Getting Very Academic - CYBERPUNCTUM: Metaphysics of Cyberpunk

October 23, 2018 7:31 AM

From the Sublime Cognition conference in London, September 2018 If you're into Cyberpunk and academic inquiry, man is this presentation for you!

Here's how it opens:

At the heart of (post)cyberpunk lies a puzzle about belief. The Lockean belief in self-as-punctum (0-D object) from Taylor’s book Sources of the Self is here the origin of the concept; and the Lockean belief in the blank slate theory of human nature and property from the latter’s treatise on government. The self-as-map, invested in reductive Lockean philosophies (and to some extent critical of them), is bolstered by cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk sensibilities. Where Frankenstein is deeply critical of the Lockean paradigms of self and property, (post)cyberpunk in many ways capitulates or gives in to Lockean impulses that drive the paradigm.

posted by RickLiebling (2 comments total)

Ooohhhhhh this is pushing all of my geeky creative mental buttons. I would have loved to attend this conference!
posted by JohnFromGR at 8:49 AM on October 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is some real gobbledygook Timecubery. I was intrigued when I saw mention of Kripke... I wondered how the author would bring philosophy of language to bear on cyberpunk. It sounded cool. But there's nothing there. It's all just free association based on a few Kripkean terms.
posted by painquale at 12:20 PM on October 23, 2018