tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post4904717057787111735..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Cultivation and realization: on faith and bullshitskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-29261998217848662682010-08-15T20:41:50.655-07:002010-08-15T20:41:50.655-07:00Nor I an expert on Spinoza, though I've though...Nor I an expert on Spinoza, though I've thought a lot on him, and researched him in the unbeaten path way. I guess I would just have to stake out rather firmly a refusal of Spinoza as a materialist (though I don't know Jacobi's argument for such), since he refuses any reduction to something like "matter". Instead Substance is irreducible to an infinity of attributes, only one of which is "extension". I suppose I could be convinced if presented with a narrow definition, but largely Spinoza places what is really, really real (in terms of what lies beyond us) lies beyond our adequate material description or calculation. It would be hard to call this a materialism, unless it is perhaps an mystical materialism (which seems quite odd to say).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-50643875760174040832010-08-15T12:03:47.766-07:002010-08-15T12:03:47.766-07:00I'd say my sense of Spinoza as a materialist i...I'd say my sense of Spinoza as a materialist is "loose," and corrigible; but I think it is an admissible interpretation (I am following Jacobi). As for you & I being on the same page, this is also perhaps loose, but I am--at the risk of being cloying-- open to learning from everyone. I am certainly not an expert on Spinoza, or anyone else for that matter.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-15799916808566388522010-08-15T11:53:14.945-07:002010-08-15T11:53:14.945-07:00Interesting that you view Spinoza as a materialist...Interesting that you view Spinoza as a materialist. Perhaps you mean this as in a very loose sense, or in a highly narrow technical sense (whose criteria I am not familiar with). <br /><br />Glad we are on much of the same page in terms of the answers to these kinds of questions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-51676359303039203292010-08-15T11:34:49.984-07:002010-08-15T11:34:49.984-07:00Thanks, Kevin. I have some sympathy with the notio...Thanks, Kevin. I have some sympathy with the notion of projection as action, as I understand you to be using it. From my own reading of Wittgenstein, the thing I took away most was the irreducibility of practices; the assertion that at bottom, theory too is a practice. I am not sure how far I want to push the arguments that this makes all our positions "entrenched" (as you put it), whether epistemologically or ideologically; but I think I see how this is coherent with Spinoza given his drastic monism and essentially his materialism. In any case, I agree that the passions are involved here as well as our supposedly easygoing minds. "In our marrow and sinews" we feel these commitments and the threats or supports to them.<br /><br />Yes, philosophy as I conceive of it is really a kind of meta-technique. A way of discerning which context calls for which "skillful means." And above all an acknowledgment that one <i>does</i>pass from context to context.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-44465470172258542632010-08-14T16:12:21.002-07:002010-08-14T16:12:21.002-07:00It seems we are on the rough page together. We bot...It seems we are on the rough page together. We both have an appreciation for the role of technique and also it seems for identifying technique as a proper level of critique and change. In this, "there is nothing but technique" involves, necessarily "the choice of techniques" (which could itself be called a technique as well, and which, if you expand it far enough you end up with something resembling what "Philosophy" is supposed to be, not a meta-discourse, but a technique for choosing techniques). Perhaps our background in Wittgenstein helps us agree on this, as he is a rather technique driven and focused philosopher (or anti-philosopher, as the interpretation may be). <br /><br />As far as projection goes, I have this in mind, and it stems in part from my study of Spinoza. Projections are not just phenomenological experiences in the world, or imaginary compositions of the world as it likely or possibly is. They are actions. Acts to power. Ontological leanings into streams and differentials (if I can hesitantly speak in that way). On the intersubjective level (if there is really such a pure thing), they involve cathexes, "encampments" of affective states which are your own, but then are projected into objects, but more readily people, and even situations such that they becomes affective potentials for triggers of your own states. Spinoza leverages his entire theory of the "social" upon this projective capacity of sameness, whereby imaginary states coherently express themselves through an affective and sympathetic weaving of one's own body into the fate of other bodies like it. These are weaves of affective investments, social bodies that extend, epistemologically, out across the world, such that if an event happens in one body, it ripples down into our perceptive own, and these affective linkings via projections are themselves highly ideologically entrenched (at the level of "the subject"), but even more so, epistemologically entrenched, such that affective sympathies (and thus necessarily antipathies) confirm the very cogency of our thought. <br /><br />I say that war occurs here because as we debate the facts of the world (and facts include values as well, when criteria is at stake), and our attendant revelations, it is with the very marrow of our body that we feel these coherences, and recoil from their disturbance. And this is why "technique" is the best prescriptive level on which to enter an in-cogency. At the level of projections the nerves and sinews are already sewn into pictures. <br /> <br />Don't know if that makes sense to you, but it is my natural response to your question.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-21194606394208339552010-08-14T13:17:12.660-07:002010-08-14T13:17:12.660-07:00Hi Kevin, and thanks for this. I hope you'll k...Hi Kevin, and thanks for this. I hope you'll keep reading.<br /><br />In a sense, I think I do hold that there is "nothing but" technique, insofar as what is available to human prerogative goes. I may be mistaking your comment, but I hope I do not give the impression of wishing to denigrate technique as "mere," since (as per my argument), in a certain sense one <i>cannot</i> do anything <i>but</i> use techniques, either well or poorly. I don't want to claim that there is no difference between good science and bad, for instance (even if I have a robust interest in what most scientists consider "fringe" stuff). Charles Williams used to argue to the effect that "unless devotion is given to what must, in the end, prove false, what is true in the end cannot come." (not a quote but my approximation of the gist). All one can do with "mystery" in Marcel's sense (I would argue) is experience is, and wither acknowledge it or else deny it. But this "all we can do " may be everything.<br /><br />I am interested in your use of the word "projections" here. Again I may misread you, but what this makes me think of is the over-insistence on particular formulae for the revelation.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-50935931272089599232010-08-13T20:26:28.274-07:002010-08-13T20:26:28.274-07:00Skhol,
Some thoughts.
Pretend for a moment that ...Skhol,<br /><br />Some thoughts.<br /><br />Pretend for a moment that there is nothing other than technique, projection and realization as it pertains to these questions. Is there any level of critique more valuable than technique (how something is done)? We attack people's realizations, criticize their visions, recoil from or gravitate to their projections (bodily), but is it nothing more than questions of technique? Ethos.<br /><br />Science (aside from its propaganda) made simple is an ethos. Capitalism (aside from its propaganda) made simple is an ethos. Each composed of a panoply of techniques. The lab is derived, both genealogically, but also in terms of a stark technique/revelation correspondence from the magi's chamber. The temple is no different. The confusion perhaps resides in a focus upon the revelation. And the warfare occurs at the level of projections.<br /><br />That's my bit of nonsense.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-27615319915545091982010-08-13T07:56:16.347-07:002010-08-13T07:56:16.347-07:00Thanks, Tim, for these comments; I hope you'll...Thanks, Tim, for these comments; I hope you'll be back. I am glad you caught this comparison, as it was one of the germs around which the post crystallized. One key thing here is that while the shrine and the lab both set up boundary conditions, ("closed systems") in the way that, e.g. Michael Polanyi describes, this is meant simply to reveal [something about] the world <i>as such</i>. The other thing is that of course it need not be a physical space that is in question; it's the operational process that matters. A poem does the same thing.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-86960988503199397782010-08-12T22:32:55.863-07:002010-08-12T22:32:55.863-07:00On a second reading, the comparison of shrine room...On a second reading, the comparison of shrine room and lab really stood out. I think that's spot on. Both are "operationally closed" (Varela). In fact Buddhist retreat language talks about the container principle, setting up a mandala that includes a boundary to protect against negative forces, etc.Timothy Mortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05067377804366363020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-90250879771200021812010-08-12T09:18:41.541-07:002010-08-12T09:18:41.541-07:00Hi--I really like this post. (And thanks for comme...Hi--I really like this post. (And thanks for commenting at EwN too.) You are one of the very few people with a good sense of "realization" who works on these sorts of materials (if I may make so bold). I'm going to think about your posts (and read that page at Love of All Wisdom), then get back to you.Timothy Mortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05067377804366363020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-64631859692817044442010-08-11T16:07:16.706-07:002010-08-11T16:07:16.706-07:00Elisa,
How to "decide whether whatever looks...Elisa,<br /><br />How to "decide whether whatever looks like a contradiction is not worth enquiring further" seems a good way of summarizing the question. You are right about photons and the whole wave/particle dualism, though I don't like to have recourse to examples from physics lest I seem to be appropriating the authority of a neighboring discipline. Still, my own feeling is that while "reality itself" does not have contradictions in it, it is very plausible that <i>any</i> meta-reality, in which part of reality tries to represent the whole of reality, will encounter contradictions (hence Gödelian incompleteness-- to risk a different appropriation). In practice, we are always making judgment-calls about which contradictions we will shrug off (as 'noise', more or less), which will spur us to try to resolve them, and which we will live with in a way that is more like Keatsian "Negative Capability," being "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-23855613561003794512010-08-11T05:33:10.997-07:002010-08-11T05:33:10.997-07:00Interesting post, as often. The main point seems t...Interesting post, as often. The main point seems to me to decide whether whatever looks like a contradiction is not worth enquiring further or whether we should not put in question our actual understanding. In fact, on the one hand the nature of photones (or of electrones in many cases) is also "contradictory", but probably worth enquiring. On the other hand, a mystery is not something about which no investigation should be done, but something whose complete understanding will never be attained. Hence, investigation is much welcome, but it will always be a work-in-progress. Probably, a sincere believer could add that grace may occur exactly during this progress.elisa freschihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17068583874519657894noreply@blogger.com