Tag: meta-philosophy

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 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 15

This entry and the next address the same question in different ways, the first written around 7 weeks ago, the second written a few days ago. This first one was posing difficulties to me on re-reading it and trying to understand it, though in this transcription I’m happier with it again. The second note addresses the same topic in a different way and together they may make more sense.

[human] History is the process consisting of the reciprocal duality of material changes & ideological changes: material conditions and [largely] unconscious ideological conditions change and cause/precipitate eachother and so constitute the dialectic process that is history. 

It is philosophy’s task to understand this dialectic, which means to make the unconscious ideology conscious & visible so that it can be seen and consciously processed and reacted to by society/humanity. Hegelians, e.g. Zizek, seem to understand this – however, Marxists, following Marx’ Dialectic Materialism*, actually don’t:

Marxists [at least ostensibly] want to move on to the post-capitalist phase of history, which would be the dialectic synthesis of capitalism and capitalism’s antithesis: The synthesis would be a new whole that fully produces and holds/includes the antithesis to capitalism. The antithesis is the dialectic negation of capitalism – which would negate exactly every component of capitalist ideology. To negate all components of the ideology, one requires exactly all components of the ideology – identifying the underlying generative process/concepts of capitalist ideology, aka finding the thesis of capitalism.

Now, only such an antithesis would be the true, exact negation of capitalism – and a less thorough negation is not dialectic*, it’s just a contradicting thesis. And such an antithesis or full negation would require capitalist [unconscious] ideology to be understood completely, i.e. made conscious at its deepest/root levels.

However, Marx’ approach is to go straight to changing the material conditions (marxist revolution, workers seizing power over production) in the blind hope that material change will end capitalist ideology or at least provide a way out of it, i.e. hoping that, in the changed material conditions, current/existing ideology won’t inevitably re-produce the same dialectic and the same problems and that there aren’t deeper material or ideological conditions/processes/concepts – i.e. a deeper dialectic – that also re-produce capitalism. And marxist denial of the necessity of fully working through this excavation of ideology makes it impossible to complete the step of the historical dialectic and reach the next higher level of the dialectic totality. And what Marxist endeavor instead leads to is a different, very speculative, question.

So one thing I’m proposing – which I think corresponds to Hegelian
thought – is that changing the material conditions in order to escape a certain material-ideological reality is ineffective without understanding the [logical] relations between existing ideology and proposed altered material conditions, and without ascertaining that the proposed material conditions aren’t just one of many possible manifestations of an underlying ideology and that the proposed material change really is a way out of the dialectic in question.

 
 

*Marxists do of course excavate, explore, analyse and critique capitalist ideology, to varying depths/degrees. But it seems to me that their aim in this isn’t to reach full understanding, but instead to reach sufficient understanding to be able to see and explicate enough problems of capitalism to motivate material change…

 

entry 14

I’ve recently been considering my criteria for selecting which notes I transcribe from my notebook to here:

Should I practice more restrictive selection leading to a low post frequency and high average quality or should I practice less restrictive selection, posting many notes that are more random, speculative, imperfect and that I am less certain about and are subject to probable revision? This question has been particularly current as I have been thinking a lot about politics, an area that a) I have spent relatively little time studying, especially and b) arguably contains especially complex questions.

In the last few days I’ve decided to practice looser selection, here are a few reasons:

1) Simply producing more has certain brute-force practical advantages regardless of content or quality.

2) In transcribing notes that are less clear/perfect, I am re-ordering and tidying them up in a way that makes them easier to work with later.

3) If I post many of the notes that are more unfinished, temporary and speculative, this can produce a visible record of my meandering philosophical journey, which could be interesting. In particular, maybe a Hegelian *Bewegung der Begriffe* will become observable in the way that – as I have sometimes noticed – after gradually thinking through a topic and reaching a feeling of understanding and conclusions, I tend to then later go back and explore a direction that opposes those conclusions – i.e. I continue to move conceptually instead of accepting reached understandings/conclusions as given, in the faith that if my originally perceived understanding was indeed an understanding, that then I will eventually return to it anyway, finding and seeing it again.

4) It should help me to avoid counter-productive levels of inhibition/self-doubt/self-censorship – I don’t want to consider each post so carefully that doubt is multiplied counter-productively. Plus I anyway only write things in my notebook if I feel the thing is important enough to need to be written down – I’m a lazy person – and ultimately I trust my own judgement in this regard and shouldn’t be second-guessing judgement of potential readers.

entry 13

für die [phil.] Praxis eine Festhaltung/Wiederholung eines mir schon bekannten, einfachen Problemschemas/Phänomens bzw. einer Unterscheidung:

[induktive] Verwechslung von Zusammenfassung mit Erklärung:

Naturgesetzte bzw. Prinzipien – die ja in [wissenschaftstheoretischen Schemen von] wissenschaftlichen Erklärungen den erklärenden Gehalt liefern sollten – sind* eigentlich gar nicht erklärend, sondern nur verallgemeinernd/zusammenfassend.

Der eigentliche Sinn einer Erklärung – bevor man versucht ‘Erklärung’ zu definieren, etwa im Rahmen der Wissenschaftstheorie – ist ja, dass sie eine befriedigende Antwort auf eine ‘Wieso?’ Frage darstellt, d.h. dass sie einem zu neuem Verstehen verhilft. Und das wird nicht unbedingt erfüllt durch eine gewöhnliche wissenschaftliche Erklärung anhand eines Allgemeinen Prinzips – auch wenn die [wissenschaftsth.] Kriterien einer wissenschaftlichen Erklärung erfüllt werden und das zu erklärende tatsächlich eine logische Instanz des herangezogenen Gesetzes ist. Denn das Gesetz ist oft eigentlich nur eine [durch logische Induktion/Statistik] von gesammelten Einzelfällen/Daten zustandekommende allgemeine/zusammenfassende Beschreibung der Welt – was vielleicht praktische Anwendungen hat aber das eigentliche Wieso nur innerhalb der selben Ebene verschiebt statt mit einer zweiten Ebene zu verbinden – d.h. statt das Verständnis der Sache zu vertiefen durch Verbindung mir einer zweiten Sache die prima facie nicht logisch/statistisch verwandt/ähnlich ist, sondern erst gemeinsam ein neugesehenes, qualitativ komplexeres Ganzes bildet bzw sichtbar macht…

*Ja – ein quasi-genereller Satz der etwaige pedantische Leser irritieren könnte. Aber man kann sich selber fragen, auf welche empirische Gesetze/Methoden bzw in welchen Kontexten meine Analyse zutrifft und auf welche nicht…

entry 10

individualism & rationalism* as social & theoretical-philosophical anti-structuralism** respectively

individualism:

Individual freedom is seen as freedom from social structures… & freedom to use money to do whatever one wishes – and this monetary liberalism at the same time erodes, disintegrates, dissolves and liquefies social structures.

rationalism/rational tradition:

on the linguistic level: Under rational methodology, ones tries to reduce statements to such that can be defined and used independently of any [theoretical] context that might be too broad to be tangible, definable & explicable, and to such statements that consist of components whose meanings/functions are independent of any intangible, unconscious, impractically complex contexts. Put more simply, words and statements are isolated out of the complex structures they are/were parts of.

on the level of object/reference domain: When considering an object or a question, one can often find that this object is actually embedded in a more complex structure that is beyond practical rational analysis, and that the object’s properties and identity are dependent on a larger structure. The rational method tries, when tenable, to put aside such more complex structure in order to isolate and focus on an object that is a tangible, bounded, comprehensible piece of the universe. And rational objects of analysis thus tend to be physical and of theoretical dimension (- i.e. of [minimum] number of relata of the object’s predicate -) low enough to be reducible or definable using the available/accessible [mainstream] theories & theory levels.

on the level of belief/truth: At the same time rational theorizing tries to be free from dogma and bias by trying to be free from ideology, i.e. ideological idea structures. And this manifests in tending to minimize the positive content of theory structure, being opposed to theory structures that contain positive beliefs/determinations/propositions, instead aiming to build a purely technical/mathematical structure of neutral sets of possible choices. And this keeps the theory structure from growing in minds***, and thus minimizes the dimension and complexity of the theory structure, i.e. minimizes the extent of structure.

—

Now, the idea of freedom from social structures is of course false – a naive rationalist denial of unnoticed, unconscious structures that humans are embedded in – structures of class, hierarchies, traditions, genders, etc. And this situation of naive ignorance of causally active social structures is open for exploitation by reactionary paternalism.

And analogously, the assumptions underlying rational methodology are also naive and exploitable.

*I’m not yet sure whether to say ‘rationality’ or ‘rationalism’ or something else here – and this isn’t simply a matter of looking up which term is the one closer to what I mean, it’s a matter of a longer process that involves exploring the logical and historical relationships between these terms and contemporary ideologies/traditions and developing a terminology that can most effectively be used to let a reader see the connections and distinctions I am trying to make or explicate. Suffice to say here that I mean ‘rationalism’ in a very broad, undefined, exploratory, speculative sense and not exactly in the sense of any particular existing historical definition of ‘rationalism’. Some other of many terminological candidates for what I’m thinking of are ‘rational tradition’ and ‘rational methodology’ and ‘rational-analytical methodology’.

**I use ‘structuralism’ here in a broader sense than the common usage of the term, especially than the sociological usage: By ‘structuralism’ I roughly mean: a meta-theory/philosophy that says that structures and relations actually exist and need to be taken into account for correct analysis of any single part of the world.

***I expect to write much more on this in other notes concerning the connection between rational-analytical method and nihilism.

entry 9

Minds that try to be rational nevertheless have some feelings/intuitive thoughts that lack a rational foundation/reason/justification. But under rationalism, it is not ok to have a purely emotionally or intuitively grounded conviction – to state a thought as true with no rational explanation/argument for it – with nothing to make it rational.

One of the natural and common reactions a mind that is trying to be rational has in this situation is to come up with* a rational reason which can replace the intuition – aka a rationalization. This lets the mind hold the originally emotionally/intuitively grounded thought/conviction [or a satisfyingly compatible one] in a rationally acceptable/permissible way.

Now, the original sub/un-conscious structures of mind – the ones that produced the feeling/intuition – are still there, and in fact become hardened and perpetuated [over time] by the presence of static rationalization that is fixed over them.

now to the main point of this note:

A potential problem arises for the mind here: If the current rationalization is rescinded/removed**, then rationalism dictates the mind negate/remove the conviction, which is a painful assault on that subconscious part of the mind that still supports the conviction.

And so, somewhat ironically, the mind trying to avoid this problem develops emotional attachment to rationalizations***, which then leads to fear, entrenchment and defensiveness…

And in my experience philosophical training implicitly shows that rationalization in this very broad sense is folly and that calmness & trust & patience & openness are more effective: one observes, in repetition ad nauseam, that even the seemingly strongest, most convincing arguments and rationalizations eventually turn out to be flawed.

And it is actually ok to have a purely emotional-intuitive [theoretical/philosophical] conviction as long as one sees and says it as such instead of rationalizing it… This is especially obvious when one considers that no conviction has a completely rational reason/justification/rationalization – if one logically follows reasons ever deeper to and into the foundations, one will always find something non-rational or a dogma…

This is part of an anti-rationalist or non-rationalist philosophy.

*which, by the way, is usually a completely intuitive/non-rational/unconscious process, and always has at least some unconscious components or base even if the [conscious] mind doesn’t notice this (the mechanism relies on the mind not noticing this, and the mind usually doesn’t.).

**and not in that moment replaced by a different rationalization with the same conclusion… hopefully I will write more related to such smooth rational transitions in later posts.

***to be clear: I use ‘rationalization’ here in a very broad and more value-neutral than usual sense, including rational theories in general – scientific theories that meet the standards of rationalist methodologies.

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.