Roffe, Dan Ross, George Vassilacopoulos

Three papers variously engaging in the possibility of new domains of thinking that canvas surfaces, eggs, AI, our technological milieu, as well as that of the gathering. This event stages an encounter between Jon Roffe, George Vassilacopoulos and Dan Ross, three thinkers and three live domains of thought. These three talks end in an open panel to talk through their differences, convergences and tensions. Proudly presented by the MSCP, On Present Concerns engages the at-times-disparate activity of thought and intricates three concurrent strands of philosophy in a local 'topos' of the whole.

Surfaces
Jon Roffe

God made solids, but surfaces are the work of the devil
- Wolfgang Pauli

First came the chasm
- Hesiod

The distinction between being and becoming has been central to the history of Western thought. In this paper, I would like to introduce a new distinction that perhaps deserves the same consideration: volume, or solid, and surface. I will begin by reviewing the history of the subordination of surfaces to volumes in philosophy and physics, before presenting some of the key features of surfaces that trouble this subordination. While this brief presentation will not allow a full inversion of this pairing - and a definition of solid as a particular state of the surface - I will present some indications as to how this can be accomplished. The paper will conclude with a consideration of the egg, which is a surface in the sense discussed here.


Erovoiding
George Vassilacopoulos

In my work I experiment with the idea of the philosopher enacting themselves as the one who responds positively to the question: ought we to think? My positive response engages the thinking practice of what I have coined erovoiding. As the bearer of such response the philosopher is at the intersection of another four related questions: what ought we to think, how, when, and where? Within this framework of questioning, they are addressed by the whole (cosmos and history) as erovoiding. Eros and void are the two elementary and universal orientations that in their various formulations constitute states of thinking. The philosopher then thinks as thought or erovoids as erovoided by the whole, always being situated in the gathering as gathered. In thinking by erovoiding, the philosopher becomes the gatherer of the whole.

Untitled
Dan Ross

AI’s recent explosive emergence seems to raise the prospect of a world where all our needs will be anticipated and taken care of. In what context should we reflect on this technological development? When one lives in a world plagued by the uncertainty of subsistence, what matters is to find food and eat. The more that uncertainty is taken care of, the more what we seek is no longer food, but the enjoyment of flavour. The more we are capable of doing, the more the question arises of what we want to do. To “want” is to know what to select, and therefore to have a criterion by which to judge. It is a question of desire. But desire is not natural: it has conditions, it implies a kind of energy, and it involves systems that circulate this energy while socializing and cultivating it. Today, we live within a system whose fundamental basis lies in stimulating and controlling desire in an industrial way, but this may be a system that destroys its own conditions. Can these technologies be harnessed to no longer systematically undermine the conditions of attention, knowledge, desire and flavour – and also of tension, considered as a virtue?