Clerestory (Bryan Kam)

Mental Proliferation, with Isabela Granic

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Episode notes

Part 6 in a series of interviews on the book I'm working on, Neither/Nor. In this episode, ⁠⁠⁠Isabela Granic⁠⁠⁠ asks about the Buddhist term "papança" and how it relates to anxiety and depression.

Topics discussed:

• The meaning of papança or ⁠Conceptual proliferation⁠
• Whether this proliferation is related to rumination, anxiety, and depression
• Historicization of translations
• How to deconstruct terms
• Comparing conceptual evolution with biological evolution
• Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer on definitions
• The two directions of dependent origination
• How and when to do conceptual genealogies like Nietzsche
• Metaphors as newly coined versus worn-out coins
• The increasing abstraction of the past few thousand years
• Mental proliferation within a single mind
• The resistance to abstraction by those who don't live in the built environment (Luria)
• Individualism in Montaigne and Fichte
• The issue of "obviousnesses" in Althusser's Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

Previous episodes:

• Part 5 of this series: Crises and Revolutions
• Part 4 of this series: ⁠Language and Experience⁠
• Part 3 of this series: ⁠⁠AI and Pyrrhonism⁠⁠
• Part 2 of this series: ⁠⁠⁠A Philosophical Journey⁠⁠
• Part 1 of this series: ⁠⁠Causality and Conditionality⁠⁠

Clerestory by ⁠⁠⁠Bryan Kam⁠⁠⁠ • Infrequent updates at ⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠ • All my work plus exclusive content at ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠

Show notes

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