Philosophy Now Forum

When my father, process philosopher Ralph Pred, died over two years ago, he left behind an unfinished manuscript: Syntax & Solidarity. Without the knowledge or credentials to complete it myself - and uncertain what else could be done with it - I’ve posted it online under a Creative Commons attribution license here:

http://www.syntaxandsolidarity.net

The home page provides a more thorough introduction, but a brief synopsis might go something like this:

What if the most intractable problems facing humanity today could be traced to assumptions hardwired in the syntax of modern western language? Technology has a recursive effect on culture, and syntax is the linguistic technology that structures our relationship with the world: distancing subject from object while shaping the contours of our conscious and unconscious experience. Given the advances in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience in recent decades, who’s to say our ancient syntactic technology isn’t overdue for an upgrade? Is it possible to jailbreak our syntax with a better world in mind? Easier said than done – but these are the radical concepts at the core of late process philosopher Ralph Pred's unfinished manuscript, Syntax & Solidarity.

I hope some of you here on this forum might find the work interesting. Some of the later more skeletal sections are a bit of a puzzle - perhaps a puzzle worth solving.

Hi onflow,

I read first two chapters and then - interested in what kind of language he would suggest - lurked the last one and found it unfinished. Could his syntactical ideas be found somewhere? He definitely was going to publish them; I'm not sure if the book is worth to be published without them.

His text is easy to read if one is somehow familiar with the subject. I deduce (by the reference list) that in the next chapters he discusses the subject from different viewpoints. I don't think if I mind reading them without knowing his final ideas.