SynTalk

Are you addicted to snake poison? Or gambling? Are you an alcoholic? Have you quit smoking? Why are cigarettes so popular? Why are slot machines more addictive than games of skill? Why are we addicted to anything? Is there a threshold? Are some of us (genetically) more vulnerable than others? Is an addict always aware that she is an addict? Does addiction always have both ‘loss of control’ as well as ‘potential to harm’ components? Can we be mistaken about the (subjective) experience of our own bodily sensations? Is addiction always a desire for certain kinds of sensations? What precedes the craving? Are addicts price sensitive, & do they respond to financial rewards? Does tobacco tax work? What if the substance is not available? Is it always irrational to be an addict? Can one avoid severe depression via addiction? Are hardcore addicts different? Is their ethical vision deeply skewed? Might brown sugar and alcohol addicts look down upon each other? Why does relapse happen? Is it tough being an addict? Is our concept of addiction going to expand in the future? Will addiction always be there, or does it depend largely on the environment? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from behavioral economics & philosophy (Prof. Harold Kincaid, University of Cape Town, South Africa), psychiatry (Prof. Shubhangi Parkar, Seth G.S.M.C & KEM Hospital, Mumbai), & philosophy (Dr. Kranti Saran, Ashoka University, Delhi). Listen in....

Is 100% memory loss possible? Is the past ‘preserved by itself, automatically’? Is the notion of decay linked intimately to the concepts of order and memory? Does life grow towards order, even as physical systems go towards disorder? Does maintenance of order require a significant amount of energy? Is there a fundamental unit of order? Are rituals (say) the work required to reproduce social order? Is anomie or agonism the opposite of order? Is too much cohesion also a symptom of decay? Do systems decay when they go ‘out of context’ vis-à-vis the neighbours? Is memory the sense-organ to perceive time? Why does a fly develop a complex memory for a life of ‘just’ 1-2 (human) days? Do life-forces wax & wane? Are there different forms of decaying? Can some systems self heal or (erroneously) self destruct? Are perpetual systems possible? Do automata (or, human beings) always display highly rule bound behaviour? Is physical immortality (with selfhood) technically possible? Can machines introspect? How do you prove that you are not a machine? Why is it that some trees do not seem to ever die? Are myths ‘more’ futuristic? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from neurosciences & psychiatry (Prof. Sanjeev Jain, NIMHANS, Bangalore), computer science (Prof. Madhavan Mukund, CMI, Chennai), and anthropology & philosophy (Dr. Bhrigupati Singh, Brown University, Providence, USA). Listen in...

Does Mowgli have fun? Why do we crack jokes? Why are spoofs enjoyable, & is having fun, fundamentally, an act of subversion? Does having fun require us to be innocent ‘fools’? Is fun the basic objective of human existence? What is it, then, not to have fun? Is it a fact of human existence that most of the time we are not having fun? Is pain the (obvious) obverse of pleasure? How can tragic spectacles be pleasure producing? How can an expression of sorrow, such as Blues, be enjoyable? Does the idea of fun primarily come to us in retrospect? Is having fun in the present often a contrived and laboured idea? Is the idea of fun intimately linked to the notions of spending, forgoing, & forgetting? Must fun be ethically driven? Why & how can (say) a musician sometimes refuse to entertain? Why do there exist self inflicting pain systems? How is the ‘crucified’ the model for human excellence? Why do musical concerts work, & can fun be manufactured formulaically? What is it to be an individual in a rock concert? Does one need the Other? Can ‘pure’ fun be utile and essential? Is the idea of life before marketplace the idea of innocence? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions under the metonym of fun using concepts from literary & cultural theory (Prof. Saugata Bhaduri, JNU, New Delhi), music (Vehrnon Ibrahim, FreeWillMusic, Mumbai), and poetry & film (Prabodh Parikh, ex-Mithibai College, Mumbai). Listen in...

How do chicks fly back to Africa on their own? Is recognition merely re-cognition? What are the different mechanisms for differentiation? How do (say) most new-born insects recognize objects without any social support? How, besides sight and sound, odour-mediated recognition plays a special role in several species? How there is a lot of consistency with smell. We journey into the world of both precocial and altricial species and wonder if the ability to recognize may be both innate and learned. How do unhatched chicks communicate with each other and their mother? Does a life form have the option to not know? Can animals identify that which their nervous system does not allow them to identify? Do brains process information from the environment in a non-linear way? Can one recognize that which has not been experienced before? How the North American apple flies were set up to love apples even before apples were there? How do starlings recognize each other in a murmuration of almost a million? Does time need to be continuous (& finite?) for recognition to make sense? Does knowledge consist in knowing what a thing is not? Is identity always ecological? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from chemical ecology (Dr. Shannon Olsson, NCBS, Bangalore), philosophy (Prof. A. Raghuramaraju, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), and ornithology (Dr. Asad Rahmani, BNHS, Mumbai). Listen in....

Is 2+2 inevitably 4? Is it grue? Is it true? Is it true that facts do not live on their own? What is The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages? How logic chases truth up the tree of grammar? Is truth the same across languages? If we used different languages would the facts be different? What comes first: truth or meaning? Is every sentence true or false? Does truth always have the IF-THEN structure? What can computers not prove, & why? What the nature of logic and probabilities does to the notion of truth, & how there need not be one logic? Can there be heuristics of ‘interestingness’ when forward chaining for a proof? Might all mathematics be done by proof checkers and Automated Theorem Provers (ATPs)? What is a candidate for a conjecture? Why is logical contradiction the ultimate no-no? Why is stock market news more difficult to write than Shakespeare, for a ‘Bayesian-monkey’? ‘Tell me what you are interested in, and I will tell you what the truth consists in’. Do (?) counterfactuals change the world by a very small amount of information? Or, does nature provide the regularities, and we provide the causal theories? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Simon Blackburn, ex-University of Cambridge, Cambridge), computer science (Prof. Paritosh K. Pandya, TIFR, Mumbai), and mathematics (Prof. Rajat Tandon, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in....

Do you feel at home? What is the other of home – the world? We think of home variously as culture, a memory, an identity, a language, a terrain of materiality, a landscape, the zone of affect, an idea, a gharana, & a family? How the sense of belonging (to, say, a gharana) has nothing to do with place? Have all homes been founded on the basis of some principles? How is the notion of home different for the refugees and the diaspora? Can you carry your home with you? Why do we need a home, & can one make multiple homes? How ideas, often, have multiple homes. What happens, however, when a certain musical tradition (a home for some) is appropriated by the market economy? What is the home of Hakuna matata? What is the significance of land, & where our ancestors might be ‘buried’? We also explore, using the Israel/Palestine case & other instances of settler colonialism, whether it is possible to have a home without a homeland. Is home where we can debate, converse and have access to new ideas? What is the future of gharanas? Does the future of home lie in creating an equilibrium between difference and similarity? Finally, are we all merely nomads? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about the past, present & the possible futures of homes, using concepts from literature (Githa Hariharan, New Delhi), social sciences & philosophy (Prof. Shail Mayaram, CSDS, New Delhi), and music (Vidya Rao, New Delhi). Listen in....

Do you hate beggars? Can one think of the above-below topography using both perspective as well as relationality? Is there an invisibilisation and dispersal of the hegemons? What does it mean to be at the very bottom? Is there a social responsibility of capital? Why does the below always have a hidden character, & why is there no giving of dignity to a full corporeal person? Why does a musahar woman own a broken-up dis-assembled bicycle? Are we as a society actively at war against the destitute – why? Are we actively creating destitution (& dispossession)? Is there always a dialectic unity between prosperity and misery? Who is the primary client of the state? How do you view taxes? Do we need to identify with the below? Is it possible to lose the above below through a new imaginary? What are the limits of solidarity? Is solidarity expensive? Why do moral arguments have so little traction? What is the universe of those with whom we are willing to share? Why are there The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas? It’s all the same people, right? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about destitution in a general sense, using concepts from human rights (Harsh Mander, New Delhi), social anthropology (Prof. Shalini Randeria, The Graduate Institute, Geneva), and social theory & literature (Prof. Kumkum Sangari, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee). Listen in....

Are you angry? Do we have a terrible love of war? Is it possible to think of violence without the teleological means-end schema? Why don’t we have a phenomenology for it? Is it because violence is the ground shared by enemies? Why don’t we manage to look inside ourselves for the source of violence, and often project it on to the Other? Why do even the worst of perpetrators represent themselves as being the victim? Does violence lie at the end of speech? Is today’s victim tomorrow’s offender? Do shame and humiliation turn us towards violence? What then is the agenda of punishment? How can we open up the victim’s silence? How can we access the scene of violence? Is the aggressive drive essential to human survival? Why do the under-trials expect the Judge to at least hear them out? Is hatred a revolutionary sentiment? Does militarism (love for war?) run across modes of production? Is crime (merely) an act by which one runs the ‘risk’ of taking punishment? What is the future of the act of policing? What is the distinction between violence and brutality? If violence becomes increasingly non profitable in the future, might society then need to invent violence for ethical reasons? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about the nature of violence, using concepts from criminology & justice (Prof. Vijay Raghavan, TISS, Mumbai), philosophy (Prof. Sanil V., IIT Delhi, New Delhi), and history (Dr. Dilip Simeon, ex-University of Delhi, New Delhi). Listen in....

What comes first - matter or space or time? What is the structure of space? Why did Paul Cezanne go 'flat'? How did Picasso turn the artistic conception of space on its head with cubism? Is there a link between colour and space? What is it like to be in Matisse's The Red Studio? What happens when you walk into a room that you have not been in before? Are there specific neurons in your brain for every space that you have ever been to? How do place cells within the hippocampus represent the physical space as a cognitive map? Is space the same everywhere in the universe? Is it possible to represent empty space? How does an artist create the pictorial space on a 2-dimensional canvas? Is the perception of space always relative to matter (& objects)? Is episodic memory anchored in space (the 'where')? What is space like at sub atomic scales? Does nature really have more than 3 dimensions? Has theoretical physics completely missed incorporating gravity of all the matter in the universe? Is matter essentially primary, time derived, and space essentially relational? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about the manifested space around and within us, using concepts from physics (Prof. C.S. Unnikrishnan, TIFR, Mumbai), art (Atul Dodiya, Mumbai), and neuroscience (Dr. Sachin Deshmukh, IISc, Bangalore).

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SynTalk thinks about the provocative questions of spectres, spirits, & ghosts, as themselves and as signifiers, while constantly wondering if they are an unnecessary residue. Can we think of the repressed voices in places of violence and ruin, using ideas of ghosts and haunting? What is the thing that haunts? What is the big deal about the ghosts? The concepts are derived off / from Plutarch, Ludwig Lavater, Thomas Lodge, Shakespeare, Nicholas Rowe, Heidegger, Freud, Weber, Adorno, Levinas, Tagore, Amos Tutuola, Derrida, Kurosawa, Arjun Appadurai, Stephen Greenblatt, Jean-Michel Rabaté, & Avery F. Gordon, among others. How the juxtaposition of the familiar with the unfamiliar creates the uncanny? Would something entirely unfamiliar be uncanny or just plain strange? Can the spectral be defined at all? How hauntology potentially challenges ontology? Do ghosts represent a world order where things are not arbitrary, and where actions have repercussions? How Shakespeare added a sense of wonder and mystery to the figure of the ghost, & made it substantial. Is Shakespeare’s Hamlet a Protestant with a Roman Catholic father? Should Hamlet have followed what the Ghost said? Are ghosts almost always ethically haunting figures? How the Derridean ghost is a bodyless body, and not a spirit without a body? Is every sense of our Being always haunted (with Nothingness)? How time is ‘out of joint’ with the ghostly. Does the uncertainty of the future always unsettle the past? Does modernity render the unexplainable superfluous, & what then are the ghosts of modernity? Is the cinematic consciousness ultimately a very spectral consciousness? What has been the life of ghosts in (say) Indian, Japanese, & South East Asian cinema? Why do Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists always see more than the others? Can a hyper rational mind experience the spectral? The links between Ur-Hamlet, 49, temporal twist, Macbeth, trauma, Hiroshima, turning table, purgatory, Madhumati, goblin, witches, The Babadook, spectral housing in Mumbai, magic, white noise, & Bhooter Bhobishyot. How the ghost expresses the yearning to grasp the mystery of history. Can we get hold of the Levinasian ‘trace’? Are there cultures without ghosts? Would our (otherwise sterile) lives need the pollution or infection of other worldliness in the future? Is it almost impossible to live without ghosts? ‘Can we speak of ghosts, without transforming the whole world and ourselves, too, into phantoms’? ‘Even if they are no longer, even if they are not yet…’. The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Shormishtha Panja (Shakespeare studies, literature, University of Delhi, New Delhi), & Dr. Suvadip Sinha (philosophy, cultural studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities).