Transcendental Stupidity
One of Deleuze’s most prescient insights was that the major problem of thought is not error - mistakes, untruths, and falsities taken for facts - but triviality and arbitrariness. Thoughts which do not respond to any necessity, which are not motivated by the milieu in which they come to be:
"Teachers already know that errors or falsehoods are rarely found in homework (except in those exercises where a fixed result must be produced, or propositions must be translated one by one). Rather, what is more frequently found—and worse—are nonsensical sentences, remarks without interest or importance, banalities mistaken for profundities, ordinary “points” confused with singular points, badly posed or distorted problems, all heavy with dangers, yet the fate of us all.” (Difference and Repetition)
Unlike errors, which can always be corrected for, and are thus ‘extrinsic’ to thought, the trivial and the arbitrary are instead ‘internal’ to thought itself; Thought, to the degree that it can think anything it wants without motivation, is always in danger of triviality, which cannot simply be corrected for by providing more facts and better resources. It is this internal and intrinsic danger of thought that Deleuze dubbed ‘stupidity’: far from being a lack of intelligence, stupidity is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent:
"Mature, considered thought has other enemies [than error]; negative states which are profound in entirely different ways. Stupidity is a structure of thought as such: it is not a means of self-deception, it expresses the non-sense in thought by right. Stupidity is not error or a tissue of errors. There are imbecile thoughts, imbecile discourses, that are made up entirely of truths.” (Nietzsche and Philosophy)
This is thus a theory of transcendental stupidity: a stupidity not owing to empirical errors, able to be corrected with a good encyclopaedia, but a stupidity built-in to the nature of thought itself, belonging to it ‘by right’ (de jure) and not ‘by fact’ (de facto), and as a condition of thought ("it is only by extracting itself from its own torpor that thought can cease to be stupid” - Miguel de Beistegui), and not merely an external impediment to it (much like Kant’s own theory of transcendental illusion). Much of Wittgenstein’s work can be seen as an effort to combat this kind of transcendental stupidity, although his concern found its locus in language rather than thought.
To clarify then, it's not that any one person or set of people in particular are stupid (which would be an empirical determination of stupidity), so much as it is that transcendental stupidity is a condition of thought that belongs to the very capacity to think. Moreover, if attention is not properly paid to this inherent structure of thought, much of what we say and think will not merely be wrong, but much worse - transcendentally stupid.
"Teachers already know that errors or falsehoods are rarely found in homework (except in those exercises where a fixed result must be produced, or propositions must be translated one by one). Rather, what is more frequently found—and worse—are nonsensical sentences, remarks without interest or importance, banalities mistaken for profundities, ordinary “points” confused with singular points, badly posed or distorted problems, all heavy with dangers, yet the fate of us all.” (Difference and Repetition)
Unlike errors, which can always be corrected for, and are thus ‘extrinsic’ to thought, the trivial and the arbitrary are instead ‘internal’ to thought itself; Thought, to the degree that it can think anything it wants without motivation, is always in danger of triviality, which cannot simply be corrected for by providing more facts and better resources. It is this internal and intrinsic danger of thought that Deleuze dubbed ‘stupidity’: far from being a lack of intelligence, stupidity is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent:
"Mature, considered thought has other enemies [than error]; negative states which are profound in entirely different ways. Stupidity is a structure of thought as such: it is not a means of self-deception, it expresses the non-sense in thought by right. Stupidity is not error or a tissue of errors. There are imbecile thoughts, imbecile discourses, that are made up entirely of truths.” (Nietzsche and Philosophy)
This is thus a theory of transcendental stupidity: a stupidity not owing to empirical errors, able to be corrected with a good encyclopaedia, but a stupidity built-in to the nature of thought itself, belonging to it ‘by right’ (de jure) and not ‘by fact’ (de facto), and as a condition of thought ("it is only by extracting itself from its own torpor that thought can cease to be stupid” - Miguel de Beistegui), and not merely an external impediment to it (much like Kant’s own theory of transcendental illusion). Much of Wittgenstein’s work can be seen as an effort to combat this kind of transcendental stupidity, although his concern found its locus in language rather than thought.
To clarify then, it's not that any one person or set of people in particular are stupid (which would be an empirical determination of stupidity), so much as it is that transcendental stupidity is a condition of thought that belongs to the very capacity to think. Moreover, if attention is not properly paid to this inherent structure of thought, much of what we say and think will not merely be wrong, but much worse - transcendentally stupid.
Comments (99)
"... remarks without interest or importance", what a load of supercilious bullshit.
This rings quite true after my several years teaching academic English, essay writing, research and the like. Thought tends to follow the path of least resistance. Factual errors were certainly relevant, but what I was looking for was evidence of structure to thought, a systemization that showed evidence of both absorption of information and organized implementation of it. What I often got though was a disorganized "picture of thought" as if students believed their impressions of what I was trying to impart could simply be regurgitated on the page and it was up to me to reinterpret that back into some properly organized whole. There was a lack of application of thought to thought, and what I tended to be given back was a filtered version of what I gave out rather than a positive transformation of it. I guess the natural form of thought acts to filter input and reproduce partial or degraded impressions rather than to create anything of interest or importance.
Quoting Pseudonym
Why?
I don't doubt your capacities as a teacher to spot such occurrences but it may also be the case that the integration/systematization took place internally yet they lacked the linguistic capacity to follow on through. It is often mistaken that people who can't speak well don't think well. Fascinating you say this though, ive always wanted to hear such a perspective.
Yeah, I often imagine thought as a kind of gear or series of cog-wheels, ones with spokes and teeth, and thought - proper thought - being a case of engaging the whole apparatus (in the sense of a meshing or 'catching' of one gear on another in concert), transmitting torque from one end of the machine to the other; And conversely, I think of the kind of cases you describe are when the gears spin-out, catching only here and there, or engaging the wrong kind of differentials for all the varying parts in motion: this latter is transcendental stupidity.
Yes, though it was part of the job to try to disentangle those two things as you mentioned. Linguistic errors (unless they obscured intent) were precisely from my perspective (along with factual errors) the lesser kind of errors identified by Street above. It was very difficult sometimes to see the semantic wood from the linguistic trees though. You hope after a time as a teacher you have a sense for that.
Isn't that one of the main points of Kant's demonstration of the antinomies of reason? (which you refer to). 'Kant believes that it is part of the function of reason to strive for a complete, determinate understanding of the natural world. But his analysis of theoretical reason has made it clear that we can never have knowledge of the totality of things because we cannot have the requisite sensations of the totality, hence one of the necessary conditions of knowledge is not met.' And as many have pointed out, there are many convergences between Kant's antinomies and the undetermined questions in Buddhism - about whether the world has a beginning in time or not, whether the Buddha exists after parinirvana or not, and so on.
In both systems there is recognition of the inherent limitations and contradictions of thought. But they're also both concerned with transcendent truths; Kant's concern is ultimately 'God, freedom and immortality' and the Buddha with transcending the endless cycle of samsara.
So, while I agree that there is 'transcendental stupidity', there might also be transcendent realities, about which stupid things are said. 'There would be no fool's gold', as the saying has it, 'if there were no gold'.
This immediately makes me think of Australia's new PM's making loud noises about the need to legislate religious freedom. Under questioning he's been made to admit that there is no social problem that currently needs solving in this regard. Yet he ploughs ahead, justifying it on the basis of a need 'to prevent future problems arising'.
I would like to call this transcendental stupidity. But actually it's quite a cunning way of dog-whistling to religious bigots, that he will seek to restore the permission to discriminate against others that they used to have before the introduction of anti-discrimination legislation (which in most cases is at least a couple of decades old).
The only necessity to which this line of thought responds is the necessity of avoiding or lessening the electoral annihilation that is approaching for his government.
Right! And just how do you tell when the machinery is working properly? This looks like a simple-minded "perfect health" type fallacy. You can blithely use this fallacy to dismiss any "transcendental thinking" you don't personally like as "stupid", "trivial', "insignificant" or "irrelevant". Looks like fascistic thinking gone nuts to me...
Dismissing the results of thinking without analysis just on the basis you don't like them would be an example of the type of thing that's being objected to. Plus, @StreetlightX posited the metaphor (which I happen to think is very apt) in response to the example I gave. So, your simply not liking the idea and dismissing it out of hand as "fascistic" and "nuts" without even considering the example or making a serious attempt at your own analysis serves more as an illustration of the point than a criticism of it.
I wish!
- And conversely, I think of the kind of cases you describe are when the gears spin-out, catching only here and there, or engaging the wrong kind of differentials for all the varying parts in motion: this latter is transcendental stupidity.
I think this would work as an analogy for faulty reasonning, where we feel for example that our thoughts are consequent to one another while it would become very clear, if they were exposed to critique, that they do not. Same thing if we arrive to a conclusion by invoking at each step of the reasonning some completely otiose proposition.
When you speak of transcendantal stupidity, what comes to my mind is the disconnected yet complementary nature of truth and sophistication. An answer can be true, and yet be entirely so vulgar as to be less compelling than a known lie. A sophisticated falsehood might actually be the best tool at hand to deal with how we relate to the world (in my case I always come back to how filled with fictions and falsehoods the legal system is, and how better off it is for it).
I would be incapable, right now, to explain in further detail what this sophistication consist off. Immediately we'll have to deal with accusation of elitism and bias if we are to advance that some truths might be indeed true, but still objectionable on the basis of specific transcendantal characteristics. Regardless, I think that 'transcendantal stupidity' remains an important area to uncover, especially in our current, increasingly-divided political climate.
Perhaps a start would be to suggest that the cause of this peculiar form of stupidity is a form of ontological cecity? Being blind to certain facets of a truth still allows you to present this truth as true, but your presentation cannot equal that of someone who wasn't blind to those same aspects...
It also strikes me how the last thread on baseless speculations and the BIV offers us an example of said transcendantal stupidity. Please dont ban me, I'm not calling anyone stupid, just saying that some people in it argued from a position which seemed to fall under the currently investigated domain.
Having to mount serious intellectual defenses against every baseless speculation encountered seems both counterintuitive and counterproductive. You should not feel compelled to offer a serious rebuke to a string of non-sensical sounds, why should you act differently simply because in another occasion you are offered a proposition which can be interpreted in your language?
Baseless is not wrong, per say. You could inadvertently stumble upon the truth. But if your arrival there was baseless, then you remaining there is equally so. Someone who argue from baseless speculation wont hold the truth for long before he trades it for some new shiny falsehood. Baseless is unhygienic. Its bad praxis.
Finding a new answer out of question always steps beyond speculation. People ahem to commit to a position. The new answer involves taking: "XYZ is the case" rather than being impaled on the face crying out: "It might so. I might not be so" ad nauseam. Baseless speculation doesn't even get is to the point of holding a truth. It just praying to a possibility of being wrong, like it would save you from some terrible life circumstance.
There is no coincidence in baseless speculation having almost exactly the same form as the God of Gaps.
The very idea of a perfectly working machinery of thought is inherently fascistic in my view. If someone offers an analysis , then any criticism of it should address the errors and or untruths in it, and not simply arrogantly dismiss it as insignificant, irrelevant, vacuous, trivial or whatever. Along the latter way lies the tendency to fascism and political correctness (which is really fascism in disguise) inherent in the worst forms of postmodernist thought.
It takes no account of the function of such thought to the individual. At best it's an honest mistaking of the personal certainty one's brain delivers about one's own structure of thought for some universally applicable structure, but at worst it's just another thinly veiled attempt to create a method of vituperating the thoughts of others in a way which itself remains immunised against criticism purely to maintain a social position.
Last week it was everything is just maps, none more true than the other, only judged by their own internally specified purpose. How judged? Well, anyone well-read enough simply 'knows' which ones are good and which aren't. Before that it was everything is just frames to view things through, none more true than any other only judged by how useful they are. How do we know how useful they are? Surprisingly again, it's just some mystical knowledge imparted to those allowed into the illuminati. Now, the new replacement for 'true' is interesting and organised. How do we judge what's interesting and organised? Oh, quelle surprise it's just something some of us 'know'.
These are all just methods of maintaining the social status of a group of people by creating an artificial membership criteria. We can allow in whomever we want and exclude whomever we want because the criteria themselves cannot be challenged. It runs through the arts, and most of philosophy. The positivist turn made a good attempt to weed it out, but look at the at passion with which that was put down. No philosophical movement has been so roundly condemned as the one which threatened to make it possible to to externally validate arguments. Support the Nazi party and you'll be forgiven, suggest that there might be an objective method for validating philosophy and you're excommunicated.
How does any of this relate to the example, which was pedagogic?
You should quote the OP because this seems more about your objections to Street and postmodernism in general than anything he wrote here. For example, what's decribed, "a stupidity built into the nature of thought" could hardly be more democratic. And if someone were to use this idea as a cudgel for an ideology, they'd simply be being hypocrites in an amusing way. Maybe this makes particular sense to me as I've been a teacher, but the idea here also seems intuitively obvious, and some of the responses overly defensive and presumptuous. Maybe, it's just the terminology used or even just the person who wrote the OP...
Christ, if we banned everyone who did that, we'd hardly have two members left to rub together to spark an argument... :grin:
Yeah - the idea takes inspiration directly from Kant, for whom the antinomies were direct products of reason themselves, and not merely some external impediment to their usual functioning. It's arguable that this in fact was Kant's greatest contribution to philosophy - in locating thought's own incapacity within thought itself, in the form of transcendental illusions, rather than assuming that - as with Descartes, say - that thought 'naturally' seeks out the known (what Kant called the 'speculative interest of Reason' was checked at each turn by the possible 'transcendent exercises' of the faculties in their 'illegitimate employment').
This of course I disagree with. As with Kant, the 'gold' is just... thought.
I thought I had quoted the OP (or at least the Deleuze quote within it). It's pretty unambiguously saying that teachers find remarks which are uninteresting and that the lack of interest to the teacher has some significance beyond that teacher's personal preference. This fairly clearly raises the teacher's personal interests and their own systemisation to a level of universality without any evidence presented as to why this should be the case.
The fact that you find the idea "intuitively obvious" pretty much says it all. It 'seems' right to you, so it is right and anyone who sees things another way clearly must be wrong.
Quoting Baden
How do you see this as democratic. Who's doing the judging about which expositions express this base stupidity. Is it being done by vote?
Quoting Baden
Give me an example of someone not using the idea as a cudgel for an ideology. Again, it's just seeing what 'seems' right to you as being obviously right in a universal sense. What you, and those who share your views, espouse is simply 'the truth' and everyone else is promoting an 'ideology'. Postmodernism is an ideology, relativism is an ideology, the belief in an academic system is an ideology, the belief that one can even 'teach' English is an ideology. None any more so than any other construct we create to define the world.
Hah, yeah, as much as it would be nice to think this is a stupidity endowed with philosophical significance, this is a nice example of a speech-act distinctly motivated at every level.
Really? Are those thoughts determined to be 'transcendentaly stupid' being decided by vote now? I think I must have missed the opinion poll you circulate before declaring ideas to be fundamentally wrong.
You really can't though, not if you understand it, and if you're honest about it. You ask how we can tell if a machine is working properly: well, machines do things, they have ends towards which they work, and if you farmiliarize yourself with a machine, you can see how effectively it runs: you may not like the work it does, you may disagree vehemently with the ends to which it is put, but that dislike should not translate to thinking that it does not work.
I think Plato is full of shit, for instance, but I don't doubt for one second the power of his work: the distinctions he draws, the ramifications he pursues on the basis of them, the vibrancy of the conceptual ecology he develops - one would be hard pressed, once familiar with the work, to call it transcendentally stupid. Or at least, it would take a great deal of further work and engagement to make that case. @Akanthinos is right that the danger of this kind of critique being wielded in an elitist, arbitrary way is a real one, but of course, if one is consistent, arbitrariness is exactly what this kind of critique aims to forestall.
No, I already gave reasons why it fit with my experience of pedagogy. See my first response.
Quoting Pseudonym
The word "democratic" doesn't apply exclusively to elections. I'm using it here in its senses of 'common/shared/available to all' etc.
Quoting Pseudonym
Anyone who can think.
Quoting Pseudonym
See my original example. To expand, when judging academic English essays, for example, we look for evidence of thought based on standardised criteria, which are systematised beforehand, continually monitored and peer-compared, and integrated with our intuitive judgements (based on experience) on how well the student has absorbed and reorganised the information learned in combination with their own pre-existing knowledge and skills. The idea that we judge simply on the basis of what 'seems' right or feel we are promoting some universal truth as opposed to everyone else's ideology is bizarre.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, that's just a belief. Is it something you doubt?
An ideology is a system of beliefs that guides behaviour, particularly in opposition to reasoned judgement, and particularly as a basis or framework for a political or religious movement. There are different philosophies, or ideologies if you like, behind different pedagogical approaches, and the whole unversity system is ideologically based in a broader sense, but within that framework sound and reasonable judgements can still be made concerning quality. To claim that they can't would be analogous to claiming that we can't make sound and reasonable judgements concerning each other's posts here on this forum, and can just retort to every criticism with "well, that just seems right to you".
Exactly. It fit with your experience. Do you really believe that what you were identifying in those essays was something universal as opposed to your own personal preference. Your "evidence of a structure to thought" was simply evidence of a structure you recognised. Your "evidence of... organized implementation" was simply an organisation that you understood. Now obviously as an intelligent adult teaching children, that which you recognise as structure and organisation is quite likely to represent a greater level of consideration than your students, but this cannot simply be presumed to be true for anyone who's had the time to organise their thought, especially about subjects like philosophy and arts.
Quoting Baden
But it's not 'common/shared/available to all' is it? That's the point. The point is Deleuze's insight isn't 'transcendental stupidity' itself. We're all supposed to sit up and take notice of his ideas, he's risen above the plebs with their uninteresting thoughts. Those of us who are teachers no longer are blind to the lack of insight suffered by the hoi palloi, we can 'see' what is organised and what is not. Its not the realisation that thought is messy if untrained that's undemocratic, it's the implication that a self-immunised selection process can identify the rare few who sit above such lowly vices.
Quoting Baden
Back to the self-immunised selection. Who are those who can think? The ones who give the answers you think are right, of course.
Quoting Baden
Quoting Baden
So what do you think your 'intuitive judgement' is other than what 'seems' right? How would you distinguish those two concepts, because they certainly sound similar enough to me not to be labelled 'bizarre'?
Quoting Baden
Yeah, basically that is what I believe to be the case absent of some specified utility to which the thought is put the achievement of which is empirically verifiable.
No, it wasn't. You give the impression you don't understand how teaching, particularly of university-level academic English to non-native speakers, as was my case, works. There's a whole field of educational theory relating to ESL that's been developed and refined for over a century, but particularly in the last fifty years (and specifically pertaining to academic English in the last thirty or so) that gets implemented and is monitored and standardized as part of a system that aims at having some level of objectivity (not that it doesn't have problems, of course). I've alluded to that already. And that forms a framework within which some level of subjective judgment is applied (as it must be).
So, when you say my "evidence of a structure to thought" was simply evidence of a structure I recognized, on one level that's trivially true: By definition, we can't identify something we don't recognize. But the obvious mistake is to draw the conclusion from that that the identification is based simply on "personal preference". It's about as sensible as saying interpretations of arguments concerning the origin of fossils or the cause of climate change just involve personal preferences because those making those judgments are only identifying structures of thought they recognize. It's at best fuzzy thinking and at worst an open invitation to and encouragement of pseudoscience.
Quoting Pseudonym
Why post then if your position is it's impossible to judge the difference between a good and a bad argument on its own terms? Incidentally, going back to the example, English language ability has obvious utility and the results of teaching are empirically verifiable according to internal and external criteria, so even in accordance with your conditions as set out here, your criticisms appear to fail.
(Quoting Pseudonym
Don't know if this is fundamental to your position, but it should be clear from what I wrote that I wasn't teaching children, I was teaching adults in university. When it comes to teaching children, especially young children, judgments concerning quality of thought can be much more fraught wirth difficulty and there is more of a danger of getting it very wrong.)
But your argument is the one that's self-immunizing by continuously conflating any form of judgment with personal preference.
Quoting Pseudonym
But I already explained that in the case under discussion that intuitive judgements occur in a context in which they are intregrated into a system that is standardized and monitored and based on educational theory not to mention the individual's experience in the field, so it's not simply a case of what seems right. As if we were talking about completely arbitrary judgments. That is what is bizarre. You have to justify your decisions with reference to rubrics, marking criteria, external examiners and so on. If teachers just did what feels right, results would show a lack of consistency and that would have to be dealt with. And individual teachers can and are identified and retrained if necessary if they do this.
Let's just say - because I have no desire to talk about brains in vats - that the idea for this thread did not develop in a vaccum. :eyes:
Quoting Akanthinos
Yeah, I think this is important to acknowledge: to recognize motivated and non-arbitrary discourse is not to pit it against truth; the point is rather to make truth do work, to give truths a discourse or set of discourses in which their significance and impact could be rightly assessed. Absent this, truths are simply homeless, their significance unassailable and closed to rational engagement. Those who think that truth and falsity exhaust the means of evaluation undermine truth itself: they sap the very ground from which to understand the significance of truth - they are relativists pretending to be otherwise.
There's a fundamental difference between the "origin of fossils and the causes of climate change" and something like philosophical propositions. The theories about climate change or fossil origin are based on empirically verifiable evidence, they both ultimately rely on something which we widely agree on the measurement of and (if they're good theories) they will make predictions which we widely agree on the measurement of. The 'rightness' of a theory about bridge-building is attested to by the ability of a bridge built according to that theory, to hold traffic. No one watches it fall down and claims it a success, no one believes that bridges are 'supposed' to fall down, that being the aim all along. To be honest, teaching English as a language falls more into this camp, the ability to correctly use terms being somewhat widely agreed on. But no similar wide agreement exists for arts and philosophy. There are those for whom Shakespeare does nothing, there are those (Schopenhauer comes to mind) for whom Hegel wrote nothing but mystical nonsense). Any idea that someone can recognise quality thought in these fields by some universal metric is clearly nonsense.
I've no doubt at all that there is a body of work supporting the theory behind judging ESL success. Not having read any of it, I wouldn't presume to comment on it so will confine my comment to a theoretical example.
Who is it that will have developed and refined it, and by what measure will they have identified a need for refinement? What would it 'not working' look like such that it could be recognised as being in need of refinement? If any of these things involved some external empirical fact, then it falls into the camp of fossils and climate change, if all of these considerations are measures 'in house' by a group whose membership criteria consist solely of being judged by the very metrics they're supposedly refining, then the whole system is self-immunised almost by definition.
Quoting Baden
Why I post is a long answer most would be entirely uninterested in, suffice to say it is not with the intention of persuading others by virtue of the universal quality of my argument. I'd have thought five minutes spent reading the threads here would be enough to convince anyone of the futility of such an enterprise.
Quoting Baden
I'm not seeing how that makes it self-immunised, perhaps you could expand on this.
Quoting Baden
None of this prevents it from being simply a case of what 'seems right'. If you create a group of people, the selection criteria for which is agreement on a particular intuition, then ask them to collaborate on a standardised theory, you will end up with a theory which expresses exactly the intuitions the holding of which was a selection criteria for the group in the first place.
Get a group of people together who all like red and ask them to come up with a method of judging colour, they will collectively come up with a system which puts red at the top.
Quoting Baden
Yes, basically I do not see a method for discerning that which is not 'transcendentaly stupid' in fields such as art and metaphysics which does not simply reinforce the subjective views of a particular group.
That's a strawman. We all know there's a difference between science and the arts in terms of empirical verification etc. The analogy I was making was based directly on the pedagogical example given, but more importantly on the recognition of the difference between arbitrary judgment and critical analysis as carried out by anyone seeking to recognize poor thinking of the sort here dubbed "transcendental stupidity". Do you recognize the distinction or not? (Judging from what you wrote, I guess not.)
Quoting Pseudonym
We're already veering off topic, and going into the specifics of pedagogical theory would be taking it too far (and I have my own off-topic criticisms of that in any case). Again, the fundamental distinction between arbitrary feelings and critical identification of poor thinking at some level is all I intended to get you to recognize.
Quoting Pseudonym
I don't see the attraction of a philosophy forum for you then. The interest for most people here is, I would suppose, in making exactly the kinds of judgments you seem to deem impossible.
I am sensing an impasse here...
Edit: Put it another way, a lower level of certainty does not indicate complete arbitrariness or a waste of time. The interest is in finding platforms of rationality on which to raise the limited level of certainty the fields in question provide.
The relevance of that division is not the empirical vetification (that is simply the definition of the division) it is who is doing the verification. The significance is that an aspiring engineering student, or a user of engineering can both see for themselves that their theories (or those they make use of) are better than those which are discarded. Only the engineer might understand why the bridge stays up, but anyone can see that it stays up and that it is intended to do so.
So what differentiates philosophy (of this sort, T-philosophy, as Horwich calls it) and fine art, is not that only the experts are able to judge why the theory works, but only they are considered able to judge that it works.
To reiterate (perhaps labour) the point. No one sane is going to accept a bridge which does not transport something across a gap without collapsing, they do not need to be told they are wrong to accept such a product, it is self evident. If someone wishes, however, to talk about the idea that we might be brains in a vat (the topic which, let's face it, prompted this latest version), they must be told that their ideas are 'transcendentaly stupid' it is not self evident because they simply don't work, so if they're not poor because they don't work, then why are they poor? All that seems to be left is that they do not fit an arbitrary set of judgements. I don't see the fact that this set of judgements had been long-ruminated on being a saviour of its authenticity.
Basically, I get that you're trying to describe a distinction between arbitrary personal judgement and critical identification of poor thinking which is not yet as objective as empirical vetification. What I don't get is what makes you think that. What structural or empirical basis are you using to determine that such a process is possible, because it sounds like just wishful thinking.
Quoting Baden
One of my academic interests is in how people hold and defend belief, particularly in relation to group dynamics. I think my interest here should be obvious from that without me having to spell it out? As to the interest of most people here, I would say the empirical evidence on group behaviour very much opposes your view. Most people are here to reinforce beliefs which confer membership of the social group to which they wish to belong.
Not at all. I think the judgement of argument can be made on its effect. If I wish to argue that eating pigs is wrong, the success of my argument is clearly how many people stop eating pigs. Judging philosophy itself, however, (by which I presume you mean judging philosophical propositions, not the subject as a whole) has not similar consequential measure. I suppose if the purpose were to popularise one's idea, then it's popularity might be s measure of its quality, but you'd have to specify a timescale. What it seems most people within these fields want to do is measure it by some intuitive sense of 'rightness' held by those who've been taught to 'see' it. I have no problem with measuring things by their similarity to an intuitive sense either. This is how folk art is measured, and to a great extent ethics, even logic and maths, as Ramsey later argued. What I dislike is the second half of that proposition. That the judgement is only carried out by those who've been taught how to 'see' it. This creates nothing but a self-immunised system of judgment. Of course it will create the appearance of consistentcy because the membership criteria in the first place require that you agree with the very criteria by which you were admitted.
Quoting StreetlightX
Guess I'm not in the group then?
It sounds like you're asking how any judgment of quality of argument that's not empirically verifiable is possible. And then asking for an empirical verification to show that that's the case! But your criticisms of my argument already presume you're acting on the same presumption I am, and know the answer. The structure is at base, the structure of reason, which undergirds empirical verification in the first place.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well, I disagree. I think most people come to a philosophy forum primarily to do philosophy. And empirically based results, for example, a poll alone, won't definitively decide the answer. Theory, reason, and critique of thought would come into play.
Anyway, I think we are at an impasse because you don't appear to want to explicitly accept regular terms of rational engagement which require us to critically analyze each other's posts in order for the conversation to be of any intellectual value. If we really are just pointlessly talking at each other in order to reinforce our beliefs and membership of etc., I suppose we've done enough of that. Really though, I think you're taking a grain of skeptical truth and trying to make a loaf out of it.
This of course is the false choice I was speaking of. And to frame it as a matter of 'in-groups' and 'out-groups' - as if it wasn't the case that literally anyone can assess arguments in a way that doesn't conform to your fake choices - even you(!), even though you seem constitutively incapable of acknowledging it at an explicit level of discourse - well, that's just more silly talk. An attempt to give moralist cover to your own incomprehension.
I did offer a structural option too. Basically anything other than just hoping it's the case. I'd expect to see either some empirical evidence that the judgement of the philosophical community (or any part of it) is more than just shared opinion, or some structural reason why you'd reasonably expect it to be.
Quoting Baden
Maybe, but if it's so, then it is at a level that is inaccessible to both of us to nor anyone yet in history. If arguments were judgeable by reason at a level we all had access to, then why would they literally all remain unresolved? If the discussion we're having now, the arguments we're presenting, could be analysed by reason, and one or the other found wanting, then would not all such arguments have submitted to such analysis by now. It is clearly either not something subjectable to reason or something the subjection of which to reason is far too complex for the human mind to do.
Quoting Baden
Well then you're far less cynical than I am.
Quoting Baden
How convenient. Another belief inpenetrable by empirical evidence.
Quoting Baden
I didn't say that. Claiming that chess serves no universal purpose is not equivalent to saying one does not wish to play chess.
Just to circle back to this because I think it's important to address - as I said to @Akanthinos, there is no disjunction between truth and significance: in fact, a truth matters to any given subject matter to the degree that it has bearing upon it. This is hardly a radical sentiment! And in fact it's basically a tautology - a truth matters when it matters, and not all truths mattter in the context of addressing any particular problem. Again, if this somehow counts as 'fascism' at work, then you've stripped fascism of any coherent meaning.
Now, one of the few points I'm trying to make is simply that the index of any truth for any particular problem must belong to the problem itself: to understand a problem, to flesh it out, is to know, minimally, what kinds of things bear upon it, what belongs to its scope and what escapes it. This is a minimal condition - not of philosophy - but of any dialogic situation: "how are you?" "I'm a human being": the minimal, positive discrimination that we make that allows us to respond "what are you talking about?" is just the condition of rational exchange. In fact we take it so much for granted that we barely notice it because we are, for the most part, enculturated humans who know how to use language.
Thought, of course is simply no different: even to "address the errors and or untruths" in an analysis is to judge that those truths or errors as relevant to begin with: it is the very constitutive condition under which we are able to 'address the errors and or untruths' - we address them to the extent that they are relevant. To speak of transcendental stupidity - a provocative name for a rather mundane capacity that seems to have bunched up a few pairs of panties - is to simply make explicit a danger that we address - albeit mostly unconsciously - in all rational dialogue.
In fact, the reason that pedagogy is placed front and centre in the OP is that it is precisely in explicitly pedagogic situations that this danger is most obvious: in pedagogical situations, we face contexts where we have not learnt our way about, where the contours of what is and is not significant and relevant are brought most sharply into focus. It's a common trope that master mathematicians are and can be in fact awful at what a school student might consider 'math': the mundane calculations scribbled in lined paper books; but of course what makes them masters is their knowledge of the mathematical landscape: of what techniques might be brought to bear on a particular problem, of what theorems to call upon when faced with such and such an issue - and importantly, of what approaches not to take.
The only thing 'postmodern' is the radically stupid idea that anything goes, that anything is worth addressing, and that each and every mundanity is worth its weight in gold. To say that there are errors other than at the level of facts, that one can make mistakes of sense and significance is simply to make explicit what is implicit in all rationality, and to draw attention to it. To do otherwise, well, that is relativism, that is where one loses ones power to discriminate and otherwise engage in what literally is transcendental stupidity.
But if it's a condition of thought, the advice is to make note of inherent inefficiency? Ok, but impractical musing is fun and sometimes profitable.
As is playing in the mud, occasionally.
Absolutely, I don't think anyone's denying that.
Quoting StreetlightX
Again, I don't see anyone denying this either.
Quoting StreetlightX
Once more, I don't hear anyone trying to argue otherwise.
So, the bit you've glaringly missed out, which is where the rather sensationalist comparison to fascism comes in is the bit where you additionally claim that a certain group of people just 'know' which truths matter to which subjects, that they just 'know' what the index of truth is for each problem, that they just 'know' what is worth addressing and what is not. And not just know in the vague sense of someone clutching at some intangible feeling, not know in a collaborative sense where mutual agreement is sought, but know with sufficient certainty to dismiss out of hand, belittle, and occasionally just downright insult anyone who dares to think otherwise.
Quote me or buzz off.
Did you not devote quite a bit of your life to playing in the mud?
Math propositions are the same.
The unknown proposition is a side effect of realism.
If I can be so intrusive, I'd recommend listening to Manuel De Landa's lectures on Youtube. De Landa sees things from a very Deluzian perspective, but his lectures are far less dense than reading Deleuze (or Deleuze and Guttari).
"What is true or false is what human beings say; and it is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but in forms of life".
The first sentence is wrong. If I agree with you, it's not with the words you speak that I agree. It's to the content of your speech. That content we call a proposition. The same proposition can be expressed by multiple groupings of words. So we know a proposition is something other than words.
The second sentence is quasi-mystical. He's saying that the whole is in the part.
There's no doubt that our conversation is meaningful only in the light of a broader form of life. Only someone also immersed in that form would be able to grasp the proposition you express by your speech.
Nevertheless, your speech does have content (unless you want to argue behaviorism and say that it doesn't).
I think "the words you say" is equivalent to content here. What we say doesn't have any relevant meaning outside the context of our language. If I am thinking "about what you say," I'm considering the context of your speech, the meaning ("what") as uttered by you ("you say" ). If we agree, it is with the words we say.
The issue is that agreement about content propositions is not really what's at stake in disagreement. We aren't moved to disagree by whether we agree with context of other speech. We are moved to disagree on account of life itself. On the grounds of how the world which is not a language act is reflected or not in the content of our language.
Our world does not speak our language. We speak the language of the world. When speaking a truth, our language reflects the meaning of the world. If we speak falsehood, the language in the world (ours) fails to speak language of the world (the meaning of the things we speak about is missing from our language).
OK, then maybe I misunderstood you. Are you saying that being "transcendentally stupid" consists in starting with some set of premises and then failing to make any (or many) of the significant connections, or explicate any (or many) of the relevant concomitants, within the context of those premises? Just a kind of poverty stricken, lame account, like a limping engine. A failure of the understanding and the creative imagination, and not that particular sets of premises are transcendentally stupid? Something like that?
To clarify, I would have thought that what you were saying would not have allowed you to say both that "Plato is full of shit" and that Plato is not transcendentally stupid, but if you can say both of those things, consistently with what you are trying to say about transcendental stupidity, then it appears that I have indeed misunderstood you. :smile:
Is it? It's in Miami. Do you agree?
Good thing the sentence doesn't even mention the word 'words' then.
Quoting frank
Good thing that your paraphrase is entirely off-base then.
Yes, but perhaps a tad bit more radical. I don't see it as a two-step process - first, a premise, then failure to make connections, etc, etc. It's more that a premise may not even be one to begin with if, 'in-itself' it is not properly articulated: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Make all the connections you like, but the starting point itself is compromised, right at its heart.
Quoting Janus
To say Plato is full of shit but not a transcendental idiot is simply to say that not all disagreements resolve into transcendental stupidity. There can be substantial and interesting disgreements between positions which are motivated and non-arbitrary; none of this disqualifies that.
Quoting StreetlightX
He implies that the discussion in another thread about the BIV hypothesis is transcendentally stupid:
Quoting StreetlightX
I deny that the discussion is transcendentally stupid. In that thread, I explain that the technical and admittedly abstract and fantastic discussions about the BIV hypothesis are part of a long historical project to construct a worldview accepting only what there is some good reason to accept. The BIV hypothesis plays a prominent role in that tradition. In fact, I'd say that since Descartes hypotheses of that sort have been a vital part of the methodology of those engaged in such a project. But then, if so, discussions about BIVs are not "arbitrary" and they [i]are[/I] "motivated by the milieu in which they came to be". That just leaves the charge that the discussion is trivial. If you think the project of building a worldview that there is good reason to believe is trivial then you will find BIV discussion trivial as well. For my part I don't find it trivial and so I conclude that such discussions are not transcendentally stupid.
This brings us more directly to the issue of transcendental stupidity itself. As has pointed out well, the notion is at least partly subjective. In calling an idea or discussion "stupid" in this sense, Streetlight wants to imply that his target is [I]not worthy of discussion[/I] - that it is "trivial". There are two points worth noting here. First, that an idea is being interpreted in a way which is "not motivated by the milieu" which gave rise to the idea does not entail that the new interpretation is trivial and uninteresting. New interpretations can be interesting too, depending on audience. Second, and more importantly, what you find trivial, unimportant or not worth discussing I might find fascinating and vital, and vice versa. You might insist that I am just wrong - that there is an objective fact of the matter about what is worth discussing and my ideas are not. I find such a view quite hard to comprehend. What are the truth-makers of these facts, and how does one discover them? I do not see how calling an idea transcdentally stupid is anything more than a fancy way of saying that you do not like certain topics, and adding the - in my view fantastic - idea that the capacity to discuss topics which you don't like is woven into the nature of human thought itself.
Still, the idea of transcendental stupidity is itself an interesting idea.
PA
"There are two opposed types of stupidity. The first is the (occasionally) hyperintelligent subject who just doesn't "get it;' who understands a situation logically, but simply misses its hidden contextual rules. For example, when I first visited New York, a waiter at a cafe asked me: "How was your day?" Mistaking the phrase for a genuine question, I answered him truthfully ("l am dead tired, jetlagged, stressed out..." ), and he looked at me as if I were a complete idiot ... and he was right: this kind of stupidity is precisely that of an idiot. Alan Turing was an exemplary idiot: a man of extraordinary intelligence, but a proto-psychotic unable to process implicit contextual rules." (Zizek, Less Than Nothing).
It's also necessary for determining what proposition is being expressed. If John says: "That is illegal!" I have to put myself in his shoes and see what he sees in order to understand him.
It's a fine point, but it's important: propositions aren't context dependent. They can't be because multitudes can express the same proposition. Grasping [I]what[/I] proposition was expressed does necessarily require familiarity with context of utterance.
Lol.
I thought that was what was going on too, but it seems I was mistaken. @StreetlightX does not think Plato (although "full of shit") was a transcendental idiot, for instance.
It's not a matter of metaphysics! Metaphysics is awesome - if, as with anything, it is approached with caution and finesse.
Real gold. ;-)
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting frank
Well, you see, ... propositions are usually context-dependent. So much so that it's almost a law. More or less everything is context-dependent. So when you say "propositions aren't context-dependent", the most likely interpretation of what you say is that it's a joke, and so we laugh. That's what's funny. Your joke. :wink:
Me too! I have always :heart:-ed metaphysics.
I have rarely seen such a well-worth-reading post. :up: Thank you.
Consider the proposition that two is greater than one. Could you explain in what sense you take that proposition to be context dependent?
In this case, the context is mathematics, and the axioms associated with number theory. :roll:
"2" referred to the US. "1" referred to Australia. The greatness spoken of was moral fortitude.
Why did you think the context was math? Stick with me. I'll get you straightened out. :wink:
Dewey's writing is rather dense as well, I must say.
It's his views on education I thought of in reading the OP. That and his theory of logic, or inquiry.
As to Stoicism, from what I read Deleuze addresses it extensively. So, again judging only from what I read about him, did Foucault.
Let's go back to the space delimited for transcendental stupidity. "One of Deleuze’s most prescient insights was that the major problem of thought is not error - mistakes, untruths, and falsities taken for facts - but triviality and arbitrariness." Would it make sense for StreetlightX to state that that the whole of ancient metaphysics must be condemned in this light? I don't think so, if only because triviality and arbitrariness doesn't come close to qualify properly the underlying attitude behind Plato's works, or really that of any other ancients. I agree that Plato is "full of shit", in the sense that it would very hard for me to find something to which I can give my unreserved assent in his entire body of works. But you couldn't properly qualify those falsehoods as "trivial", they were the first (available) attempts at laying down the grounds that would later allow for empirical knowledge to take over. They weren't trivial if only because they carried an extra weight as point of origin for all further philosophical discussions in the Western world.
If we expand a bit, we can question if any philosophical position, in the current academic curriculum and in their historical development, would fall under the charge. I think the closer we go to "pop philosophy", the closer we get to a point where this charge is effective. Stoicism and Scepticism in their ancient manifestations were serious enterprises, trying to come up with effective means of relating to a reality which had only moments earlier been brought up to consciousness (historically speaking). On the other hand, when we see nowadays young students adopting an affected yet unmotivated stoicism or scepticism, we are closer in my opinion to transcendental stupidity. There is a blindness to context at play here, or even a willful ignorance.
Yep, none of this has anything to do with metaphysics in the slightest. That said it's worth reflecting on the specificity of the 'transcendental', which has basically nothing to do with Plato or even the 'transcendent' (despite people constantly and mistakenly mixing up the two entirely unrelated terms), and everything to do with Kant: for Kant the transcendental was that which guaranteed the necessity of thought - that is, the non-arbitrariness of thought; the transcendental was invoked and invented by Kant as a specifically anti-sceptical device which was meant to make sure that thought was always thought of that which could be known, and not just, well, anything whatsoever (figments of imagination, etc, etc).
Now while Kant is full of ambiguity on this point, one essential discovery was that there were experiences where this guarantee could be broken: experiences where thought did not conform of its objects, becoming untethered to them and generating 'transcendental illusions'; these illusions were generated internally by thought itself, precisely to the degree that were not anchored in an object which would lend these thoughts the force of necessity that would relate them to something concrete in the world. The notion of transcendental stupidity is simply an extension and renovation of this Kantian idea, one oriented not toward truth, as in Kant, but toward significance: a question of relating thought less to an 'object' than to a problem. So yeah, the question of metaphysics here is almost entirely irrelevant.
I'm still having a hard time expressing a proper delimitation for the concept. So, instead of being the negative of Kant's guarantee against the arbitrariness of truth determination, which I guess must translate in a priviledged access to the transcendental object by the philosopher?, we would be talking about the negative of a guarantee against the arbitrariness of meaning creation?
I have a rather base example that I wish to have you examine, if only to help me see if I understand the concept well enough to recognize it in a specific context. Lets say a discussion thread were to emerge on the subject of IQ differences amongst preconceived racial groups, its social impacts or remedies or whatever horrible thing sure to follow such a subject. Even if it were discussed however seriously or factually by standard generic users of TPF. Would it be correct to say that such a discussion, regardless of how it is conducted, would be essentially transcendantally stupid if only because the vast majority of users would not meet the prerequisite experiential baggage to speak meaningfully in that conversation? That we have no access to its object, or only a skewed, arbitrary one?
Yeah, actually, this seems like a good way to put it: there is no guarantee that thought will hew closely to the significance of a problem.
I'd hesitate to answer this in the abstract (i.e. without an actual discussion to refer to), but to lay down a basic distinction, if it was just a case that people are not getting the facts right (they are unfamiliar with what the science says with respect to race and IQ, or whatever), then this would not be a case of transcednental stupidity, insofar as what's going wrong is going wrong on an empirical level; a minimally decent discussion would be at the very least getting the facts right (there's a similarly veined thread atm on the disabled and evolution - while I think the thread is pretty abhorrent, it is so largely because of its egregious misunderstanding/mischaracterization of evolution as a science: it's just flat-out stupid!).
On the other hand, there might be a question regarding the conceptual articulation between race and IQ: that is, what kind of concept is race, and what kind of concept is IQ, and what is the right way - if any - to think about their articulation such that one could draw meaningful conclusions about that articulation? Assuming one could draw a correlation between a 'race' and a statistical distribution of IQ, at what level should we pitch our conclusions: historical? biological? social? political? linguistic? Some mixture of these? And within what scope, and under what conditions? I don't know the answers, but I know that whatever they are, they cannot be taken for granted, and they need to be hashed out in order to be spoken about meaningfully at all.
With respect to this particular example, I think that transcendental stupidity would manifest when the presumptions behind however we articulate our concepts are unclear or unexamined; if the (conceptual) ramifications of the distinctions drawn are not properly set out, and contrasted with other sets of distinctions which might yield other insights, or even other, further sets of distinctions (when the differences the differences make cannot be specified). I suppose the key point is that transcendental stupidity operates at the level of concept formation: what concept is in play in such-and-such a discussion, and to what exigency does it respond? So while I don't think a discussion of race and IQ would be a priori 'transcendentally stupid', I suspect that given the general confusion that surrounds these concepts, it's more likely than not to skew that way.
He asked for his account to be disactivated.
It all looks like metaphysics to me. You have described a separation, a distinction between the object of thought and the good ("significance", what is valued in relation to intention)). If this separation is upheld then the object of thought (intelligible object) becomes an illusion, as transcendental stupidity sets in.
Thought, I want to say, is the same: the default setting of thought is simply transcendental stupidity; it simply spins out connections and associations, connecting like with unlike, confusing kinds of some types with kinds of another. What needs to be explained is how in the world thought actually sometimes generates results; how it gains traction unto the things it ostensibly talks about. This is what the Miguel de Beistegui quote that I parenthetically included in the OP is about: "It is only by extracting itself from its own torpor that thought can cease to be stupid”; Transcendental stupidity is the native environment of thought, and it takes a great deal of effort to set it aside. The fact that thought sometimes... well, thinks, is a miracle at all.
(This is a kind of inversion of Kant, or at least the account of Kant I sketched previously).
What is the criteria for “works” though? Could an output of transcendental stupidity be said to “work”?
So transcendental stupidity is simply that condition in which we cannot or do not make the relevant distinctions, where the color of the car and its broken drive chain are said to belong to the same category of things which must be addressed (in order to make the car work again). TS is the condition under which thought is not subject to, or is not cognizant of, a constraint which would render it effective. Hence Deleuze's constant refrain that all thought only ever takes place under the sign of an encounter which ultimately forces it to think, and that thought, 'in-itself' is fundamentally stupid (or resides in a 'torpor').
I think you're on the right track in shifting the focus to the nature of thought. I'm not fond of the words "stupidity" and "triviality" as they seem to take us back towards the content of thought, but I really like a focus on "conditions inherent to the very structure of all thought".
Quoting StreetlightX
Yes. Here's an example of how not paying attention to the nature of thought can cause us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
For thousands of years people have been trying to find the philosophy that will bring unity and peace. Some of these philosophies have been religious like Christianity, while others have been secular like Marxism. That is, the search for unity and peace has typically (but not always) taken place within the content of thought.
And it has never worked. As example, both Christianity and Marxism have been plagued with internal division and conflict. In fact, every ideology that's ever been invented seems to inevitably subdivide in to warring internal factions. The universality of this phenomena is a very useful clue trying to tell us that the peace and unity we're looking for can not be found in philosophies, in the content of thought.
If we see that a process of conceptual division is a "condition inherent to the very structure of all thought" it should become clear that we're never going to find unity using a medium that operates by a process of division.
But, if we fail to examine the nature of thought, we will likely continue riding the eternal hamster wheel of philosophy in the pointless search for the "one true way" ideas that will deliver us from conflict.
I would rephrase this statement...
"stupidity is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent"
to this....
"division is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent"
Imho, the word "stupidity" is too closely tied to the content of thought to be useful here.
C'mon! :smile: You offered a statement without context, and challenged me to guess what it was. Now you come out with some cobbled-together story about how it concerned something quite different, demonstrating that context is very much present in your example, and that its importance to the meaning of the statement offered is central. Context applies to almost everything, as I said, and as you seemed to be denying.... :chin: I don't think I will be taking up your offer - to straighten me out :wink: - any time soon. :smile:
Quite possibly. :up: But there are other explanations that also seem (to me) to recommend themselves. For example, perhaps the problem lies with humans, not directly with thought, or its content? I'm sure there are quite a few other possibilities too.... :chin:
The question is where do we put an end to this line of thought? Acting correctly, using language correctly, thinking correctly, don't come naturally they require effort. But if thought can go both ways, toward the correct, or toward the incorrect, then thought itself must come naturally, and it is only correct thought which is what requires effort. That is, unless thinking itself is a good, correct act, which requires effort to avoid non-thinking, then we must look even deeper to put an end to this line of thought.
No, I didn't want to talk about brains in vats either. I asked if we could look more generally, at speculations that were possible, but came without evidence. Sadly, most other contributors did not wish to direct their attention there. I hope this thread is progressing more to your liking? :wink: :up:
I went back to the OP, to read carefully what this topic is about. I hope I've chosen appropriate words?
My response to this is simple: how do we recognise "the trivial and the arbitrary", and distinguish it from that which is worth thinking about*?
* - In whose opinion...? :chin:
If we are to discover new knowledge, it will necessarily not be a part of our current knowledge, so it will seem unorthodox; it will not agree with currently-held knowledge. How do we continue to make new discoveries, and also avoid "the trivial and the arbitrary"? :chin:
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Janus
Jokes about seeing someone else vomit making oneself vomit in turn aside, I am still not really seeing how the notion of "transcendental stupidity", if not taken to be merely attacking the stupidity of premises involving the idea of substantive transcendence, consists in anything more than pointing out the plainly obvious fact that there are more or less comprehensive and subtle, that is more or less intelligent, accounts of pretty much anything we care to think of.
And the idea that stupid people will be content with the least comprehensive and subtle accounts accords quite well with @Wayfarer's point about 'fool's gold vs real gold', so in light of that the initial act of vomiting does seem somewhat inexplicable. :confused:
The point, among other things, is a generalization of this observation. To speak of transcendental stupidity in this context is simply when the problem that is being meant to be addressed is simply not addressed at all, or worse (and perhaps even more common), when it is entirely unclear what the stakes of a problem are to begin with (there's an anecdote that William James relates in his Pragmatism where he tells of two people arguing whether a man following a squirrel around a tree is going around the squirrel, or if the squirrel is going around the man; he dissolves the argument by showing that, obviously, there is nothing at stake in this question: that it is entirely irrelavant what the answer might be. This is another case of transcendental stupidity).
So - the question of 'substantive transcendence' is *ahem* irrelavant to any of this, and I do wish people would stop talking about it in this thread (which doesn't mean I can't put up vomit emojis when it's mentioned!).
Yes, I actually very much agree with everything you say here!
Quoting StreetlightX
OK, I think I get your drift now...but, remember, just like witnessed real vomiting can lead to subsequent real vomiting by the witnesses, so it also may be with vomit emojis...not to mention transcendental regurgitations...or vomits of transcendent substances...