Technology, Complexity, Science- No Bastion for Meaning Either
The gent scholar types want to think that understanding principles of science, and applications in technology provide some inherent meaning. Thus, by edifying themselves in the immersions in these topics, they feel they are participating in something grander or important. The fact that the world works in such a way as applying mathematically-derived, precise scientific principles to materials, processes, functionalities, etc. makes it such that their work is really "doing something", perhaps above and more so than those who are not engaged in these activities.
Are there people on this forum who believe they are participating in something "grander" by:
a) Trying to understand how the universe works through mathematically-applied science?
b) By actually being able to perform equations and experiments in the math, science, or technology fields.
c) Somehow connected with an objective "truth" that is out there through participating in the mathematically-applied empirical sciences. Does the fact that there is a can be useful information derived through mathematical-scientific methodologies make people feel there is meaning inherent in this?
D) Does the complexity of problem-solving using the difficult maths and methodological practices of science, and the fact that results from these methods can be empirically verified, make this endeavor something superior to other pursuits not touching on these objective "truths" with their complexity and often difficult to comprehend nature?
Are there people on this forum who believe they are participating in something "grander" by:
a) Trying to understand how the universe works through mathematically-applied science?
b) By actually being able to perform equations and experiments in the math, science, or technology fields.
c) Somehow connected with an objective "truth" that is out there through participating in the mathematically-applied empirical sciences. Does the fact that there is a can be useful information derived through mathematical-scientific methodologies make people feel there is meaning inherent in this?
D) Does the complexity of problem-solving using the difficult maths and methodological practices of science, and the fact that results from these methods can be empirically verified, make this endeavor something superior to other pursuits not touching on these objective "truths" with their complexity and often difficult to comprehend nature?
Comments (145)
For thousands of years, cultures have had to depend on their sophistication to predict and tackle problems that come along, but in these ages, it might seem easier to let problems arise, and then try to deal with them with modern technology. This might have allowed culture to become lazy..The arts seems to have taken a different route to science on their way to Scotland, as it were.
Indeed I thing this sliding back has had a bad effect on science too...there are ideas in science that need to be challenged, but culture has atrophied to the extent that it isn't even able to see that there are problems in science, let along tackle them.
My pet hobby-horse is the idea that space-time can be so curved that light is unable to escape an area of space. This might seem wonderful for those people who love the maths..although they don't love the maths enough to come up with a more complex model that would address certain issues with this model; that would be too difficult...culture should be in a position to say 'light??..you mean you think the universe would allow light to be a prisoner of time and space??'..
That shouldn't sit well with a healthy culture, or the arts, or religion....yet people will just accept TV science advocates that that is the case...and accept other materialistic points of view.
The arts has been led away by big money, and science is leading culture away in the direction of materialism...and people can watch culture rot, on their brand new flashy iphone, if they want.
Maybe there are types like that out there. I don't know. In my experience people often learn science and tech because it's fascinating, impressive, and well paid. Many of them are atheists who like dark comedy. They don't know what 'it' is all about and don't pretend to. Others are passionate liberals and seem to find more 'inherent meaning' in politics.
Quoting schopenhauer1
For some the 'inherent meaning' just is the 'useful information.' The utility is objective compared to that of art or music. For the most part my opinion isn't valuable to others who already have their own opinion. On the other hand, they might need a tech person to fix their internet so they can share their opinion or design a memory card so they can record their child's first steps on their smartphone.
Is part of the charm of science is distance from the endlessly personal? I think so. Exact, testable knowledge can be created and shared. Relatively unambiguous progress is possible. In the world of Twitter and Facebook, it's nice that there's a realm where wishful thinking comes up against a resistance that filters out much of the delusion, confusion, and ambiguity.
You I think this should be explored. The notion that science is useful, makes it better in some value or axiological sense. I welcome any ideas relating to that theme. The very use of its products speaks for itself, despite what comes out of the mind. But is there something missing here from its supremacy by pragmatic default?
Quoting old
Yes this too should be explored. What about science makes itself immediately something to be embracing as a topic of focus and reverence? Its resistance to completely being collapsed into subjectivity in its outcomes and uses. However, does this create a default meaning? Does this make it better in some way? Does it make those who are immersed in it better as a result? Is there something superior about it, more meaningful, etc.?
Hi. I think I agree with a point I think you are making. There is nothing 'absolutely' deep about science, IMO. Personally I don't know what existence is all about and I don't think anyone else knows. I live as if there were no 'grand' meaning. This is fine for the most part, but it's not great for the occasional dark mood.
I like Schopenhauer, by the way, especially the essays and aphorisms. Recently I read Schopenhauer and the The Wild Years of Philosophy, which is pretty great. I enjoy various German philosophers who basically tried to make a rational, quasi-atheistic 'religion.' At the same time, none of them quite convince or convert me. So I don't have a system.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think you nailed it with its resistance to completely being collapsed into subjectivity in its outcomes and uses. While this doesn't give it an 'absolute' meaning, it's good enough often enough within the life of 'ultimately meaningless' mortals. At least in my opinion. I think we like building better and better mousetraps. Beavers probably like to build dams. Even this conversation seems to me like the attempt to build a better mousetrap.
There are regularities within experience, or at least apparent, temporary ones, I suppose in a world without regularities we couldn't exist. Science's job is to uncover these regularities, then by making use of these apparent regularities we are able to manipulate our environment in a predictable way, which is technology. These regularities could be expressed in various ways, our culture has chosen to do it through its language of mathematics.
Scientists feel a sense of superiority or meaning because they believe they are able to see the world beyond our senses, that through their activities they gain access to the 'beyond'. But in effect what they actually do is imagine a world where the regularities they describe hold (such as a world of particles, or a world of probability-waves, or a world of energy, or a world of strings), and yet an arbitrarily large number of possible worlds can be imagined that fit a finite number of regularities. So they are not actually gaining any access to the 'beyond', they simply choose to fixate on one world which they imagine that can be made to fit with the regularities of experience and that suits their personal preferences, out of an infinity of possibilities, and then use the world they have imagined to tell people what they are made of, where they come from, where they are going, without realizing that if they had picked another world the answers would be very different.
As a basic example, light, as an entity that travels at a given speed and behaves in a specific way, is a product of the imagination and not something that we actually experience. We never see light traveling, what we see are colors, what we do is describe the way these colors change relative to each other through imagining a world in which an entity we call light travels from the things to our eyes. But the same regularities could be described without invoking the existence of an entity actually traveling between these things and our eyes.
So if scientists do not uncover anything about the 'beyond', about what exists beyond our senses, they simply uncover ways to predict to some extent what we will observe with our senses, and then essentially all they are doing is predicting the future to some extent, which is a useful survival tool, but such is also the belief in a greater power, or altruism, or exercising.
They feel they are participating in something more important by believing they gain access to the beyond, like the people who believe they gain access to an afterlife by worshipping some deity. Belief makes us see what we want to see.
We can see wonderful things within imagination, some believe they are traveling to other worlds or dimensions with it. But what do they ever bring back from it? Motivation, ideas, but they're still bound by the same constraints as everyone else, as if we couldn't ever really escape this place without death.
Understandable. I like Schopenhauer obviously, but I don't necessarily buy into his metaphysics, though I think his conclusions are pretty spot on.
Quoting old
I do like the idea that "ideas" are a kind of technology and building a better mousetrap. Even this philosophy forum can be seen as a strengthening of ideas through the dialectic process. Anyways, look at this example of scientific/technological complexity about how a computer processor is made: https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/514-intel-cpu-processor-core-i7.html
Some people would point to the complexity, ingenuity, intelligence, and research that went into these technologies, and say that these are examples of meaning. The fact that we can create such a complex tool from our understanding of how the world works and apply it to make even more complex tools, is a reason many people hold for why life has meaning. Our ability to understand the universe in ways where we can predict, explain, and shape our environment must mean there is meaning to be had there. Other than the bare essentials of living, it is these "loftier" pursuits that tap into our scientific-mathematical understanding of the world that gives us some access to meaning. Or that's the argument. Look at those, even in this forum, who are discussing the complex problems of various scientific and mathematical equations. Is there something inherently meaningful in this? Does this ability to even comprehend the world in such a rigorously refined and exacting way, analyzing very difficult information in such a way, make life inherently more meaningful? The products of technology, and the minds behind it, must mean something, no? (I am being the devil's advocate here).
Nice.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Personally I'd say no. I see no ultra-deep meaning to be had. I like Ecclesiastes. In thousands of years, how much progress has really been made on this issue? We get various 'religions' of progress, moral and scientific and creative. Most of them have their charms, but none of them have the power of belief in a dude who can break all the rules of everyday life at will and hurl us into paradise or torture. I know well enough what you mean by inherent meaning, but I think the concept can be further analyzed. Is 'meaninglessness' experienced with the perception that all things are temporary? That seems like part of it. On the other hand, immortality in a world that was somehow indestructible might not even touch the problem of 'inherent meaning.' It's as if we itch for something that we can't quite specify.
But you're clearly alluding to some kind of grander existential meaning. No, science doesn't provide that, but fortunately our neurology takes care of that for us. We have wants and desires, and to better achieve them more reliable predictive models are objectively useful.
If you don't believe me, just imagine dropping an anvil on your foot.
But look at the complexity of statements like this:
Quoting fdrake
Doesn’t that count for something? Doesn’t the fact that the process to create a microchip being so complex yet some people can construct and engineer one mean something? All the people who can comprehend, analyze, and make new technologies, aren’t they the ones keeping society going? Aren’t the ones who make the very things we use, who can translate scientific principles into complex equations...aren’t they somehow doing the real shit? The shit that matters? The hard shit? Isn’t it the peoole who wheel and deal in equations and scientific complexities the real ones? Isn’t it the capitalist entrepreneur who bring the resources together..aren’t they the real ones, providing meaning with their USE and their grasp of mathematical and the complexities of scientific theory and application?
Look at what doesn’t matter. What isn’t even heard. This kind of stuff. Quoting Fooloso4
That isn’t a complex equation, some idea contributing to inventing, not about the minute mathematically derived model regarding some complexity of the natural world or synthetically engineered device or process.
It counts toward non-subjective world-modeling (which might fairly be labeled its own broad category of knowledge and intelligence). It's only "meaningful" in so far as it serves the things that matter to us. If the scientist fulfills their own goals with science they're doing what matters. Likewise, if a poet successfully communicates their ideas with the intended perspective(s), they've achieved what matters to them.
Because survival and happiness are so often counted among our individual existential requisites, it makes sense for some people to say that science is what matters, but they're merely using science as an equivocational proxy for more a more fundamental existential platform: science gets us a kind of potent knowledge which is why we want it in the first place; subjective utility. The people who wax scientific such as you describe are overwhelmed by the world of possibility, power, (and idealized utopic delight) that scientific and technological progress can bring in blind theory.
Crises of identity and other such human problems usually don't demand (or permit) inquiry of the scientific kind. It's another realm of human knowledge and intelligence entirely, but generally it is made to serve the same human purposes: how do we reach a world that is relatively more free of our current dilemmas?
Ultimately I think the criticism you broadly apply can be launched against anything. "_____ isn't everything". If science killed the star-philosoper, did philosophy kill the master story-teller?
Well it's cool, no doubt. Depends what you mean by 'mean' here. I mentioned the 'itch' earlier. I kinda sorta know what you mean by mean, but that's maybe because I suffer/enjoy the vague itch.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What they do is impressive. Whether it's the real shit is a matter of opinion. Some of them probably think so. And I respect them and work in that field myself. Is the inventor better than a great actor or doctor or reliable auto mechanic? I don't think so. An actor is as concerned with the details as an engineer. The difference is that success is more ambiguous in the aesthetic realm. Those who are paid well and admired in their own lifetime in the aesthetic realm are probably higher on the hog than a respectable but mediocre engineer. I don't see how it goes any deeper than that, though others might.
Nothing matters more than a mathematically derived formula that “works” in predicting a physical event or creating a useful technology. You can put that on a t-shirt!
Science is a tradition and because of this, it provides meaning to many people. Sometimes the zealous types get insulted when a comparison is drawn between science and religion - "science works, religion doesn't", i.e. religion is just the stupid stuff, and science is everything that is good. But the point is rather that science fulfills the same role as religion did. Religion seeks to:
1.) Explain the origins and nature of the world.
2.) Explain the relationship between humans and the world.
3.) Provide a sense of purpose or meaning behind "it all".
4.) Shield us from the harrowing prospect of death.
5.) Secure social values and keep the community together.
Science arguably does all of this. Or, more specifically, many people think science does all of this, or [s]believe[/s] HOPE that science can. And by science, what is really meant is technology.
And so while it is true that science (technology) has given us vaccines and telecommunication, it has not and cannot solve basic constituent problems that are inherent to being alive. It has also brought incalculable suffering in the form of modern warfare, ecological mismanagement, etc.
Similarly, the religion of the past gave us universities and hospitals. But they also carved out brutal conflicts in the Crusades, Inquisition, etc. And so the good is always paired with the bad, as we should expect.
However your post seems to be more oriented to the starry-eyed scientists than the technocrats and their sheep. Ligotti writes:
"Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own.
One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT."
It spooks me out to see these adults fawning about the beauty of the cosmos as if it "speaks" to them (through the "poetry of math" or some stupid shit like that), or has "secrets" that we must discover, or that only a select few "intellectuals" can truly understand what it all means. Did not the mystics believe that God spoke to them, that God held the all-important secrets, and that some truths were esoteric and hidden from the masses?
I gotta say: I don't think you'll find many who will put it in those terms. Behind whatever hype is out there is still the old fashioned appreciation for a discipline where fine phrases alone don't cut it. If some are peering into the secrets of the cosmos, others are just building a faster racecar or GPU. Of those I know who chose that path, only one was a true believer. Others thought it was solid way to make a living, given the reliable income and (let's be honest) its respectability.
After all, has the world ever been more crammed with opinion, opinion, opinion? Some 'metaphysically' minded science types may indeed wax poetic, but maybe a taste for facts as opposed to interpretation is more important here. The personality I have in mind and relate to no longer bothers with grand, vague narratives that can be debated endlessly. Why does it all mean? Don't know. Prolly nothin'. Let's build something cool.
Thanks for the mention, looks a good read! Interesting author, also.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think you really have to grasp the historical dimension of this statement. Philosophy proper, before philosophy and science started to be regarded as separate disciplines, was always concerned with qualitative issues, with questions of meaning and purpose. From the time the scientific revolution, this has been stripped out of much Western philosophy due to the ascendancy of the role of quantitative measurement. In this new philosophy, what was real were the mathematically-quantifiable attributes of bodies, which is why physics replaced theology as the ‘queen of sciences’. Questions of meaning, purpose, intentionality, and so on, were relegated to the domain of secondary qualities and by implication, personal belief. Protestantism played into this narrative with its emphasis on the primacy of individual conscience.
In light of that, I think your analysis is actually off the mark, because the ‘gentlemen scientists’ of the modern epoch proclaimed loudly and often that the universe revealed by science was actually quite devoid of meaning, and that whatever meaning we might seek and find, was surely of the individual’s own devising. Of course, even today scientific intellectuals speak of the awe of the vistas that science delivers us, but the underlying sensibility is worlds apart from the grand tradition of philosophy. There, causation was understood as strictly ‘top-down’, and the attraction of mathematics and reason was the insights they provided into the incorruptible realm of the perfect Ideas. So whilst Platonism admired mathematics, it never depicted mathematical knowledge (dianoia) as the ultimate, but only a pointer towards the even higher truths of noesis. (My spell checker wanted to change ‘noesis’ to ‘onesies’, a type of pyjama, which is kind of like a cyber-Freudian slip. :-) )
But I do agree with your analysis of the subordination of science to ‘what works’.
Nice Ligotti quote. Yes, you are getting close to my main point. There is also the nuance that being able to UNDERSTAND and DO the maths involved is in itself superior than all forms of knowledge. If you gave me an opinion on the metaphysics of matter and consciousness, it wouldn't matter to many of the mathematically-oriented. THEY create, derive, and solve equations relating to things that predict and have use. The fact that they can DO this with regularity and full comprehension makes it de facto superior. The actual DOING and KNOWING fully of what one is doing in hard-to-grasp concepts that are mastered and used to create new technologies or contribute to the research that can then be applied or used for predictive purposes- that is something these people will offer. They will by default win by the de facto nature of the ability to create things which "work", and are governed by principles that cannot be argued due to the fact that they in fact do work as technology. If I wax on about Schopenhauer, and fdrake waxes on about equations of probabilities that actually map to processes of entropy, and he can back this up with equations that "work", his is the superior topic by default.. at least to a cadre of people who may judge what is meaningful.
Indeed this is very close to what I'm getting at. The de facto nature of being able to DO the hard maths and science that WORKS being deemed as superior and more meaningful in its default nature of de facto WORKING.
But what I mean by meaning, is in a way, a sense of superior understanding of the world, and the self-assurance that one is doing something that actually WORKS. By participating in the mathematical-science traditions, by understanding highly rigorous, complex models of the universe that actually WORK in predicting events in the universe, and that can be applied to technology in ways that innovate and can be used by people in functional ways, these people de facto are doing something more meaningful. There is no debate when it comes to someone who can create, derive, and solve complex mathematically-based problems that can be applied to scientific concepts and engineering, and can then be used to construct things that work and are useful and/or describe events with precision and accuracy using precise languages. Mastery of this, and participating in this, make it for them more meaningful. The meaning is in the mastery of the complexity, and knowing something that is difficult, providing them a "seat at the table" at what "really" matters, which is to say, what is useful and actually works.
We are mostly on the same page, but I mentioned other high-status careers in the aesthetic realm to emphasize that technical people aren't alone on the pedestal. Tech efforts just offer a more objective measure of success. Does the machine work? How fast is it? How accurate are its predictions? These things can be established against the bias of those who want the machine to fail. What's challenging in this world is convincing others of what they don't want to hear. As animals with various needs and vulnerabilities, we can't get away with ignoring those who can transform and predict the environment reliably --not for long anyway.
Philosophical types sometimes envy/resent physicists in particular as direct competitors. The 'metaphysicists' would like their TOE made of words to be respected as true. But such theories don't seem to get much work done beyond preventing boredom and increasing self-esteem --from the point of view of those who aren't already convinced. There's a market for this stuff, but there's something for everyone on the shelves. You can have Plato or Crowley or Icke or Buddha or Schopenhauer or Peterson or Wittgenstein or... On other shelves there are machines that work whether you believe they work or not. They promise less but deliver what they promise to all consumers. People still prefer their Plato or Jesus or Trump or Warren to gadgets, but they all meet in their need for the gadgets, which they can then use to broadcast the superiority of their spiritual products on social media.
It seems to me that most people still value something or other more than technology. In a free society they just choose or find themselves with differing spiritual beliefs/practices while relying on the same physical technologies. Maybe a few people make technology their religion, but they strike me as an eccentric minority who have chosen one version of spirituality among others. Arguments against them seem like one more metaphysical/spiritual issue.
From this perspective, the 'equations that work' are superior in a practical context to religious/philosophical musings. I probably don't care about my electrician's religion or philosophy. That's not what he's selling. Technology has a kind of independence from philosophy and religion that's being neglected here. On the other hand, if you are some other metaphysician tell me exactly what I need to hear to feel at home in the world, I and other consumers/voters might make you rich or elect your president. Maybe we'll even drink poison to catch a ride on a UFO.
Yes the de facto fact is that all need technology. Those who can actually engineer, solve, and experiment in the science/technology realm are thus automatically doing superior things- the things that take principles of the physical world and apply to functional devices and processes.
Quoting old
But again, the electrician (or perhaps the electrical engineer) is the one that is called- that is doing work that is harnessing the physical processes. Isn't that objective understanding of something we all see is useful, works, and "does stuff" mean something? Aren't the ones engaged in these activities doing superior work to others that don't do stuff? The ones who can wade in the minutia of hard-to-grasp equations in order to bring about an outcome of precise explanatory or applicable power? Isn't that what "matters"? At the end of the day, we go to jobs that move technology and information to people, or that in (not so) indirect ways supports these technologies. The internet, the product, the device, the software, the hardware, and all that surrounds it to make it come about. THAT is what matters. Everything else is just noise. Whatever supports the circular flow of information for more novelty in engineering and scientific application is what matters, apparently.
Aren't you forgetting what people use that stuff for? To surf porn, watch Peterson videos, see how Game of Thrones ends, or argue politics? Customized horoscopes, conspiracy theory videos, life hacks, interviews with rappers, funny sermons from John Oliver.
Speaking loosely, science is not the truths that people want. It's the truths that get in the way of what they want. It's the annoying truths that they have to deal with either directly or by paying someone to do so. What they want is poetic theories of everything made of words that guarantee them cosmic justice, an afterlife, the correctness or superiority of their values and politics, a deep explanation of why we're here and not just a description useful for prediction and control. And they also just want to be entertained with a good story, laugh at a good comedian, enjoy a song and dance from a pop star in his or her underwear. What do the kids want to be these days? Many of them are selling their personalities, snowflake romanticism (love it or hate it.) That's far more glamorous than an objective discipline which requires a certain humility and interest in the sub-personal. Is engineering a sexy field? Maybe for the chick with the 'I love nerds' T-shirt. And for the nerds.
Yes but that's what makes these guys superior. I call it "minutia-mongering". Those who not only tolerate, but REVEL in complex mathematical formulas, theories, and applicable functions of physical materials. These are ones doing the superior things. All else is blather and noise.
Let's take fdrake as another example of this reveling in what matters:
Quoting fdrake
You are presenting a position that is not your own, correct? As I understand it, you are attributing this opinion to an ideological opponent, to mock it. If so, I agree that a few people think like that. I suggest (to be clear) that all else is not blather and noise. Philosophy and religion and literature are indeed valuable pursuits. The scientist does not have the highest status, but merely a high status. I think it's safe to say that religious people value their religion more than science and therefore give their religious authorities a higher status than physicists for instance. It's only a certain kind of a philosopher (something like a positivists or a pragmatist) who wants to dismiss non-science as 'blather and noise.' If the view above was dominant, then wouldn't we elect scientists as leaders? Who do we actually elect as leaders? And what do they say to convince us to do so? Stuff about freedom, equality.... the 'blather' that moves millions after all.
As to the quoted example, well that's just nerding out (which is fine for a nerdy place like this forum.) Because the stuff is hard to learn and generally respected, it's always tempting to drag it out for display. This site seems more or less built for intellectual showoffs. That's why I'm here (to jokingly oversimplify). The game is more about Pepsi versus Coke than water versus soft drinks. If showing off technical knowledge is resented, there's probably some envy involved. One of my philosophy professors (in a surprisingly candid moment) admitted that he wasn't good at math and (in short) envied scientists. And he has a point. Who really thinks a philosophy professor has special access to the truth? Few think scientists have the deep truth, but most agree that they have valuable, reliable truths for practical life. Philosophy in the eyes of many doesn't offer that much, or, when it does, it's not the academic stuff.
Yes, there is some strong cynicism here, but I'm trying to be convincing :smile:. However, what I am doing is similar to doing hard work out of spite of having to do the work; I admire the opponent enough to give him a fair shake, and perhaps can retain his position enough to make my point, in the long game using devil's advocate advocacy.
Quoting old
But the pragmatist-scientist would just kind of have an amused chuckle and roll their eyes.. At the end of the day, religion doesn't make the human world do anything outside of the extremists and/or providing some people ways to alleviate boredom with the mundaneness of modern life. Rather, THEY (the scientist-pragmatists) are the ones who are deriving useful equations and concepts from the universe and applying it such that humans can use it to their wants and needs (through avenues of commerce and trade of course!). Look at extremist Islamic terrorism.. For all their talk about going back to the 600s, they use modern technological means to achieve it. Hypocrites to say the least. But that is the way technology dominates human pursuits. It is ready-at-hand, and people will take every opportunity to use it.
I'm currently playing at a milder version of that with my forum persona. Does anyone live entirely without 'blather and nonsense'? I don't think so. But it's possible to be a skeptic in the face of grand claims and stay close to the facts of life and theories that prove themselves practically. There's still some faith involved, faith for instance in that there is not a God who has mischievously hidden himself and that death is real.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Good points. But consider that we are here talking this meta-blather and meta-nonsense when we could be reading about convnets. A certain amount of identity-bolstering blather seems to be an important part of a balanced intellectual diet. Some kind of philosophical scaffolding seems necessary. An anti-religion is still a religion, that sort of thing.
But that's the thing! The minutia-mongerer doesn't care (or need!) intellectual underpinnings. His/her formulas and applications speak for themselves. That is what moves the world. That is actually doing the work. The printing press, not the content in them (unless it's about building things like printing presses). That is the useful stuff!
I hear you and I agree. I guess it's only a matter of emphasis or arrogance. A person can politely tolerate or even empathize with those who cling to underpinnings or arrogantly deny the possibility of underpinnings. To deny the underpinnings is to fall back into metaphysics, but it's hard to avoid if one bothers to show up to that kind of party. To me the 'profound' reading of Wittgenstein makes this mistake. 'Metaphysics is metaphysically impossible.' It seems more stylish to sketch the advantages of an alternative and move on.
As a minutia-mongerer in career terms (and for philosophically reasons lately, I'm more impressed by someone who can code up a convnet in C than by someone who wants to preach politics or metaphysics to me. Still, I have this view to some degree because I was various (anti-) philosophers. I also tried on various grand narratives for size and they didn't wear well. 'Let them take it, for there's more enterprise in walking naked.'
The tech people (in this context) are those who make millions selling shovels during a gold rush. Let others dig for Truth. One useful truth is that digging for Truth requires a shovel. Of course shovels are laptops, etc.
The philosophical version is to stop worrying about Truth and learn to make due with truths.
Yes, that is it. When you want to talk about "big boy" things, you talk about the "work" you do. The useful things you do that support the techno-industrial economy. You don't usually talk about your view on the metaphysics of mind or the underlying principles of reality (unless it is a scientific/technocratic topic and relates to your work...). The people who can churn out equations, manipulate scientific concepts, use complex tools to make more complex tools, those are the "real" ones. Everything else, is epiphenomonal to that. Using this computer for example says so. Driving to my destination says so. Gathering my food from a grocery store says so.. and all the rest of daily life.
Schools are not that efficient, but they are essentially designed to see who can perform science and math with ease, quickly, so that they can be put on a track to be the ones that count. The rest are there to support them, or provide the consumptive powers to organizations that will support them, so that they make more technology. The minutia-mongerers are the movers and shakers of the world. Their meaning comes from their doing, and what they do, effects billions.
If you don't minutia-monger, you are simply babbling fantasy nonsense and unnecessary noise out of your mouth hole. You are here to contribute to the techno-economic system. Otherwise, you are here to consume from it. The only ones who derive true meaning then, are the pragmatic-scientists who quietly churn out more scientific, applied mathematical, or technological advancements in their workplaces or other production locations.
I mostly agree, but wouldn't a younger person rather be a famous athlete or movie star? If tech people sell the shovels to the gold miners, some of those miners actually strike gold. Who has higher status? Beyonce' or some random coder making 80K? The 'big boy' theme is at least as entangled with money and fame as it is with science. I think it's only some philosophical types who struggle with science envy. If only their deep truths could have the prestige of shallow truths of sciences...Others just want their gear to work so well as to become invisible, along with its creators. I struggled with this envy myself once and ...put on my big boy pants and studied science. Or rather I studied a little part of it, quickly learning that there's just too much knowledge for any single mind. One has to specialize. So philosophy remains valuable as an attempt to make sense of the big picture and not drown in the details.
This 'system' is just lots of individuals though. From the guy at Best Buy they want the new smartphone. From the cutie on Tinder they want sex. From their dealer they want some good weed. From their politician they want...all kinds of things. Throw us altogether and we get a system, with no one really in control, despite some having far more influence than others.
'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance.
:rofl:
Quoting old
But the details are where the action happens. Keep your eyes on the details, make your 80k, live comfortably and the world turns. The people use YOUR minutia-mongering technological achievement, at the end of the day. There is meaning in that for the minutia-mongerer. Your equations COUNT. Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. That makes them content. That provides them meaning. That the world of numbers, the regularities of nature, and physical materials can come together to make devices, items, widgets, and products of use is where the meaning lies.
I get you, but all of this nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. Their meaning is secondary- derived from the "real" ones.
Actually it's a bit painful to come to terms with specialization. Or it was for me. If there's an itch for God, then there's a similar itch to know everything, from first principles if possible. But life is too short. Science is too complicated. Now I'm just glad to have chosen something that not only appeals to me aesthetically but is actually in demand. It's not a religion, but it's better than waiting tables.
But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals.
The blather doesn't matter. We are here to support technology. People's enjoyments of the products of technology is just a way towards more technology. The MMs involved in making the technology get to participate in the great "real", while the rest can find their blathering amusements that come out of the tedious MMing of the MMers who find it meaningful and not tedious (apparently).
If science and technology were better adapted toward some sort of 'progress' than the arts or literature , then these modalities would not all evolve in parallel with each other. In fact, it can be argued that it is philosophy which is the crystal ball in each era, pointing toward what will later emerge as the new technological forms. So whatever it is that is most vital in the methods of science and technology with regard to changing ways of meaning making , it is not bound up in what distinguishes them from other modalities, butt rather what is shared among all cultural modalities. There is no such thing as pure science or technology which is not already inextricably bound up with and interaffected by rest of cultural ideation.
Heidegger wrote:
"Because in accordance with its existential meaning, understanding is the potentiality for being of Da-sein itself, the ontological presuppositions of historiographical knowledge
transcend in principle the idea of rigor of the most exact sciences. Mathematics is not more exact than historiographical, but only narrower with regard to the scope of the existential foundations relevant to it."
Art doesn’t make the things happen, technologies do. Those who don’t mind the minutia and REVEL in it are the ones that make the technology. They are doing the work that we de facto rely on. Here’s an example:
Quoting fdrake
A technology doesn't represent the leading edge of ideas. On the contrary, it is the tail end of a long process of discovery that begins with philosophy and then the arts. Today's cutting edge technology is a force of conservatism, its leaders are rehashing old ideas in a new form. The next wave of philosophy and the arts will be a reaction against what today's technologies instantiate.
Technology means the application of scientific principles, mixed with math, and physical materials are used in such a way as to create functional items or predictable models. At the end of the day we reach for the products of technology and science, even if we are soothed or edified l by art. Especially the minds capable of getting through minute details of mathematical complexity, they are doing the stuff that counts.
A machine is just another form of text, and it informs, changes , moves us the way any text does. And its limits are the limits of any text.
As text, a technology has no existence apart from the ability of its users to read and interpret it. It is just one cog in a matrix of cultural readabillty . That's why a technology cannot be a technology until a community is ready to understand it and thereby see it as useful. Technology means nothing without usefulness and usefulness is a cultural artifact. It also defines a certain conventionality and common denominator. By definition, technology can only be what it is because it exemplifies the familiar and widely understood.
It is widely understood to use but not the minutia of creating. That is for the minutia mongerer who makes real and useful functions from the science, math, and materials.
Every creative soul is a minutia mongerer. Beethoven's minutia mongerings were as 'real' (whatever that is supposed to mean) as Jobs', The difference as I see it isnt that you cant hold a symphony in your hand, but that the realness of Beethovben's music was richer, more powerful, more precise in a way than the final, exhausted incarnation of ideas that a technological instantiation represents Think about what happens we we move along a hypothetical spectrum of 'realness' from , say, Kant to Goethe to Schoenberg to Joyce and Picasso to Frege and Russell and Goedel and Turing and Von Neumann to finally today's device inventors.
Just for the sake of argument let's say that the essential discoveries made by Kant were carried through into these subsequent creative products in the arts, mathematics and then technology. That is to say, that each new product was the translation of ideas originally put forth within a philosophical context into a variety of cultural vocabularies(literary, poetic, artistic, scientific, technological). Each new mode, then, was an application of a previous mode, and the dissemination of ideas that were initially held by a tiny few to a wider and wider spectrum of society.
Finally , the originally philosophical ideas become widespread in the form of machinic 'text', and then we say they are 'real', as if somehow something magical is happening with them that wasn't before. But what really is this magical thing, this 'reality, this 'materiallity', this 'I an hold it in my hand and play with it so it has more 'reality' than an a measly idea'?
And if a technological device more 'real' than the philosophical and scientific ideations that made it possible, then keep in mind that this process of 'realization, of further and further application of application, doesnt stop with technology. It makes its way into business and finance theories and then into popular modes even more conventional and widespread in culture. These modes should then be considered even more 'real' than those of technology.
It would seem arbitrary to pick, out of all of these phases of application, that of the technological and crown it as the queen of the 'real'.
You can’t do anything with Beethoven’s music besides emotional edification or inspiring more music. Is it genius? Yes. Is it talent? Yes. But it’s not real on that it’s use doesn’t provide physical functionality except in a superficial way that all things are “physical” or “functional” (like a butterfly effect). The computer engineer and the materials and structural engineer are touching on the real though. Their minutia formulas and creative innovations of the minutia on applied ways.
Derrida' s main focus was exposing the ways in which presence has been prioritized throughout the history of Western philosophy. It has taken the form of privileging speech over writing, nature over culture, and these days it involves theorizing something that somehow escapes interpretive contingency, that which we call the 'real'
But what is more real than applicable principles derived from the universe’s natural regularities, that “get things done”?
The deconstructive move of Heidegger or Derrida aims not to disprove, but argue that the very idea of 'correctness' as agreement between a subject and object of a proposition stands at the basis of the determination of objectivity and the notion of the 'real'.
Is there anything about a physical device that we understand identically , whose inner working everyone can describe identically? Are there ever two people who use a device in the identical manner? IF not, then what distinguishes such objects from texts?
And of course, I dont need to point out the profound ways in which any other cultural product, from music to the political to the philosophical, can reorganize communities.
My pleasure. One good thing about this book is that it pays attention to why philosophers caught on or not in their time. The main idea and its mood seems to have been more important than its careful justification for nonspecialists. Presentation (of a new, living option) seems to trump justification, though of course some support is needed for what also just appeals to and creates the spirit of the time.
You mentioned Heidegger. He wrote about the broken-tool phenomenon. Humans are uniquely dependent, upon tools. Yes, we do this from habituated means, but nonetheless, this dependence is present. Let’s take a hunting-gathering society that relies on the technology of the poison from a poison dart frog. Let’s us say the dart frogs happen to migrate elsewhere or die out all of a sudden. This society was habituated to be dependent upon these frogs. They were integral to the daily supply of food. The monkeys this tribe ate were hunted in abundance and with ease with this poison. In fact, the tribe never really thought about life without supply of this vital poison tool-function. The abrupt disappearance of the missing frogs and poison supply, the world of this tribe has been severely shaken. The tribal members are scrambling, trying to figure out an alternative- maybe more ancient hunting techniques they haven't employed in generations. Life for this tribe, seemed to glide through time, without thinking about it. This is humans relying on their natural use of tools that work and provide function. When this tool is broken, the world is no longer ready-at-hand but present-at-hand. It is something which needs to be diagnosed, solved. Life moves at a grinding pace. It is something that needs to be overcome.
Now let’s look at modern societies based on Enlightenment-based scientific methodologies and their descendent technologies. Internet has now become a utility almost akin to electricity. When internet access works, the modern plugged-in human who relies on it for commerce or communication doesn’t even think of the platform upon which he relies. When a problem in the connection occurs, the world of ease comes crashing down, as the troubleshooting begins. Is this as devestating as the first scenario with the missing dart frogs? No. But does the frustration and annoyance and the feeling of helplessness ensue for many people? Yes, as the habituation to the reliance threshold on a tool becomes more engrained it becomes yet another “essential feature” if that society.
Who are the ones that increase and maintain the technological thresholds? The minutia mongerers. They are the inventors of the tool and the remedy of the broken-tool. Being that humans are a technological being and “at home” with technology, they are essential.
Heidegger determines technology in its instrumentality as an 'enframing', or 'standing reserve'.
“The merely instrumental definition of technology is in principle untenable”.
Heidegger doesn't say tools don't have the being of the 'real' . He says an 'objective',. present at hand, enframing way of thinking about beings requires a derivative modification of primordial heedful circumspective ready to hand engagement with the world. For Heidegger, humans aren't simply 'dependent on' tools, as if there was first a subject and then a present-to- hand object that one engaged with in certain useful ways. Rather, the essence of the ready to hand , as 'use', circumspective engagement', having something matter to one, precedes both subjectivity and objectivity. Thought most primordially, Dasein doesn't 'use' or 'depend on' tools. Dasein is always already in between, in transition, in creative engagement with a world, prior to its being a subject.
Enframing cuts off our thinking about tools from their relational context of heedful circumspection and narrows them down to theoretical propositional statements, which is what we are doing when we point to a tool as a real, objectively existing thing. Only then can we talk bout something like a tool being 'invented' For Heidegger, the ready to hand is not the invention of a thing that we then use in particular ways. It's meaning is wholly enveloped in its use, and this use is particular to me and my context of relevant purposes and engagements. So , thought in this way, the ready to hand doesn't distinguish between invention of and engagement with what we call present to hand things. This is because all being is being with ,and all being with is a modification and transformation of being. That is, all being is creative, inventive. The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. What objective thinking does is arbitrarily separate certain types of relational contexts, those you would call tool invention, from all others, including making music and philosophy.
you speak about the critical importance of the presence or absence of tools throughout history to particular cultures. In my own life, the development of my philosophical thinking has had an infinitely more profound effect on my life than exposure to any 'objective' technologies. That is as it should be, given that there is no way in principle to distinguish between philosophical creation and technological creation. As Heidegger says , the essence of technology is nothing technological.
Hello again. I don't say that the quote above is wrong or is meaningless. In fact I like Heidegger. I even relate my criticisms of Heidegger to things I've learned from him. But I do think this is an example of a certain excessive style. We don't use tools? We don't depend on tools? This kind of statement seems to rely on ripping 'use' and 'depend' away from their ordinary use and re-framing them as complicated metaphysical commitments.
Quoting Joshs
I suggest that the notion of reality is not derivative. For me the assertion that it is derivative... relies on some kind of reality that it asserts something about. 'The reality is...that the notion of reality is derivative.' 'The fact is...that there are no facts.' The philosophical elaboration of reality is one thing and a more primordial sense of being in a world together is another.
Let's say you disagree with me. Fine. But what then am I wrong about ? if not something like this world or reality?
Heidegger writes:
"...statement means pointing out. With this we adhere to the primordial meaning of logos as apophansis: to let beings be seen from themselves.""Statement is tantamount to predication. A "predicate" is "stated" about a "subject," the latter is determined by the former." "Positing the subject, positing the predicate, and positing them together are thoroughly "apophantic" in the strict sense of the word. "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it? We can point out the modification by sticking with limiting cases of statements which function in logic as normal cases and examples of the most "simple" phenomena of statement. What logic makes thematic with the categorical statement, for example, "the hammer is heavy," it has always already understood "logically" before any analysis. As the "meaning"
of the sentence, it has already presupposed without noticing it the following: this thing, the hammer, has the property of heaviness. "Initially" there are no such statements in heedful circumspection. But it does have its specific ways of interpretation which can read as follows as compared with the "theoretical judgment" just mentioned and may take some such form as "the hammer is too heavy" or, even better, "too heavy, the other hammer!"
The primordial act of interpretation lies not in a theoretical sentence, but in circumspectly and heedfully putting away or changing the inappropriate tool "without wasting words." From the fact that words are absent, we may not conclude that the interpretation is absent. On the other hand, the circumspectly spoken interpretation is not already necessarily a statement in the sense defined. Through what existential ontological modifications does the statement originate from circumspect interpretation? The being held in fore-having, for example the hammer, is initially at hand as a useful thing. If this being is the "object" of a statement, as soon as we begin the statement, a transformation in the fore-having is already brought about beforehand . Something at hand with which we have to do or perform something, turns into something "about which" the statement that points it out is made. Fore-sight aims at something objectively present in what is at hand. Both by and for the way of looking, what is at hand is veiled as something at hand. Within this discovering of objective presence which covers over handiness, what is encountered as objectively present is determined in its being objectively present in such and such a way. Now the access is first available for something like qualities. That as which the statement determines what is objectively present is drawn from what is objectively present as such.
The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. The "as" no longer reaches out into a totality of relevance in its function of appropriating what is understood. It is cut off with regard to its possibilities of the articulation of referential relations of significance which constitute the character of the surrounding world. The "as" is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination. This levelling down of the primordial "as" of circumspect interpretation to the as of the determination of objective presence is the speciality of the statement. Only in this way does it gain the possibility of a pointing something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. Thus the statement cannot deny its ontological provenance from an interpretation that understands. We call primordial the "as" of circumspect interpretation that understands, the existential hermeneutical "as" in distinction from the apophantical "as" of the statement. There are many interim stages between interpretation which is quite enveloped in heedful understanding and the extreme opposite case of a theoretical statement about objectively present things: statements about events in the surrounding world, descriptions of what is at hand, "reports on situations," noting and ascertaining a "factual situation," describing a state of affairs, telling about what has happened. These "sentences" cannot be reduced to theoretical propositional statements without essentially distorting their meaning. Like the latter, they have their "origin" in circumspect interpretation."
I value Heidegger as a philosopher and think there are important ideas in what you quoted, but I don't feel that the issue I raised is being addressed. I also hope to avoid talking more about Heidegger than reality.
Quoting Joshs
Let me borrow that structure: When we determine the [s]presence[/s] meaning of a [s]thing[/s] word in terms of a [s]propositional subject-object statement[/s] metaphysical investment, we cut off our experience of [s]something[/s] this word from its context of use and [s]ossify it as what it is in itself[/s] and mishear it as an opposed metaphysical investment to be corrected by our own.
I do agree that we focus on objects and left them from their context and that they are something like ossifications. This perspective has its uses, but so does that ossification. This doesn't seem to address the issue of (as I see it) a 'primordial' reality that we can't help talking about. For instance, to deny that there even is something like reality is to say something about reality as I intend it here.
If I may make use of Richard Rorty here instead of Heidegger, the postmodern pragmatist sees 'reality' as resting on the idea of truth as the mirror of nature, a correspondence between human constructions and an external world.
"I argue that when extended in a certain way they let us see truth as, in James's phrase, "what it is better for us to believe," rather than as "the accurate representation of reality." Or, to put
the point less provocatively, they show us that the notion of "accurate representation" is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do."
Maybe you're raising the often brought up objection to radically relativistic philosophical positions which deconstruct foundational metaphysics. The argument goes something like this: "If your claim is that no metaphysical ground for reality can justify itself, then isn't your very claim a sort of ground in itself"?
It would be unfair to answer this question by suggesting that it is only an issue when one has failed to understand the nature of a thinking that frees itself from foundationalism. Instead, I would say that there are many ways of constructing a philosophical position, .The sort of philosophical position that embraces a radical relativism doesn't see itself as a concept that sits above or beneath or outside of the flux that it points to, but instead embodies that flux within its own terms. Heidegger's notion of Being, Derrida's differance and Nietzsche's he's Will to Power are already bifurcated within themselves. they are less to be thought of as originating concepts than they are enactments, performances, transitions. They are self-reflexive and historical , meaning that each time one references such a 'grounding' , it is a historically new manifestation of itself. Mobility , transition, absence, the in-between, these notions can be talked about and referred to to. In doing so, we are not pointing to static concepts, but enacting what we are pointing to.
It's not a huge issue, but I'll try one more time. I don't claim to be able to define reality. Consider what it would mean for me to do so. I'd be showing or making known what reality is, what reality 'really' is. I connect this to:
Quoting Joshs
The beings are there. Reality is there. Language reveals and points out. It is aimed away from itself.
Quoting Joshs
I know the work of that ol' snake Rorty. I learned much from him. He did pomo with a minimum of stylistic bluff. His work is full of important insights , and I embrace the anti-foundationalism. But I don't think he shattered the mirror of nature unless it's the mirror of certain fussy foundationalists. If he did shatter that mirror, after all,...then he also didn't. And he also neither did nor didn't. My talk and his talk about that mirror corresponds to nothing. It's just marks that help me get what I want and feel good about myself. But it's also not that, because nothing is really there and reality is superstition. And yet superstition is a superstition too, for that very distinction corresponds to nothing. Clearly our mild-mannered liberal Rorty is a nice fellow who's just trying to soften up an unhip scientism (or something like that), which is fine.
Quoting Joshs
Note that they show us. They represent the notion of accurate representation (accurately, one would hope) as an 'automatic and empty compliment.' Let me emphasize that I like the spirit of this statement. I also like the spirit of logical positivism. Certain anti-metaphysical positions can't resist becoming meta-physicians themselves as they try to prove (metaphysically) that metaphysics is impossible or worthless. James was disliked empty talk that went nowhere. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. As James wrote, his pragmatism was (in its guts) old as the hills. IMV it's as much an unlearning as a learning, and I connect it with the later Wittgenstein's insights. A live 'spiritual' option is presented, and that's the possibility of taking a certain kind of thought less seriously.
You can probably tell from what I've written already, but I'll emphasize that I'm coming from an anti-foundationalist position in my criticism of certain excesses of the pomo style. As I suggested in the Wittgenstein thread, the danger in a profound reading is that it repeats what is being criticized. I find this tension in the personality of Wittgenstein himself, who seem to wrestle with the angel of his own massive and lovely pretentiousness. Because the TLP is fascinating, it's easy to forget how absurd it is. Who but Wittgenstein could wring a PhD out of something so indulgent? Institutions aren't exempt from seduction and fads, and this contributes to the wariness toward lines like 'science doesn't think' or 'woman does not exist.' The same people who mock Jordan Peterson (which is fine with me) sometimes embrace Zizek as an essentially different animal. I'm not so sure, at least not if pseudo-science is the issue. I'll see your Jung and raise you a Lacan.
Heidegger has always been obtuse to me. What I've gleaned from his "ready" and "present" at hand along with broken tool is more-or-less summed up in this:
Ready at hand is how we relate to an object as a practical thing for us, and present at hand is simply understanding the object in a conceptual way- observing it, understanding how it works, enframing its features and distinctions, etc.
Thus objects in the world naturally seem to relate with us and us to them in a ready-at-hand way. However, we have learned to abstract objects to the point of present-at-hand more frequently and readily. Philosophy has overstepped its bounds by taking the present-at-hand as the natural stance, when in fact our existence is usually related to the world in a ready-at-hand fashion. [Let me know if that interpretation seems wrong to you. I've never had anyone explain Heidegger very well without using self-referencing neologisms which don't help. Try to avoid that if you do want to explain a better interpretation. ]
Anyways, the point in general I'm trying to make is that we are in a way a tool-being. We relate to the world via technology. Using tools are natural to us. The minutia mongerers live in the present-at-hand. Troubleshooting, surmising, deriving, synthesizing. They revel in doing this. They are in a mix of flow and halting frustration until they have solved it. Either way, whether flow or grindingly exhausting work, they produce the things that "get the job done" so the rest of us can have a seemless tool that is "ready-at-hand". Thus the minutia mongerers are the essential ones, yet again. More than anyone else. The meaning they find minutia mongering is more important than the derivative meaning we find in the fun of ready-at-hand that is a result.
By the way..to be completely upfront.. everything I'm saying right now is completely devil's advocate. I am spitefully taking the position as if I indeed think meaning is to be found in minutia mongering, and that usefulness is what counts as the real.. everything else being babble. Keep that in mind.. This is a LONG con to get to a certain point..But a long con I was upfront about, that you may not have caught :wink: .
What if showing is transforming? What if representing is an an altering interaction? What if the constraints imposed by reality are normative constraints that are only relevant and coherent within a contingent scheme of understanding? Do you support Kuhn's anti-foundationalism or do you think he goes too far?
Neither Derrida, Heidegger nor Nietzsche would say foundational metaphysics is worthless. They would instead say that it doesn't understand its basis. I would not call Heidegger and Derrida anti-metaphysical. Derrida in particular says that we can never simply escape metaphysics. He calls what he does quasi-transcendental.
WIttgenstein may be anti-foundatinaist but not radically so. His approach is what I'd call emanciaptory, fitting into a Kierkegaardian mode where truth is contingent within cultures but one can still justify a trajectory or telos to history. I think this is Kuhn's move also, allowing for a pragmatic notion of progress. The radical anti-foundationalists are post-strucrturtalists like Deleuze and Derrida, who question the ability to justify the meaning of a valuative directionality to truth, meaning, value.
I think the common concepts of interpretation and bias already demonstrate a general awareness that representation is transformation. I also think that schemes are contingent. Moreover I'm down with holism.
I haven't read Kuhn directly but got him mostly through Rorty. I don't think he goes too far, from what know.
I agree with what you say about Heidegger and Derrida, but I'm not sure I agree with them on this. While we are all enmeshed in a contingent culture, To say that we can't escape metaphysics is, in my view, one more dramatic overstatement. Instead of metaphysics being impossible, we have with Derrida that not metaphysics is impossible. Not a huge difference in style, but this inverts logical positivism as supposedly Nietzsche inverts Plato. Sure the uneducated person who's never touched a philosophy book has his prejudices, but why call them metaphysical? It stretches the word in a way that may inflate the relevance of the guy who happens to have studied metaphysics all his life (an academic like Derrida or Heidegger.)
Nietzsche stands out in important ways from both, but he wrote in obscurity (having scared off his peers), and he was amazingly honest and naked on the whole. He captured the ups and downs of godlessness, and he's something like the Coca-cola of critical mystics. *
*I mean this as a compliment.
I suppose excess is relative to time and place. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we are here talking about James, Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida. I was blown away by Nietzsche in my 20s, and part of that was because of his exciting style. Beyond Good and Evil! Those are rock lyrics. What Wittgenstein means is endlessly debatable, but I read some anti-found. into them. I also very much like some of Heidegger (some of the early pre-B&T stuff, cuz' I'm a hipster.)
For me anti-foundationalism has a significant anti-philosophical charge. To live antifoundationalism might just be to do excellent work in something besides philosophy.
For what it's worth, that's sounds about right to me, on that one issue anyway. And I think the later Wittgenstein is making the same kind of point when it comes to language. The alternative is centuries of analysis of the word 'know?' In the meantime, somehow the people who don't even 'really' know what 'know' means erect skyscrapers and land on the moon.
They are in a mix of flow and halting frustration until they have solved it. Either way, whether flow or grindingly exhausting work, they produce the things that "get the job done" so the rest of us can have a seemless tool that is "ready-at-hand".
[/quote]
Yeah that seems about right. I will say that it offer artistic pleasure if a person is designing something. Coding is building a machine more or less out of ideas. The computer will do all the boring stuff for you if you can figure out to tell it how.
Or it could be to understand 20th and 21st century anti-foundational philosophy well enough not to confuse its attempts at rigor for sneaking in foundationalism through the back door. Rorty badly misread Derrida and Heidegger this way, It's a typical Anglo-American weakness. We tend to be threatened by the thoroughness of a continental style, having only our own thinner emprically-parasitic intellectual traditions to fall back on. You sound like Rorty, exhorting us to abandon philosophy for other endeavors now that metaphysics is out of fashion.
At the same time that we pat ourselves on the back for avoiding the supposed errors of the overly theoretical continentals, we haven t figured out a way to think anti-foundationalism without falling back on the crutch of empiricism. They have, and we fault them for our inability to read them well enough. Their abstractness is no match for our anti-intelectualism.
Indeed. Why not? I'm open to that. But this is also the problem with pomo insight. Anyone can accuse anyone of confusion. Yet at the same 'there are no facts, but only interpretations.' So what is there to be confused about?
This is why I value technology that works whether one believes in it or not. The game of 'you're confused no you're confused' is interminable if the players are foolish or amused enough to persist. It's exactly this kind of noise that I want and use philosophy for cutting through : hype, bluff, pose, and the endless wishful thinking that inflates and deceives itself, my own included.
Note that I am not accusing you of these things. I'm saying that critical minds are by definition on the lookout for bullshit. Which claims should I trust in a world where so many claim so much? I look at what their talk can help accomplish not only without the help of faith in such talk but even against such faith.
If you want to escape noise , choosing one side over another isn't the answer. The trick is to locate that small minority within the scientific and philosophic communities who are truly onto something.
And when you do, you will likely find that they have found each other. IF you want to read the best new approach to the empirical understanding of visual perception, you can do no better than Alva Noe. But you will have to listen to his praise for Edmund Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Yes, he found out they had been onto something, the same thing he was just now discovering, but they got to it decades earlier. If you want to read some remarkable new research on autism, schizophrenia, child development of empathy, I highly recommend Shaun Gallagher. But you'll also have to make your way through his praise of Gadamer's hermeneutics(as well as phenomenology.) Yes, Shaun noticed that these philosophers were onto something. That's why he co-founded the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Dan Zahavi is one of the best interpreters of Phenomenological philosophy today, and he has immersed himself in the project of integrating phenomenological method with empirical fields. Such endeavors were encouraged by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty themselves.
Sure, but you don't do much to acknowledge the possibility that some difficult ideas are just smoke. You mention substanceless syncophants, but what about master thinkers who are ultimately faddish footnotes?
Quoting Joshs
I don't see myself as having chosen one side over the other, though I have chosen one career path over the other. I spent many years on music, art, lit, and philosophy. I still love all of these things. Still I insist upon the distinct charm of what I see as the least controversial forms of specialist knowledge (for instance, math.)
Quoting Joshs
I'm not not interested in that (I've looked into Noe briefly already), it's just that I'm more into (and more likely to be paid for) understanding the guts of a convolutional neural network for computer vision. Also my sense is that the world won't reward me much for being the intellectual tourist I might prefer to be. As far as phenomenology goes, Heidegger was great, but there is also just living more in one's body. Books are great, but let's not forget old fashioned experience.
One of the many things that I guess I'm trying to say here is the importance weighted to various topics or "ways of" thought. There may be a group of people discussing a fictional book and be passionately involved in understanding it. There may be people diving into the complexities of what Schopenhauer or Camus, or Heidegger said in various terms like "Will", "absurd", and "ready-at-hand". There may be religious discussions delving into the complexity of Leviticus or Matthew, etc. etc. But these are all put by the wayside when it comes to "real" daily living.
The meaning then is not in the deep, rich laughter, reflection, faith, apprehension, discussion of these topics aforementioned, but of "getting shit done". It is precisely those most adept at solving daily problems ("getting shit done") that might say, "I am the one who gets the most meaning, as I am dealing with life at its most necessary and useful functional level. I am the one solving the problems of inventing and maintaining tools that we rely upon as a species through daily life.. That we get habituated to, and find greater thresholds of need, when the tools are working". In other words, BECAUSE of the pragmatic and useful nature of the work done by the minutia mongerer, they, by default may very well claim to hold the real "meaning". They are reveling in the very thing that keeps the circular, repetitive thing called life going, and therefore have a monopoly on what actually counts (which entails for them that it makes things meaningful). Thus, working away at an equation that solves real world problems is more "real" than the pablum of discussing a book. The present-at-hand IS the real.
To go even further, even ancient tribesman probably thought more present-at-hand. They had relations to their surroundings for sure (themes of ready at hand), but they were constantly trying to figure out how to use those surroundings to fit their needs (present at hand). This is the mode of the real indeed. The one tinkering, not the one reflecting. The one constantly stressed out about how to solve that problem to get that tool created and maintained. They will claim THIS is life. The more minutia, the better. We are here to monger minutia. All else can be tolerated, but don't be surprised if the MMs laugh derisively and roll their eyes at what doesn't count.
"I'm not not interested in that (I've looked into Noe briefly already), it's just that I'm more into (and more likely to be paid for) understanding the guts of a convolutional neural network for computer vision. Also my sense is that the world won't reward me much for being the intellectual tourist I might prefer to be. As far as phenomenology goes, Heidegger was great, but there is also just living more in one's body. Books are great, but let's not forget old fashioned experience. "
Lots of distinctions being thrown around here:books vs experience, bodily living vs abstract thought.
What I like about Heidegger was his tearing apart the supposed distinction between 'bodily' and conceptual. Of course , we don't need to rely on Heidegger for that. In a less radical way , today's enactive, embodied approaches also dissolve such distinctions between what is body and what is cognitive. I think what you're getting at is that you are more comfortable with applied fields because they suit your style of thinking better. But I wouldn't confuse your personal preference for mode of ideation with some supposed defect in the style of thinking associated with many continental philosophers. Everyone has their preference in terms of how to best articulate, process and expand their creative thinking. I do think a non-linear sort of development of ideas can be talked about in relation to cultural history that involves a holistic relationship between different modes of expression(empirical, political, philosophical, ethical, artistic, literary, etc).
No one modality takes preference over others(not the scientific-technological) in terms of something like rapidity of progress or better access to truth. Each modality of culture depends on all the others in complex reciprocal ways in articulating truths of an era within their own vocabularies. Persons working within a particular modality can confuse their own biases and preferences for some universal priority of their discipline. Heidegger thought poetry could articulate Being better than any other modality, Some physicists still think their field is the queen of the sciences and that the
sciences are superior modes of access to truth and progress than other modes. Some mathematicians believe their field is grounded in Platonic universals and is protected from the contingencies of empirical science. There are musicians and artists who prioritize an affective-intuitive language of expression over empirical or philosophical.
My own bias is that the best philosophers of an era tend to act as a crystal ball, anticipating ahead of the rest of culture to ways of thinking that unfold eventually as new empirical discoveries and artistic movements. Whether I can justify that or not, the important point for me is that it is possible to translate what is essential in a philosophical articulation of ideas into psychological or artistic or literary or any other modality of ideation of that same era(Im Hegelian in that way, I believe in the idea of cultural worldviews and their evolution)., so I am not wedded to one disciple over another. Do I want my subjective idealism in the form of Kant, Einstein, Picasso or Joyce? They are all essential to me even though my preferred vocabulary would be Kant. Do I choose Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault or Dennett? They interpenetrate each other's thinking in so many ways, it would be a crime to excluded any of them. And still, my personal preference is Nietzsche, for the incomparably rich language.
The particular milieu you have chosen to embrace is your priority, but dont make the mistake of universalizing it.
To me this is an important point. It's the down-to-earth wisdom that cautions against forgetting ourselves in those spiritual complexities that makes us deaf to the speech of daily living. This doesn't make those complexities less meaningful. Instead some of us can share in an investment in critical thinking. We differentiate between spiritual claims and worldly, objective claims.
A difference between @Joshs and myself might be that I find claims like 'there are no fact but only interpretations' more spiritual than objective, even as they attempt to abolish the distinction. I don't see how this difference can be methodically resolved. This is part of the angst of personality. I can always decide that I was lying to myself by underrating or overrating some thinker. At moments of manic investment I can look back at more sober moods as a failure of nerve. In moments of appreciation of others who have never looked into various famous intellectuals, I might think that these famous intellectuals functioned for me more spiritually than practically. They entertained me with grand abstractions about grand abstractions and made me feel like I was one of the few no longer in the matrix.
Quoting schopenhauer1
They might say that. More reasonably they might enjoy the feeling that they are less likely to decide that they have been lying to themselves. Their work is also intelligible to everybody, not the details but its value. Those who can do something are definitely skilled, definitely intelligent. On the other hand an atheist may find theology fundamentally absurd and deceived. The newfangled religious type may find some kind of scientism to be fundamentally blind. Then in politics the other side is often simply demonized. Practical power convinces everyone. In war it sometimes 'convinces' them by removing them altogether. Talk is cheap and yet poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Using one's surroundings to fit one's needs, as you say, is a ready to hand relation with a tool. What would be present to hand about the situation would be extracting the tool-object from one's needs in the contextually meaningful surroundings and simply thinking of it as a contextless, purposeless 'thing', this tool with its properties and attributes. normally , we dont do that when we engage with objects, because we are busy making meaningful use of them. We dont even notice the tool until something goes wrong. Then the meaning of the tool is in what went wrong with its use, not as 'thing with properties'.
In Heideger's lecture 'What is a Thing', he says a commonly held assumption is that of the 'natural attitude' toward things, as if , beneath the changing fashions of theoretical definitions of objectiveness, there lies a universal, non-theoretical practical understanding of what a thing is.
Heidegger then goes on to skewer this assumption.He argues that there is no such thing a a natural, pre-theoretical notion of a thing.He believes the present -to-hand and the development of logic went hand in hand as Western inventions. A primitive tribesman would likely have a different notion of what we commonly call things and objects than via the present to hand.. And I think Heidegger foresaw an era to come when we would replace the idea of the present to hand with a different thinking, just as the present to hand emerged at some point in Western history. This would imply that a future empirical science would not have to base itself on the idea of present to hand.
In fact , one could argue that today's enactive embodied cognitive approaches replace objectivity with intersubjectivity, which might still fall under a Heideggerian critique , but goes a long away towards emancipation from the thinking of a mind-independent world, or a correspondence theory of truth, or the idea that we have ever have theoretical access to objects severed from a larger implicit context of interactive use and significance.
Now lets talk about getting shit done, the rock-bottom irreducibly physical-material thingly-bodily- corporeal-fleshly realer-than -real basics of surviving, the real shit. I'm thinking about how Silicon Valley's minions are spreading out over the earth, and how the closer we seem to get to the immediacy and hands-on-ness of the really real shit the more likely it is that such tasks are being given over to robots. Extrapolate forward 100 years, when a majority of humans will work at tasks in virtual' reality.
They will code, design, organize, plan, orchestrate. All kinds of stuff that involves creating, manipulating and interpreting language. But an almost complete elimination of tasks involving physical objects, excepts as housings for screens or implanted neural devices communicating image and text.
In the future the real may be completely virtual, bout wont it still mostly be about getting virtual shit done? About creating and maintaining tools? Of course, the writing and teaching of a book of philosophy is also the creating and maintaining of a tool, but what of your adjectives?
Heidegerrian thought is clealy not necessary, useful functional, repetitive minutiae mongering, or pragmatic tinkering, is it? Heidegger is on the side of complexity and richness. Real meaning is on the side of survival and getting shit done. A quick question. What if it were the case(and it isn't for most people) that reading Heidegger produced for everyone an extraordinary , lasting euphoric pleasure that was far superior to anything that 'getting shit done' could produce, would you still call minutia mongering more meaningful? In that case you're defining meaning in terms of a distinction between pleasure and survival. Of course, if my hypothetical were true, then many would sacrifice their lives to such pleasure(as they do now to euphoria-producing drugs).
There would then seem to be a constant battle among humankind between what gives pleasure and what is necessary for survival, with some arguing that true meaning is higher than mere survival, and others arguing a Darwinian position that pleasure is merely epiphenomal, a biproduct of adaptive brain structures those only meaning from an evolutionary standpoint is in their capacity to foster continued survival of species, gene or whatever.
In a way this is a variant of Rousseau's philosophy of the cultural as parasitic on the natural , which Freud picked up on in 'Civilization and its Discontents'.
One could point out here that the survival of a complex post-industrial service and information- based society would seem to be a survival with distinctly different features than the survival of an ant colony.
One might want to divide 'survival' into two components,1) the very sucess of self preservation and persistence, which would not differentiate between an amoeba and a philosopher, and 2)the level of complexity and , internal differentiation of a particular living system that happens to be surviving.
Let's say for the sake of argument that we say that meaning requires both components, such that the more complex and differentiated a human's life is, the more meaningful it is, and it is thus directly tied into human desire and motive.
This is kind of the 'complexity theory' of meaning. By this measure , all those grunts trying to simply 'get shit done' are striving not just for simple self-preservation, but are getting shit done for the sake of a motive for self-complexification(what people call personal growth or self-improvement).
In other words, getting shit done has an arc to it, a kind of developmental telos. Getting shit done always implies a motive toward getting shit done better, and getting shit done better naturally aims toward getting it done in a richer, more complex, more differentiated and integral way. This isnt what the grunt is thinking, but it is what underlies their sense of satisfaction and what it means to them to be doing a good job, or a better job. In situations whether one is just trying to get paid and doesn't find their work rewarding, this anticipatory sense making still applies, but in this case one has to follow what they are preferring to the work.
My favorite writers in psychology and philosophy(George Kelly, Jean Piaget, Heidegger and numerous others) see human experiencing as anticipatory. These writers do away with the distinctions between motive , affect and cognition. They see human beings as already in motion(not physical motion but in process of experiential change). So they don't have to posit extrinsic or internal movers, drives, pushers and pullers of human incentive. The only motive is sense making in a world that appears to us as always changing from moment to moment. Sense making is anticipatory, future oriented.
So motive is naturally aligned with being able to assimilate all variety of new experience.
I didn't mention the key component of their thinking. It is that thinking is hierarchically organized as an integral totality. That means that when we approach the world we interpret the meaning of experience globally. From the most mundane practical minutia to the most elevated, abstract spiritual or philosophical concerns, all of this functions in the background of each of our engagements with the world at every moment. So those lowest level pragmatic 'getting shit done' experiences imply , are authorized by , are understood in relation to and meaningful extend those most global, abstract and complex meanings by which we defined ourselves ethically, spiritually, socially. A human being is, from moment to moment, a single integrated worldivew in process of self-transformation, Getting shit done is our ways of preserving, extending and transforming that worldview. The 'getting shit done' pragmatic minutia mongerer of today in the tech world is extending his worldview, which , being a 21st century empirically sophisticated worldview, has internalized Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and liekly Knat, whether they have read a word of those authors or not. Each eyeblink and and sneeze
and intended action of getting shit done refers to, addresses and strengthens their Platonic-Aristotelain-Caretsian-Kantian construct system. So maybe you can see that, thinking about the real and tools the way that I do from this vantage, there is no conflict or separation between the most abstract and ephemeral meaning in our lives and the most supposedly 'real', 'getting shit done' meanings. each presupposes, feed back from and extends the other.
My working right this minute on soldering together these two circuit components is not just the isolated activity that it seems . Everything that led me to sitting down in this chair and doing everything necessary to begin the task , including deciding why i want or need to do it, what my goal is, etc. arise out of the global, integrated context of my construct system. When I lose myself in the details of my task, that global background is never absent but informs and directs my actions and motives.
I like that too, but pointing out the limits of a distinction doesn't destroy its utility. I relate my reading of Heidegger to Wittgenstein through the idea of automatic knowhow. One of the reasons I don't quote the masters much is because this sometimes shifts real talk into academic chatter. Participants switch out of their automatic knowhow and ordinary words lose their transparency.
Quoting Joshs
It's complicated. I love pure theory, but this love sometimes looks to me like a vice. I am wary of human pretentiousness and self-deception. The gap between theory and application is also philosophically fascinating. The prestige of science seems technological and ethical. The ethical prestige is in its humility. Popper's notion of falsification has an ethical appeal. I don't see how it can be justified. Just as Turing machines are one way to make the intuitive notion of an algorithm definite, so falsifiability is an attempt to crystallize a sense of what makes science science. I think that technology and its supporting theory that works whether or not one believes in it is another good candidate.
Quoting Joshs
I largely agree, but I apply this to Heidegger and gang too. As illuminating as they can be, I don't find them authoritative. Maybe Dostoesvky or Heller is better. What's missing from so much philosophy is divine malice, laughter. I love Nietzsche on these themes. We are mortals. The species itself is mortal. All our fine talk is ridiculous to the gods. Sometimes we can laugh with them at all of our poses. Does academia welcome this kind of divine malice? If I used the slang I think in, I'd get in trouble. This is the slang of comedians and rappers and our taboo selves behind all the masks we wear in this world.
Quoting Joshs
I agree, but I don't see why philosophers should always be the leaders. Sometimes it may be the artists or the engineers. And sometimes maybe philosophy is in the way. Quoting Joshs
I love Nietzsche too. If I had to pick a single thinker who affected me most, it might be Nietzsche. Some of that is circumstantial. I happened on him early in my 20s. Did you ever read Kojeve? He also deeply impressed me.
I was going to bring up Popper to you. I wonder if you could talk a little more about what sort of view of what science does makes sense to you. I think it was Bacon who coined the hypothetical deductive method as what science does. Do you agree with Bacon that there is such a thing as THE scientific method , and if so, what is it?
When you say that Popperian falsification cant be verified , does that mean you disagree with the whole claim he is making? Have you read Thomas Kuhn? Do you prefer Popper to Kuhn?
Does science change by revolutions in its paradigms or does it progress incrementally, mostly preserving facts from earlier theories and adding to them? Does it progress toward an asymptotic limit of truth?
"Sometimes it may be the artists or the engineers. And sometimes maybe philosophy is in the way.
Quite possibly, but I'm going to make you a dare. Name an engineer or artist who you think defined a new cutting edge before any philosopher.
BY the way, how could an engineer do such a thing when they represent an application of basic science. Isnt an engineer by definition a conventional character, translating what has already been established into something that can be marketable? Isnt marketability function of recognizability? That is, if a large enough mass of consumers dont see the value in a new device, then it will not succeed. Automobiles were originally scoffed at as impractical whimsy(this was of courses before infrastructure like auto repair and parts stores, gas stations and paved roads).
I never claimed an escape from angst altogether. We are mortal. And your talk of disabuse lapses back into the objectivity that some of your pomo taken earnestly would deny. If there are no facts but only interpretations, there's no reality for me to see incorrectly. It's this kind of performative contradiction that I strive to avoid by cutting back on some of the rhetorical habits of thinkers I otherwise value.
I think you're also being a little deaf here in terms of our interpersonal situation. I'm not here as it were looking for your approval. I'm probably as arrogant as you are. I just take it for granted that we intellectual dudes are generally pretty sure that we are more profound, etc., than one another. That's part of the comedy. And that's why a conspicuous attachment to critical thinking is disarming. If the other person doesn't even expect doubt, then I have to question their own possible credulousness.
*This isn't meant as an insult. It's almost common sense. In another thread a religious person is outraged by skepticism directed toward spiritual experiences, as if the OP hadn't noticed the ubiquity and danger of unchecked wishful thinking. He'd be far more credible as someone who has had a spiritual experience if he opened by emphasizing how ridiculous he may sound.
Some of us pride ourselves more on being reliably correct than on any particular profound viewpoint. This pride is its own kind of 'spirituality.'
Perhaps the person most closely associated with radical relativism, and the idea that there is "no reality for me to see incorrectly". is Jacques Derrida. But no one saddled with that accusation would argue that there is no way , in any sense, to distinguish better and worse , more or less correct. The quote from Derrida below is I think representative of how so-called radical relativists would argue against your claim.
For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let it
be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how
amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the
following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-
nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of
meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we
read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text
be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood,
simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and
discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition
of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it
supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous
texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.
Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated
with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in
more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts
(that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example,
socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively
stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to
invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith,
lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy. I should thus be able to claim and to
demonstrate, without the slightest "pragmatic contradiction," that Searle, for
example, as I have already demonstrated, was not on the "right track" toward
understanding what I wanted to say, etc. May I henceforth however be granted
this: he could have been on the wrong track or may still be on it; I am making
considerable pedagogical efforts here to correct his errors and that certainly
proves that all the positive values to which I have just referred are contextual,
essentially limited, unstable, and endangered. And therefore that the essential
and irreducible possibility of misunderstanding or of "infelicity" must be taken
into account in the description of those values said to be positive.
Heidegger called the basis of modern science onto-theology because he recognized that worldly objective claims are founded on metaphysical pre-suppositions that link it to the history of Christianity.
IN a fundamental sense, the claims of objectivity are inherently spiritual claims.
I agree, and I've criticized the style of statements that I otherwise value for being exaggerations.
Quoting Joshs
I'm familiar with that quote. I don't think Derrida comes off all that well there. Accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings. You can accuse me of a feeble reading of Derrida and/or Heidegger and/or Nietzsche. I can accuse you of the same. After all, my criticisms of pomo are largely inspired by pomo.
You question my antifoundationalism, but I'd say that it's largely inspired by Heidegger. I like Groundless Grounds by Lee Braver. Language is mostly ready-to-hand. To read metaphysics into this automatic knowhow is to stretch the word to the point of uselessness. If everything is metaphysics, then nothing is metaphysics.
Quoting Joshs
But Heidegger's claim is itself (arguably) a spiritual claim. He makes a case, gives reasons. Does he achieve a Science above science? Who's to say? Some consider him profound, others can't believe that the ol' swastika lover is taken seriously. I was myself intensely impressed and influenced by some of his early stuff, but I don't feel the need to quote him much and I am consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority --which you seem to do implicitly.
What I sense here is the same old projection of an explicit metaphysics on automatic knowhow. The philosopher is endlessly tempted to cast the non-philosopher as a failed philosopher. When the non-philosopher decides to play the philosphical game, he's likely to underperform. But the non-philosopher is mostly not playing the philosophical game but instead just living in the pretheoretical knowhow that we philosophers rely on when we aren't performing a certain role for one another (and the mirror.)
[quote=James]
Not only Walt Whitman could write "who touches this book touches a man." The books of all the great philosophers are like so many men. Our sense of an essential personal flavor in each one of them, typical but indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished philosophic education. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe of God. What it is—and oh so flagrantly!—is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is. Once reduced to these terms (and all our philosophies get reduced to them in minds made critical by learning) our commerce with the systems reverts to the informal, to the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or dislike.
[/quote]
[quote =Nietzsche]
That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
[/quote]
I agree with both quotes. For me this is a fundamental experience. We take ourselves quite seriously and jockey for the status of the most profound, critical, educated, authentic, hip, creative, etc. In my view it's naive to think that the master thinkers aren't caught up in such a game.
I play and enjoy this game myself, but another part of me sees the ridiculousness of claiming to know that which is most important or authoritative or primordial or sophisticated. The gods laugh at us pretentious mortals, and sometimes we can laugh with them. I think Nietzsche is great in the way that Dostoevsky is great. Heidegger and Derrida, despite what I like about them, were also longwinded academics. Could they afford to get real ? I think Rorty hinted at the darkness now and then in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. His style and tone were post-metaphysical too.
Great, so what's your alternative? Is it closer to Popper, Kuhn or neither?
" I am consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority --which you seem to do implicitly." Suit yourself. If Heidegger's political affiliations were enough in and to themselves to discredit his philosophy, don't you think that Derrida, Levinas and philosopher Eugene Gendlin, three Jews who suffered from anti-Semitism (Levinas only survived the war because he was in a prisoner of war camp rather than a concentration camp, and Gendlin only barely made it out of Germany in 1938), would have ignored him, rather than considering his work teh greatest of any 20th century philsopher? (I'm also Jewish, for what that's worth)
Either you find his work authoritative or you don't . Obviously I do, and I'd rather rely on my friend Gendlin's take on Heideger's politics than yours.
I no more expect you to be dazzled by my anonymous perspective than I am automatically dazzled by yours. Despite our little clash here, I find you a worthy opponent. Very little persuasion happens on these forums as far as I can tell. Personalities tend to settle and harden. I wouldn't even say that one of us has to be right or wrong on what I regard as spiritual matters. As I see it, we are publicly performing the game of personality. So of course the gods are chucking. I like to think that we are leaving a nice stain for passersby.
My antifoundationalism is focused around the inexplicit or automatic knowhow that I keep mentioning. Lee Braver focused on this theme in both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in Groundless Grounds. His view is close to mine. Rorty's view is also close to mine. An important difference is that Rorty was constrained by being a professor (one wrong tweet and you are history.) He also takes politics more seriously than I do. I don't have to pretend to have a cure for the individual or the species or justify my income in the same way. All is vanity and this world is a great stage of self-important fools, including of course the self-important fool rude enough to point such a thing out. But that's just spiritual music. It's a joke and a reminder.
Also I don't reject Heidegger for the usual whiny reasons that he was a Nazi once. I mention the controversy to make the point that his claims are not obviously binding, however occasionally spellbinding. I don't pretend to authority on spiritual matters, nor am I quick to grant such authority to others (to put it mildly.) I'd like to both not be rude and at the same time be sincere. It's tough when it comes to a critical attitude toward what others have woven into their persona. Our heroes are something like our spiritual substance. I like dorky Stirner for trying to root out every such vulnerability in himself. He never organized or purified his message (which is concisely offered as 'the irony' in Hegel's lectures on esthetics), but he worked the theme for hundreds of pages.
My goal is not persuasion. I believe that worldviews, which are what philosophical positions are, have a certain stability to them.
What I aim to do is to get as precise an understanding of the other's worldviews as possible , from their perspective, so that I can effectively summarize back to them their ideas. I'm not out to win anything but demonstrating to myself that I was able to subsume another's worldview to their satisfaction.
i'm curious why when it comes to Heidegger you are "consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority", when you've just said you are close to Lee Braver's thinking and he seems to appeal to Heidegger as an authority.
Try to see it my way. I generally try to avoid quoting. I prefer to just paraphrase. But intellectuals like to drop names. Maybe it's a ritual where we convince one another that we've actually read something.
Braver interprets Wittgenstein and Heidegger in a way that pleases me. I don't see the appeal to authority in merely bothering to interpret so-and-so. It's just that academics seem to often define themselves in terms of more famous academics. If everyone is obsessed with X, then one might as well express one's own view in terms of a reaction to or interpretation of X.
Of course if everyone is talking about X, that'll also inspire curiosity. The implication is that they are the most profound fellows around. Why miss out? Sometimes they live up to the hype. Sometimes not. I say we sculpt our personae in terms of those more famous (for intelligibility and as shrewd marketing). Magazines usually only put celebrities more famous than the magazine on the cover for the same reason.
I like this goal. I hope my cynicism wasn't too offensive.
I don't think this is an easy project. Why should every position fit in a living way in one personality? I suggest that we understand best what we were once or are currently passionately invested in. It's not just ideas. It's the feel of a personality.
Pre-theoretical knowhow, the laugher of the gods, and a respect for technology that works without the help of our faith in it....That's an improvised theme summary of my philosophy, if you are curious and really want to assimilate what they mean to me.
As I mentioned, we can try to formalize/crystallize our intuition of what makes science science, even if the word has no essence. Falsifiability is good. Technology that works without our faith in it is also good. What is science? What is knowledge? What is justice? What is meaning? These questions aren't ridiculous and have even been useful, but there's a limit to how seriously we should take this game. After all, we've put human feet on the moon without the profound philosophers managing to come to a consensus.
I also dodge materialism, physicalism, idealism, etc. I don't worry about the ontological status of the real numbers or what the entities of physics 'really' are. I don't think we need a crystalline theory. We know how to get shit done, without knowing exactly how we know how. If the philosophers could somehow answer this convincingly, I'd want to hear their answer. I've lended a few thousand ears by now. But usually the philosophers are less sophisticated than the same blind know-how they must rely on to construct their philosophy. Obviously I'm expressing opinion here. You asked and I improvised an answer with some of that blind know-how. I didn't know what I would write beforehand. See how we glide.
I like Popper. Like many crystallizations of an intuition, it enriches us. But it's the working technology that I prefer to any theology of science. Texts /sentences are machines too, but some texts only work if you believe in them. The sentences associated with technology that works for everyone are lifted by the reliability and power of that tool. This is almost bestial, such is our pre-theoretical response to stuff that works.
I have only browsed Kuhn himself, but I have been exposed to his ideas, which I think are great. I have read many pages of Popper and have quite an affection for him. If I pick favorites, it'll be largely circumstantial. He was a crusty old man, which amuses me.
That is a tempting reading. You've located the crux. Is it anti-intellectualism or good sense to be suspicious of Derrida, Heidegger, & co. I'm familiar with accusations that Rorty misread D & H. Having looked into D & H after being steeped in Rorty, I agree. But he went in through the front door. He was conspicuously recontextualizing other thinkers. He took what he liked and gently mocked the rest. Whether one prefers Heidegger to Rorty seems to some degree to be an expression of a fundamental attitude. Heidegger was just tuned to present himself as a little wizard, and I do enjoy the magic show. Rorty was cool like Hume and friendly like James.
We don't need to 'think' anti-foundationalism. We just learn to live without some top-level metaphysical justification of our doings. Or we learn that we are already doing so.
There's no way to prove that X has or has not been read well enough. It's not as if the professionals agree. I've followed petty squabbles in Heidegger scholarship between two important translators for instance. They accuse one another of fundamentally misunderstanding the thinker that both specialize in. How are we to interpret this failure of consensus?
For me it's not a binary response. I think a person can enjoy a thinker like Heidegger without losing the ability to criticize and doubt him. Indeed, I'd say that we ultimately synthesize our own philosophy appropriate to our own particular existence. I face my life and death alone in some sense. The fine phrases of others can help, but I like working up my own fine phrases...in the context of this help.
I'm not sure that any proposed profundity conquers death and the risk of being an individual. I think death is death, the end of me. I don't see how the human species can avoid extinction forever either. 'Death is god' I scrawled on my copy of Hegel's shorter Logic. There are the little deaths of the evolving personality and the big death that threatens all this progress with absurdity. Is Plato wiser than the teen aged suicide? Does the philosophy professor really have something better than the annoying sophomore who suspects that it's all bullshit on some level? In this or that practical context, we can make a case. In some grandiose narrative of human progress, we can make a case.
But philosophy is also gallows's humor. Heidegger, to his credit, gave his attention to this. I like Heidegger the existentialist. Is he my guru? No. I'm doing my own version on this forum. Who couldn't? Who isn't already doing so? And maybe Bukowski is a better philosopher than Derrida. Our obsession with academic chatter may be pretentious and artificial in the first place. By all means let's include it, but perhaps the professionalization of philosophy is also to some degree its castration or transformation into a mostly irrelevant game or masked politics.
Most people get the stuff that matters (their living philosophy) somewhere else.Some of us work the high-brow stuff into a fusion with everything else.
So apart from a definiton of foundationalism as a "top-level metaphysical justification", here's another one. You stop a random person in the street and point to a rock. You ask them what it is. They say it is a rock, and as a rock, it is an object with persisting attributes and properties such as a grey color and a particular weight and size, and is composed of particular material compoents. You ask them if the object still exists when they walk away from it, and they answer yes. You then stop another person in the street and point to the same rock. You ask them what it is. This person says what it is depends on the reason that the person is paying attention to it. It could be an object of aesthetic enjoyment, or merely abstract figure, or only something indistinct in the background next to something else the person has their eye on. You ask them if it is an object with persistent properties like weight and size, and they say those are not properties of a fixed or persisting thing, but only a way that one has of talking for particular purposes. You ask if the rock is still there when one walks away from it, and they say the question is incoherent. Most would say the first person is using common sense in describing the rock, That may be so, but I'd also say their description is a foundational one. What is common sense to someone in the 21st century would not be to someone 20,000 years ago. A set of theoretically guided ideas underlie the commonsensical answer of a self-identical object with persisting properties. The second person gives a non-foundational response, making the experience of the rock relative to the concerns and context of that person. They may have learned their answer from a philosopher, but then again, it may be common sense to them.
So whether or not we live with direct exposure to philosophical teachings, our common sensical thinking about our world may be foundational or post-foundational, and this will depend primarily on what cultural era we grow up in.
We need an entirely new conception of truth, since the traditional notion of correspondence to the world in itself is no longer feasible. I think that Heidegger gives us the best answer: if reality is that which appears and if it is as it appears, then truth should be thought of as this event of appearing itself. The idea of comparing appearances with the reality behind them is off the table, since the only way we have of making such a comparison is by checking one experience against another. In other words, all we can do is compare appearances with appearances without ever getting outside of these. There is no way to get behind them to something deeper or realer, so we shouldn’t even say that there is an outside or that these are “mere” appearances. What we need is a rigorous philosophical analysis of appearances and appearing, and this is just what phenomenology becomes in Heidegger’s hands.
Nonsense.
Enlightenment rules. No urgency here for Heidegger. Even Pierce and pragmatism would do (in my view), but it isn't really needed. The critique is just fashionable nonsense.
And the reason why it's nonsense is that when you teach and read only the critique, you don't actually understand the thing that you are criticizing and, above all, you don't put the critique itself into context, into some perspective with the whole. Heidegger knew the science of his day and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Today people seldom do. This is the basic problem. Or as one Asian academician put it aptly: "In order to criticize Western science, you actually have to know and understand Western science".
I mean the meaning/purpose of a fish is to swim and swim well. A tiger must predate well and so on. What of humans? That which sets us apart from the rest of the living world is our mind, its higher faculties of logic and creativity. I believe, ergo, that cultivation and employment of these higher faculties define us.
As for science, it looks like it's at the top of the list of mankind's creative and logical achievements. It helps us understand, therefore manipulate, our world to our advantage. Scientists and mathematicians have to be rational AND creative, sometimes, I believe, at the very frontiers of these abilities.
So, according to me, yes, there is a greater meaning/purpose in immersing oneself in math and science.
What I'll not agree on is that scientists/mathematicians are morally good people. Like every other professional category there'll always be some rotten apples.
Abandoning the correspondence theory of truth is not about ignoring the Enlightenment or Western science. In fact, Thomas Kuhn.s approach, which is an abandonment of the correspondence theory, has been taken up by plenty of empirical researchers in the cognitive sciences. If this is fashionable nonsense, then I guess the visual perception research of Alva Noe at Berkeley is fashionable nonsense.
This is a bit dubious though. One of my themes is that humans don't just "do" things like "work", but we KNOW we do things like work. We are a product of our biology and culture, but we are also SELF-AWARE of this. Thus, this puts us in a weird position that anything goes as far as how we are defined. That was Sartre's main theme in radical freedom and authenticity. There is no set human nature, other than the freedom to play at things like "roles" or a "purpose". In other words, it would be circular reasoning to knowingly pursue a goal called "science/technology" as if it was our destiny, when it is something we are willfully doing in the first place! To combine this with Heidegger's "ready-at-hand", we must distinguish our ability to tinker and invent that comes as a result of necessity, vs. a purposeful/willful goal of pursuing technology. One does indeed seem to come naturally, but it cannot be something we think about as we are doing it, otherwise the natural-ness of the phenomena gets subsumed by our awareness of it, and it is no longer "natural", but a product of our personalities willing it to occur.
Quoting TheMadFool
I guess the big question is, WHY is it meaningful to create technologies? I've already discounted the idea you mentioned earlier, that it is our species' purpose. Any other ideas? Understanding the regularities of nature, usings specific and complicated maths to determine exact outcomes. What is it about this that makes this a bastion of meaning?
@Joshs and @old, feel free to chime in.
I agree with Paul Feyerabned's views of science:
"Starting from the argument that a historical universal scientific method does not exist, Feyerabend argues that science does not deserve its privileged status in western society. Since scientific points of view do not arise from using a universal method which guarantees high quality conclusions, he thought that there is no justification for valuing scientific claims over claims by other ideologies like religions. Feyerabend also argued that scientific accomplishments such as the moon landings are no compelling reason to give science a special status. In his opinion, it is not fair to use scientific assumptions about which problems are worth solving in order to judge the merit of other ideologies. Additionally, success by scientists has traditionally involved non-scientific elements, such as inspiration from mythical or religious sources. He rejected the view that science is especially "rational" on the grounds that there is no single common "rational" ingredient that unites all the sciences but excludes other modes of thought He claims that far from solving the pressing problems of our age, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful."
I find it hard to swallow criticism directed at science using tools that are only possible because of science.
Yet, it won't take long for scientists and non-scientists to realize, in complete understanding of their choices, that science is the one true activity that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Yes, there's art and music but these are non-rational as far as I can see and so must be on a lower rung of the hierarchy of natures that define a human being.
Some might say that science is incomplete and there are other rational fields like philosophy that are non-scientific as it were. Nevertheless science is surely (I'm being optimistic here) going to make inroads into such issues as consciousness and thereof all other fields will be absorbed into science.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Heidegger:
“modern science, as the theory of the real, is not anything
self-evident. It is neither a mere construct of man nor something
extorted from the real. Quite to the contrary, the essence of
science is rendered necessary by the presencing of what presences at the moment
when presencing sets itself forth into the objectness of the real. This moment remains mysterious,
as does every moment of its kind. ..The sciences are not in a position
at any time to represent themselves to themselves, to set themselves
before themselves, by means of their theory and through
the modes of procedure belonging to theory.
If it is entirely denied to science scientifically to arrive at its
own essence, then the sciences are utterly incapable of gaining
access to that which is not to be gotten around holding sway in
their essence. Here something disturbing manifests itself.”
If we accept that science itself “remains mysterious” it is possible
to challenge a variety of meaningful anthropomorphic narratives describing science.
In what way does it separate humans from other animals? What objective purpose does it ultimately serve besides helping us guarantee our survival? (which is actually questionable seeing how it can also help us destroy ourselves)
Quoting TheMadFool
What makes rationality the criterion that puts science above art or music?
Do you realize that rationality alone cannot tell you what to do? Rationality alone cannot tell you what goal to pursue. It is your feelings in the first place that give you goals, what you desire, and only then can rationality help you decide how to reach them, what you may do so you can reach them.
There is this widespread view of seeing logic and reason above everything else, without realizing that logic and reason in isolation can help us decide nothing.
So then what gives science a special status above art or music?
It's a bit dishonest to the fish and tiger to describe them solely from what we see them do, while describing humans with having a mind because we are able to experience our own mind. Who knows what it's like to be a tiger or a fish, what their mind is like? Some people have a rich inner world, yet you wouldn't guess it from barely looking at them, based on the human-centric measures of what they build and how productive they are. Who's to say other animals don't also have a vivid imagination that is simply not apparent to us?
If some alien species were to observe our behavior, without taking into account our hypothetical mind, like we don't take into account the hypothetical mind of other animals, they could easily say the meaning/purpose of humans is to build more and more and spread like an invasive species at the expense of their environment.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I mean that for Heidegger scientists themselves in principle cannot give a full and correct account on what are they doing. Farther, if one embraces this assertion, one can conclude that scholars undoubtedly are “doing something”; nevertheless, it is unknown in what they are taking part.
Of course, any scholar can have a kind of a feeling and tell stories about their personal experience; yet, all these accounts will always remain ungrounded and opened to a constant process of different interpretations.
Of course each one of us is "participating in something grander" just by being alive. Each one of us is a member of multiple communities whether he wants to be or not. Each of us is a member of a family and lineage, a citizen of a nation-state, a resident in a municipality, for instance. Each of us is a member of the community of living things, of sentient animals, of human beings, of sentient beings wherever and whenever they may be.
I'm not sure I understand the rest of your question. It seems you're taking issue with an idea you attribute to others, something about math, science, and technology being "meaningful" or "important". It's not at all clear to me what you're driving at.
I'm not sure how to coordinate your use of "important" with your use of "meaningful" and "grand". Are you asking whether people think pure and applied math and empirical science are "more important" than other human pursuits? Don't you expect that there are many different ways to tally up what counts as "important"?
The minutia is where the job gets done. Those who know how to monger minutia to get shit done, can claim they are doing the real work. Everyone else is just jabbering. Thus, the meaning of life for them is the ability to compute minutia to get shit done. This is de facto justified by our very use of the things that are the outcome from the minutia mongerers.
The way I see it people are driven by their desires. Maybe all our desires were selected through evolution. Some people have the desire to understand, to predict, to build cool stuff, to be famous, to feel better than, to help others. They use specific and complicated maths to fulfill one or several of these desires. Working on fulfilling their desires is what gives them meaning. There is inherently nothing there that makes this activity a bastion of meaning over any other.
But there are some people who see this activity as giving access to the ideal of Truth, to the absolute, to everlasting certainty in a world full of uncertainties, something unchanging that we can rely on no matter what. The desire of reaching this ideal may be again a byproduct of evolution. Some see this ideal embodied in an absolute God who governs an underlying absolute reality, and believe they can reach this absolute by worshipping it. Others believe there are absolute laws that govern an underlying absolute reality (which they may call laws of the Universe, of Nature, of Physics), and that uncovering them will give them access to the absolute.
The strength of the desire to reach this absolute may be the reason why some people see worshipping a God or attempting to uncover laws of the Universe as activities more meaningful than any other.
But then of course even if such Laws existed, what would happen once we uncover them and reach the promised land, the nirvana that we believe awaits us once we uncover them? We would have a great ability to predict the future, to ensure our survival, but what would become the meaningful activities once our survival is ascertained? I believe our state of mind then wouldn't be far from that of the people who dedicate their life to becoming rich, believing that riches will give them bliss, and who once rich find themselves purposeless and realize it didn't make them any happier.
Minutia mongering in general can be different things in different realms. I'll just give some examples in various layers.. but this reaches across all disciplines with their associated layers.
- Creating a really complicated spreadsheet with various interconnecting functions and formulas to extract complex data trends
-Programming using C# to create new software functionality connected with some SQL database.
-Creating the C# language using various advanced coding layers
-Creating machine code
-Designing the circuitry, memory, and motherboard components to allow the binary code to create information from electrical impulses and turn it into translatable machine code for higher programmatic purposes
All this is intensive minutia mongering. Life itself is about immersing oneself in the details in order to obtain some goal of survival, entertainment, or comfort. At the social level, these goals are intertwined with incentives and rituals to induce production and replication of resources, people, and the culture itself.
The opposite ideal is sleep. Slumber, off, rest, the desire for nothingness. To be rid of the detail, the minutia. This impulse is like that of Nirvana, sleep, being one with the universe or godhead, etc. It is akin to the most generalized form of being. We can never achieve this stillness or oneness though. As long as we are live and conscious, we are slaves to the minutia. Suicide itself, negates the very freedom of the hope that is desired, so even that is not an escape. One alive, there is nothing we can do. There is no catharsis in the desire to be "generalized" in nothing/god/death/nirvana/sleep. There is only repetitive, minutia mongering until death do us part.
First, I'm curious what some examples of this would be.
Yes. This is the way I see it:
We feel desires. These desires lead us to set goals and attempt to reach them. Without any desire we wouldn't do anything and would quickly die.
Our fundamental desires have no justification, there is no justification to our desire to live other than if we didn't have it we would die quickly.
People do things, because they experience a desire that leads them to do these things. The experience of the desire is what gives meaning to the act, without the desire the act has no meaning. Using a tool has no meaning if there is no desire we want to fulfill by using the tool.
So without experiencing the desire, anything anyone does can be seen as meaningless, including indeed all the minutia people immerse themselves in.
The people immersed in these activities see them as a tool to fulfill one of their desires. For instance, people "programming using C# to create new software functionality" may do it because that's what their boss tells them to do and they know that if they do what their boss tells them they will get money which will allow them to buy food to eat, to pay for a place in which they will sleep comfortably, to do fun activities, which is what they desire.
Some other people may do this very same activity of "programming using C# to create new software functionality" because they believe that the software once finished will help them or others in some way, which would be the desire that is fueling them.
Some other may do this very same activity to prove to themselves or to others that they are able to do some complicated task better than others, with the end goal to feel good about themselves and confident, which would be the desire driving them.
There are a whole bunch of different desires that could lead people to do a given activity, but the reason they do that activity is because they see it as a way to fulfill a desire they have, a desire that they experience. Their desire coupled with the belief that the activity is a way towards that desire is what gives them meaning to what they do.
This all led me to wonder where desires come from, if our whole existence depends on what we desire then where do our desires come from in the first place? Then I realized that we could see all our desires as evolutionary tools that were selected through competition for survival, that everything is as if we have the desires we do because they helped our ancestors/species survive in some way. As if we were machines controlled by our desires, attempting as best as we can to fulfill them, and surviving and reproducing and perpetuating the species in the process, in this grand cosmic game.
The way that you've articulated the concept of minutia mongering, it seems that the more 'stuff' we are conscious of dealing with in our moment to moment experiencing of our world, the more it will fit the defintion of minutia mongering. Detail, complexity, intensity imply a quantitative element, all that magnitude of stuff we are burdened with fixing, figuring out, calculating, counting, manipulating, transforming.The greater the magnitude the more burdensome.
Your adjectives for minutia mongering are affective terms, describing what it feels like to be involved in a kind of experiencing that we don't particularly enjoy, that is tedious, somewhat boring and unfulfilling. What exactly is it about such experiences that make them less than satisfying to us?
Is it the sheer amount of 'stuff' that is the essence of minutia mongering, or is it the inadequate way in which that 'stuff' is organized, interrelated within itself and with respect to our goals? Think about what are called 'flow' experiences. When we are immersed in such experiences, time seems to fly by, we feel the opposite of bored, we don't consider what we are doing a means to another end, but its own end. But is a flow experience characterized by a paucity of 'stuff', the escape from detail? On the contrary, in such states of being we maintain a hyper-awareness of all that goes on around us.
What differentiates it from an experience of minutia mongering is that each moment 'flows' into the next. What makes this possible is that when we are engaged in a truly creative endeavor, we are able to assimilate new experience in a supremely , joyfully integral way with respect to previous experience.. The difference between a complex, intense, detailed experience that feels burdensome, tedious, boring and, enslaving, and one that is creatively satisfying and pleasurable is not the amount of 'stuff' we are aware of being immersed in, but the particular way we are immersed in it, how meaningfully we organize it. This meaningfulness is a function of our ability to make sense of its moments as purposefully and thematically related and relevant to each other and to our overarching goals and self-understanding. Spreadsheets and programming tasks can typically involve a mixture of the purposefully patterned and the arbitrary in equal measures. Important factors include who you are doing such tasks for, and how personally invested in the outcome you are(is this your own business, personal hobby, or are you a wage slave to a boss whose goals you are not personally invested in?). Writing a musical score or a novel or philosophical treatise will also involve a bit of both, but if they represent works of unusual originality the moments of profound satisfaction will greatly outweigh those of ambivalent, semi-bored 'minutia mongering'.
Generalization is an important element in flow experiences . You associated the term with sleep, nothingness and escape from experience, but , on the contrary, generalization, theorization and abstraction are synonymous with true detail oriented, complex thought. Generalization is about ordering lower order differences within higher order unifying syntheses. It lets you have your cake and eat it too, Generalization allows us to experience MORE detail than we can when an experience we are immersed in unfolds in a fragmentary, disjointed, arbitrary manner. 'Minutia' implies arbitrary. We only pay attention to each moment of experience when they are imbued with an arbitrariness. Watching the clock move agonizingly slowly while waiting for the school day to end illustrates how our sense of the speed of time is connected with the relative interruptedness and disjunctiveness of moment to moment experience. Don't mistake this restless bored attention to the clock as a hyper-awareness. One's memory for the later recall of the details of what transpired during such tedious events is not typically very impressive when compared to one's memory for what took place during a hyper-aware flow experience. Generalization gives you MORE, richer, denser , more integral experience than minutia mongering.
If, as you argued, the marginally effective ways of construing ongoing experience characteristic of minutia mongering are means of self-preservation, the the more effective and adaptive flow-type modes of creativity are even more conducive to self-preservation.
There is more than one way to look at desire besides thinking of it as separated from cognition and experience. It is only when we begin from a desire-thinking split that we are faced with a self-invented problem of having to explain how we are pushed(drive, motive) or pulled(environmental re-enforcement) into action. We inherited this quandry from the notion of static equilibrium used in the physical sciences, But a living system is not a static thing, it is a self-enclosed system of exchanges and interaction with an environment. It exists by changing itself, and thus is a dynamically equilibrating system.
A range of philosophical and psychological accounts abandon the arbitrary split in favor of a view of experience that begins with our always already finding ourselves in motion (not physical movement but experiential). so from moment to moment we find ourselves in changing circumstances as sense making organisms. 'Desire' is simply the particular way in which the world makes sense to us in our interactions with it. We find ourselves engaged and doing before we 'desire' to engage. This means that human experiencing is inherently anticipatory, purposive and goal-oriented.The world as it appears to us via our perspectival, goal-oriented engagement with it IS what desire is.
This always already being in active engagement with the world is something we share with all living systems. It is not a specific evolved mechanism but rather goes back to the fundamental basis of living systems as self-organized interactions. The question for us human is not how to explain desire but how to adaptively transform our perspectives such as to move smoothly through a constantly changing world.
Schopenhauer called this initial state "Will'.
Quoting leo
Ok, I'll go with this schema. It is the burden of these desires (that lead to more minutia) that I am concerned with. Once born, you are responsible for your desiring. To live in a society to "get stuff done" we need those desires to be driven to ever more knowledge, application, capacity, and aptitude for understanding and performing minutia. The opposite of this is sleep, nirvana, being immersed in some form of oneness feeling. It is the general, not the specific. It is rest not intense mongering and tending to the minutia. Once born, we are responsible to see the minutia carried out. The bird must follow its prime directive. The human must KNOWINGLY monger its minutia, live its daily life, constantly evaluating the situation, making conscious, deliberate decisions, that are more minutia mongering. There is no end to it once born.
I've discussed "flow" states many a-time. I KNEW someone was going to bring that up as some form of rebuttal about my idea of generalization, or to counter the idea that minutia mongering is negative. Flowing in philosophy, and flowing in technological-mathematical fields have two different outcomes. One is jabbering babble and the other "gets stuff done". One is just talk, the other takes materials, time, space, and turns it into stuff that does stuff to get other stuff done, and works with other stuff that does stuff that gets stuff done. Whether you are flowing, or painstakingly tediously making your way through a technological-mathematical problem, the outcome is that stuff is getting done. All that matters is that stuff is getting done that works and is functional, is usable, and takes the material world and does something with it, or so the people that are more "flow" in these realms might argue. I'm not discounting creativity, but creativity in solving the material-functional things that get stuff done is what counts. Next time you turn on your light, adjust the temperature, open the computer, walk on any material in your house, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, etc. etc. you'll know what I mean.
I simplified, but yes our desires are shaped by our experiences and beliefs, which themselves are shaped by our desires, in an interacting whole. It might be more accurate to see desire, experience and belief as three aspects of the same changing thing, which would give a more poetic aspect to existence than seeing us as machines controlled by our desires.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think I agree with you fundamentally, but where are you going with it?
The feeling I get is that you reject the idea that a life where we constantly "get stuff done" is more meaningful than a life spent doing nothing, you are against the idea that other people or society should pressure you to "get stuff done", which I agree with.
But also it seems that you are lamenting the fact that existence is the way it is, seeing desires as a "burden" rather than an opportunity, which leads me to think that you don't find life worth living, and that philosophy was a way for you to attempt to make it worth living (correct me if I'm wrong).
Many people don't do philosophy and yet would say that their life is worth living, that they're better off alive than dead. Some would say that it's because "they don't know better", but I think it's more simply that they have experiences that make their life worth living. And the feeling I get is that what you are fundamentally looking for and lacking is these experiences that make life worth living.
I have found that it is often our fears that take away the joy from life. So what are you afraid of deep down?
While on a surface level it appears that all we ever do is get stuff done, you are stating that from the point of view of looking at the world with your eyes alone. When we see with our eyes alone the world appears soulless, we appear as a bunch of machines getting stuff done endlessly. But that's not the whole world, because there are also feelings there that the eyes can't see. There is something going on in our minds that cannot be reduced to what the eyes see, that cannot be reduced to getting stuff done.
The people I'd first want to thank for my home thermostat, computer, refrigerator and lights are the ones who installed them. They are the 'realest of the real' minutia mongergers. Next would be the ones who delivered the materials, and after them would be the corporate ceo's who created a business model , marketing, and distribution successful enough to stay in business and make these products available to people like me. I suppose next I'd thank the minutia mongerers who designed these products, which is the narrow group you seem to constantly refer to and glorify. but of course they are just one intermediate link(in terms of detail mongering) in a long chain of participants in bringing products to my life. After the designers-engineers, I'd thank the scientists who invented the physical, chemical-electrical-information theories that the designers merely applied. Then I'd give a big thanks to the abstract philosophers-logicians-mathenaticisns who preceded the scientists and provide the overarching framework within which the industrial and information sciences could develop a vocabulary. Apart from the progressively higher levels of abstraction and generalization we see in the sorts of models and plans used by the various groups involved in bringing products to me, as we move from transportation route to business model to design blueprint to scientific theory to philosophical position, there is another progression we see.
While each corporation and designer deals with a limited range of products, the scientist creates the possibility for many categories of products in a wide variety of industries to be developed. And the philosopher not only makes possible new modalities of material inventions, but new political, ethical , economic, educational and social arrangements as well. So as we move up the ladder of theorization and generalization, from business to design to science to philosophy-logic-math, the variety of human technologies, well beyond the merely material ones, that each participant makes possible expands.
Note another imporant fact about this progression toward generalization. Starting with the lowest rung of the ladder of abstraction, thinking machines are in the process of replacing the workforce. The blue collar manufacturing workers were the first to go, accounting and secretarial work is vanishing, soon transportation workers will be eliminated. It is only a matter of time before the design-engineer-programming minutia mongerers are replaced by machines. You wont have to worry about all those bored 'getting stuff done' drones any more. They will be obsolete. The pace of change is accelerating, and time will be too precious a commodity to waste on paying humans to do repetiiive 'minutia mogering' work when they will be better utilized in creative , intuitive tasks that machines will not be able to duplicate for a long time.
The whole notion of the relationship between what humans get paid to do and what 'works' is likely to undergo significant change over the next century as those aspects of our world we call merely functional move further away from human concerns as we increasingly cede control to our machines to take care of the sort of repetitive minutia of what 'works' . What will be left to humans will be the social and creative arts, politics, entertainment, education and the like. You know, the generalization racket.
Quoting schopenhauer1.
What it means for something to get done, to work, is relative to one's goals. If you're bored and miserable at your job , you are failing to get stuff done that counts for you, even if you are churning out product.. Your affective comportment is telling you this. There is no other measure of success at anything than our affectivity. It is what defines our values, our goals and their successful accomplishment. What ever you can accomplish through a mostly tedious , repetitive and boring career you can accomplish much more by replacing that meaningless job with one that feels satisfying, regardless of whether it is making what we call 'real' objects. Since the machines will eventually take over your job anyway, why not get a jump on the future? Why waste your life as a slave to a narrow materialistic view?
It may be that you havent found satisfaction in any other sort of thinking than what passes for you as pragmatic materialist drudgery, so you universalize what works for you into a general human principle. But holding that functional-materialist view may make one miss the eventual threat to one's livelihood from trends that are beginning to pick up speed.
Yes, there is minutia mongering at all levels. Remember, much of this view is simply cynical devil's advocate- trying to play the opposite view to make a point.
Let's take a step back here. The problem itself stems from being born. The individual is burdened with the responsibility of existence. Sartre called it "throwness" and Heidegger had his own name for it (I can't recall). But the cultural-historical-social-material world has been set up and played out long before us, the individual, got here, but we are to navigate and understand at least a small part its billions of webbings in order to live comfortably within it. There is a lot of talk of "flow", "creativity", and the like which has the "sound" of being some positive aspect, but to me rings hollow.
Existence is about the stress- the stress of living with others, the stress of getting by, the stress of finding comfort, the stress of finding peace, the stress of mastering minutia, the stress of labor, hell, it goes down to the very stress of our own desires as @leo stressed. It doesn't go away- robot paradise or not. Flow and creativity don't justify or compensate for the negative characteristics. If someone said birth entails all this, but you get to have flow states and creativity, I'd tell them to shove it where the sun don't shine- they can keep it. I see the hope for achieving flow states and creativity as just ANOTHER propaganda tactic thrown out there by psychologists and social scientists to make sure people are getting along well enough in society. That is complicity, not a justification for life's continuance.
Just keep minutia mongering.. get caught in the details of the trillions of interactions at all levels, and all layers. The new salvation is flow and creativity to add to the socially deemed worthy pursuit of output. Meanwhile, you were never born for yourself, nor can you be. You were always being used. But hey, the outcome of birth is that now YOU have to deal with the impinging factors of life.
Also, this kind of got off tangent and became about psychological states of flow, etc. What the main point is in a nutshell is that some people think that trying to master all the minutia of some topic inherently provides some sort of worth. Thus the more complexity you understand of a subject, the more your life is justified. By knowing the complexity of a subject matter, this somehow provides you more worth. This thread is trying to disavow this notion as well. No one explicitly states this of course, but it is implied. It's not knowing the general principles of life/universe/cosmos that they think is worthy, but the fact that they know very detailed information about life/universe/cosmos.. or the millions of subtopics of those very general categories. Thus, the minutia provides the meaning. As with many of my threads, I am disarming this view as well. You are not justifying your life or life itself or being born in the first place by desperately mastering minutia either. The false hope is the infinite amounts of information that can be "mined" and that one is "revealing" by trying to master the minutia. One may feel that they are literally "mining" existence. Since existence can be mined, and that there is so much to mine, this must "mean" something.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree that there is no absolute objective justification or worth to anything, I agree that you didn't choose to be born, but I don't agree that you have to feel used, and I don't agree that you have to feel unworthy, this is just how you feel, because of your past circumstances.
Whatever you do, someone somewhere will find it useless. It doesn't stop people from doing what they do, because they find worth in it themselves, and they are not looking for an absolute justification that doesn't exist, the only justification they need is that they want to do it.
Sometimes people think only about themselves, or need your help, and make you suffer as a result. You can choose to interpret it as if they are using you, but you can also simply interpret it as if they think about themselves or need help.
I think that if you felt worthy, you would not have such a pessimistic outlook on life. You would not try so hard to find in things an inherent meaning that doesn't exist unless you give them a meaning yourself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The stress is how you feel about existence, many people feel like you, but many other people feel differently about it, it is a subjective interpretation rather than an objective thing. I think that what you should be looking at is why is it everything is so stressful to you, what is it that prevents you from finding joy in life. The stress stems from a fear. I know it's not an easy question, but what is it that you fear deep down?
This may seem unrelated to the thread, but I see it as the fundamental reason why you made this thread in the first place. On the surface you try to show people that there is no inherent meaning in anything they do, that there is no inherent justification to keep living, but they do see a meaning and a justification because of how they feel, how they feel is the only meaning and justification they need. And I think that if there was much less stress and much more joy in your life you too would see the meaning and the justification, which is why I think that what you're really looking for is joy in life, find out what prevents you from experiencing it, and then your quest for meaning and justification will be over. It is not the meaninglessness and the lack of justification that takes out the joy, it is the lack of joy that gives rise to the feeling of meaninglessness and the absence of justification.
I found my wasy out of the straightjackeet of drives and reniforcers with the help of Heideger(he's the one who coined the term 'thrownness'), Eugene Gendlin and George Kelly. Kelly, Gendlin and Heidegger abandoned completely the notion of 'drive' as a way of explaining human motivation. We are not slabs of meat pushed and pulled by social and internal strings.
Eugene Gendlin’s re-envisioning of the body as radical interaffecting, thinking along with
Heidegger’s Being-with, locates the genesis of meaning-making as always beyond the reach of
normative social processes.
“We can speak freshly because our bodily situation is always different and much more
intricate than the cultural generalities. A situation is a bodily happening, not just generalities.
Language doesn't consist just of standard sayings. Language is part of the human body's
implying of behaviour possibilities. Our own situation always consists of more intricate
implyings. Our situation implies much more than the cultural kinds. The usual view is mistaken,
that the individual can do no more than choose among the cultural scenarios, or add mere
nuances. The ‘nuances’ are not mere details. Since what is culturally appropriate has only a
general meaning, it is the so-called ‘nuances’ that tell us what we really want to know. They
indicate what the standard saying really means here, this time, from this person.
Speech coming directly from implicit understanding is trans-cultural. Every individual
incorporates but far transcends culture, as becomes evident from direct reference. Thinking is
both individual and social. The current theory of a one-way determination by society is too
simple. The relation is much more complex. Individuals do require channels of information,
public discourses, instruments and machines, economic support, and associations for action. The
individual must also find ways to relate to the public attitudes so as to be neither captured nor
isolated. In all these ways the individual is highly controlled. Nevertheless, individual thinking
constantly exceeds society.”
What happens if life really is bad. We tend to psychologize the badness and make it YOUR problem or MY problem. If it is your or my then it is not A problem in general. What happens if life is actually bad, but by psychologizing it, you are being complicit in perpetuating the badness by trying to correct the ones chiming up about it. Like a bad boss who doesn't want to hear complaints- shape up or ship out is the message. However, there is no improvement plan- it is just better coping techniques. Life itself can't be the problem though, right?
I agree to some extent with that, I have said numerous times in other threads how psychiatry focuses on making the individual adapt to the system we impose on him rather than changing the system so it becomes better adapted to the individual, pathologizing the individual rather than the system the individual finds himself in. But at the same time there are constraints about existence that are seemingly out of our control, such as the need to eat and the need to share this planet, so to some extent the individual needs to adapt to that if he wants to find his life worth living.
And these unavoidable constraints of existence cannot be what makes life really bad, because many people find their life worth living. So then the solution to get better for those who struggle through life lies in changing what can be changed, either changing the way society functions and the way we interact with each other, or the individual. I don't agree with psychiatry that the solution is to be found in drugs that we make the individuals ingest so that they can adapt to whatever system we impose on them, rather I believe that most if not all mental suffering can be traced back to fears, fears deeply ingrained that haven't been uncovered or that haven't been faced. If you could overcome your fears and find your life worth living as a result, would you see that as a coping technique, or would you see it as yourself having let go of your burdens and able to enjoy life?
Myself I have a deep fear of people, of being judged negatively, of being rejected, of being pointed at, of being mocked. I have come up with coping techniques, playing a role, being oblivious to others, thinking I'm better than others, but they don't solve anything, they only mask the fear and cause other problems, and worse than that they lead to stop seeing the fear as the underlying problem.
In society I feel regularly stressed, to the point of having sometimes dark thoughts and seeing existence as meaningless. Yet when I go deep in nature, far from anyone, I feel right at home in a profound sense, I thrive, I'm happy to be alive, and in these moments it makes it all worth it. The fear of people is still there, but there it is inconsequential because there are no people around. There I find life beautiful. Within society, on a few occasions I ingested a specific substance that had as a temporary effect to remove my fear of people, not because it made me reckless, not because it made me not care about anything, but somehow it made me see the beauty in people rather than seeing them as threats, and in these moments I could see how beautiful life can be without our fears. But this is impossible to see when your fears take hold of you, because they put a filter onto the world that prevents you from seeing the beauty.
But the real solution lies not in staying constantly deep in nature, or in ingesting that substance constantly, it lies in overcoming the fear for good. I am still afraid to face my fears, it isn't easy for me to talk about my fear of people, it wasn't easy for me to come and read what you might have answered to my previous post, what if he rejected me, what if he said that what I say is bullshit. I believe that one day I will succeed, to the point where the fear will be gone for good, where I will see the world for good without this filter that destroys life. I don't want to perpetuate the badness, I want to help you feel better, to help you enjoy life. Maybe because you remind me a bit of myself.
It is bad for them too. I don't take much stock in self-reports at a particular time/place. Benatar did a good job indicating our psychological mechanisms for reporting "good" about "not good" things, specifically through Pollyannaism (optimism bias), adaptation (ideal/initial goals are changed to lesser goals because life doesn't meet them), comparison (if people are seen as having it worse, you must be better off).
Also, my own input is that when interviewing someone about "LIFE" there is social pressure and cues to make positive statements, not to sound too whiny or make dramatic pronouncements, or generally look like a Debbie-downer, so of course people will usually report they are better off. Also, indirectly, people who report "life is good" are interconnected with, and rely upon the labor, life-experiences, and hardships of those who do not agree. Further, things change. What people thought was good when generalized or with time might not seem so anymore.
Quoting leo
I don't think there is a "solution" beyond recognizing the problem and perhaps simply not having more people- to not create a new person who must then overcome pain/adversity for a lifetime.
The implication is that "experts" in any field, by simply "revealing" complexities, are "revealing" some depth to the universe. The FACT of this depth itself means there must be "something" to it. Thus, by "expertising" people think they are substantiating something. The expertise electrician, the expertise logician, the expertise, mathematician, the expertise technician, it doesn't matter. By being experts, by having a handle on complexity, they think this confidence in "mining" a particular aspect of the universe (or simply a topic to no be so dramatic), is doing something inherently meaningful. This substantiates why we are born for them. We must mine complexity, keep making more and more knowledge-bases.. They might be completely "nihilistic" in statements, but then show their actual tendency to embrace a logos by their "expertising" and "mining" tendencies.
I can tell you there was zero embellishment in my experiences I reported, I described them as I felt then. Also there are quite pessimistic people out there, always focusing on what they don't have rather than on what they have, comparing themselves to some famous star they see on TV rather than some poor African dudes dying of hunger in a war zone, always seeing the glass half empty rather than half full. I have had genuine lasting moments of happiness in my life, so I can't pretend they have never existed. And I have been in much better situations than where I am now, where I do tend to feel like shit quite regularly.
What I'm wondering is that if you were so convinced life is fundamentally shit and that it cannot possibly get any better, why do you continue living? What keeps you alive?
I'm not Sigmund Freud, and this isn't a therapy blog, but i suspect that intimacy issues are driving the existential concerns here.
I appreciate that @leo seems to be kind enough to try to reach out to what he probably sees as a troubled soul. At least online, he seems like a kind and nice fellow, and is quite the opposite of some more aggressively trolling types around here. Anyways, one of my major themes is that life is often worse than we realize, but we often are programmed to try to comply with it as the project of life itself is deemed as somehow necessary to continue and something to extol, when the constraints, circumstances, and fundamental structures might be quite negative for the individual. Even the fact that it is necessary to psychologically learn to adapt one's psychological state so as to accept life more easily, or in a better way, is telling. One of my other threads spoke of how birds and other animals don't know that they need to do, or evaluate what they are doing while they are doing it. We cannot do that. We evaluate our situations at almost every moment while we are doing it. This is not some Buddhist or Eastern thing where people would then respond, "we have to shut the evaluative part off while we do something".. While "flow states" exist and creative pleasures can occur, the evaluation is necessary to correct course, make deliberate actions, and generally get by, so that is not really an answer, as cognitively, it is so integrated with how we humans operate. To say otherwise, would be to throw out cliched, hollow solutions that do not really reflect what we do or rather, what we must do.
Anyways, this thread is essentially about how some types think that by "mining" existence- that is to say, by knowing/mastering all the minutia of life (minutia mongering), that we are somehow fulfilling a higher goal of some sort. Even if we say there is no higher goal to work towards, de facto by being wrapped up in the minutia, by trying to master it, we are regarding the fact that we are able to mine some understanding that can be useful for prediction/functionality from the materials/universe and so we must be doing something of value. The value comes in the output of more mining. For example, if I show you a really complex and extremely detailed math formula or proof, and then go about solving it, and then applying it to some world event that it maps to, I must be doing something of meaning because of its very complexity. I have mind the information and presented it and solved it. That in itself must mean something. The very fact of my understanding and solving the complexity or that I advanced a functionality.
What's really going on is instrumentality. The world turns, the universe expands, humans will go through repetitive tasks of survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment seeking. We will continue to seek out the "goods of life" motivated by these there main drives. We understand that we do this though. We don't just "do" like animals. We are aware of our own circular behavior that we cannot escape. This isn't like "take a vacation or do something different" type of escape, but everything together is part of it, including the vacation and something different. That would be particularizing the general situation and throwing out pragmatic, granular "solutions" to the bigger existential issue of instrumentality/circularity in the first place.
Good questions. By the way, as @Joshs mentioned, you seem very empathetic. Thank you for reaching out and trying to help. I appreciate that. I just want you to know, I recognize it and think that that is really good of you.
As for your questions, ending my life would provide no satisfaction, as the very ending of my life would also end the satisfaction I would have gained from ending my life. Even the thought of death is something that has to be conceptualized. Actual death is the end of conceptualization itself. Perhaps Schopenhauer said it better when he said: "Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer."
As to what keeps me alive, I think your question is really, "What gives you hope?". That is a question I do ask myself often, with no good answer. Perhaps that the next day won't be as annoying as the last? But the fact that I have to fix the problems causing the annoyance, is the problem I have in the first place. I will say, although I do see one of philosophy's main benefits as being a kind of existential therapy, I don't like to personalize it. That's why I tend to talk more in generalities. I'm not trying to avoid your questions that seem to be out of concern.
Even the atheists act as though somebody somewhere is keeping score and the result of all the purposeful figuring out is we get to keep what we’ve figured out and use it as a staircase to climb up to a better and better place. In fact, it isn’t life we want to continue and extol, it’s good experience. But life is every kind of experience, it will always, for everyone transition through every conceivable shade of good and bad feeling, and whether we feel like extolling it or not depends on what mood we are in.
That doesn’t mean that life is meaningless. If it were meaningless, we wouldn’t suffer. Being miserable is a very meaningful state. It implies a concept of pleasure. Pessimism is a comparison between an experienced or imagined state of well being or satisfaction and its loss or negation. A pessimist or depressive who claims never to have experienced pleasure could not then experience sadness or negativity. By the same token, pollyanna types experience as much suffeing as pessimists, but de-emphasize or repress those experiences. So pessimism, optimism and Utopianism have a lot more in common than they think.
To my mind, meaningfulness itself is a problem and a nuisance when taken as the aim of living. What people don't realize is that desiring substantial happiness and profundity out of meaning also dooms them to equally substantial misery and chaos.
The aim of knowledge is the minimization of meaning. I dont mean instrumental knowledge. I mean the kind of interpersonal knowledge that allows us to slip into the other’s perspective such as to give their actions a certain overall relataibility and intelligibility. Such relational anticipatory knowledge allows us to bypass significant anger, guilt, condemnation, astonishment when it comes to making sense of others. This is no instrumental staircase to bliss and idealized harmony. What it is is the dialing down of meaningfulness in relating to others. In achieving intimacy of relatednesss and unity,we at the same time reduce the power and substance of what we understand to affect us . This way of being with oneself and others is is directed toward a certain insignificance. It is still goal-directed, but the goals are more minor, not needing to be taken as seriously any more, just something to do. This is where Heidegger and Derrida lead me. It’s life beyond frantic joy and meaningful misery, and the replacement of such substantial affectivities by a knowing engagement of insubstantial mood textures, leading nowhere but in an endless circle of getting along barely distinguishable from non-existence.Heidegger calls it uncanny. Derrida says it is almost nothing. That’s the life for me.
Schopenhauer took misery too seriously. That's becasue he was stiil attached to the Proper. His pessimism, as is all lamenting of the misery of life, was a mourning of the loss of faith in proper foundationalism. Nietzsche shook himself free of vestigial attachment to the Proper , the serious, the mournful and the miserable.
Life for him was misery, but not proper misery, any more than it is proper joy or aggression or suffering or laughter. It is all these, sometimes all at once. He called this WIll to Power.
there is Will to instrumentality, Will to misery, Will to emancipation, Will to Utopia , Will to minutia mongering and Will to nothingness, and they are all forms of Will to Power.
A good cook, painter, or martial artist might, but need not, use tools designed by engineers to facilitate the labor of these specialists. Their excellence in their respective arts does not tend to depend on a narrow range of tools, but rather transfers readily enough to any of a wide range of tools that may efficiently serve the same or similar ends, regardless of whether the tools were designed and produced by way of primitive or advanced technological practice. Moreover, these artists might, but generally do not, stoop to rigorous arithmetical calculation and rigorous experimental method in the practice of their craft. Nevertheless, they may be said to attend to minutiae, to get shit done, and to do real work, little or none of which work -- far less than the scientist's or the mathematician's -- comes down to jabbering.
Yes, I agree, but thread was about how mongering minutia about a subject matter doesn't make life more meaningful because we have "mined" this information and can use it. In other words, "Look at all this stuff we have figured out! Look how adept some of us are at building immense equations that translate to technological output! This is meaningful!".
Isn't it meaningful? Or how isn't it? I'm still unsure what tree you're barking up.
It seems perhaps you're aiming to correct an immoderate bias you believe you have detected among some other speakers. I happily agree, some people tend to exaggerate the value of quantitative, scientific, and technological work as compared to other sorts of work. What purpose would it serve, if our characterizations of their excesses should be disfigured by the opposite deficiency?
:up:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
In a roundabout way, this has to do with pessimism. Pessimism posits that the world has an inherently negative value due to structural and contingent sufferings. There is an absurdity in our way of being that has evolved, whereby we have a whole variety of choices- what Sartre appropriately called "radical freedom", but we choose to put weight on various focuses to keep the absurdity constrained into discrete goals.
Some of those from the intelligentsia community (specifically mathematico-scientific-technological) would argue that they are a source of positive value. Why? Though not articulated in this manner expressly, the argument is that since they have the capacity/propensity to calculate advanced mathematical concepts, and since they are able to apply them to an empirically verifiable outcome in science and technology, that this is meaningful and counteracts a negative evaluation of the world, or its intendant absurdity. Rather, they might argue, the fact that we can "mine" consistently verifiable/falsifiable information about the world, that "cashes out" in the outcome of more accurate explanation and technology, that this is inherently something of value.
Further, people might feel that simply the sheer complexity of new technologies makes them meaningful. The fact that there is so much minutia to monger to understand a process, maintain it, and further its development into more areas of minutia, is somehow inherently good. In other words, somehow, complexity of subject-matter bestows it value.
Others, who are not the actual scientific-technology communities might also look to the value of this minutia and say, "see this work that the community is doing is proof that human production is "doing something". There seems to be a forward momentum, that technology and science is showing human values. Those who can monger all the related minutia must be of most value then. Again, this is a sort of critique of a way-of-thinking. Because we can use principles of math applied to science, we have something inherently meaningful that bypasses any notions of absurdity. People need to be born to maintain this mathematical-scientific human society. By the mere fact that our "modern lives" are touched in almost every respect by math-derived scientific/technological outputs, by having more children, and putting more people into the world to push minutia around and monger it in order to survive, many people are assenting to this being something meaningful that needs to be maintained by future generations. To put it in less words- "mine more minutia and create more complexity as this is somehow inherently valuable in itself and the people who can do this best are providing the most value".
I've never quite understood romantic talk of "absurdity" along such lines. I might agree that each of us is more or less out of tune -- with the truth, with the facts, with his own good, with other sentient beings, and so on. Life is dukkha. Is there something more -- apart from this sort of generic conception of disharmony, misalignment, conflict, ignorance, and confusion -- to existentialist talk of "absurdity in our way of being"?
I'm even more at a loss to make sense of your talk of "values". I'm not aware of any natural science or objective standard of values; I take it axiological discourses are predominately philosophical, political, and anthropological discourses. Is it commonly maintained that philosophical pessimism "posits that the world has an inherently negative value"? I'm not aware of this formulation of pessimism. I expect philosophical pessimism may be compatible with the claim that there is no such thing as "inherent value"; that judgments or dispositions of value are relative to the priorities of those who make such judgments or have such dispositions. I see no reason to say that the world has "inherent value" in itself, or to say that any particular thing we may distinguish in the world has "inherent value" in itself. Things have value for creatures like us; a thing that is positively or negatively valuable to one creature need not be valuable to another creature; a thing that is valuable to many creatures need not be valuable in the same way for each of them. Pessimism needn't be pessimism about values, it can be pessimism about outcomes, starting points, historical tendencies, natures, conditions... relative to a set of values.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, I'm perplexed by this framework of "inherent value".
Surely no one disputes that mathematical, scientific, and technological developments can be applied to achieve both desirable and undesirable outcomes. It seems about as reasonable to expect catastrophe as to expect salvation from a global technological culture like ours. In that regard, an accumulation of scientific and technological culture is no more "inherently" good or bad than an accumulation of iron or carbon. Everything depends on how such socioeconomic "goods" are put to use.
On the other hand, I find it hard to shake the intuition that, all else equal, creatures like us tend to prefer knowledge to ignorance, and to prefer power to impotence. I suppose such intuitions give some weight to support the claim that, all else equal, creatures like us may tend to value knowledge and power positively, and to value ignorance and impotence negatively.
Shall we say knowledge and power are well used the more they tend to produce desirable outcomes, and are abused the more they tend to produce undesirable outcomes?
Perhaps we can split the difference this way: Knowledge is better than ignorance, and knowledge well used is better than knowledge abused. Power is better than impotence, and power well used is better than power abused. I expect even many of the giddiest optimists about the prospects for technological culture like ours would be disposed to agree with some such evaluation.
Beyond such ready common ground, I suspect the disputes here at issue consist primarily of conflicting expectations about the likelihood of and means toward various desirable and undesirable outcomes, and about which outcomes are desirable or undesirable. What else is at issue in these disputes, discounting the vain boasts and insults of diverse cults competing in misguided contests for esteem and self-esteem?
Quoting schopenhauer1
A work of fiction, carpentry, or empirical investigation may be simple or complex in comparison to other works of its kind; I see no reason to suppose that in general the more complex work is the more valuable. One might argue the simplest work, achieving the greatest results in exchange for the least resources, is the most valuable.
I'm using it in a specific way, qualifying it with the concept of radical freedom. That is to say, the choices of what we do are of any range of things, but we often use a set of habits and heuristics to give ourselves constraints and focus. In this case, a constraint and focus for many inclined to the math-science-technology realm is to be adept at mastering the minutia of that particular interest. So the absurdity is the relative freedom of choice where we start as socialized individuals directed at the world before we make a decision on how to direct our thoughts and actions. That's how I am using it in this case at least. I can think of several other ways to use the term in an existentialist context.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
You are not aware of this formulation of pessimism, but that is the essential view of pessimism, so now you know :). Pessimism is actually not compatible with the claim that the world has no inherent value. If anything, that is aligned with what we commonly call "nihilism". Pessimism does view there to be value, but that existence has some structurally negative value attached to it. Thus, earlier you mentioned something like "dukkha". Buddhism is in a way a form of philosophical pessimism, as it purports that life has inherent dissatisfaction for the individual, and that there is a kind of constant deprivation inherent in the human condition. Yes, I think pessimism can be used in many other ways, but I am specifically applying the use of it in terms of "Philosophical Pessimism" which is very specific in the Western tradition to a form of evaluating life or existence as negative for the individual. The primary philosopher for this position, is of course Schopenhauer. So it is not nihilism, nor should it be construed with other uses of pessimism. Just as if someone says, "That person has a stoic expression" does not mean that that person necessarily believes in the philosophy of Stoicism, pessimism can be ascribed to other contexts, but not actually be referring to Philosophical Pessimism.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I think you are closer to my point with your point about contests for esteem and self-esteem. Imagine someone who has the ability to perform advanced calculations and apply it in such a context as to make applications that are utilized by people in various technologies. There are several directions to take this. First the person who is performing these advanced calculations and detailed experiments, may have a greater sense of utility. They are the ones that are maintaining and developing technologies used by society. But also, there need not be a subjective element to the esteem given to the technology-creator. That is to say, by simply using these technologies, we are already assenting that this is indeed important to us, whether or not the actual contributor to the technology got esteem from their contributions or not.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
We value complexity as it is needed to keep mining the world. Newton and Leibniz needed to develop more complex systems in order to answer certain questions. They mined more complexity that then translates to opening fields of inquiry that require more minutia-mongering- that is to say, wading in the weeds of this complexity, mastering it, and using it. Charles Boole, opened up the idea of Boolean logic, which indirectly translated into computer science. This applied to logic gates and physical circuits opens up the way for computers. This gets much more convoluted and complex as the way hardware and software that is created becomes used in various ways. So the computer programmer then has to get in the weeds of the minutia and become an expert in the complexities of the software program. The IT person must get in the complexities of the OSI internet model, networking, and general computer operation. The computer engineer has to understand the complexities of the materials, electrical components, and computer science principles to create the hardware that interacts with higher programming languages, etc. It just keeps going until much minutia is mongered. The more complexity one can monger, the more valuable one is in creating this output. Now you ask, where does this value come from? It comes from the fact that we use the outputs. Even if we did not acknowledge the person who contributed to it, we do by valuing the products of their output. Thus, we indirectly value the minutia they can monger.
Let's also look at it another way. Let's face it, if someone is positing an advanced mathematical or logical set of formulas and symbols that are being presumably calculated correctly, and correctly understood in their context, that person seems to be of more value based on their ability to master the calculations and understand such formal sets of information. That sort of formalized understanding is more sociologically deemed as valuable by many.
So, sure, other forms of outputs may achieve great results, but this thread is focusing on how many people view complexity and the mastery and mongering of it, is deemed as valuable in both a use and psychological way.
I'd like to add something to this argument. Not only is it that we think that there is some extra meaning in the fact that we get esteem from understanding complexity, and that we use the products of complex mathematical-sciences, but thirdly, that that we can comprehend the complexity itself is meaningful. Somehow the fact that we can develop all this minutia of complexity into our explanations of the world and in our technology, that this is meaningful in itself.
It's amusing. Lots of other pleasures fade as we age. Our knowledge organ is reliably erect. When my mind 'eats' a book, I don't feel sluggish. Our personality expands, a swelling microcosm. For many of us (and I think you'll relate) it becomes more amusing to talk among 'oneselves' than with others who don't have much appetite for thought. I count at least 3 dudes in my skull. You may have heard of them.
Yes, but remember I am actually critiquing this argument of meaning in complexity, technology, and science.
I guess I am demystifying the use of 'meaning.' A few people might indeed build it up into something transcendent. But I think this is the exception. In the same way a few people might build science up into scientism. And someone can make that their windmill.
So maybe it's a vulnerable target but not a challenging target. Is sex or food a 'bastion of meaning'? I don't know. Depends what you mean. I see that 'all is vanity' and men die just like dogs. OK, Preacher, but what now? Laugh with Democritus perhaps. Or hang ourselves. Or do the first while it's possible and then the other when it's not.
I think I mostly see the world as you do but I can't embrace the transpersonal value judgment or the project of trying to build this negative value judgment into something more. I'm down with grim thinkers. I don't mind the grimness. I just don't believe in some essential badness or goodness of reality/experience. It's different for everyone, but also there is enough similarity to be moderately intelligible to one another.
Yes meaning here I guess is tricky- but I'm using it to mean something that is valuable. Some people that understanding the complexity of a subject must mean one is inherently providing value. That this act of understanding complex subject matter must bestow is own virtue. The technology created from the complexity must bestow virtue for the technologist, and the fact that we can comprehend such complexity itself bestows virtue.
Quoting g0d
The constraints of survival are enough.
Fair enough. My theory is that any indicator of intelligence signals value. Even if the IQ is currently being 'wasted,' it's still evident in the grasp of (the wrong kind of) complexity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Fair enough. But why wouldn't we consider an inventor virtuous in some sense? We love the inventor for making something useful or pleasant. We love the composer for the music produced, etc. For those who aren't going to hang themselves, this stuff is genuinely valuable. So we value those who give us these things.
I just have ordinary valuing in mind, as in not resenting their getting paid for intellectual property rights, etc. Or having respect for someone who was clever and creative. Loving our best fellow monkeys the most is true religion, or so some thinkers have said (in other words).
Enough for what or who? We don't have to dwell on this point if you'd rather not.
Granted. In the light of suffering, it doesn't provide a reason to bring more people into the world in and of itself. No X value does. A further consequence of the inventor himself is the minutia that is mined from it. More jobs understanding the minutia so that more stuff can be pushed around and/or produced, continually. From previously: Minutia mongering- our focus on the particular, especially as it pertains to technological mastery. Some type of people think that by "mining" existence- that is to say, by knowing/mastering all the minutia of life (minutia mongering), that we are somehow fulfilling a higher goal of some sort. Even if they say there is no higher goal to work towards, de facto by being wrapped up in the minutia, by trying to master it, they are regarding the fact that we are able to mine some understanding that can be useful for prediction/functionality from the materials/universe as being something of value. The value comes in the output of more mining. For example, if I show you a really complex and extremely detailed math formula or proof, and then go about solving it, and then applying it to some world event that it maps to, I must be doing something of meaning because of its very complexity and its use in a functional application. I have mined the information and presented it and solved it and used it in a complex tool. That in itself must mean something. The very fact of my understanding and solving the complexity or that I advanced a functionality.
Quoting g0d
The hard stop for me is foisting challenges and suffering onto a next generation. Survival itself, in any socialized context, with any buffers, or contingencies attached that you can think of, is enough to prevent any other X value. No challenge needs to be unnecessarily foisted or foisted for some third-party reason X (to experience X). To go any further and say, "But people need..." is to then beg the question and engage in circular reasoning. If you want to get into subjective post-facto justifications that a net majority of people would say life is good in some survey we can.
In other words, the minutia to the minutia mongerer may seem more of signifier of "something" that is not there. Just more minutia to focus on.
Maybe. But no one on this forum is standing in for that position. Try to zoom out for a moment. Are you sure you aren't constructing a target out of thin air? Or what if we all already agree with you in terms of this reclusive target? I'm an atheist who thinks all value is mortal, finite, etc. Am I on your side or am I still too attached to the 'animal' value of gadgets, art, food, and sex?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Wait a minute, please. If you create something useful, OK. That's value. That's interest. If you create something beautiful or cute, that's value. But complexity alone wouldn't have value in itself. Maybe if I were your father-in-law I'd think well hopefully he'll grow up and apply that IQ in the real world.
But I can also imagine crazy people with endlessly intricate fantasy systems that no one wants to look at or study. The world is full of noise. We love geeks for their ability to cut through this noise. Complexity is what we don't like. If you aren't filtering or processing it, then who cares? If your filtering/processing is potentially generalizable to something that Mr. X and Mrs. Y wants done, then it's 'meaningful' in the boring way.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well I don't really take a position either way. It would be a game of 'If I were king.' People are going to do what they do. Life is short. I can't control this world. I ride my little piece of it like a bull that I know will eventually throw me off.
So I don't say 'life is good' as if I'm defending one metaphysical/scientific thesis against another. I don't claim that life is good or bad at all. I hustle like many others to protect and expand what I have. I just got a memory foam mattress. Those things are nice! I've got 2 pets and a S.O. I get paid for intellectual work. I'm in good shape. Whatever I say about Life I must say from this detailed situation which is not life in general but my life. That's why it's hard to be convincing with evaluations of life in general. You end up trying to tell depressed people that it's not that bad (which could be radically mistaken) or happy people that it's not that good (when life can indeed be paradise for long periods of time.)
It's targeted at those who think by being wrapped up in complexity, they are doing something greater. It's like Shakespeare's quote about an idiot on stage that signifies nothing. Think of the programmer wrapped up in the complexities of his language or the mathematician who can delve into the deepest of set theory proofs. The complexities of these seems to mean something here here. Think of using a complex device made by those who value complexity for a living. This use may "mean" something to some people. Think of the fact that we can delve into such complexity. This seems to "mean" something here. All I'm saying is this complexity too signifies nothing. It isn't an indicator of something more going on.
Quoting g0d
That's all fine and good, but then I will point you back to my thread about the happy slave. Foisting challenges on a new person by giving them life (which de facto requires challenges to overcome) is never right. If you answer that overcoming challenges is necessary, this would be a contradiction, as the person did not exist for anything to be necessary for. You are creating the situation out of nothing. You are then saying, "There needs to be someone who exists that then must overcome challenges". This is slightly sadistic, even if meant as gentle "doable" challenges. The point being that it is ethically never good to promote suffering or foist challenges to a new person. Just like the happy slave scenario, even if the slave/child eventually identifies with their situation, it was not right to have been given challenges and exposure to suffering in the first place. The conceit is "something needs to get done by somebody!" But nothing has to get done by anybody. Your romantic vision perhaps that there will be no one around to enjoy things and love, is just that, a romantic projection. What actually would be the case is that there would be no one deprived of anything, as there is no person to exist. You can then say, "We all agree life is better than not-life" but this doesn't make sense. Good experiences in life in and of themselves only matter relative to an actual person. However, overcoming challenges and suffering are the result of being born. Good experiences would not be missed out by an actual person, and challenges and suffering would be prevented. The hidden assumption here is that pleasure, relationships, flow-states, accomplishment need to be carried out by someone. No they don't. Nothing needs to happen for anyone. To bring up some odd socially constructed assent argument would not work either. Like zombies saying, "We the united people of peoplehood need more people to experience good things, because need more people to experience good things, because we need more people to experience good things."
We agree here. 'Life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. ' What is this nothing? An infinitesimal pinprick in the balloon that makes it all an 'absurd' brute fact for the intellect that wants a bulletproof 'why-it-all-happens.'
At the same time we are drenched in somethingness, and the 'nothing' above is just the impossible outside of this somethingness grasped intellectually?
Responding to the anti-natalism, I think of arguments for vegetarianism, reducing my carbon footprint, etc. You make some points that might persuade someone not to have children. I haven't and won't have children, so it's not an exciting issue for me. To me the 'life is great' and 'life sucks' intellectuals are both rhetoricians, sophists. Which is fine but not that exciting to me.
I will say that antinatalism was exciting when it was new to me. But there's not much to chew on once the novelty wears off.