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Quote by James Conant

“There is no thinking the form of thought from outside of thought. This yields a very different understanding of why there is no position from which we can do something which can qualify as 'apprehending a logically alien thought ' - where this is supposed to qualify as doing something that is at the same time a case of apprehending that which we do in thinking and a case of apprehending a form of activity that is comprehensible to us, as such, only from outside (only from a position that cannot be available to us in and through engaging in that form of activity).”

Quote by James Conant

Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics

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James Conant

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“Thinking takes on first a conceptual, metaphorical form. Then a subjective, affective form. Then an animal, instinctive form. Then a reflex, automatic form. At that point, it is simply a function equivalent to the circulation of the blood and artificial respiration. Writing is the living alternative to the worst of what it says . There was a dramaturgy of art and language: transfiguring the real into lyricism and violence, giving history a heroic, bloodstained ending. It seems today that art and language have the opposite function of making everything conform to ordinariness: without end and without resolution.”

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“Lichtenberg speaks somewhere of the 'freedom to think, without danger, for the truth'. By this he doubtless understands the right of speaking the truth without the danger of being thrown into prison by the monarch. But if, by removing a comma, we read, instead, the freedom to think 'without danger for the truth', things become much more interesting. For then it becomes a question of the capacity to think without imperilling truth (without risk of unveiling it). It is no longer the freedom of thought at odds with power, but the truth itself at odds with the freedom to think. The whole relationship between thought and truth is at issue. There is a profound difference between the thought that wants to make truth shine out and the thought that wants to keep it secret. But you can also wish for both at the same time.”

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Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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“The conscious decision to make a movement corresponds to an electrical event in the brain that happens 200 to 300 milliseconds after the beginning of the movement.' 'The experience of free determination of the will is nothing but an awareness of past events projected into the future' (Atlan). This precession of the act over the will, of the movement over the decision is interesting. It is the very question of thought: is there, in thought itself, something that precedes thought? More broadly, it is the question of the world: is there, before the Big Bang, something that precedes the world? This enquiry is essentially metaphysical. No point falling back on 'neuronal electricity'!”

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Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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