Author: Christopher

entry 6

on intellectual pessimism or ”realism” and dis-empowerment:

When one considers one’s potential to contribute something intellectually original and worthwhile, one may consider great minds and thinkers and one’s potential to in some way surpass them.

There are 2 distinct ways of seeing the process of theoretical advances and achievements and of explaining why great & respected minds have not reached complete or error-free theory or knowledge, and these 2 options have different implications for how one ends up estimating one’s potential:

I: The contributions of a great thinker in a given field are the product of that person’s intelligence and effort applied to that field. They have done all they could, and any remaining error or incompleteness [in the theory or field the thinker has worked on] is due to the thinker having reached the limits of their ability and capacity – In other words, [metaphorically] the thinker has trodden a path that goes up the mountain of knowledge or truth, where success is determined by how hard and well the path is trodden.

II: The great thinker may indeed be remarkably intelligent*, but the importance of their intelligence and determination is overestimated and is really just a rough prerequisite for their success – the primary cause of the fruitfulness of their intellectual path is a particularly good fit between the unique structure of their mind** on the one hand and the set of dominant and available*** [methodological and theoretical] paradigms on the other hand. And the reason for any remaining error or incompleteness is primarily not exhaustion of intelligence or strength, but instead that we have not yet found the ultimate pairing of a mind/thinker to a paradigm-set. Broken down differently, this means that we haven’t yet found the ultimate methodological or theoretical paradigms to work under or that we haven’t yet had a thinker with the most fitting possible uniquely structured mind for the practical scientific-historical conditions. And indeed we are [extremely] far off from all of these. And to adjust the metaphor from I: the path the great thinker has trodden is not a pre-existing, objective path, but an entirely unique path that is laid down in an inter-play of the walker and the environment as the thinker treads the winding and idiosyncratic path of their life and career. And there are very different and more fruitful possible paths – and these may become visible to a future thinker only after the first thinker has trodden their path…

implications of I: One only realistically has potential to surpass great minds and contribute something truly original and significant if one is even more intelligent and persevering than the greatest minds of history – thus quite a bleak out-look.

implications of II: All you need is a subtly – but qualitatively – different set of paradigms or a slightly different unique mind – or even just a different intellectual path or different historical conditions – and then all kinds of unexpected advances or intellectual fruits are suddenly possible – thus a much brighter out-look!

My hope is that this perspective can lead to some more personal optimism – and in particular do so without needing to address the also complex topic of the standard presupposed conceptions of intelligence and genius that are part of the process of resigning oneself to mediocrity of potential – seeing one’s place in following established paradigms and traditions and in working within these to support greater people or minds, and to being ‘realistic’ about one’s prospects.

 

 
 

 

*I leave this possibility or assumption open (the standard assumption that some people are particularly intelligent) for the sake of the argument of this entry: Whilst I personally don’t agree with the standard conception of intelligence and varyingly intelligent minds – a topic that I’m sure I will write other entries on, and in which I share some existing criticisms of the theoretical/ideological foundations or assumptions of the conceptions of IQ and intelligence – the argument of this entry is [meant to be] independent of such criticisms of the conception of intelligence itself. (Only deeper analysis will bring this argument together with analysis of intelligence conceptions.)

**This structure also has a historical aspect, a process or development over time: The thinker’s life & career path constitutes a continuous series of conscious and unconscious changes in their mind’s structure – on many levels, on the theory-content levels and meta-levels of internal, in-grained method of thought, aka philosophy. And a lot of this may be political or dependent on politics, both concerning actions the thinker takes in their career and reactions a tradition/culture has toward the thinker.

***[The identity of] this set of paradigms – those paradigms that are in place at any particular moment when the thinker interacts with an intellectual culture/tradition and those paradigms that are potential candidates to switch to or use – this set is of course dependent on the course of history[, specifically of science]. And this dependence is of-course part of a causal inter-dependence between the individual thinker and the cultural history, i.e. participants can have an effect on history while history determines the available options or directions of individual action/effect.

entry 5

I’ve found that this is naturally a 2 step or 2 level process – in transferring my hand-written notes to here, I naturally look at them and re-consider and then re-formulate them. I had originally wanted to re-produce the hand-written notes as exactly as possible without any further thought, without any 2nd, later thinking layered over the original and interfering with it – I wanted to be natural and authentic. However, I now think that forcing myself to keep to the exact original note would in fact also be unnatural and inauthentic…

I’ve already found that this blog is useful for my process: Re-reading and considering notes – lingering on them longer than I otherwise would and maybe re-formulating them – so far seems to have positive effects.

entry 4

One important aspect of [genuine] philosophy is a radical dis-entangling of [all] concepts – separating concepts that have become stuck or lumped together in contemporary discourse or one’s own mind. Points of connection or over-lapping of [extensions of] concepts mustn’t distract from the non-identity and independence of concepts.

an example: [being able to] talk to about reason – the concept of reason – as something value-neutral, i.e. without the whole concept being [intrinsically] joined to the very basic concept of good.

[Metaphorically,] I picture the inside a puff pastry or ciabatta that is rising airily – delicate and beautiful – or lungs filling with a deep breath that leaves no cavity unopened.

Slightly more technically, I suppose this particular formulation high-lights the vertical or depth dimension of thought and theory – and the maximising of this dimension.

 

entry 3

a re-formulation:*

When one senses or feels an idea that isn’t quite here yet – in other words when one notices the subliminal presence of a coming idea that is as yet un-finished:

Instead of following the urge to [try to] pull it up into consciousness by force of will, one should patiently wait while it gradually fills itself out and one day pushes itself up [through one’s mind] into consciousness – sprouting up like a perfect young plant – & only then look at it directly, and unleash one’s curiosity on it.

And I think this is an important part of philosophical training: practicing remaining calm when one has an intuition of an unfinished idea instead of reacting by forcing some abstraction process in an attempt to quickly arrive at an explicit thought.

 

 

*Some of my notes are re-formulations of existing notes: just some subtly different formulation or aspect of an already noted idea.

entry 2

some long introductory remarks

  • (on why someone may want to read my writings) Philosophy is very important for the world – and one major part of my overall project is to explain what I understand as ‘philosophy’ and why this thing is important. And over the years it has gradually become clear to me that I have a [- Surprisingly to me -] relatively unique philosophy or perspective on the world. And I know – from my experience – that this perspective is one that can facilitate and organically produce thoughts or ideas that feel colourful, meaningful, useful, relevant, enjoyable, bright, vivid, mind-opening, fresh, etc… And maybe I can communicate some parts of my philosophy, maybe leading to a reader at some moment also feeling something positive.
  • (on why writing this may more directly be useful to me) At the same time, I am open to the possibility that an idea I have is in some way trivial – in particular that someone else has already had the same idea and expressed it better… or that the idea is already well known and well understood – just under a different name – and that I just haven’t made the connection for whatever reason. Here it’s obviously of great value to me to get outside feedback…
  • (on understanding my writing and commenting) When I write notes for myself, I of course just use whichever terms and syntax seem most comprehensible and useful to me at the time.  Preliminarily, I’ve decided to maintain this practice for notes I make public instead of trying to estimate which terms will or won’t be familiar to readers or of trying to assume some standard terminology and syntax of some particular contemporary tradition. To make this work, I want readers to just comment whenever a word/phrase/term or some way I [syntactically] use and arrange words or other symbols or whatever isn’t completely clear.
  • (on things that I write that seem or are trivial) Whilst some things I write will indeed turn out to be trivial, others will only seem trivial –  And therefore I ask of you to try to not let the first impression of triviality make you disengage! In a way, one main aim I have for my ideas is to be as obvious as possible whilst in fact being nontrivial – more specifically, non-trivial relative to the ideas, theories, ideologies etc that are already familiar to the reader. Sometimes, if something is very obvious, one has to take a step back in order to see that it was never really understood until now. Maybe one thing is explicitly known whilst some of its consequences are only implicitly or intuitively known or felt – and thus if one reads an explicit statement of those consequences, it may feel familiar and obvious, suggestive of triviality or uselessness, while in fact the explicit statement constitutes a new step forward in understanding.
  • (on how the set of these entries may differ from my personal notes) I may write notes here that I wouldn’t write as personal notes due to not being new to me and therefore not being necessary/helpful to my own understanding of my writing.
  • (on putting philosophy in writing) I’m starting this in awareness of some of downsides* of using writing as the tool for expressing and sharing philosophy – aware that writing, especially rational writing and permanent writing, is regarded too highly over other possible means of expressing philosophy, e.g. poetry, music, art, dance, etc… that forcing ideas into particular language elements has various questionable consequences, as does the making-permanent and making-easily-readable/reachable of an idea. At the same time, since we do historically have writing and rational abstract thought – and existing philosophy and ideology is influenced by this history – a huge part of philosophy must engage with writing in order to be effective.

 

*a topic that I have only recently become aware of and want to learn much more about.

entry 1

Welcome, dear future reader!

Until now I have kept my notes to my notebook. From now on I want to start something more open: Whenever I write a new note, I will consider making a new entry here on my website. When I make a new entry I will tweet it from @stephens_blog – so you can just follow that account on twitter.

The notes may be in English or German, I expect mostly English. They will be more or less extensive, formal, speculative, clear, grammatically/syntactically correct, etc. – I don’t have any conscious rules for my notes, and the way I write them develops and changes.

And I expect the way I want to write this blog and use this site will gradually develope and go through shifts – and some entries will be regarding this process.

I expect many of the earlier entries will be about the blog itself – discussing what kind of notes make sense to share, or expressing ideas I have regarding why anyone would actually want to read this, or discussing technical questions of writing here and of making a website.

Lastly, I hope you find something here that you enjoy reading or thinking about!

-christopher