Syntalk

syntalk

SynTalk thinks about the concept and process of ‘knowing’ and tries to understand ‘how we know what we know’. What is common knowledge (lokavidya), and is it largely phenomenologically acquired? If science is born out of common knowledge, then how do counterintuitive concepts come to be known? The concepts are​ derived​ off / from Kant, Marx, Pramatha Nath Bose, Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Poincare, Zilsel, Conan Doyle, Popper, Polanyi, D’Ambrosio, McLuhan, Gettier, Febvre, Needham, Ellul, Monge, Vance Packard, Chomsky, Said, and Kancha Ilaiah, among others. How do we really know today that the sun is in the centre of the solar system, & links with Sherlock Holmes, realism, & positivism. How keeping earth in the centre became mathematically unwieldy. What is knowledge, reason, belief, and Justified True Belief (JTB)? How did hierarchy set in between (say) pottery and weaving? Is cognitive differentiation produced via social differentiation of labour? What is the impact of loss of agriculture as a form of life? Does / how artisanal knowledge lead to abstract knowledge, and what is the interplay between theory and praxis? How does media decide what is worth knowing (agenda setting), and is the internet selfish with a will of its own? How technologies produce skepticism. Does something exist if it is not on internet and big databases (why grant patent for neem)? What is ‘generalized calculus of all curves’ a product of, and is mathematics also embedded within social norms? The new modes of production of knowledge. Does more information on candidates change voter behaviour? Will knowing remain ‘centered’? Will all knowledge become some kind of folk epistemology (with limited ethnocentrism?)? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Amit Basole (economics, University of Massachusetts, Boston), Prof. Dhruv Raina (history & philosophy of science, JNU, Delhi), & Dr. N. Bhaskara Rao (social sciences, media studies, Center for Media Studies, Delhi)

#TWOK (The Ways Of Knowing) --- SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about the power-ecology-knowledge triad with a certain anticipatory emphasis on ecology & modernity and their crises in a broad sense. The discussion attempts to understand each of the three concepts from the vantage points of the other two. The concepts are derived off / from Nietzsche (will to power), Mahatma Gandhi (swaraj, oceanic circles), Schumacher (‘small is beautiful’), Lovelock (Gaia hypothesis) & Isabelle Stengers (‘ecology of practices’), among others. What is soil to a farmer, and can soil be male or female? How / when did nature become natural resource? How a certain non-modern conception of ‘owning’ (of, say, land) go together with ‘owing’, and not remain linked to the concept of property. How the power (thought of as work done per unit of time) of modern & traditional industries differ? How is the non-natural linked to a certain power-led deviation away from equilibrium & ambient conditions? Power as the nature and manner of valuing & validation, and an ecology of practices. Does a certain Will to Power underwrite both natural and human forms? Is ‘symbiosis’ a possible thematic countertrend to the Will to Power? Are the paradigmatic logics of ‘social being’ and ‘dominant knowledge’ separable from each other? How the modern panchayat systems are different from the traditional panchayat system in its political structure? What is Radical Ecological Democracy (or swaraj, or sumak causay, or el buen vivir, or Solidarity)? The significance of endogenous modeling over (seemingly) indigenous ones. How some communities conceive of themselves as earth citizens (sharing the planet with ~50 million other floral & faunal species). Do we need a certain ecological reconceptualization to include the inanimate as well. How do we all fly planes in a sustainable world? The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Sasheej Hegde (sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), Ashish Kothari (ecology & conservation, Kalpavriksh, Pune), & Sunil Sahasrabudhey (philosophy, science, Vidya Ashram, Varanasi)

#TPEKA (The Power Ecology Knowledge Axis) --- SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about the phenomenology of getting an idea, and wonders about the fine ‘thinness’ of an idea’s form. We discuss lively, apt, inapt, frustrated, injurious, abstract, failed, & wrong ideas, and understand how an idea can sometimes (but only rarely) run away with reality. The concepts are derived off / from Plato, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Leibniz, Hume, William Blake, Peirce, Dalton, Mendeleev, Allama Iqbal, Tartakower, & Kasparov, among others. Are ideas always driven by a sense of necessity, and how necessity fundamentally deals with form (& not content)? Is the world of the sensible (matter) and the sensitive (mind) different from the (autonomous) world of ideas? Is the material world a corruption, then, of the realm of ideas? In what sense is the idea of (say) justice or table-ness enworlded? The modes of recollection, doubt, introspection, induction, deduction, or abduction. Why a solution or an idea sometimes hits one as a bolt out of the blue? Are problems also ideas? Why an epiphany can (& should) never last long? Does every idea start with an anxiety, and what is the (creative &) schizophrenic journey into the field of uncertainty? What is the granularity at which the mind operates? How blunders and combinations are all waiting to happen. Are bad ideas as rare as good ideas? What is the margin of lost memories (between remembrance and forgetfulness)? The interpretive act of rendering a poetry using melody. Can we formalize introspective rationality? Chess chunks and how expert level games are driven by pattern & experience recognition? What is the darkness of the infinite like, where one may be without an idea? The links between rabab, homeless king, Dervish dance, smothered checkmate, stylization, alaap, dreams, indrajaal, & fMRI. How the greatest empowerment (in any field) via any idea is being or momentarily becoming as large as the universe. How the likely long term change in the global political order might change the idea of an idea into one more experiential and less propositional. Does idea need to be liberated from underneath language? Is it fair to anticipate that much of human affairs in the future is going to driven by the new form of the ‘point’? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Madan Gopal Singh (sufi music, Delhi), Prof. Navjyoti Singh (philosophy, IIIT, Hyderabad), & Pravin Thipsay (chess, Mumbai).

#TFOI (The Firstness Of Ideas) --- SynTalk

Is babble the beginning? Are languages pure, or were they originally mixed? Was Shakespeare writing in English? Are languages negotiated like in a bazaar, & where then does the power lie? Are there areas & languages where mixing is flaunted, & some where it is not? Do you communicate in a mixed language (Hinglish?)? Does the label of language operate in a retrospective manner? What does it mean to have a first language? What does it mean to loan and borrow words? Do you pun? Do words travel more easily than syntax; why? Do scripts mix? Is it possible to legislate languages? Is the French of French Canada ‘purer’ than of France? Why aren’t other languages not completely incomprehensible? Is everything translatable? What might be the impact on languages of the disembodied global marketplace or the digital? Is it likely that the standardized language (of literature) in the future would (again) be poly-genealogical, & something that we would not recognize today? Can media or political spaces possibly be pluri-lingual? Can a totally artificial language be created? Do languages need custodians? Aapko space chahiye? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from linguistics (Prof. Probal Dasgupta, ISI, Kolkata), English literature (Prof. Jonathan Gil Harris, Ashoka University, Delhi), & translation and cultural studies (Prof. Rita Kothari, IIT Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar). Listen in....

#TMOL (The Medley Of Languages) --- SynTalk

How does rate of change change? Is equilibrium balance, & what happens when there is no balance? Is equilibrium attained when fast processes have done their job, and the slow processes have not started? Do all systems tend towards equilibrium? How are biological, physical, and economic systems different in this context? What would happen inside a closed box of Hydrogen atoms in (say) a billion years? Is equilibrium scale and time dependent? Is stability desirable? Is daily temperature stable on an average? Is graphite more stable than diamond? Is it possible to have stability far from equilibrium, & can equilibrium be unstable? Can prices be chaotic, & how does market achieve equilibrium? Can stability be thought of as, among others, constancy, persistence and resilience? Can ‘only’ one sub-market (or species) be out of equilibrium in a market (or an ecosystem)? What is the role of credit in creating (dis)equilibrium? Do predator-prey population sizes fluctuate naturally? Are buildings in local stable equilibrium? Will the world notice if all the human beings were to die? Is the ‘balance of nature’ strong or fragile or neither? Are there only local equilibria and ‘no’ singular global equilibrium? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from biology & ecology (Dr. Sutirth Dey, IISER, Pune), physics (Prof. Deepak Dhar, TIFR, Mumbai), & economics (Prof. Anjan Mukherji, JNU, New Delhi). Listen in....

#TIOE (The Instability Of Equilibria) --- SynTalk

Are there happy poets? Can one write poetry without having suffered (some) exile? Why has there been deep pessimism about poets, & might poets cause wars and genocide? How is deeply personal poetry dangerous? Does poetry represent perfect, universal and eternal truth? How is a poet different from a philosopher? Does poetry find its foothold in a good society, when philosophical truth is understood as a process, & not a product? How might limitless (anarchic) emotions be expressed given the limits of language? Can one ‘suggest’ that which cannot be written? How do ‘word’ and ‘meaning’ come together in poetry? What is the relationship between form and content? Is poetry a very personal use of language for the poet (and the reader)? What is the link between the ethical and the aesthetic? How might bhava become rasa? What happens the moment you come in contact with yourself? Is poem something whose essence cannot be removed from it? How & when do poems get exhausted? Should poetry be history? How did the ‘first’ poetry come to be? Is an exile always asked for? Might an exile be a voyage? Will ‘mistakes of intellect’ continue to happen? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from political theory & poetry (Prof. Ashwani Kumar, TISS, Mumbai), literature (Udayan Vajpeyi, Bhopal), & literary theory and philosophy (Prof. Sitanshu Yashaschandra, ex-M.S. University, Vadodara). Listen in....

#TEOP (The Exile Of Poets) --- SynTalk

Is Colin McKenzie for real? What cannot be faked? Are fakes lies? Can copies be more valuable than the original? What is the test of something being original? Is originality a fact? Is it culturally determined? What are the ethics and aesthetics of fakes? How and at what point do we know when an experience is not real? What about reality that cannot be experienced? Is seeing believing, or is believing seeing? Is ‘seeing’ always ‘seeing-as’? Why do some of us prefer artificial flowers over fresh flowers? Does the idea of the original always imply its opposite? What kind of objects can (cannot) have copies (originals)? Can there be fake words? Or chairs? Is the copy of a copy the copy of the same original? Can there be a fake documentary film? Are there false images for astronomers? How does science ‘handle’ reality? What are the (dis)similarities between archaeology, astronomy and film-making? Is most of reality constructed, and do we really know what reality is? Does reality always depend on the technology available? Do we ‘need’ reality? Can we live (largely) with hyperreal simulacra, & will reality be dispensed with in the long run? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Sharad Deshpande, ex-University of Pune, Pune), film-making (Nilita Vachani, Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), New York), & astronomy & archaeology (Prof. Mayank Vahia, TIFR, Mumbai). Listen in....

#TROTO (The Reality Of The Original) --- SynTalk

Do kids understand adults? Does foetus feel pain and pleasure? What does the world look like from the crib? Is the new born infant alert, aware & awake, & not confused? What are kids pre-wired for, & is pre-wiring largely genetic? Do we learn fear? Do new-borns get bored? How do children learn, and (what) do they need to be taught? How is grammar learnt? When do kids start becoming autonomous? Have you experienced the Terrible Twos? When does a child stop being a child? Is the concept of late childhood a product of modernity? Must adolescence be a ‘productive’ period? Do children have rights? What exactly is childhood ‘innocence’, & must childhood be valourized? Can some kids be unusually cruel? Is parenthood naturally anxiety inducing? Might the absence of disclosure of love for the child be a problem? What might indiscriminate ‘limit setting’ by parents lead to? Is it hard, however, to always be a calm carefree parent? How different and similar are kids from each other, & is it alright to compare them? What is the long term future of childhood? Should kids be free? Would the basis of innateness be established in the long term? Would such a world be dystopian? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from psychology (Prof. Malavika Kapur, NIAS, Bangalore), sociology (Dr. Shilpa Phadke, TISS, Mumbai), & developmental paediatrics (Dr. Koyeli Sengupta, Ummeed, Mumbai). Listen in…


#TTAGU (The Things About Growing Up) --- SynTalk

f(q) = Is soil a definitive sign of life? (#TCAFG)

SynTalk is a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective.