tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post5909626514842015560..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Through the Turing test, darkly.skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-18395444245321676422010-03-06T17:00:29.818-08:002010-03-06T17:00:29.818-08:00I meant science as the poetry of the real world. S...I meant science as the poetry of the real world. Sometimes I get the two confused.dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-83727471885934548022010-03-06T15:33:00.311-08:002010-03-06T15:33:00.311-08:00Let me make clear something that may not come acro...Let me make clear something that may not come across in my laconic style. I am sympathetic to Harman and the other speculative realists. I offer criticism because I think them worth criticizing and I'm sure they would understand me in that spirit, no matter how much they may think me off base. <br /><br />A battle against scientism seems to be in itself a sign of despair. As if I would land a blow on the spirtiual tradition of the west by berating the door to door evangelists in my neighborhood. What philosophy needs to do is come to terms with is science itself and to do that might requre studying a few chemicals or animals. Harman takes pains to distance himself from those who hold disdain for the "furniture of the world" but seems reflexively at times to adopt the Gallic condescention of his teachers towards such mundane thinking.<br /><br />I detect something of the Moor's last sigh in the anxiety of philosophy. Once philosophers reigned supreme. It is no accident that philosophers were so often leaders of science at that time. But in the last century philosphy has been humbled, perhaps humiliated. At times it has been reduced to little more than terrorizing texts. But philosophers have not really been eclipsed by scientists, they too have been deflated. We are no more likely to see a modern Newton than we are to see another Kant. The scope of the human project has simply become too vast and too fast. We all stand of the shoulders of giants and are likely to become outdated before we leave our prime. We may all need to get used to living in our little ghetto of knowledge because this multi-generational, multi-discipline project of ours is emerging to be something greater than its parts. Is that something a something beyond biology? Perhaps we will pass the Turing Test *darkly* but I'm not willing to conceed that means we will be somehow *less* than we are now in doing so. We will become different, of that I'm sure.<br /><br />I look forward to your thoughts on philosophy and poetry. I threw out the science as the philosophy of the real world because I mean to underline that science remains a *human* project. That doesn't mean it has to be anthropoCENTRIC. But it will always have our smell on it. Also there is something about science that, like poetry, never really owns its objects. I accept that even the clearest formulas are still hinting at something beyond our grasp...so far.dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-17295028970126769602010-03-06T07:49:42.148-08:002010-03-06T07:49:42.148-08:00I am not sure what to make of Harman's stance ...I am not sure what to make of Harman's stance towards science. I think he wants to try a new ploy in the war of attrition he feels philosophy has been fighting with scientism. He's on record as holding that philosophy ought not to accept the ghettoizing and retreat into more and more ancillary roles. I think he would argue that anthropocentrism in philosophy is a function of its retreat in the face of science. <br /><br />Meillassoux claims that this anthropocentric stance ("correlationism") makes it impossible to understand science as science understands itself. The correlationist (says M.) always has to insert a caveat under his breath, and that caveat is not to the effect that our current theories are the best that account for the evidence we have available, but rather that there is of course no world aside from thinking and so our theories are not about the world <i>as it is whether there is thought or not</i> but only about the world <i>as we theorize it</i>. Meillassoux offers his counter-examples (E.g. the Big Bang, before there could possibly be anyone to think it) as a kind of uber-tree-falling-in-the-empty-forest, and Brassier goes in the other direction (the end of the universe long after all life is extinct) precisely to force the issue. <br /><br />I think Harman, for all his differences from M. and from B., is offering a similar argument; the inner life of <i>any</i> object is a kind of forest in which trees fall with no one around. He has said a few times that he thinks philosophy can speak of the same objects as science but <i>in a different way.</i> His efforts to articulate an account of "vicarious causation" are part of this. It remains to be seen if this adds anything essential to our way of thinking, or just winds up an unnecessary flourish on a basically scientific account of the world and what happens in it. (As Wittgenstein said, a wheel that doesn't turn anything else is not part of the mechanism). Since I think Harman is attempting something worthwhile, I keep paying attention. But I'm not sure my Wittgensteinian motives for this attention would meet with Harman's approval.<br /><br />Re. poetry: one reason I love Badiou (despite the current cooling of enthusiasm for him among some thinkers I admire) is his effort to wrestle philosophically with both poetry and science, in a way that eschews condescension or reduction. Eventually I'll get around to posting something on him. And, I hope, also on the relation between poetry and philosophy in general.<br /><br />thanks for the link--it works if you paste the URL into the address bar. I saw one of the earlier videos in this vein a while back which you may also have seen:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbcskholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-1660419608767082502010-03-05T19:21:32.036-08:002010-03-05T19:21:32.036-08:00I've been reading through Harman's blog an...I've been reading through Harman's blog and found this curious:<br /><br />tedious eveningFebruary 26, 2010<br />I’m reading a philosophy book tonight that goes roughly like this:<br /><br />science science science SCIENCE science SCIENCE SCIENCE science science science science science SCIENCE<br /><br />Rather than writing philosophy books of this sort, it would be a lot more interesting just to go into science, I think. There are all kinds of chemicals and animals to study.<br /><br />End quote.<br /><br />I have to raise my eyebrows at this and would like to retort that if he doesn't think philosophy is about science perhaps he'd find it more interesting to just do poetry.<br /><br />I'm not simply being snide in that. I think poetry is very well suited to exploration of the internal experience, that world of ideas which we may never truly be able to escape and which contaminates if not determines every encounter with reality.<br /><br />Mark goes on to say this:<br /><br />... because it is NOT obvious from human experience as i have it and as i hear it reported by other humans. Also to say "your being anthroprocentrically arrogant" also does not seem to be a convincing argument, it criticizes a tendency but does nothing constructive to explain the nature of experience.<br /><br />End quote.<br /><br />What is obvious, say the sun moving around the earth for instance, is often very wrong. I don't believe Brassier would say that it is obvious that there is a world outside the limits of perception. That is the position he is fighting hard to defend. <br /><br />As I understand it, the scientific method is precisely our best bet for avoiding the anthropocentric rock that has wrecked so many of our promising theories. I always point out every anthropocentric tendency I see as I consider them dangerous. <br /><br />I'm not sure if this link will paste here but I think these guys say it better than I do.<br /><br />http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/march-6-the-week-in-viral-videos/?cid=bs:archive1#gallery=1399;page=39dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-72154283475990970712010-03-05T13:09:28.164-08:002010-03-05T13:09:28.164-08:00For me the meaning in the "not good to be alo...For me the meaning in the "not good to be alone" segment of genesis was that it is the natural program to recieve correction from what you perceive and that is most easily accomplished in company, when what you percieve will talk to you. If approached with humility then there is greater chance of misperceptions being corrected than from correcting them alone by summoning up personal thoughts. To use a negative rhetorical device -Going off on ones own to find truth bespeaks a certain arrogance. To use a positive rhetorical device- "- it bespeaks a certain confidence and dignity" People succeed and fail all the time in so many things, is this not so? Of course you see people in society so stubborn in view so incorrectable that even the most impressive corrections don't get through. So the natural mode of correction through others often fails as well. Its a philosophical or religious dilemma anyone seeking to find truth faces, i believe with no clear cut answers other than for each specific instance.<br /><br />I apologize if I am throwing out loaded words and terms that have no place in the sentence or idea. I am painfully aware of my own ignorance in these matters and no philosopher. I wish I knew the truth, thats about it, and in this post am only trying match the words I know with the ideas I think.dorjehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12822022520823998690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-19544679088973368022010-03-05T13:08:08.302-08:002010-03-05T13:08:08.302-08:00Personally, as far as I have been able to deduce, ...Personally, as far as I have been able to deduce, any kind of being that I can conceive of or have ever experienced is defacto also a knowing. Even were I to wish with all my heart to verify something outside of this i would feel forced to admit there is no means to verify such a something, I would have to admit I am taking it on faith.<br /><br />"knowing" can be said of a very small subset of things whereas "being" can (in a certain way, at least) be said of anytihng that exists. <br /><br />This is coming from the assumption that there is "an anything that exists" somehow outside of experience, I would like to know how Brassier justifies this stance. To say that "its obvious" would not cut it for me, because it is NOT obvious from human experience as i have it and as i hear it reported by other humans. Also to say "your being anthroprocentrically arrogant" also does not seem to be a convincing argument, it criticizes a tendency but does nothing constructive to explain the nature of experience. For instance one could say of a rock, it appears to have no knowing but you have to acknowledge when you think of things in this way you are saying there really is a rock out there outside of the Mind experiencing it AND (perhaps this is taking too much of a leap) if knowing is a small subset of the phantom things (phantom because we cannot perceive anything outside of our knowing)then you are debasing what you DO experience as a subset of something unverifiable.<br /><br />There is a bit of an impasse here between not wanting to go so far as to say that MY experience is all that can be said to be and the inability to verify anything outside of experience. <br /><br />The solution that works for me best is that there is more to sentient experience currently in process than I am able to acknowledging now. That any being I can acknowledge with certainty is also a knowing and that about whether there is a being somehow Outside or *somewhere* I must remain silent. I know its not much of a solution. It has always been a painful awareness that the conviction I hold, that the mind is able to acknowledge all aspects of experience entirely with veritas, is something I take completely on faith, probably for the psychological reason that this is what keeps me going. Perhaps saying completely on faith is being overly harsh with such a conviction as there are a few reasons to believe it possible- reports of historical men of integrity that they have done so, the fact that at times I see the interrelationships with more clarity and certainty than at others. and a comforting realization that if Knowing Mind is in fact inseperable with what we call being, Then it is already the case that such complete knowledge is already accomplished. Other than these consolations, there is not much to conclusively prove that gnosis of truth is in the realm of possibility.dorjehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12822022520823998690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-22818477976868983152010-03-05T08:30:00.613-08:002010-03-05T08:30:00.613-08:00Mark,
The "assumption" you note-- "...Mark,<br /><br />The "assumption" you note-- "that by simply being one is not knowing as well" --is not mine, (the quote you get it from is one of Graham Harman's) though I am willing to entertain it. It is, however, a point among some of the thinkers who have been discussed recently, espec. Brassier and Harman (to name only the two who have figured most), that Being and Knowing are not <i>identical</i>. It's probably in the spirit of Brassier to go further and say that "knowing" can be said of a very small subset of things whereas "being" can (in a certain way, at least) be said of anytihng that exists. (Not sure Brassier wd. agree w/ how I've formulated this though). Harman might (in his panpsychist-friendly mode) go so far as to say that anything that "is" can <i>also</i> be said to "know", but I am pretty sure he wd. not say that knowing and being are <i>the same</i>. <br /><br />Now of course, "Thinking and Being are the Same" (to use one standard translation) is a line that goes back to Parmenides. One extreme version of this identification is Protagoras' "Man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not." One could say in a sense that the history of philosophy in the West plays out from Socrates' attempt to sort out the consequences of Parmenides in a way that does not lead to Protagoras, or at least to the radical subjectivist interpretation of Protagoras. There are plenty of full-fledged relativists out there still (e.g. some of Peter Unger's work). I take Harman and others to be articulating a strong version of the anti-Protagorean view (and some have explicitly negated the Parmenidean equation).<br /><br />As to it being "not good to be alone," well, <i>yeah</i>. I believe the prophet Muhammad said something to the effect of, "if you want to get closer to God, get married." (I think this is in some hadith somewhere, but I can't cite it for you-- it was quoted to me before I got married). In any case, there are a few who are cut out to be spiritual athletes in real solitude, but most of us need a human community. It's one reason I started this blog. Of course it's also necessary that the community be of a certain caliber. So far this blog has delivered.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-3232413225202852010-03-04T23:18:48.620-08:002010-03-04T23:18:48.620-08:00knowledge is made up of qualities approached direc...knowledge is made up of qualities approached directly or obliquely from the outside, while reality consists in simply being something.<br /><br />there is an assumption i think im catching in some of these dialouges, that by simply being one is not knowing as well. I may be wrong about that being an assumption, perhaps it is simply your working definitions.<br /><br /><br />on one of your second points<br /><br />and it is explicit that greater snares await you on the inside than outside.<br /><br />I think this is true and probably the rationale behind God's very practicality based one-liner "It is not good that Man should be alone" by seeking isolation one is essentially one-upping the natural program so to speak, and personally upping the ante.dorjehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12822022520823998690noreply@blogger.com