pragmatic Studies:

For all things philosophical.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

I want to meander and fumble around on my last point a little more. But I would start with another quote from Rorty’s essay “Philosophy as Metaphor, Science, Politics” in Essays on Heidegger and Others:

“The latter are better metaphors for metaphor, because they suggest that cognition is not always recognition, that the acquisition of truth is not always a matter of fitting data into a preestablished scheme. A metaphor is, so to speak, a voice from outside logical space, rather than an empirical filling-up of a portion of that space, or a logical-philosophical clarification of the structure of that space. It is a call to change one’s language and one’s life, rather than a proposal about how to systemize either.”

What we are getting at here is not just the important role that metaphor plays in post-Neitzscheian philosophy (once again:

“Sartre’s being-for-itself and being-in-itself? Baudrillard’s Simulacrum? D&G’s rhizomatic network? Rorty’s mirror of reality? What are they if not metaphors: a new way of talking about things that forces us to change our repertoire of sentences?”

(but the very real pragmatic function it can serve. Anyone who has come to know Deleuze to any degree can appreciate the role that osmosis (via free indirect discourse (can play in that process: that vague sense of having been altered. And like free indirect discourse, metaphor works in an oblique manner. The pragmatic/practical potential of it goes back to a point I made about conflict or what Layotard referred to as differends: the way opposing views can break down to assumptions that, from the nihilistic perspective, ultimately, float on thin air. Once again:

“I would first point out what may be one the consequences of recent discoveries of neuroscience and the data that increasingly leans towards a more materialistic description of the relationship between the meat of the brain and what we experience as mind. Now don’t get me wrong: I still hold out for the possibility of participation in defining mind as an interface between the body (and its brain (and its environment via a non-linear feedback loop between the two. But as neuroscience shows more and more that we are who we are because of the physiological structure of the brain (and in the sense that Chomsky asserted (you start to recognize the futility of different dispositions fighting (that between left and right or that between continental and analytic approaches to philosophy (and the silliness of it given that, as neuroscience learns how hard-wired these dispositions are in us, it makes no sense to alienate those who don’t share our disposition especially when some of those people may be people we love. I mean we are always more than the ideologies we adopt.”

The point here is that given how hardwired ideologies may be in the minds of people who risk our destruction through man-made climate change or our enslavement through global capitalism, direct confrontation through reason may not only be futile, but actually counter-productive in that it will only alienate them and push them deeper into their system of beliefs. And outside of Rorty’s other two means of adding beliefs, perception and inference (both of which are means the other must go through on their own, metaphor or indirect poetic methods are the only means by which we can hope to resonate with, seduce, and participate in adding to those systems of beliefs.

Brian Massumi , in his User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, approaches this when he points out the import of camouflage in his Deleuze and Guattarri based manifesto. And who better to undermine a king (a tyrant (than a joker saying pretty and entertaining things?
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

So in the hopes of sounding like I’m writing a real philosophical exposition, my intention here is to zero in and expand on a previous quote from Rorty’s essay “Philosophy as Science, Metaphor, Politics” in Essays on Heidegger and Others and hopefully push further into the nuances of metaphor in philosophy. Anyway:

“Both perception and inference leave our language, our way of dividing up the realm of possibility, unchanged. They alter the truth-values of sentences, but not our repertoire of sentences. To assume that perception and inference are the only ways in which beliefs ought to be changed is to adopt what Heidegger identified as the “mathematical” attitude. It is to assume that the language we presently speak is, as it were, all the language there is, all the language we shall ever need.”

Now the thing to note here is that Heidegger is noted as taking the “poetic” lean in philosophy –that is as compared to the scientific or political. However, as Rorty points out in a later essay (and that is if I understand him right (Heidegger fell short of his promise by turning his emphasis on the poetic approach into a mandate towards the obscure and esoteric language of the priest or shaman. In other words, Heidegger, by giving the poetic privilege over the political (that which is about social justice (showed the very elitist colors that may have been flying when he so blatantly subscribed to Nazism. This, as Rorty points out elsewhere, was the result of Heidegger’s reactionary disposition in the face of technology. And we should note here Heidegger’s rather eccentric choice of appearing before his classes garbed in the traditional German outfit you often see on polka bands.

Rorty then turns to Davidson’s take on metaphor (something I will have to drive into after I understand it better, but what it ultimately comes to is a quote from pg. 14:

“Another way of putting this point is to say, with Davidson, that “the irrational” is essential to intellectual progress. In a paper on Freud, Davidson notes that “mental causes which are not reasons” –that is, beliefs and desires which play a role in our behavior but which do not fit into the scheme of beliefs and desires which we would claim as ours- are needed not only to explain “deviant” behavior (as Freudian psychoanalytic theory employs them) but also to “explain our salutary efforts, and occasional successes, at self criticism and self improvement.”

(First of all, note to self: need to dig deeper into Davidson.)

That said, we can see here a bridge or overlap (or maybe even a premonition of (with modern discoveries in neuroscience and, contrary to the bah-humbug attitude of more scientific approaches such as that of Dennett or Searle, the import of the metaphoric/ poetic (that which Heidegger failed to follow through with (that, despite their seemingly irrational nature, can add to our evolution in terms of brain plasticity. (And it allows for a connection that can eventually be made with Deleuze.)

My window is almost out, so I have to do this quick and elaborate later. But as J. Allan Hobson points out in Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, dreaming (that which we would normally think of as an irrational experience (actually may play a vital role in the process of brain plasticity….

Unfortunately, I have to let this go for now. But elaborating on that last point gives me my rhizome for tomorrow.
*
Appendix (something I had time to write earlier that goes to the pragmatic point:

“(Biological evolution can be defined as change with modification over a period of time.)
In the context of the past, the past tense of change is changed. This implies that the fossil records are about things that have changed. And subsequently, (this implies) that we cannot know they have changed. For the knowing of change is contingent on our past experiences of what those things looked like before. Therefore, with reference to the past, biological evolution cannot be confirmed.” –David Salako: https://www.facebook.com/groups/philoso ... ment_reply

I think we can consider evolution as having passed the pragmatic truth test of warranted assertability. In ways described by Eren, as well in other ways, it just works.

But to tentatively jump on David's side of the fence, we could resort to the inductive limit and argue reasonably that there is no way of knowing that some guy with cloven hooves and horns didn't plant this evidence to throw us off his tracks. And the best one could do is snort, "yeah, but it isn't likely" and walk away leaving the argument pretty much unchallenged.

However (to jump back to the other side), were we to follow that argument with an assertion that, because of that, evolution must be false, we would be making a clear turn into bad reasoning. But then all we would have to do is change one word (a mere qualifier (and argue that because of the previous point, evolution could be wrong. But then we would just be saying the same thing as the first: simply converting our premise into a conclusion.

But this is all a lot of semantic play with minor references to existential reality. But once we move from the semantic to the existential, we return to the pragmatic force of warranted assertability in front of which semantic arguments fall limp.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“Another way of putting this point is to say, with Davidson, that “the irrational” is essential to intellectual progress. In a paper on Freud, Davidson notes that “mental causes which are not reasons” –that is, beliefs and desires which play a role in our behavior but which do not fit into the scheme of beliefs and desires which we would claim as ours- are needed not only to explain “deviant” behavior (as Freudian psychoanalytic theory employs them) but also to “explain our salutary efforts, and occasional successes, at self criticism and self improvement.” –Rorty

“That said, we can see here a bridge or overlap (or maybe even a premonition of (with modern discoveries in neuroscience and, contrary to the bah-humbug attitude of more scientific approaches such as that of Dennett or Searle, the import of the metaphoric/ poetic (that which Heidegger failed to follow through with (that, despite their seemingly irrational nature, can add to our evolution in terms of brain plasticity. (And it allows for a connection that can eventually be made with Deleuze.)

My window is almost out, so I have to do this quick and elaborate later. But as J. Allan Hobson points out in Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, dreaming (that which we would normally think of as an irrational experience (actually may play a vital role in the process of brain plasticity….”

To elaborate: the body sleeps; meanwhile, the brain, restless with the movements of mind and consciousness, prods itself in a kind of inventory (perhaps out of a resistance to its own non-existence (in which it ransacks its contents, picks randomly through all the mental artifacts it can in a given window, and juxtaposes them in a kind of bricolage or collage until it finds patterns that happen to work (the pragmatic word for resonate or seduce (that it stores as artifacts that it can further use as artifacts in further dream related inventories.

But not only are dream motifs being created. It may well be that the very structures by which the brain (via brain plasticity (interacts with its real-world environment. We get, in this materialist sense, how even the more irrational actions of the mind can participate in its “intellectual” evolution. We see now how our evolution as individual intellects or a culture does not exclusively require the strict methodology that our more neo- classicist peers would have us believe. Rorty, later, in the same essay, goes on to say:

“Davidson’s insistence in that paper on the importance of “mental causality that transcends reason” is focused on self-criticism and self-improvement in individual human beings, but I think his point is is even more striking and plausible for the self-criticism of cultures. The “irrational” intrusion of beliefs which “make no sense” (i.e., cannot be justified by exhibiting their coherence with the rest of what we believe) are just those events which intellectual historians look back upon as ‘conceptual revolutions’. Or, more precisely, they are the events [note the Deleuzian possibility here -me [which spark conceptual revolutions –seemingly crazy suggestions by people who were without honor in their own countries, suggestions which strike us as luminous truths, truths which must have always been latent in ‘human reason’. “

Here, I would stand on Rorty’s, Davidson’s, as well as Deleuze’s shoulders and note the folly of the tyranny of the functional: the guilt and inferiority complex the neo-classist disposition seems to feel in the face of science and not being able to create an i-pad. If we really look at our cultural and technological evolution, there is no way of distinguishing the value of the functional (the technological (and the non-functional (the creative (approaches to our intellectual evolution. Case in point: the 90’s, under Clinton, are considered a period of major economic expansion. And from a more conservative (neo-classicist (perspective this might be attributed to a major technological boom. However, this was accompanied by a major creative boom: Seattle grunge, electronic, industrial, etc.. Now how could the conservative disposition argue that this creative boom followed the technological boom when there is every reason to believe that technology was working to meet the demands of the evolving sensibility of the creative boom? There was no privileged participant in what was basically a chicken and the egg dynamic.

The truth, as I see it, is that there is no way of knowing what product of intellectual or creative inquiry will be useful. Take, for instance, the engineer’s of WW2 planes who based how they painted them on Picasso. And even if that product is not useful, we’ll never know since all it will do is slip into obscurity. This is my main argument with the neo-classicist sensibility: given that we can never know what we might or might not use, does it make any sense to smugly dismiss any method until it has clearly proven itself to cause real harm? Wouldn’t it, rather than establish an arbitrary and power backed criteria by which an assertion may be deemed worthy of participating, be better to play things by ear and let the discourse weed out the wrong?

And I would pull this into the political by pointing out how wrong the Republicans in America are in their dismissal of the arts, their hard-on against such cultural institutions such as the NEA or public TV and Radio. They fail to see the very real connection between unblocked creative energy and economic prowess. And leaving that to the forces of Capitalism can only stifle that resource.... Think: reality TV.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“By centering in on "the obscure and esoteric" aspect of Heidegger's preference for "poïesis" you missed its most important aspect. You ended up talking about his "elitist colors" and his "eccentric choice of appearing [...] in the traditional German outfit you often see on polka bands.", but I wonder if you grasped the most important reason for his preference for poïesis.

Another closely related word to poïesis is mimesis, which can be loosely defined as representation (but that doesn't complete its meaning). Heidegger sought to engage with our metaphysical presuppositions that had their roots in the earliest works of philosophers. Heidegger's poetical engagement in philosophy was an attempt uncover primal understanding of Being which had been overlooked or distorted in tradition of philosophy as it stood before Nietzsche (who he believed to have begun a revolution in metaphysics by making a definitive break with the then dominant Platonic (or Socratic) metaphysical position (though to be fair we would have to say that both Plato and Aristotle were deeply influenced by various branches of metaphysical inquiry taking place at the time).

Heidegger's philosophy is meant to contribute to a new starting place. Without work of his sort (and I don't mean here that it must be deeply obscure) philosophizing takes for granted not only concepts but ways of looking at the world and builds on the ideas of the past. Heidegger contributes to a new foundation which can be built upon.

It is another question whether his obscurity was entirely necessary. I do think though that work of his sort is inevitably going to be at least difficult because he create a lot of new terminology, he is attempting to uncover a new way of looking at the world (which being new will not be easy to sink into the first time around certainly, besides the difficulty of engaging with the terminology), and also because he goes after his subject with rigor in that he does not speak colloquially or stop to explain what he had just said in other terms for clarification but continues to delve into the inquiry.” –The Artful Pauper: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi ... 6#p2536396

First of all, thank you for your astute and intellectually sincere response and today’s around 500 word project. It’s what I always hope for when I post.

Secondly, I would ask you to keep in mind here that what I was mainly responding to was Rorty’s Heidegger in the context of what I know about him via secondary text. And given how you have clearly gone into him a little deeper (and have likely gone into Heidegger’s original text (I would not even try to speak from any position of authority here. It would be silly for me to even attempt to dismiss your take on Heidegger or his importance as a philosopher. But then that was never my point. Nor do I think it was Rorty’s. And because of that, I’m not sure our two takes on it are totally incompatible.

Still, I would stand by Rorty’s point that while Heidegger started out with his heart in the right place (the rejection of scientific standards for philosophy: what Heidegger referred to as the mathematization of philosophy (he still went wrong by clinging to the platonic hierarchy of mind, heart, and body. The only difference was that Heidegger, unlike Plato, did not choose to exile poets from his republic, but rather chose to treat them like philosopher kings. This is what led to his sense of philosophy as being the language of the shaman, high priest, or guru. I can fully sympathize with you when you say:

“It is another question whether his obscurity was entirely necessary. I do think though that work of his sort is inevitably going to be at least difficult because he create a lot of new terminology, he is attempting to uncover a new way of looking at the world (which being new will not be easy to sink into the first time around certainly, besides the difficulty of engaging with the terminology), and also because he goes after his subject with rigor in that he does not speak colloquially or stop to explain what he had just said in other terms for clarification but continues to delve into the inquiry.”

I too often question whether such obscurity is really necessary when a writer could as easily approach those aspects of reality that are beyond words by working the reader towards it until they can take off on their own. However (from what I’ve read of and about him, I get the feeling that Heidegger’s use of poessis has a different intent than the French use of it (Deleuze, Foucault, Lacan ( which centers around Barthes’ writerly text in which the reader is allowed to arrive at their own conclusions. In the case of Heidegger, it feels more like some corporate ladder that you must climb in order to achieve the vision that he has as your guru. In his case, it is as if he is saying:

“I will make you work for the level of understanding that I have. And if you choose not to, then you are worthless.”

As Rorty called him: a Schwarzhog Hick. And what Rorty seemed to be working at was the connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his involvement in Nazism which, as far as I’m concerned, is not a bad attempt. And I would note here the recent publication of his Black Notebooks (as reported by Philosophy Now: https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/Ne ... l_May_2015 (that establishes Heidegger’s anti-Semitic views and was cause for the resignation of Gunter Figal as chair of the Heidegger society.

Once again, I do not (would not (discourage you from pursuing Heidegger as you seem to be doing. I hope to get a little deeper into him myself. Still, I hope you will allow for some credibility in the criticisms against him.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“The reason I made the response that I did is because I feel that Heidegger has many important things to offer to those engaged in philosophy and otherwise.

That Heidegger was revealed as anti-semitic doesn't really surprise me since he was engaged under the Nazi regime, and it doesn't bother me in terms of reading and contemplating his work. As someone engaged in philosophy, I consider it my role to contemplate whether what he said is true, not whether those things agree with my politics.

I do wish that Heidegger had made an effort to be more clear, and I can admit that when I read him I have even found myself for a long time on a single sentence trying to think of what he means — this is sometimes because he is using a term that he introduced and defined prior and which I was unable to remember and contextualize as I moved on. It remains to be seen (for me) whether his writing style was necessary for his project, and again whether his project led to the discovery or aided the pursuit of truth.

I personally find more value in Heidegger than Foucault. I have not read Deleuze, Lacan, or Foucault's lectures. This point of view might change in the future, maybe because I grasp something in their work I hadn't before.

So again, the reason I made the response I did was because I feel Heidegger has something to offer and reducing his work to his politics (or prejudging it on those grounds) will be a disservice to philosophical pursuit.

It might, in the future, be worthwhile to engage in something like a study of one of Heidegger's works going over each paragraph, but that is only as yet an idea.” -The Artful Pauper: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi ... 8#p2536528

First of all, I hope that I am reading in an apologetic tone to this since it would be completely unnecessary. And on second thought, I can’t help but feel that bringing Heidegger’s anti-Semitism into this may have been a bit of a red herring. Thank God (whatever it is (that I have the denial of nose-blindness in my corner. I only brought it up to point to the clearly anti-democratic disposition that he had and what was the issue for me and Rorty. But that is a different issue than the one you are bringing up and are doing an impressive job of arguing. I mean I haven’t seen a point I could disagree with. Still, what I was arguing (via Rorty (was that Heidegger appears to have used a good method to bad ends by rebelling against the classicist hierarchy only to establish the hierarchy of the poet/priest.

What might help us here is Rorty’s distinction, in Philosophy and Social Hope, between interpretation and use when it comes to reading text. And what seems most important to me here is that you are finding things you can use in Heidegger. And that is all that should really matter as long as you are aware of the risks involved as Heidegger demonstrated. I myself, found something I could use (and still can (in the first essay of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness: the idea that accusations of selfishness can too often be expressions of the selfishness of the individual making the accusation. But then by the 3rd or 4th essay, I got so nauseous with the smug fascism of it that I had to put it down. I just couldn’t go any further. But I can still use the point about selfishness without being obliged to accept the rest of her nonsense. And the same goes for you and Heidegger.

Luckily, this offers me a smooth segway (for the purposes of this rhizome (into an article in Philosophy Now (issue 107): Yonathan Listik’s Derrida’s Performance:

“Derrida’s use of the performative aspects of language attempts precisely to take the road not taken. His argument is that proper and improper uses of language are not separate, but in fact dependent on one another, because language is built not on its successes, but on its failures.” -https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/De ... erformance

The term I want to focus on here is “uses”. If we focus on use, as compared to interpretation, how do we distinguish between “proper” and “improper”? A use is a use –proper or improper. The neo-classists may zero in on a gotcha moment and argue that this is exactly why we should focus on proper interpretation rather than use. But then doesn’t that constitute just another “use” (perhaps proper, perhaps improper (of language?
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

Some responses to yesterday’s rhizome:

"...the wiring that neuroscience describes." What specifically does that wiring look like according to neuroscience?” Steven Orslini: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1385673 ... up_comment

“The wiring huh? okay. well wiring isn't psychological destiny….

Well neurons get built by the genes(or by proteins that are taking direction of genes) that proscribe much of that, and much of epigenetic forces that do much else, and the rest is set up by experience. I don't know what over-ride here means?” –Anthonia Garcia: Ibid

And from Yanis Brikis on the Deleuze board (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2232336 ... up_comment:

“Different structures that are related and create difference, difference is the nature, ethics of difference is the absolute ethics.”

First of all, I can’t help but interpret Yanis’ as an appeal to the multiculturalism that many thinkers derived from Deleuze. But I’m not sure Deleuze would be comfortable with being adopted for the sake of any “absolute ethics”.

As concerns the former points, I would secondly point out that in no way was I endorsing a purely materialist view. I was pointing to the contradiction within the neo-classicist sensibility of, on one hand, arguing for a strict objective criteria for ethics while being beholden to the scientific method that increasingly shows, via neuroscience, that our choices are not as much our own as we would like to think. I was describing their take on the possibility of participation. Not mine.

That said, I did a lot of struggling over that rhizome last night at work. It felt like a lot of gerrymandering and I was seeing a lot of holes that the neo-classicists could easily insert their gotcha moments into. I especially felt it in my attempt to connect the scientistic side of it back with the ethical:

“At the same time, those on the scientific side of the neo-classicist equation are equally beholden to their ethical/moral peers since they are arguing as if our duty to the scientific method and objectivity is a moral and ethical one. Why else would they put so much effort into dismissing thinkers like Rorty or Derrida? That is rather than take a live and let live position?”

It just felt like gerrymandering. So let me first say that I may have spoken a little too soon when I said this was my next letter to Philosophy Now (I put my week of just writing off (and take another stab at it:

First we have to ask what it is that the neo-classicist expects to happen if they win the war they seem to be in with non-classicist approaches which they categorize with the sweeping generalization of relativism. What will it actually change if the neo-classicist establishes an objective criteria for ethical and moral assertions? That is when we really don’t need a solid foundation or objective argument to know, for instance, that murder or theft or rape is wrong? Why can’t we just feel it? Their argument, of course, is that the non-classicist position is a moral failure in that it lacks the solid foundation to counter the beliefs of murderers, thieves, or rapists.

Enter the scientific side of the neo-classicist sensibility that, via neuroscience, cannot accept the Cartesian Ghost in the Machine that the neo-classicist ethicist builds its argument on: these objective moral assertions that we must choose (as perfectly free beings (in order to save the world. I mean how do you make such an argument when you are ideologically obligated to accept the possibility that we aren’t actually (and from an “objective” perspective (making choices. How do the neo-classicist ethicists assume that if they win, the murderers, thieves, and rapists will just change their minds when the scientific neo-classicist shows that such behaviors are basically wired into us?

I know I’m fumbling around here guys. But I can’t help but feel I’m working towards a contradiction that I can drive, like a stake, into the heart of neo-classicism and its intellectual arrogance, like that of Steven Pinker’s –as much as I admire the man.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

Roger and Sydney’s Posts:

“ I've seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.

Given that "most" people probably think wrongly that words are defined to have meaning which is immutable, they are easy prey to this strategy. Therefore it's legitimate to explore the mutability of the meanings of symbology. I'm not sure that Derrida and the Continentals have a clear enough grasp of the simplicity of this idea and so there's a lot of empire-building going on, which only really serves to make clarity of language more easily evaded.

When "philosophers" discuss complex ideas in terms of other people's ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism. These aren't real philosophers. They are academics whose job it is to show people a range of ideas. To be worthwhile, we have to be very clear.”
*
“When "philosophers" discuss complex ideas in terms of other people's ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism"

And hermeneutics!

I think that the tradition of engaging in philosophical dialectics has had a profound impact on the history of western thinking.

Its almost like Jazz; you have to somehow start off in a key, and maybe play a melody as an indicator to your audience that this is the musical universe you are in, and from there its your opportunity to make your own unique expression/contribution to alter the expression of the whole.

The 'other people’s ideas' is the head.

The 'none of which may be clearly connected' is what we would call 'soloing over the changes.'

The outcome of Jazz is often movement, hopefully in the form of dancing.

The outcome of dialects is profound shifts in public attitude and a sense of progress in history.

Analytics has its place, but its not all there is to thought.”

I have, in my process, developed and held onto a sound bite (that which for the intellectually and creatively curious is what Frost called: a momentary stay against confusion (that pretty much describes my process:


I am drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition.


And because of this, I find myself sympathetic with both Roger and Sydney –that is with the qualification that while I agree with Roger on a lot of particulars, I am also in disagreement with his general conclusions (him being neo-classicist to some extent (while being more allied with Sydney.


And Sydney, I had decided yesterday to commit today’s limited window to Roger’s rather impressive post. I’m hoping, given time, to get to yours which I’m full in agreement with. I’m even hoping to slip some of yours into this. But enough with the preliminaries:


“I've seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.”


Nothing, Roger, could be more frustrating than trying to have a discourse with someone who is talking in etherspeak and offering up an interpretation of and response to what they’re saying, only to have them smugly reply:


“No, you don’t quite get it.”


I’ve actually been considering a satirical piece for Philosophy Now that describes just such a discourse and the intellectual arrogance involved. This, to me, shines on a point Rorty made in Philosophy and Social Hope concerning Heidegger who started out with his heart in the right place with poessis (etherspeak (then turned it all right back to the platonic hierarchy that modernism and postmodernism was working to undermine with his turn to a kind of esoteric priesthood with their exclusive semiotic system.


This is why I was with Mary Warnock when she, in an interview with Nigel Warburton, expressed regret at Heidegger’s desire to create a new language for philosophy. Still, Heidegger has, via secondary sources (including Warnock, given me things I can use. I’m equally split on Searle. On one hand I’m put off by his smug dismissal of continental approaches. On the other, I can also see the compassion in it in that it feels like an old pro taking taking someone under their wing and saying:


“Listen: you don’t need to go through that kind of alienation and degradation to have knowledge.”


And I do admire the step by step process he takes in his writings. Still, it is all fuel for the fire as Sydney points out:


“Analytics has its place, but it’s not all there is to thought.”


None of us can claim to have the all-purpose answer that will make everything work like a fine tuned machine. And that can only set us up for the risk for something authoritarian and possibly fascist in nature –for example: Heidegger.


As I see it, our situation is too complex to not think it’s going to take a lot of different people using a lot of different methods to fix it. This is why while any talk of a “Real Philosophy” concerns me, I am not going to sit here and try to convert you to the continental approach to philosophy. That would be futile given that you are clearly not wired to be open to it: to treat it (as compared to a direct exchange of information( like a poem or meditation you just keep reading until something happens. Nor do you need to be. I mean we all gotta find our flow.


But to offer you an example that might help you understand why I get into it: I have found, lately, that after reading a lot of and about Deleuze, it is often hard for me to go back to Rorty who works in the Anglo-American style of exposition. The guy is an important influence on my process. And I must always pay tribute to that. Still, it’s just not as challenging. It’s a little like going back to Ginsberg’s poem Howl (an easily accessible one for any reader of poetry just starting out (after experiencing the subtlety of someone like Levine.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“Our opponents say [the Kantians and Neo-Platonists –me] that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it. We say that this theory is barely intelligible, and of no particular importance –that it is not so much a theory as a slogan which we have been mindlessly chanting for centuries. We pragmatists think that we might stop chanting it without any harmful consequences.” –from page XVII of Rorty’s intro to Philosophy and Social Hope.

I would first point out that while I always have some reservations about going back to Rorty (especially after a less accessible philosopher like Deleuze(mainly because it feels less challenging and too familiar a territory, I’m still impressed by Rorty as a writer who can find some really cool ways of expressing what I already have thought.

That said, while I am in full agreement with Rorty here, I can’t help but feel he is overlooking what is implicit in his very point. He points out that:

“Our opponents say that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it.”

:then focuses on the unintelligibility of it. True enough. But what gets marginalized is how superfluous and redundant the theory is since the very reason it is so “obvious” and “self evident” is because people tend to naturally use correspondence (as well as coherence (in dealing with their environment. In fact, these tools can be said to be evolutionary adaptations and, therefore, wired in. And I think the same can be said for such terms (or slogans (as “objectivity” or “rationality”. This can even be said of the “scientific method” since everyone uses it in the way they go into their own little mental labs, form ideas, and test them against reality.

At the same time, this brings me up against another hesitation I always feel coming back to Rorty. His main attraction to me, from the beginning, was as an antidote to the trolls I encountered on these boards who threw the terms described above around like badges of authority, who acted as if because they said words like “objectivity” or “facts”, they had every right to treat you like some kind of intellectual inferior that they, through “tough love”, were tasked with shaping. I mean I’m naturally thrilled when Rorty later says:

“We must repudiate this vocabulary our opponents use [the trolls –me], and not let them impose it upon us.”

But I can’t help but feel like the cliché of an old Japanese soldier stranded on an Asian island who thinks World War 2 is still going on. The problem is that trolls really haven’t been that much of a problem lately on the boards –not that I’ve seen. I can’t help but feel, when I turn to Rorty, that I’m riding on the momentum of some past battle.

Still, there is a big difference between a battle and the war it is part of. And given the complexity of the war I find myself confronted with, the pragmatic approach of taking things on a case by case basis (as compared to a grand narrative (cannot help but feel like the only way to go.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

First of all, today is my last day of this particular run with Klein’s book. (Tomorrow I start to finish up on Deleuze’s Logic of Sense.) And I gotta say that one of the main philosophical influences that has haunted me throughout it has been Rorty and pragmatism, which makes perfect sense given his willingness to refer to the concrete as compared to Deleuze. And I’m a little surprised that Zizek didn’t slip in there a little more –given the common cynicism he shares with Klein as concerns Capitalism. But then he may well retroactively do so when I get back to him. To give you a “for instance”:

“As Robert Manne, a professor of politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, puts it, climate science is for many conservatives “an affront to their deepest and most cherished basic faith: the capacity and indeed the right of ‘mankind’ to subdue the Earth and all its fruits and to establish a ‘mastery’ over Nature.” For these conservatives, he notes, “such a thought is not merely mistaken. It is intolerable and deeply offensive. Those preaching this doctrine have to be resisted and indeed denounced.” -Klein, Naomi (2014-09-16). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (p. 41). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Here we can see pragmatism’s rootedness in romanticism, its rejection of the classicist sensibility: that which seeks to impose itself on the natural way of things and props that imposition up on the human constructs of conceptual systems: hierarchies and ideologies. Hence the pragmatic refusal to think of terms like “objectivity”, “the scientific method”, or “rational discourse” as all purpose epistemological systems that can underwrite any statement we might make. This is because, as I see it, the attempt to impose those criteria upon the general discourse is really not that different than mankind’s claim to the right to subdue the earth. Both are basically phallogocentric.

Still, the neo-classicist would claim that the pragmatist (the so called relativist (is in no position to resist such sensibilities since they lack the HIGH-TECH tools that the neo-classicists do. Really? And by that do they mean the high tech tools through which they can subdue nature?

Granted, pragmatism may not be “high tech”; but it can see through the bullshit the neo-classicists are offering when they claim to be the only ones capable of dealing with what is wrong with the world while explicitly participating in it. Furthermore, the neo-classist dismissal of the pragmatic approach is based on a rather oversimplified understanding of pragmatism’s criteria of what works. For instance:

“Bast, who has little of the swagger common to so many denialists, is equally honest about the fact he and his colleagues did not become engaged with climate issues because they found flaws in the scientific facts. Rather, they became alarmed about the economic and political implications of those facts and set out to disprove them.” Ibid (p. 42)

Here we can exercise the true complexity and sophistication of the pragmatic approach. It’s not just a matter of what works. Clearly, the bullshit the climate change denialists are coming up with is working for them. But the criteria of the pragmatic asks that we further ask the question of how their bullshit is working, for who, and how it is working. This is how the pragmatic sensibility comes to the rightful and sensible conclusion that the climate change denialists are full of shit: that it simply does not work in the general scheme of things.

And I ask my pragmatic peers: if the climate change denialists happened to get a hold of the arguments the neo-classicists tend to use against us, how likely would they be to use such terms as “objectivity”, “the scientific method”, or “rational discourse” against us? How entangled is the neo-classicist sensibility (that which the pragmatic sensibility was born to oppose (in producer/consumer Capitalism?

I mainly bring this up because of another point Klein brought up:

“The ties between the deniers and those interests are well known and well documented. Heartland has received more than $ 1 million from ExxonMobil together with foundations linked to the Koch brothers and the late conservative funder Richard Mellon Scaife. Just how much money the think tank receives from companies, foundations, and individuals linked to the fossil fuel industry remains unclear because Heartland does not publish the names of its donors, claiming the information would distract from the “merits of our positions.” Indeed, leaked internal documents revealed that one of Heartland’s largest donors is anonymous— a shadowy individual who has given more than $ 8.6 million specifically to support the think tank’s attacks on climate science.”

Something I have experienced (on these boards even (and will get to tomorrow.
Dalek Prime
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:48 am
Location: Living in a tree with Polly.

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by Dalek Prime »

Sorry to interrupt. Would you say pragmatism is led by positive utilitarianism, d63?
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

I would say that utilitarianism (positive or not (is an expression of pragmatism.

It's not just about what works. That makes it sound too simplistic. It's about the complex interaction of what is working for whom and why.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

First of all, Alexander, watching young guys like you (as well as Steven (work is a thing of beauty: like walking down memory lane: the same sensibility as well as a lot of the same places I have been. But don’t get me wrong here. What I see happening is analogous to when I first started my present job around the same time that 2 other young men did and quickly realized that as I was fumbling around on my own on night shift (being self taught (those guys would be well ahead of me a couple of years down the way (they having the brain pool of the day shift to follow around and find out what they needed to know. And I think the same applies here: me being pretty much self taught while you guys are right in the middle of the system following around the brain pool. Therefore, I have to get in what I can to help you before you are well ahead of me. Hopefully, you’ll have time to read it and it helps you with your paper.

I start with what I am most confident about:

“For that reason I want to try to give a short "story" on what happened (and went wrong) from Descartes to Locke to Kant to nowaday's philosophy of language (actually just paraphrasing Rorty here, but with a critical look at the "joints" of his arguments, meaning: do I find his perspective plausible or not). I have a limitation of around 6000 words, I think, so I can't really tell the whole story en detail, but I have the intuition that one can only define Philosophy as a literary genre, as a kind of writing, when one drops the whole epistemology then, philosophy of language now-business.”

Bertrand Russell described philosophy as lying in that no-man’s land between science and religion. And as accurate as this sounds (religion having the faint scent of metaphysics about it (we do live in a more secular age. Therefore, I would humbly (with all due respect (revise this to: philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and literature.

And this involves a spectrum throughout which various philosophers choose to work. You say:

“What I hopefully will be able to show, is, that a division between Philosophy and Literature only occurs, when one associates the task of Philosophy with the Kantian project in its (now) analytic philosophy-form (analysis of language instead of epistemology but with the same aim, namely to bring Philosophy "on the secure path of a science.")”

I say it is all fuel for the fire. I say that, ultimately, there are lots of different people out there using lots of different methods to come to understanding and that we should use whatever tool seems to work in a given instance –even those of the analytics. Your point, however, seems to come from the same conflict I have had with the analytics: the smugness they often display when referring to the more literary approach to philosophy such as Searle’s dismissal of Derrida as a philosopher for those who know nothing about philosophy or Hawkin’s declaration that physics and science would make philosophy obsolete which, BTW, is the result of a rather half-assed understanding of philosophy: that which leans towards the scientific side of the spectrum.

That said, I want to address another point before I run out my daily 500 words:

“Thinking of Robert Frost now actually, but instead of mending the wall, I ask myself: Why is there a wall, a defintion, a distinction in the first place? What's so bad with tearing down walls, if we agree not to interfere (or come to some other kind of agreement)? “

The thing to understand about Frost is that he was a neo-classicist much like the analytics we are dealing with. As he said in an interview:

“We rise out of disorder into order. I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down”

What was cool about him is that he was a little more open to the romantic sensibility he was reacting against. This was why he would pause before a wood on a snowy evening, consider walking into it, but choose rather duty or act like it would make any big difference what path he chose when faced with the dilemma. In Mending Wall, there are 2 refrains:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall:
nature, beauty, anything that is not the system.

At the same time: Good fences make good neighbors. In other words, there are these human agreements that seem to go against our nature. Still, as opposed to the romantic sensibility, our happiness as human beings may be dependent on those artificial distinctions: the Lacanian Symbolic Order.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“Another reason science is superior - it avoids the whole debate over relative and absolute truth and sticks with what is objective - reality.”

But that’s not what you’re doing, John. Like most people running around talking about “objectivity” and the “scientific method”, you just seem to be flashing it around like a badge of authority then making assertions based on speculation: for instance, this erroneous notion that neuroscience must necessarily lead to a conclusion that must exclude the possibility of a participating self. As I wrote earlier:

“Once again you run into the self contradiction that hardcore materialism runs into. You talk about the brain creating this illusion. But how does an illusion happen in terms of just meat, blood, and guts? How do you have that without consciousness? Furthermore, you talk about empirical evidence while asking us to accept your argument based on what you argue science will EVENTUALLY be able to do, not on what it has. But what if science actually finds evidence of a participating self? Your argument reads more like an appeal to the authority of science (an informal fallacy) than an appeal to real evidence.”

But the more interesting aspect of this is the very real possibility that science is starting out with that foregone conclusion –that is given that the materialistic position seems to fit within the scientific comfort zone. And if that is the case, is there any wonder we might actually question the scientific method?

It seems to me that these issues only seem to be relevant when we’re engaged in meta-discourses about discourse, these pissing contests that tend to emerge when people are striving for power and influence as compared to real understanding. I mean, at some point or other, we have to ask why we are engaging in debates about what method is superior when we could simply use that method and prove it. We have to ask what John expects to achieve here (that is outside of some snide dismissal of any sensibility not like his (when he could actually be engaged in science and not contradicting himself at every point along the way.

And in that sense, doesn’t this all feel like more of a distraction as well as kind of petty? Does it really matter where we get our understanding from as long as it gives us enough understanding to change the understanding of others and possibly make things better? And wouldn’t “making things better” (the pragmatic criteria (in evolutionary terms, be the only real criteria by which we judge our assertions, regardless of what method we use to arrive at them.

I get it: John is working from the assumption that science, and the technology it has produced, is one of the higher achievements of man. But it is only one among others: art, philosophy, literature, etc.. And to succumb to this notion that science is above them all is to succumb to Capitalistic and corporate values. And I don’t see how that contributes to our evolution as a species.
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“Three answers have been given, in our century, to the question of how we should conceive of of our relation to Western Philosophical tradition, answers which are paralleled by three conceptions of the aim of philosophizing. They are the Husserlian (or 'scientistic') answer, the Heideggerian (or ‘poetic’) answer, and the pragmatist (or ‘political’) answer. The first answer is the most familiar, and was common to Husserl and his positivist opponents. On this view, philosophy is modeled on science, and is relatively remote from both art and politics.” –from Rorty’s essay “Philosophy as Science, as Metaphor, and as Politics in Essays on Heidegger and other Philosophical Papers

Now what I mainly want to note here is that while I have gone to great efforts to make connections between Rorty and Deleuze (both major influences on my process (this particular map lays out a clear distinction between them in that while Deleuze can be comfortably delegated to the poetic, Rorty clearly takes a more political approach. This seems only all too clear given the difference in their style of exposition: Rorty’s up front manner of conveying meaning as compared to Deleuze’s embrace of free indirect discourse and an oblique approach to meaning. Whereas Rorty tries to give it to you in the straightforward manner of a kindly old schoolteacher, Deleuze often takes the rock star approach of dancing around you and explaining himself in the western equivalent of koans. And I’m guessing this is why some of my respected pragmatic peers (and jam-mates (seem a little taken aback when I attempt such comparisons.

(And I still maintain that there is a connection in their common emphasis on discourse and rejection of the Platonic hierarchy (classicism and neo-classicism (via representation.)

And I would also note here how Rorty, later in the essay, describes Heidegger as grouping the scientistic approach with the pragmatic under the label of the mathematical approach to philosophy as compared to the poetic approach. As if it wasn’t bad enough for Husserl (someone generally grouped with the continental approach as compared to the analytic (to be defined as scientistic, now the pragmatic is associated with it in terms we can’t easily dismiss.

But the plot thickens. Later in the book, Rorty makes the reasonable argument that the problem with writers like Deleuze and Foucault is their fixation on theory and bourgeoisie detachment from very real social problems. They make it seem as if our problems are so deeply entwined in our systems of social and political interaction that any attempt to try to fix it can only lead to our further involvement in that system. This can only lead to radical solutions that will often be entertained simply because they seem so radical. Or the fashionable cynicism we are dealing with today.

To give you an example that Rorty brings up: Layotard, in the appendix to The Postmodern Condition, suggests the sublime and Avant Garde as an antidote to the tyranny of the accessible and easily communicated. And may it produce a lot of really good art. Still, is that really a solution? Theory’s a lot of fun –especially with beer and Jager. But don’t we, at some point or other, need to take the pragmatic step of drifting back down to the real world with real people having real problems, explain those problems in clear language, and come up with clear solutions for them? Don’t we eventually need to see theory and philosophy for what it is, a kind of pastime with some perhaps real consequences, and actually act in the world?
d63
Posts: 755
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: pragmatic Studies:

Post by d63 »

“By an antirepresentationalist account I mean one which does not view knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 1). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Here again, we see the important role that the evolutionary model is playing in the evolution of philosophy which along with culture in general, as Rorty points out in his writings, is an extension of our physical evolution. (And once again: I cannot help but see a core overlap with Deleuze’s agenda here.) To get to the depth of it, we have to look at the evolutionary feedback loop that resulted in the experience he have as conscious beings and the language we developed in order to deal with it: that between an evolving brain attached to a body and the environment it has to negotiate. These are the tools we are working with. Therefore, it makes no sense to sit around and debate about the nature of that negotiation in order to (as Rorty puts it:

“To find some epistemological system that will underwrite any statement we might make about the world.”

That can only lead to quagmires. For instance, note how science has lately gotten into the mindset that it can make philosophy obsolete. And as Hegel rightly pointed out: such arrogance can only lead to self contradictions: an overheating that can result from an ideology trying to be the simple solution in a complex world. Scientism and realism, however, are based on the notion of empiricism which is based on a trust in what we can experience and see for what it is. Then it makes statements like Free Will and consciousness doesn’t exist, that they are illusions, mainly because such statements feel like the scientific/ realist thing to say. The problem is that we actually experience consciousness and free will. So, if we can’t trust our experiences of that (that which we experience at every point in our point A to point B (how do we trust any other “empirical” experience we might have?

Plus that, the scientific/realist approach acts like it has some kind of monopoly on the method with which it works. But everyone, by our evolutionary heritage, uses it. We all retreat into our own little mental labs, form hypotheses about the reality we are dealing with, then go back out and test them and, depending on the results, retreat to our own little mental labs and either eliminate, keep, or revise those hypotheses. So why even sit around and nitpick over terms like “objectivity” or “reason” or “the scientific method” when we could be just putting it out there and letting it all come out in the wash –that is when we know perfectly well that arguments backed by empirical evidence will generally fair much better. Flashing around such words (and such debates (only constitute, as Layotard points out in The Postmodern Condition, powerplays: attempts to control the rules of the language game as compared to just letting the argument speak for itself.

Rorty, in this spirit, later goes on to connect his anti-representalist position to his liberal one:

“I read Dewey as saying that it suits such a society to have no views about truth save that it is more likely to be obtained in Milton’s “free and open encounter” of opinions than in any other way.”

Here we only need look at what props up the arrogance of scientific/realist position: the corporate funding it tends to draw. It only seems more right because it has access to cooler toys indulged in by children who happen to have more market value: the so called “greatest minds among us” whom we can also see as well trained -children, BTW, who had the resources to go to universities in the first place.

This is why I’m actually enthusiastic about increasing corporate funding (due to decreasing state funding (driving the fine arts and humanities out of universities. It just seems to me that they may be more effective at doing what they do best in workshops which most people, who can’t afford to go to universities, might actually be able to afford without an expensive bureaucracy driving up tuition. Such workshops could actually serve the Promethean purpose of bringing the fire to the people where it belongs, where it needs to be if we are to change the general sensibility.
Post Reply