In this course we follow a track from Bergson through Whitehead to Deleuze, paying special attention to the concepts of time and the virtual, before turning to consider the question of time in Einstein's physics, as interpreted on the one hand by proponents of the static universe from Kurt Goedel to Julian Barbour, and on the other as interpreted by proponents of the ontological reality of time, such as Eric Lerner, Lee Smolin and Alexander Unzicke. Along the way we attempt to make clear the connection between the doctrine that mathematics is ontology with the so-called simulation hypothesis, and also entertain Wittgenstein's idea that ethics, aesthetics (and by extension the politics of decolonialization) can only be addressed indirectly by being shown rather than said.
I gave a background lecture for Melbourne's Existentialist Society to serve as a general introduction to this course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZM25bql8zM
Lecture One - Beginning Bergson: analogue AND digital: or, why we were already virtual.
Lecture Two - Bergson continued.: or, how intelligence was always artificial.
Lecture Three - Bergson continued: creative evolution and virtual duration.
Lecture Four - Deleuze on Bergson: or, the cinematographical mechanism of thought and the mechanistic illusion.
Lecture Five: Time and the virtual in Deleuze's Cinema.
Lecture Six: Growing time crystals: chronosigns, lectosigns, noosigns.
Lecture Seven: From Bergson to Deleuze via Whitehead: or the nativity of the continental/analytic divide in Bertrand Russell's attack on Bergson..
Lecture Eight: Alfred North Whitehead - ways into Process and Reality via The Principles of Natural Knowledge and The Concept of Nature.
Lecture Nine: Whitehead's Process and Reality.
Lecture Ten: Cosmology and/as Theology: Whitehead and Spinoza.
Lecture Eleven: Prigogine's Being, Becoming and Chaos.
Lecture Twelve: Constructing temporary finite transcendences on the infinite plane of immanence.
A concluding "Close Parentheses" lecture is scheduled for the Existentialist Society on the 1st July, to be available here: https://www.youtube.com/@existentialistsociety8453