entry 26

This concerns philosophical discussions of the mind-body distinction and of the nature, concept and definition of consciousness & mind:

It maybe noteworthy that when more rationalistic philosophers, e.g. Karl Popper, are trying to define or explicate a notion of consciousness/mind for the purposes of a discussion/argumentation, they tend to emphasize sense-of-self as the defining or essential feature of consciousness/mind & de-emphasize actual qualia. (Which means they de-emphasize/ignore the concept that most directly and simply refers to subjective experience and the contents of consciousness in general – in favour of something more abstract.)

This maybe a consequence of the rationalistically stunted/inhibited introspection/vision of such thinkers: They fail to notice that one doesn’t actually see* a self – that self is a less concrete, more abstract entity, and that a sense of self is a very complicated basis for definition, as it is just an intuition/feeling of something that is already abstract and complex – unlike the more direct contents/constituents of consciousness, such as colours in a dream, which one does see. And the stunting of this kind of introspection or of introspective visual intuition occurs as follow:

Rationalists systematically ignore, neglect, devalue, inhibit, repress, and dismantle their intuition;**

then they destroy their understanding/idea of intuition;

then, in this new world where intuition is a broken and thus useless tool, they use just-based-on-an-intuition as an argumentative/rhetorical tool against opposing ideas, especially ones that clash with a rationalistic worldview.

*this can, theoretically, be generalized beyond the visual, but seeing suffices for the purposes of these points, and generalizing to something like perception in general to includes things like smells and tastes is counter-productively difficult because the notion of perceiving/perception is, in current philosophical discourse, too broken and confused.

**Taking intuition seriously/sincerely is antithetical to rational method/thinking, and intuitions are treated as something irrational and primitive that should be handled from the outside and treated with suspicion.

entry 25

2 very different interpretations/versions of dualism, i.e. of distinctions between the extended, material reality/objects and the mental reality/objects and of questions of the type:

Why should it be that how something feels cannot be identified with any physical property?(*, **)

To an analytic philosopher, this is a problem of how to [correctly] connect/relate certain symbols/words/terms (‘feel’, ‘experience’, ‘physical property’, ‘material object’, etc.) to a domain of reference, which is the pre-existing domain of external, objective reality.

Whereas, alternatively, it is instead an analysis of the concept of experience vs the concept of physical property – and an analysis of the relation between these 2 concepts.

In other words, the prior is an analysis of relations between symbols and a pre-defined domain of reference, i.e. pre-supposing a certain reality –

while the latter is an analysis of relations between two sets of ideas/concepts, entirely independently of domain of reference, i.e. before defining the properties of the reality to which the ideas are applied…

Or, put even more radically or critically: the prior is simply a question of how to define words to make them fit a given worldview – which is a technical, not a philosophical endeavour,

whereas the latter approach tries to discover and see the full idea under each of the two terms/words, because it leaves open the possibility that these ideas – which each are positive result of a long historical development and are each extremely important and central to many (different) people and traditions – may, if treated respectfully, be impetus/fuel/tools for doubting and developing our worldview/reality. That is philosophy.

ex

*In this particular wording, the question and dualism is discussed in Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979 Princeton University Press)

** put differently: Are terms/words/ideas regarding subjective experience necessary, or can one fully cover/capture subjective experience with the terms/concepts that are called ‘physical’ in the cosmology/language of adherents to mainstream science/reality.

entry 24

a key concept/lesson in [philosophical] ethics

the catastrophic confusion between 2 types of *should*:

type I: as in expressing an ideal

type II: as in expressing a concrete duty or prescription in a concrete, practical situation of action/decision

A person’s actual behaviour and decisions can only theoretically conform to the ideal, because in reality, they are restricted – by reality, i.e. by the constraints imposed both by the nature of the individual person and of the reality in which the person is acting.

When actions and ideals don’t fit each other, which they practically never do, then confusing these two types of *should* leads to disappointment on the level of personal morality, judgement and psychology, and to systemic error on the level of inter-personal judgement and abstract ethical theory.

 

Ideals are something to strive or long towards, guiding practical action, not precisely determining and judging it.* Ideals are something to think about speculatively or abstractly. Ideals can be as general as basic deontological principles such as a principle of dignity or human rights. They can also be less theoretical and pertain to specific behaviour or action, permitting or prohibiting a general action or inaction of more or less specificity, such as don’t do anything that causes harm to other lifeforms, or, even more specifically, something like never resort to physical violence in a moment of anger.

And on the other hand, there is actual action, which is always a particular external and internal behaviour, and always exists in a unique practical situation. Factors that restrict an agent’s ability to match action to ideal: awareness of facts and relations relavant to a behaviour/action; the actor’s physical, mental and personal faculties in the precise moment; the person’s economic, material, social means; the person’s position within structures and systems of culture, society, reality, etc….

– In German, some philosophers utilize the difference between the two verb forms ‘soll’ and ‘sollte’: one can use ‘soll’ to indicate a concrete duty/prescription and ‘sollte’ to indicate expression of an ideal. This can be helpful, but doesn’t stop the confusion, as it is systemic:

The confusion is a systemic and often over-looked feature of rationalistic ethics, and by ‘rationalistic’ ethics I mean abstracting and generalizing actions out from their real-world, practical, particular context to the degree where one can consider the action in a vacuum** to enable manageable analysis/discussion. In other words, the unfathomable complexity of a real human acting and behaving within the constraints of themself and the real world are systematically ignored to enable analysis.

And all this makes the relevance of analysis to practical life and morality very questionable. And indeed, when philosophers are discussing ethics, speculating about what one *should* do, they often fall into over-looking this difference and taking their abstract speculations as exactly relevant to practical life. And not just philosophers, but also normal people who live under mainstream rationalist ideology that says that one’s actions should be in line with rational principles of action and that cool-headed, rational calculation/speculation should ultimately judge action.

* In a moment of reflection, one can remind oneself of an ideal, calling it into mind or imagining it whilst questioning how ones concrete actions and decisions align with this ideal, and then trying to re-align ones concrete plans and judgements with the ideal. (This is of course an endlessly difficult practical aspect of life, not something for a philosopher to solve – although many so-called philosophers think they can)

** with a much reduced number of relata of the predicate, logically speaking

entry 23

More precisely than saying that [the goal of] philosophy is correct simplification:

[The goal of] Philosophy is simplification without [any] loss of meaning.

  • This is uncompromising, as opposed to abstraction/thought that is performed in the service of practical goals, which accepts some loss of meaning in exchange for expedience, i.e. to be useful for the purposes of ordinary science problems* or practical problems, abstract thought has to fit both into time-constraints and into the worldview/reality/ideology in which the problems exist/are formulated.

*as opposed to revolutionary phases of science in the sense of Kuhn and co.

entry 22

Synthese von analytischen und dialektischen Methoden, in Anlehnung an Adorno’s Vorlesungen zu Dialektik als Paradebeispiel für gängige Abstraktionen der hegelschen Dialektik

A: analytisch-philosophische/rationalistische Methode: Begriffe möglichst explizieren, definieren, fixieren, strukturieren/einordnen

B: Dialektik*: Begriffe nie fixieren, sondern sich bewegen lassen

[dialektische] Synthese von A und B: Einen Begriff vorläufig definieren, und, wenn er sich [trotz bestmöglicher rationaler definition] doch [entlang [irgend]einer dimension] bewegt, dann auf einer nächst höheren bzw tieferen bzw allgemeineren Ebene einen Begriff suchen, der den ersteren und diese [Dimension der] Bewegung fassen/halten kann. …Und dann diesen Vorgang für diesen neuen Begriff wiederholen, usw – unbegrentzt in die Höhe/Tiefe. Und insgesamt ist es dann so, dass Begriffe nie permanent fixiert sind bis sie die Totalität erreichen und sich von selbst fixieren** – was sehr gut vereinbar etwa mit Adorno’s Dialektik ist.

*Ich beziehe mich hier auf gängige/häufig-lesbare Zusammenfassungen bzw. Abstraktionen der (hegelschen) Dialektik bzw. der Anwendung von Dialektik auf Philosophie und Methodik, zB wie man wiederholt lesen kann in Adorno’s 1958 Vorlesung Einführung in die Dialektik (Suhrkamp 2010) – Wobei ich nicht behaupte, dass diese Synthese Adorno’s Dialektik widerspricht. Ich schätze diese Synthese ist damit vereinbar und folgt sogar aus seinen Aussagen. Aber seine Ausführungen sind lang, komplex und in teile aufgeteilt, und er arbeitet immer wieder einen starken Kontrast heraus zu analytischen/rationalistischen standard-Vorgehensweisen – und vielleicht gerade deswegen passiert es, dass die Abstraktionen/Lektüren die er herausarbeitet [ironischerweise] teilweise selber einen gewissen nicht-dialektischen Charakter annehmen…

**Und dies ist wohl für die dialektische Praxis der Grenzfall/Extremfall wo sie letzendlich doch in ihre Negation umkippt/übergeht bzw sich damit wiedervereint…

entry 21

Everyone has biases, always, & it’s OK to have biases.
And the mitigation, reduction and transcendence of biases that is prescribed by rationalism – by the ideals/principles of rationality – is folly.
 
[A proponent of ideals of rationality may reply that this results in pure relativism, ]but actually this needn’t/doesn’t result in relativism:
What’s important isn’t whether one has biases, but whether one’s biases are fixed* or can move, i.e. whether there is a dogma that is a/the fixed (and oft-unnoticed) source of one’s biases or whether one[‘s mind] is open to dialectic, unconstrained movement of ideas & evolution of theories/paradigms & organic growth and development of the overall ideological/theoretical/philosophical [meta-]structure…
 
I’m suggesting a mode of thinking that results not in biases being reduced [until they maybe disappear], but instead results in uncovering of a bias going hand-in-hand with a new, biased part of theory/mind being produced** – of which the bias later should/can be uncovered… So this is a step-wise, indefinitely continuing process by which a theory or mind or philosophy organically changes and grows.
 
And maybe on the meta-level I’m distinguishing between two ways of thinking/doing philosophy: seeing biases as negative or seeing them as interesting and as a necessary component of any temporary theory that one uses before one has reached the totality [of knowledge] (which of course nobody has and is indefinitely far in the future…
 

*if they are fixed, and one insists on reduction of bias, then the result is denial.

**meanwhile, the part/structure of theory/mind that one has found a bias in isn’t sanitized and maintained – it is commensurately exited/abandoned as one’s ideas move and one’s mind shifts to a new theory – the shifting of biases is a logical result of the movement/change of ideas. (or it is (temporarily) accepted along with its bias…)

entry 20

Rationality: speakable & correctly spoken thought

One key aspect of rational thought is that it is speakable: To be or become rational, a thought is reduced to its speakable part or version, and any part or aspect that isn’t expressible in language is rejected or denied.

A potential criticism of rationalistic thinking, philosophy and theory-building presents itself when one considers aspects of our world that are at the same time of deepest importance whilst not being speakable, for example beauty: Beauty can never be fully caught by definitions, transcending and eluding any attempt to [linguistically] capture or grasp or fix.* …And therefore, in a rationalistic worldview/reality, beauty is ultimately rejected or relegated to the level of mere relativistic & irrelevant ästhetics…

A further core component of rational traditions is that one must use language correctly [when expressing the speakable]… This makes the false assumption that we know how to use language correctly and thus have the ability to use language correctly and avoid using it incorrectly… I think it should be clear that this is an absurd assumption.**

 
This is one of many instances where I collect [suspected or observed] aspects of rationality or rationalism as part my anti-rationalism project:

I’ve been trying to find out what rationality and rationalism is and how related thought, theory, tradition, culture and history may be affected by this, i.e. how rationalism shapes our world and how it relates to other contemporary paradigms of mainstream [thought and] reality.

I think readers can agree that the concept of rationality is, explicitly or implicitly, a major factor/part in contemporary worldviews, both within and outside of intellectual/scientific institutions. I want to find out how important it is and what exactly it is – and what its function is. And by ‘rationalism‘ I mean whole methodologies or traditions that are built out of or on the more basic concept of rationality.

This project is a process of exploration and speculation. I neither want to simply choose some existing definitions and base my analysis on those nor simply stipulate my own definition/usage of the terms: What I’m doing is I’m trying to find out how ‘rational’ is actually used and functions in the world and in existing traditions – even if people aren’t aware of these functions and usages – and what the concept that best fits this usage/function ultimately looks like. This is a gradual process with many observations and speculations along the way.

This is necessary because – as can be easily observed – there is no  consensus on the meaning or importance or relevance of rationality. And it has become more obvious to me over time that rationality is an astoundingly murky and ill-defined or un-defined concept – and this is especially striking considering its prominence in traditions that value clarity and definition of language so highly.***

And concerning the critical aspects of this project: In my reading I came across criticisms of past and contemporary rationalistic traditions in philosophy. I was intrigued by this unusual case of criticizing something that is usually simply assumed to be something positive and important – & from there I’ve been exploring how far and deep these criticisms and the corresponding flaws of contemporary thought & theory may go: Firstly in schools of metaphilosophy and philosophy/methodology of science – but also exploring possible connections and influences this may have on any other parts of the human world – be it a scientific tradition or economic or political doctrine or ethics/morality or any other theory, tradition or culture. I’ve continued and deepened this endeavour because it has turned out to be fascinatingly fruitful.

*Beauty really IS ineffable – and by trying too hard to eff it, you will actually just f it up.

**I won’t directly argue this point here, but will just mention some points that should be considered in this context: Consider how language actually works as a pragmatic, psychological and historical process (or result thereof). It has intuitive components. It isn’t a fixed, perfect, objective system but rather a historically grown complex of temporary inter-subjective, co-operative conventions. It’s full of quirks and multiplicities of uses of elements. Attempts at correcting natural language or translating into formal languages – i.e. at making language completely rational – are vain attempts at overcoming this and removing all undefinable parts from our thoughts. An analytical philosopher can try to use new definitions to stipulate a new, limited language game, but even then you need to somehow provide a connection to other, broader language games for your artificial language game to have any relevance or meaning – this is the point/boundary at which the philosopher tricks themself into not noticing the intuitive/irrational components of what they are doing. And, of course, one shouldn’t forget that these imprecisions, intuitive/unconscious components, pragmatic mutabilities and fluidities etc are features that make language a wonderfully powerful, adaptive tool in an ever-changing environment and society.

***in fact so murky/dark that it can actually function as a kind of everyday dogmatic basis for modern thinking that – unlike explicit dogmas – isn’t even accessible to critical inspection.

 

entry 19

some rationality basics
 
a distinction between two dimensions of rational thought – which gives two ways of questioning & judging thought:

D₁: To what degree is a thought rational? (as opposed to intuitive or para-linguistic) – this is a value-neutral dimension, i.e. it is [logically] independent of the overall quality/value/wisdom/intelligence etc. of the thought.

&

D₂: How good is a particular rational thought? I.e. once we have determined how rational the thought is (D₁), there is still the question of how good or valuable or interesting the thought is, which is [logically] independent of the degree to which the thought is rational.

Further rationalistic determinations or beliefs are required for the two dimensions not to be independent.

entry 18

an easy way to spot racism & bigotry:

Whenever an ethnicity, religion, class or gender is blamed for something: just try to notice whether someone accepts this without considering whether the blamed group is just a scape-goat(De: Sündenbock). 

The phenomenon and concept of scape-goating is so familiar and obvious that, whenever there is some problem that is causing pain in society and a specific class or sub-set is blamed for the problem, any non-racist will naturally react by [first] asking themselves whether the blamed group is just being scape-goated.

And it is easy to notice the opposite – when someone accepts the blaming/judgement of an ethnic or cultural group without pausing to ask themselves whether this might just be another case of selecting and using a scape-goat to deflect discontent/resentment away from wherever the true responsibility lies.

scape-goating: There is a simple and broadly well-understood phenomenon of the master in a master-slave relationship using a slave or category of slaves as a scape-goat for problems that would otherwise impact the master’s standing in some hierarchy or power-relation, e.g. would reduce the respect or loyalty that the master commands. And this can be expanded beyond literal slave-masters to include individuals or groups or classes that control or preside over whichever processes/structures/institutions are actually* causing or contributing to the problems in question – or even just to the [economic, societal or other] structures themselves in cases where nobody is really in control and nobody really understands what’s going on or how we got here.  

* – at least in the minds of those people who are in control, as this subjective picture/model is what is causing them to feel a need to deflect blame – so this is actually independent of where the true cause is.

entry 17

In this entry I return to a my main projects: criticism of rationalism and rationality. Reading this note now, it seems rather speculative and maybe unfair. It was written several months before I planned on starting this blog, and I didn’t even write down which book the quote was from. But whether the quote is precise or correctly attributed isn’t really relevant to the main points here. And expansive speculation and mental gymnastics are productive and healthy. Also, the more dominant and historically causal/operative a tradition, the stronger society’s attempted criticism must be – as it is correspondingly more important to make sure that the tradition isn’t fundamentally flawed and imbalanced and to test/explore ways in which it might be…

How my anti-rationalism may connect to [analysis of the meaning behind] seemingly anodyne rationalist maxims, for example what Karl Popper states as a credo¹ of his:

1: ”I accept that I may be wrong” 

Consider the quote not simply at face value but in the context of Popper communicating/laying out his philosophy and calling it a credo. It seems clear that it must mean something other than the literal², particular meaning – a personal statement – as this would be trivial and irrelevant to his project. I think he means to imply a general methodological rule and that what we see here is a prescriptive/normative statement formulated as acceptance/seeing of reality – I propose that rationalists’ actual meaning of such credos/maxims is something like these paraphrases:

1p₁: I should/must admit that I am wrong in cases where [rational] reason(s) dictate so.

1p₂: If I am faced by a logically sound [counter-]argument & I am [in the moment] unable to come up with rational/explicit/clear reasons for a premise of the counter-argument being incorrect³, i.e. reasons with which to defend my position – and if I proceed based simply on a *reasonless* un-convincedness, i.e. a feeling/intuition that I am nevertheless right, then this is irrational, unreasonable of me! (and this even in the moral sense!) 

When thus interpreted, many problems arise [in a world in which we follow the credo]:

    • Conformity to standard established/accepted language – & thus to currently dominant conceptual paradigm – becomes prerequisite to inclusion in discourse! (One is excluded as soon as one sticks to a position in the face of rational reasons – despite only having a reason that doesn’t conform to the criteria of dominant rationality.)
    • Only those concepts are permitted for which there are/is currently available language/terminology.³ (If, to defend oneself, one uses a word that is meaningless to a rationalist, then they will say that you must accept you are wrong.)
    • …Non-rationalism is confused with infallibilism!

also connected:

    • debating: Adeptness in established/dominant linguo-conceptual paradigm and in ability to connect ideas/positions to the terminology of the paradigm/tradition gives a prohibitive advantage which can be utilized and presided over in a lawyerly fashion…This is a technical, non-philosophical mastery in contrast to what should really count and be made visible in debate – the brilliance of the actual idea/position.
    • conservatism: It is too easy to rationally defend established ideas and ways of speaking against new ideas that have not yet had time and space to fully take form and be institutionalized in systems of abstractions and in terminology/language/culture…

¹ It is ironic and fitting that, whilst religions state their credos openly and sincerely, rationalists state their credos with ostensible irony.

² – This would also be ironic given rationalism’s general linguistic methodology of clarity, precision and literalism.

³ see Paul Feyerabend: Erkenntnis für Freie Menschen p.47 footnote