Join Plato's Cave philosophers and Orlando Stoics on Zoom this Sunday morning, November 23 at 9:00. (Informal chat at 8:45)

Plato's Cave members can reserve a place and receive zoom login information on this site and by e-mail notice.

A link will be shared here and by message to members who RSVP.

*This Sunday: Language After Technology:
From Simulation to Liquid Meaning

*(be sure to check back before the meeting for any updates)

Description:
After examining Ellul and Baudrillard - both of whom lay out how technological mediation erodes authentic meaning and replaces lived reality with systems of signs - we next shift from language as technological artifact to language as a cultural-moral environment. Scholars Isaiah Berlin, Zygmunt Bauman, and Neil Postman, in different ways, focus on how language shapes the conditions of freedom, moral life, and public culture.

Berlin brings forward the problem of plural moral vocabularies and what is lost when conceptual diversity is narrowed or managed. Bauman offers a sociological perspective on the “liquid” character of contemporary meaning - unstable, rapidly shifting, and easily co-opted. Postman ties these concerns to media ecology, showing that every technological form generates its own epistemology and reshapes how public discourse is conducted.

Taken together, these thinkers allow us to explore how technological mediation does not merely alter what language expresses but transforms the very conditions under which meaning is created, contested, and sustained. This week, we will trace how plural vocabularies (Berlin), liquid meaning (Bauman), and media environments (Postman) converge to shape the landscape of language - one increasingly influenced by digital systems, algorithmic filtering, and AI-generated language. We hope you’ll join us this Sunday for this interesting discussion!

READING MATERIALS

Isaiah Berlin - The Crooked Timber of Humanity, opening essay, “The Pursuit of the Ideal” (1990)
https://isaiah-berlin.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-09/Bib.196%20-%20Pursuit%20of%20the%20Ideal%20by%20Isaiah%20Berlin_1.pdf

Philosophy & Intellectual Parricide - Isaiah Berlin & Bryan Magee (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCzqhWGJ1RU

Zygmunt Bauman - Liquid Modernity (2000)
https://easysociology.com/general-sociology/understanding-the-concept-of-liquid-modernity-in-sociology/
Or
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_modernity

Zygmunt Bauman. Interview from documentary. Liquid modernity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvfLpptUIh4

Neil Postman - Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly