The irony is that the very kind of “rigorous analysis” you claim to prize is being accelerated by AI. The most forward-looking thinkers are not treating it as a toy but as a new instrument of inquiry, a tool that extends human reasoning rather than replacing it. Those who ignore this development are not guarding intellectual integrity; they’re opting out of the next phase of it. — Sam26

I'm willing to take that gamble.

In a sense I'm fine with people using it and making it work for them. One of the uses that I came across that looked sensible for humanities scholars:

https://x.com/jonathanbfine/status/1978420519926936015


But I genuinely don't believe using it helps anyone to progress thought further. Go ahead with the next phase, I'll be waiting on my hill of luddites for the prodigals to return ;)

Fair point. There I struggled with thinking on how to do it, which no answer leads to your line of questioning.

Not at all :) -- I suspect that here we're likely not very alone on this after all.

I'll admit my prejudice is somewhat on the pissing on the forest fire side -- an almost Kantian hatred of AI.

Let the world move on this will be the old hill I stand upon alone with my books and mumblings...

Thanks :) -- I'll be sure to write something up then. Probably get to it this Friday.

Nice :) -- I gave both a listen and both are beautiful.

I expect I've posted this before, but it's been hitting hard tonight.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190075/capital?srsltid=AfmBOopk8ce3Zn8JoWI4iPgdxbeUGfwp5DAeuCrhFqZHZ37A36ixS0OB

?

Capital by Karl Marx, the new translation — Jamal

I wasn't aware that there's a new translation. How new is it?

My point is that some may argue that Zeus made an impact on him. But, upon serious reflection, does Zeus really interfere with people while they are asleep? — javi2541997

Maybe not Zeus, but Jesus Christ, Allah, and so on?

People have more than dreamt of them: They've had living visions, if we believe their testimonies. And those who testify as much clearly are influenced in their day-to-day life by these Gods given their various habits.

My point was to note that there are people out there that would utilize your criteria to come to conclude that Zeus -- or maybe other, more plausible cosmic figures -- also exist.

I then wondered if perhaps these entities could exist-for someone, and not someone else.

On the other hand, I even believe that my point would also be plausible if you were AI, because my argument is that I suggest you exist because you interfere in me. It is not possible to dream of God or Zeus because they never made an impact on me. But I consider it plausible to dream of you, Michael or Baden. Isn't this a good starting point to consider people real? — javi2541997

If it were then would it not be the case that God or Zeus is real for some, and not real for others?

That is, some would say that they have made an impact on them -- so just as I conclude that money is real so do I conclude that Zeus is real every time there's a lightning storm.

But this is a puzzler:

although the subject is strengthened solely thereto by means of restrictions based on the division of labor.

Another dialectical twist. Does it mean that only in our alienated modern society in which everyone must be an exclusive specialist of some sort could there be people, like Adorno and his peers, capable of focusing intently and deeply on the qualities of things? If so, this is a natural follow-on from the "Privilege" section.

The dialectical point would be that bureaucratic capitalism, the very thing that has created the problem of scientism (of reason as measurement and instrumental rationality) has also created the social capacity for its solution, in the shape of the division of labour. — Jamal

I found that puzzling, but your explanation does make sense at least.

I'm still uncertain about Adorno's so-called elitism here. I haven't commented on your previous summaries because I had nothing to add as I read them and the sections, and reread them, concurrently. Good summaries!

But I'm having trouble parsing my own defense of ability from the charge of elitism and Adorno's justification -- in some sense, yes, the division of labor will make it such that some are better able than others in a particular field.

But I wonder if this is a general call to elitism, or rather a generic defense of philosophical thinking in a scientistic society: He mentioned earlier how the scientists demand something which can be "understood by anyone", i.e. eliminate the subjective in favor of the quantitative, so I could see this as something more akin to Derrida's defense of his own work: Philosophy is a real discipline that you learn something in and get better at, and so yes some people -- due to the division of labor -- will be better at philosophy than others.

But this does not then mean that philosophy is somehow what makes Adorno and his peers superior to others in that social sense: Rather, he seems to be countering the claim of scientism's chauvinism.

But, then, I also may just be thinking that because it gets along with my own notions, and Adorno really does think that philosophy is superior in the sense that the qualitative distinction is what "grounds" the quantitative method -- being able to differentiate what something is from what it is not is the basis of being able to count and individuate, i.e. think quantitatively.

Thanks :)

I'm glad I did it because there were a couple of knots in there that I skimmed over in my first reading and this forced me to untie them and I felt pretty good about it.

Dialectics and the Solidified

1. Negative Dialectics, unfettered, does not dispense with the solid/fixed anymore than Hegel did. This may be surprising to hear because his origins don't emphasize the ending point, but this is misleading because it is the end result of Hegel's dialectics that is then illuminated by the preceding whole. This is why Hegel's dialectic displays a double-character as 1) Developing and 2) Invariant. This on its face opposition is brought in Harmony by the reproduction of every layer of the dialectic in the immediate. Negative dialectics keeps this feature of a double-character, i.e. the fixed and the developing, by starting with the seemingly unmediated immediate and then progressing to display the mediations that were not initially apparent but only became apparent through a comparison of differences between moments.

2. The "positive" of the young Hegel is the negative of dialectical analysis, just like Hegel's own dialectic is the negative of the young Hegel. Thought is still negative in the Phenomenology of Spirit. That which does not think tends towards the bad positive, i.e. the conceptual being interpreted as if we are seeing the thing. This difference between the positive and the negative is easy to see in that we can renounce thinking and yet then may still encounter the object as it is (a positive, non-conceptual); but a thought will always be negatable (leaving a negative)

3. Though Hegel is on the right track he still emphasizes the primacy of the subject over the object, i.e. there is nothing that is non-conceptual. Though Hegel attempts an immanence of the object through the subject the primacy of the subject remains in the semi-magical concept of Spirit. So he's not as far from those he criticizes as he thought.

4. This Spirit retains the primacy of the subject by not addressing the not-conceptual. There's an insistence that the content of thought "comes along with", but as soon as an actual concrete -- Krugian's feather -- was brought up Hegel dismissed it thereby showing he is still enamored in the phenomenal rather than the immediate non-conceptual. In fact the non-conceptual is what allows the dialectic to continue, though.

5. If consciousness were not naive -- taking the immediately perceived as the real-deal rather than a phenomena -- then thought would not think of itself. There would be no negative. Thought would get on with the task of perceiving reality and never think of itself. Thought here would be a "dim copy" of the perceived.

6. The immediate reflection on the object which reflects upon the non-conceptual beyond the intuitions laid about the object is the least subject-like experience of all, and yet even here we must acknowledge that our experience is not the object as per paragraph 5.

7. That confidence in the immediate is an idealistic appearance. Dialectics gets around this by noting how the immediate does not remain the same and is not a ground, but rather a moment. On the other side of the mind, the purely abstract, there's a kind of naive truth in the same manner: Even children know that math works and would adopt the relativism of "that's not real" as a kind of joke or to win an argument with their peers. However for all that, even though "invariants" do not change in the dialectic in the same manner as rocks and trees these invariants are also only moments rather than transcendental truths -- to think of them as eternal things is to adopt an ideology of transcendence. Not all idealisms are transcendental but hide in some substructure (regardless of its content) which the world justifies even when one is a Hegel and claims immanence -- the underlying equality of thought and being remains -- Negative Dialectics uses these fixed point but it's important to remember they are moments and moments only.

To be fair I couldn't find it anywhere else so had to look through my own posts because I remembered using it at one point. It surprised me that it was 5 years ago.

Of course as almost always I never actually got to the part where I have an answer....

Sure we can't talk about texts we haven't read. I don't believe the OP is stating something along those lines, but rather is looking for fellow travelers who might like to read what I'd call pop-philosophy (descriptively, not pejorative): So rather than focusing on the beauty of difficult texts, which I wanted to note I have a taste for, I thought it more welcoming to point to pop-philosophy (that then might serve as the honey which leads to harder texts if an interest is cultivated)

What counts as listening?

It was 5 years ago so it's been awhile.

I used it in one of my old OP's, so maybe that's where you heard it before.

Any links to the whole album?

I was inspired to relisten to Ground Zero - Consume Red by your song:

This is great.

isn't this whole forum armchair philosophers? — DifferentiatingEgg

Mostly.

There's some who have been or are in "the profession" if that's the standard we want to use.

But, yes, I think we're basically as laidback as philosophy can get while still actually reaching for philosophy.

For my part that's somewhat by design: I want it to be accessible, and know how inaccessible it was when I started.

I intend on revisiting and trying to do a paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown as I've done before.

A note on style, given your conversation with @NotAristotle: I've noticed in my disentangling that many of the sentences have two sentences parsed into clauses such that we must think of two ideas within the same sentence. In my disentangling I had to prioritize one or the other thought -- so it made me think that the density of the sentences is very much the point since he didn't want to give priority to a Thesis over an Antithesis, but rather talk about them in relation to one another for the purpose of dialectical reflection.

Annoyingly:

Both/and/or

or

Something else.

Or maybe just once. Perhaps the universe ends and nothing comes about ever again.

I won't be there to see it.

What would nonexploitative labor look like? And do you maintain that such labor is necessarily inconsistent with a capitalist system? (And if so, please explain why this inconsistency) — NotAristotle

Democratic ownership and control over the means of production such that surplus-value is directed by all of us rather than for private benefit, or even potentially not generated at all: Rather than getting what you're paid you'd get what you've earned. (In a slogan: Communism is free time and nothing else)

So, yes, insofar that the private ownership of the workplace is capitalism then this would be inconsistent with capitalism.

And, really, it's not hard to see given the history of the labor movement and socialism. The only reason jobs are what they are now isn't because the captains of industry are wisely leading us to a better tomorrow, but because workers organized fought and died for it; and as we see labor unions becoming dismantled by the state we also see that wages stagnate with increases in productivity.

So there really does seem to be something to Marx's description in the world we inhabit even if we do not have an alternative answer.

It's not that Stalin was evil so we can't think about Marx's ideas, but rather it's important to think about his ideas because they properly describe the world we inhabit. We don't live in the USSR. There are lessons there, of course, but it's not relevant to using Marx's ideas in thinking about our world.

Do you think exploitation of labor is definitive of capitalism or could extra capital be achieved through other avenues like technological development? — NotAristotle

I don't think these are at odds, exactly.

We have to be careful here because Marx's use of "exploitation" is specialized to capitalism. For instance we might easily say that slavery exploits labor, but it is not, for that, capitalism. Capitalism as Marx describes exploits labor through the free exchange of labor: that's the important part. The way the bourgeois economist describes our economy is due to the perspective of the owner: attempting to build a firm which produces goods and services and turns a profit requires theorizing things like firms, supply, demand, and exchange which in turn requires a state to enforce these claims to property.

So yes the exploitation of labor is part of capitalism, but it's a particular kind of exploitation: Slavery, in the Marxist sense, is primitive accumulation -- our tribe took your tribes shit and made you into slaves so we now have more wealth. Greece's economy was a slave economy which exploited labor, but not as a capitalist does.

Also it's something of a Marxist point to note how technological development is part of the process of the economy in general (and therefore also a part of capitalism in particular): The whole base-superstructure notion is basically to note that as technology changes so do our societies. Capitalism required more than the worker-boss relationship, but needs to expand into Rents to absorb surplus-value, and also must expand railroad systems (or systems of transportation, generally) so that the world may even be able to be treated as an open market where we can all trade and make different firms more competitive depending on their environment (and thereby make the market more efficient).

So, yes, capital can be achieved through other avenues, but exploitation and the development of technology aren't at odds with one another. If anything the development of automation has allowed for an increase in the rate of exploitation as manufacturing centers drift across this global economy: With automation you can hire fewer workers and have a labor-reserve which depresses wages of those who have a job because there's another person waiting to take your place.

This isn't to say automation is bad, though. It's the social relationship of capitalism which puts automation in the service of exploitation (rather than in the service of freeing us from labor).


****

I can understand being wary of Marxist thought. We're pretty much conditioned, in the states at least, from a young age to have negative associations with the USSR, Marxism, and all that rot. We are taught it's bad because Stalin was evil (List all the Big Bads here as you wish like Mao, Che, Ho Chi Minh: but note that Pol Pot was deposed by a Marxist state)

But here we're just using the words of a philosopher and not building a worker's paradise. Instead we are describing the hell we see before our very eyes: the hell of capitalism.

Do you think Adorno talks about Marxism as if it were objectively true? — NotAristotle

Seems so. "In some sense" we might say; like any philosopher he'll take what he thinks is true and leave what he thinks is false, or even utilize what he thinks is interesting in a work for a new purpose even if it were false.

If so, why? Given the terrible things done under Stalin during Adorno's lifetime, does it really make sense to read Adorno as a Marxist? Or, does criticality towards capitalism not imply Marxism? — NotAristotle

One can believe that Karl Marx wrote a true description of the movements of capital as well as believe that Stalin did terrible things we should oppose.

The reason I'm reaching for Marx is because Adorno is using the language of Marx: Labour-power and exchange are central concepts to Capital.

I very much doubt that Adorno is not critical of Marx.

This seems to be a tension inherent in the book; ND rejects abstract theorizing, why is Marxism the exception to this rule? Or, do you disagree that Marxism is theoretical and abstract?

From my perspective, at least, I think of Marxism as a living philosophical tradition. It's theoretical, and concrete. It's a theory of the concrete conditions which is then supported through historical inference: Even if Stalin is bad Capitalism grows by seizing all property such that there's a class of people who own nothing but their own labor, and then exchanges through the market money for that labor, and then exploits that labor in order to grow wealth.

Care to share a reference for the secondary material?

If only I could quell my curious desire -- opting into becoming a pyrrhonist is much easier than becoming one, let's say.

At their core, although they provide various examples of causes, what is not presented is an account of what it is to cause, or to be caused.

That's an issue addressed in more recent metaphysics of causation, and to which a not insubstantial reply is that there is not some one thing, or even group of things, that are common to all causes.

The notion of a family resemblance might be appropriate here, as in so many other cases of mooted definition. — Banno

I'd go along with the notion of a family resemblance as long as we don't stop there -- and I must admit I feel like I'm chasing a rabbit down a hole where simply saying "Causation is a metaphysical fiction that's attractive" stops me from jumping down the hole.

Try the Lounge maybe?

Better still read someone like Alain de Botton? He is a pretty pleasant read and explores topics with graceful prose allowing the reader to become as involved with the text as they wish to.

'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' is another moodier book that might interest you.

Wouldn't hurt to just post about a topic that interests you and make clear what it is you are trying to get out of the thread. — I like sushi

@Ansiktsburk I second this suggestion.

Botton and associated authors fit what you describe. They're accessible to a general audience and think about philosophical things like what you seem to want.

Start a thread on one of these sorts of authors and see whose interested -- I bet you'll get participation.

The SEP article on metaphysics of causation offers an analysis in terms of type and token that looks promising. And reduction to "probabilities, regularities, counterfactuals, processes, dispositions, mechanisms, agency, or what-have-you". — Banno

Those sound interesting (without having read) -- would you say that these analyses are Against Cause, in terms of the OP?

But here we are yet again stuck with Aristotle. — Banno

There's a sense in which I think it's understandable to reach for Ari on causation. The sense in which it makes sense is that we generally do believe in causation if we haven't read much philosophy in a fairly unquestioned way. And even if we have, at least in my journey of thinking, I held onto cognitive dissonance on this question until still now, but less so than before.

Aristotle provides a plausible account of our phenomenology, from the scientific attitude. The four causes, at least as we interpret them today, work well enough to be persuasive, at least with respect to philosophical reflection: The question is asked and answered suitably well enough.

I don't like the universal move, though. I think we can shoehorn causes into the four-causes, but it looks a lot like the various organizational-speak around business and government, except that it at least fits into a larger coherent philosophy that isn't capitalism.

And I think it's important for us to be critical of the philosophers we love, especially. Else we'll probably get it wrong.

Have they considered the benefits of dehancing their lives?

If "my life" is that which I desire and what I desire feels bad then even by the psychological egoist's standards dehancing one's life could lead to a better outcome than enhancing it.

Suppose the love of money within a career that's rewarding. Then one can enhance their life by volunteering for more work and obtaining more reward. There are only so many hours in the day, though, and if they have loved ones then this enhancement can lead to sorrow and loss in some other regard that the enhancement didn't consider.

Which is a long winded way of saying: It's worthwhile to think and reflect. "Enhancement of life" might not be all it's chalked up to be.

Since the social whole changes, isn't Adorno himself just another relativist, but on a bigger scale? — Jamal

It seems like we'd have to say "no" in keeping a charitable reading. That the social whole changes will change consciousness, but I'm thinking that this is a false consciousness. In this case I'm relying upon Marx's analysis of capital to state "the social law" only because the social whole is capitalist, and this notion of the bourgeois relativist is also only interesting because these are the circumstances we find ourselves in.

But, on the other hand, it seems that since there's never a final synthesis ala Hegel we can still reach for this more general view of things -- but the relativist of tomorrow, like the relativist of ancient Greece, will have its own particular false consciousness.

It seems to me that Adorno believes that the relativist can be demonstrated objectively false on their own terms -- not because they must have a presupposition (since a relativist can always take the skeptics route of denial over affirmation), but because the social whole will require a kind of truth that is beyond this relativism.

In a way I get the feeling that the relativism he's pointing out in particular is one that thinks things done: We're at the end of history living in liberal democracies in this viewpoint, and so we're all free to believe as we wish within our individual consciousness.

And, it seems then, that this attitude will be perennial -- if the social structure changes the form of relativism will change, but it will still be embedded within a social whole which said relativist will not be a relativist towards.

Is there a difference between the relativism of truth and the historical situatedness of truth?

I'd say so.

In a simple way suppose that the cat wanders off the mat. Then "The cat is on the mat" is false, where it was once true. Truth isn't relative here, but the situation changes the truth value of a particular expression. (Darstellung, maybe even?!)

We do reading groups, though most of us that do them like the difficult texts. (At least I know I do -- the reading group helps me keep on task)

In terms of attitude, though -- going into reading the text with interest rather than judging it stupid or absurd, or going into philosophy with the attitude that we aren't here to prove that we're the smartest in the room -- that's basically what we do here, or aspire towards at least.

So, sure, you could find that here: Start a thread on a book and see if anyone wants to read along with you.

True -- it's almost an inversion of Socrates who bragged he didn't do it for money.

I wouldn't want to make that a necessary condition, though -- the "minimal" condition I was thinking of was the most inoffensive possible condition: If a person is paid to do philosophy, and does philosophy, how would we not say that person is a philosopher? What could we possibly mean?

Socrates could make a distinction between philosophy proper and sophists so we'd have to do something along those lines to get at a more robust notion of the philosopher.

But if we can't even answer the question of "Why wouldn't a person who is paid to do philosophy, is trained in philosophy, and does philosophy not be a philosopher?" then that seems like a "minimal" requirement in that it's easy to use and see.

But it doesn't get at what a philosopher really does or even what we really mean by the honorary use of "philosopher" -- and it's definitely an answer predicated upon our social world: Since most people think professionals know things and thereby get compensated in relation to that knowledge and the market it would follow that the philosopher who does the same must also know things, etc. But that only designates some contemporary philosophers and doesn't get at the deeper question of "Is there a purpose to philosophy?" and doesn't make sense of the list of greats that you point to who we'd also be stupid to deny as philosophers even if they were not paid to do philosophy.

What do you think, setting aside capitalism... — Tom Storm

That's me jumping into the ether of wonder. I too frequently occupy my thoughts with meta-philosophy and its possible purposes.

If I had to draw one example: Socrates is philosophy. Plato is commentary. The Gadfly is doing philosophy not at the "bare minimum" but at the point where it's unquestionably philosophy.

"The Health of the City" -- though I'd expand that to the globe at large in thinking about philosophy proper regarding The Gadfly.

I wonder what the minimum standard would be for someone to be called a philosopher? — Tom Storm

Minimum standard, by my lights in the world we live in, is being paid to do it.

But surely you see how inadequate that standard is. It's just the minimum standard in the world we happen to live in (and it's likely the person paid to do it has expertise, especially given how competitive those roles are)

I don't think everyone is a philosopher like he says, most people don't really seem to question the way things are in life and just go along with it with what they were taught. — Darkneos

I'd put it that everyone has the potential to think philosophically.

I don't agree that everyone is a philosopher, though. Everyone has the potential to think scientifically, artistically, and so forth -- insofar that a person connects to that group of thinkers then they can think like such and such.

So it goes with philosophy.

There is something to learn.

Now, if I were leading a discussion with people face to face is right. "The Big Questions" or simply "wondering" are what philosophy is all about.

In responding to a Quora post: Even there I'd say not everyone is a philosopher, though they could be: some people wonder about stuff and are willing to hear other perspectives, and some aren't.

If you aren't willing to listen or wonder then even though you could think philosophically you are no philosopher.

I echo:

↪T Clark Yes! — Banno

No need for four becauses, unless that helps us to sort our thoughts at the moment: We can surely come up with more than four becauses. We see these sorts of categories all the time in Business -- why 5 Whys? Why the 6M's in a Fishbone diagram?

Insofar that it makes sense in the moment go ahead and use any cause you want -- it may be more multiplicitous than the four causes, though.