While it's true that there are a large number of examples in both camps, what makes the argument to intelligent design so strong is that we know based on what we've observed, that we only get artifacts that display the properties of premise one in this way. — Sam26

I think this is an example of one mans modus ponens being another man's modus tollens. Or, rather, it's still just a matter of how we count what is designed and what isn't.

I don't understand? How is it that a cat doesn't have parts, e.g., legs, heart, lung, liver, etc. that work together to achieve higher order functions than any single part alone, and the same can be shown with the tree. — Sam26

Well, I admitted that in some sense I could see how the parts make a whole, and without them the cat wouldn't reproduce. My issue was more that I don't think this is enough for me to conclude that the cat is intelligently designed. It seems to me that the cat doesn't fulfill a purpose which some intelligent being had a desire for. The watch, on the other hand, is exactly like that. In our society we desire to keep accurate accounts of the passage of time, and so we built a watch. In our society we desire to have a place to sit, and so we built a chair. We fashioned the world around us in various ways to fulfill our desires.

In some sense this could be applied to trees and cats and crops and cows -- but here the intelligent designer is human, who applies pressures to these living systems through simple breeding. No more than that.

But the origin of speciation can be understood in terms of simple physical forces acting on living systems. This doesn't rule out some other designer by necessity, but it does make me want evidence of, say, a designer of nature as a whole who set things in motion to create things just as they are. Something akin to our own watches and chairs -- where I understand these are products of thinking beings who want to fulfill their desires, and who thereby create objects with that purpose in mind.

I don't see what the beings of nature do, like that, which our watches and chairs do. And where our watches and chairs have clear designers and builders, I don't see that so clearly in the case of animals and plants.

I don't think nihilism is the end result of having no reason why objects are. I find existential philosophers arguments to be compelling -- even in a nihilistic universe, an absurd world, we still can find meaning in life. Even if some objective purpose is not knowable, we still can live a life of joy. Even if it were knowable, and there was a purpose, but we were to find it reprehensible we can live well.

No, it cannot. At least in not some kind of self-help way. Consider having a broken leg. In a distant sense, philosophy can help medical practitioners thinking through the problems people have. But if you have a broken leg you don't turn to Plato -- you see a doctor who knows a thing or two about broken legs and how to help them mend.

Not every doctor is a patient's best friend. Just because they know a thing or two that does not then mean they know everything, or know the best course in your specific case. But seeking out knowledge from those who have a better inkling than you do on how to get on the mend is better than picking up a book by a philosopher, whose interests are likely quite divergent from your more immediate need to be helped.

Well, in a loose sense, he's making generalizations from observations, and so he is an empiricist.

His arguments regarding causality are sort of different from whether or not he counts as an empiricist. And he builds to them in the first section of A Treatise of Human Nature -- it's not as if he opens with "all inductive inference is invalid!" (or, really, that he concludes that, either). He comes to some queer (to common sense thinking, something he even acknowledges) conclusions, but they are worth reading if you're interested.

Yeah, it was Dembski's arguments, in particular, that had be starting off with talking about complexity. But I'm willing to see where the thoughts go. It'd be nice to hear something that's not part of the usual offerings.

@PossibleAaran -- I suppose I'd first ask, what is it about perceiving the paper that makes you believe you know, in the same sense that you're asking about knowing how the unperceived paper exists, that the perceived paper exists?

Clearly if you believe that then there's some kind of method you're already accepting as a path to knowledge of what exists. What constitutes that method?

Sure. I allowed for that possibility. I didn't explicitly say that the premise had to be denied, but that's what I meant by "skipping over or written off as a pseudo-problem"

Hrmm, that's not how I understand it at all. Substance or property dualism would be an explanation for the hard problem, not a problem for the hard problem.

I'd say the hard problem is posited on the basis that consciousness exists, 1, and the standard physicalisms are unable to account for the fact. By standard I just mean the one's you list -- behavior, identity, functional, or eliminative.

There are people who lay claim to non-reductive physicalism, but I don't think the metaphysical stance is quite as clear as the other four. It's usually kind of idiosyncratic and unworked out -- sort of like saying, hey, consciousness exists, and it is physical, because. . . it's convenient that way? That is, the "because..." doesn't seem to work out what physicalism means like the other four have.

I think that were a materialist to say that then they'd be sort of skipping over the hard problem, or perhaps have written it off as a pseudo-problem. If one were to take the hard problem seriously then, to be a materialist, one would have to deny that there is such a thing as consciousness (as defined by the hard problem, at least) -- since even functionalism is adeqaute enough to account for mental processes and the effects of a nervous system on a body, but doesn't say much about consciousness.


I think the OP's article conflates consciousness with awareness as it related to perception, at least with respect to the discussion of the hard problem of consciousness. The feely-ness of the world differs from the amount of concentration a learning system needs to learn, or whether or not they are aware of a perception or if that perception is subliminal.


Sorry if that's off topic. I reflexively read "consciousness" in terms of the hard problem.

So I think my main objection is with premise 2. But I hope to say a little bit about why I think disagreement on ID is strongly divided first by responding to this part of your post:

This is an inductive argument, not a deductive argument. The conclusion is not necessarily the case, but follows from the premises with a high degree of probability, based on the number of examples in nature, and comparing them with what we know about intelligently designed human productions. — Sam26

I think I was asking after evidence not to say you were committing a fallacy, but rather because I think the question of how we count examples is precisely why disagreement is often difficult to discuss. Once one counts living items of nature as designed then there really are an incredibly large number of examples that seems to confirm the inference. Likewise, once one counts living items of nature as not-designed, the products of physical forces and nothing more, there are an incredibly large number of examples that confirms the inference. So, in both camps, it's easy to look at the other camp as irrational or dogmatic or confused, or any many other possible psychological explanations which are far from flattering (and certainly miss the point anyways)

In a lot of ways, if I am correct at least, it all comes down to how we count -- meaning, how do we include or exclude some entity from the set of designed entities.

(2) Objects of nature have a structure where the parts are so arranged that the whole can achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone (e.g., a cat). — Sam26

I'd contend that objects of nature, like a tree or a cat, do not have a structure where the parts are so arranged that the whole can achieve or be used to achieve a higher order than the parts alone. Or, really to put it better and keep our positions linguistically distinct, I think I'd add more to this definition of intelligent design than what you've laid out here.

What does a watch achieve that the parts couldn't? It tells time. At least, it helps us to keep track of the passage of time within the manner that we, as a culture, keeps track of the passage of time better than we can do all on our own. In some sense technology, to put it more generally, is an extension of our desires, and we so happen to live in a culture where it is desirable to be able to keep precise track of the time (even if, in some sense, we may find this desire undesirable). If one part of the watch is removed then it will not fulfill this purpose.

I'd set forth that what a designed entity does is fulfill some purpose that, in this case, an intelligent being wants to be fulfilled (hence why I'm bringing up desire before, but here I'm introducing purpose as well).

Now, higher order I suppose I could see. Sure, if the bits of a tree are separated then the tree will not reproduce. If the bits of a cat are separated then the cat will not reproduce. Separated enough and neither would even be a cat or a tree at all, not even the leftover remains of one, but simply atoms or quarks or whatever it is we want to conceptually break things down to. The whole of the cat or the tree is something over and above its parts, by way of the pattern and arrangement of these very small parts.

But I don't think I'd say that this is enough to say that something is designed. That the parts do more arranged in a certain way doesn't mean that a designer was involved, from my perspective. It seems to me that we need some notion of, first, a being who wants, and second, a purpose which fulfills that want. (I'm always using too many comma's...) -- the aspect of design I *think* we're pretty much on the same page on is in the general sense of the word. I think it's just the specifics, between higher and lower order or purpose, that seems to be how we might see things differently (and therefore count things differently)

Now I don't expect a believer of intelligent design to have to produce evidence of said being. But having a being involved is important to me because I could certainly be swayed in my opinion were such evidence presented -- some being who said, hey! here I am. Look at my records, looks at my plans, this is what I did and see what you see before you? That's what I designed.

That is, I may just be more skeptical than yourself, and desire more evidence that there was some being involved, rather than dogmatically so. I can see how another person may not need such evidence, and think that certain entities of nature are very much like our watches, but I'd hope that someone could see why I'd want more to go off of as well.

That being said, since I think it can be mostly lain to the side (these past two paragraphs I'm just addressing the charge of dogmatism more than the actual debate), I think our disagreement lays primarily with notions of higher order vs. purpose.

Do you see it that way?

Does intelligent design negate evolution, absolutely not.

Cool. I'd say you'd be climbing an uphill battle if you thought intelligent design lay in opposition to evolution. Now, stateside, that is normally how intelligent design is presented -- as a theory which should be taught in opposition to evolutionary theory, as if it holds better or equal scientific credibility to evolution.

So perhaps that is also where some of the push back you've mentioned comes from. You mean something different from a politically contentious term, but use the same term.

But if your notion of intelligent design doesn't conflict with evolution, then that's cool. We'll see where this goes.

Cool. The tree example was meant to get at the whole nature/artifice distinction as well. This is nice and straightforward. I'll have to think a bit before replying, but I'm glad to see your reply.

I didn't ask a question, only answered yours. But I'll try to posit a direct question here to keep the ball rolling.

It seems to me that what needs better elucidation between ourselves is the distinction between artifice and what is not designed (for lack of a better word).

You give the eddies in the sand or the rocks in the desert as not designed.

I give the tree as not designed, but the chair as designed.

I agree with your examples. Do you agree with mine?

Also, I'd like to hear more about what you mean by higher or lower order. Does higher or lower order mean the same thing as complexity? This was what my example between the tree and the chair was meant to explore.

The chair is an artefact, so obviously it is designed, as that is the meaning of 'artefact'. — Wayfarer

Granted I am risking going into tautological territory. I'm hoping that by reference to particulars, like a chair, the gist comes across without merely being some convenient definition for my purposes, though.

Mostly I'm trying to highlight that artifacts are made from something more basic, and they need not be more complex than what they are made of (though "complex" may not be the same as being higher or lower order -- I'll wait to see what @Sam26 says)

(((edited for clarity -- fewer pronouns and whatnot)))

I don't find that a difficult question. Look at the shape of the sand in the dessert caused by eddies, or the random placement of rocks on the ground. There are too many examples to list. — Sam26

Cool. Examples are nice. In some sense if one believes in an intelligent designer to the universe it would seem to me that even the eddies in the sand could be thought of as intelligently designed. But having examples to draw from helps in making a clear distinction between the two.

On the other hand, if those who don't believe in intelligent design aren't committing the fallacy of the self-sealing argument, answer the following: What would count as evidence of intelligent design? When we say that something is intelligently designed what does that mean other than, a structure having parts so arranged that the whole can accomplish or be used to accomplish activities of a higher order. Isn't this the hallmark of any intelligently designed object. Is there anything that you know of that has been intelligently designed that doesn't fit this description, assuming someone isn't aiming at randomness?

It seems to me that in order for something to be intelligently designed I'd just go to what the words seem to mean in a plain way, at least at first: someone intelligent built something from a design. So we have a tree, which is not intelligently designed, and then we have a chair, which is.

It's not the complexity so much, as a chair is rather simple, but that an entity bears the hallmarks of artifice. (and, it's worth noting, that artifice works on something to make something else -- it doesn't create the beginning, so to speak)

Is it a higher order? I'm not so sure about that. The tree seems more complicated to me than the chair, for instance. But the chair is certainly a product of intelligent design.

How could these quarks assemble and organize without some sort of outside guidance? A computer could never have been created - never mind programmed - without some sort of intelligent designer. — CasKev

Seems interesting to me that you don't use life, but physical reality, as the gawking point.

I think the sense of awe one feels when looking at the complexity of the world is what the argument for an intelligent designer mostly leans on, rhetorically speaking. It's why people find it persuasive.

But if there were some other answer as to why the universe is complicated, what then? Perhaps the universe is complicated because it has many entities with a myriad of properties and relations between said entities, properties, and relations. Perhaps it's just very large in relation to our cognitive capacities. Larger than what our feeble minds are able to comprehend, at least independently (as, even assuming science explains it all, that only happened through collective intergenerational effort that continues to go on to this day)

I think that the argument for an intelligent designer is nothing more than analogical reasoning supported by gawking at the intricate nature of things. I would ask, though, for believers in an intelligent designer: What does something which is not designed look like?

It seems to me that without some sort of basis of comparison between the two that no fair judgment can be made, and we are simply left with how compelling we feel awe at intricacy and complexity is. Which, in my round-about way, is what I'm trying to get at -- the argument needs more than merely listing things which the speaker finds too complicated to believe would form of themselves, since clearly there are those who find that notion just as plausible.

What counts as evidence in the conversation, either way?

Anti-depressants might help one cope, but they are not a cure. The idea that antidepressants will cure depression is probably a dead end. — Bitter Crank

Eh. While I agree there's more to curing depression than anti-depressants, I don't think this is right either. Anti-depressants work for some people. How do we know? We can ask them, and they say so.

I don't think there is a Cure to depression, but cures. Descriptions of depression vary widely from person to person. They're grouped thematically, but we don't understand the mechanism of depression terribly well -- in part because we don't understand the mind terribly well. I think the safest inference here is to treat "depression" as a term which references a wide range of mechanisms, though symptoms are thematically similar to an observer. If that be true then there simply isn't a Cure, because "depression" references a multiplicity of possible mechanisms at play.

Which is why I'd say the golden standard for evaluating whether a cure is working or not is not double-blind analyses of groups, but rather what a patient says about their condition given x, y, and z.

That's not a bad summation at all.

This is already covered in the OP, which provides sources that heavily discuss and present research on evidence.
Is reading the sources so arduous? — ProgrammingGodJordan

Thus far, throughout the discussion, I have not detected any novel information.
Please recall that I am busy working on:
My book: "Artificial Neural Network for kids".
My model: The "Supersymmetric Artificial Neural Network".
Thus, I shall underline a summary below, until I return in roughly 12 hours. — ProgrammingGodJordan

And we mere students were simply waiting by the pond for the master to appear from his work to enlighten us, and help us over the great hurdle of observing your statements steeped in non-belief via your guiding touch.

If A then A
A
therefore...

That doesn't answer my question. I quite agree with the idea that people hold onto beliefs in spite of evidence. I think it is well demonstrated. I agree that people can accept beliefs without sufficient evidence and also retain beliefs longer than would be the case had they sought out diagnostic information, and that people have a tendency to not question proto-beliefs.

But I asked:

what is this "paying attention" and "observation" such that it is not belief? Even given the basic definition above (which is surely more science-friendly than fixating on a single dictionary definition, and given that you like science should be something you'd pay attention to) -- how in the world do you pay attention or observe without representational content and assumed veracity of your observations? — Moliere

Given that these are the bare-bones necessary features of belief in the paper you cited.

2. By extension, research shows that beliefs typically occur on non-evidence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25741291 — ProgrammingGodJordan

The paper you're citing defines belief pretty early on, and it doesn't really match how you're defining belief, i.e. by reference to a single definition of a particular dictionary. Here's what they say in the first paragraph on their section titled Defining Belief:

Belief can be defined as the mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of some idea (Schwitzgebel, 2010). According to many analytic philosophers, a belief is a “propositional attitude”: as a proposition, it has a specific meaning that can be expressed in the form of a sentence; as an attitude, it involves a mental stance on the validity of the proposition (Schwitzgebel, 2010). Beliefs thus involve at least two properties: (i) representational content and (ii) assumed veracity (Stephens and Graham, 2004). It is important to note, however, that beliefs need not be conscious or linguistically articulated. It is likely that the majority of beliefs remain unconscious or outside of immediate awareness, and are of relatively mundane content: for example, that one’s senses reveal an environment that is physically real, that one has ongoing relationships with other people, and that one’s actions in the present can bring about outcomes in the future. Beliefs thus typically describe enduring, unquestioned ontological representations of the world and comprise primary convictions about events, causes, agency, and objects that subjects use and accept as veridical.

Belief so construed would include things like perception, given their example of "that one's senses reveal an environment that is physically real" -- and hence observation and/or evidence.


That was my first cursory glance to the part of the paper that seemed relevant to your point. I didn't read it all. But I don't think that what you're explicitly stating is supported by your citation, and so I have reason to doubt that you've done the reading you're requiring of us all.



All that being said, it seems to me the most charitable interpretation I can give is that you'd rather people pay attention to evidence and observation rather than hold onto any sort of belief which is contradicted by evidence. But then what I'd wonder is -- what is this "paying attention" and "observation" such that it is not belief? Even given the basic definition above (which is surely more science-friendly than fixating on a single dictionary definition, and given that you like science should be something you'd pay attention to) -- how in the world do you pay attention or observe without representational content and assumed veracity of your observations?

Seems an odd start because most defenders of intrinsic value are usually against pleasure. :D Not to say I am one of them....

Though I think it does depend on what you mean by pleasure.

I sort of wonder about the phrase "in and of itself" to be honest. And "desire" too since it's a defining term of said term -- if something is desirable without leading to anything else then isn't that just what pleasure means? To satisfy desire, to find what one is lacking (at least in a usual sense of desire) -- isn't that just tautological to your definition of intrinsic value?

I feel like this statement gets closer to disagreements we've had on incommensurability before. (I'm sorry to Streetlight for going astray of the thread. alas I suppose that's what I do at times)

I have definitely tried to utilize ways of communicating with people who seemed totally other to me. I have mirrored them and even did get "a sense" of their world through such action.

When you describe such activities it makes me wonder how you are such a staunch defender of commensurability to be honest. (bad spelling aside)

I long ago acknowledged how Davidson shewn that incommensurability is not logically defensible in the sense that the very idea of it can lead to contradictory results.

But here it seems -- to use a method by example -- that you would agree with what I thought of incommensurability at least.

I just highlight that because we were so unable to find where our disagreement lay before. Maybe this shines a light?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/785/785-h/785-h.htm

Perhaps a bit obvious, but worth noting all the same.

I think that's just a matter of names after the fact. How do you answer the questions you pose? I'd say a piece-meal approach to the questions is better than deliberating between options.


Yup, I acknowledged my error.

Cool. My familiarity with Cicero is primarily through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_finibus_bonorum_et_malorum bc. of its polemic of Epicureans of the day. The wiki article mentions that he subscribes to Acadmic philosophy on it, so it seems I'm the one in the wrong on that. I mostly took his opposition to Epicureanism to be a Stoic one bc. they were the competing schools of thought of the day.

So not a strict stoic, I agree. Just one who is sympathetic of stoicism.

A bit of historical pedantry on my part, but I feel it important to note just cuz -- Cicero was a Stoic, and not a Skeptic.

Ahhh OK. Cool, I had it backwards in my head then.

I wouldn't speak against eclecticism, per se at least. I'm more just trying to get at that while categories of thought are useful for our understanding there is still variation within said categories. Existentialism is a prime example -- while there are themes and problems which Existential thinkers seem to grapple with with some similarity, the disparity of thought and argument varies widely among them.

So it's not satisfactory to simply posit three lines of thinking, and then disjunctively find the best solution between them. Disproving two or three whole categories of thought doesn't necessarily get at the arguments or lines of reasoning which you're exploring or thinking about.

You mention systems a lot when talking about dogmatism, and state:

Regarding systems:
It seems to me like the paradigm is, "What you need to do is to think and analyze... that is THE most important thing to do in life." What about our actions? What about other people? How should we treat them? What about my first person experiences? Do they mean nothing? — anonymous66

You also mention a goal here:

I do feel like I'm on a journey to find the best way to make sense of the world and the best way to live my life. — anonymous66

I'd second what another poster has said, in part, and say that I don't think "dogmatism" is the exact right word for the questions you're asking when describing systems or the goal you're after. One could find answers to these questions by appeal to dogma, but I wouldn't say that systematic thought implies dogmatism. Or, at least, if we feel that systematic thought is dogmatism, then that might actually shed light on exactly how you feel about systematic thought -- that it can't be rationally defended, or something along those lines.



For me, it seems that tackling these particular questions is more interesting and worthwhile than parsing them into broad categories of thought, though, just because it allows you to be more specific and pay attention to the details of your thinking. Ideally speaking, at least, I'd say that a system of thought is the result of such thinking, rather than the justification by which we answer these questions. You don't begin with a system and derive answers, you begin with the questions and, perhaps if you are lucky, develop a system of thought.

I'm not sure I follow. I wouldn't say I'm eclectic, at least, if that's how I came across.

I wouldn't be so quick to cut out other possibilities. What did "existentialism" mean in medieval philosophy, after all?

These are only categories to coming to grips with thoughts past. But philosophy is a truly inventive enterprise -- it creates categories whole-sale. At its edges it makes thoughts ex nihilo -- even though we do spend a lot of time on exegesis and analysis of philosophical history.

If you find these categories unsatisfactory then that is the genesis of new thought.


Just to lay out my prejudices I am most sympathetic to existential philosophy when it comes to meta-ethics, and epicurean when it comes to normative ethics.

I suppose I'm a bit of a relativist in these matters. I would say 1) The Mind is not the same as The Social, and 2) Mathematical concepts and truths or scientific laws are both products of social activity.

They are true. They are mind-independent. And they are social products -- like toasters, legal precedents, and money.

Without us they would not exist. And yet in spite of that dependency they do, in fact, exist -- the same as rocks and beans.


Not sure where modern metaphysics would lead us. I am not educated enough to adjudicate that boundary. But those are my first thoughts.

All this leads up to a simple question: is he right in claiming that there are only three possible Realist views: Platonic, Aristotelian, and Scholastic? It’s been decades since I have read any Metaphysics, but I cannot help but think that surely in the 900 years since Aquinas, other views defending Realism have been offered. — Mitchell

I don't know. But I'm willing to give the thought a gander.

What would you count in the category "universal" that you would also count as real?

There are eminent persons the world over who cite philosophers as the basis for their action, but I wouldn't say that this then entails that the eminent persons actually followed said philosopher. Stephen J Gould, for one, credited Feyerabend with some of his scientific thinking, but Gould was far from a scientific anarchist.

And I'm not sure how you read Popper, but given that his theory is all about choices between competing theories given such and such basic statements that is so clearly prescriptive that I'm not sure how else to read him. He believes that we should choose theories which are easier to refute, and hold them tentatively.

Honestly, I don't think Popper can be taken seriously after Feyerabend. Not that you have to go "all the way" with Feyerabend, but his work can be read as a thorough critique and revealing of the weaknesses in Popper's thoughts on science. In "Against Method" he basically uses Popper's thoughts on falsifiability to prove that if they were true, then Galileo would not have made the inferences he did.

On the whole this is the problem with Popper's project -- it is prescriptive, and when one looks at the work actual scientists do they simply do not follow the prescriptions. So it leaves one wondering what good are these prescriptions if the actual practices of scientists, which do, in fact, continue, aren't even close to what they prescribe.

Popper is best read with the problem of induction and the positivists in mind. His criterion of demarcation is the kind of thing journalists of science like to grab onto because it seems simple to explain, and gives them some kind of philosophical authority for rejecting this or that. But science is messier than what the venerable Popper wanted it to be in order to solve his philosophical problems.

I always feel two conflicting feelings with the word "Democracy"

There is the use of "Democracy" to indicate features of current institutions which lay claim to being democratic. And then there's the more general idea "Democracy", which seems to me at least to not even require a state. The latter I think is good, the former not.

Which are we assuming is good?

If we are assuming that democratic states as we currently see them are good, then I can't say that I feel a great deal of urgency to preserve them. I am willing to participate within them for the benefits of other causes I care about, and relative to those causes I'd judge whether it were worth said institutions to continue on or not -- whether I'd go this or that far.

I don't think democracy should be spread globally. Such talk just justifies war, and nothing else. And on the whole war is bad for my people. And on the whole this is how I view actually-existing-democracy -- its opposite is not "totalitarianism" (itself a hangover term from the cold war meant to justify expansion and defense of global power), it is a totalitarianism. It constructs our world just as much as any dictatorship does, and we act within it in relation to our collective self-interest. It all boils down to self-interest, but not of the individual sort -- just of the groups we are a part of.


For the latter I don't think there's much I would rule out a priori. That being said, I can't say that I've participated in anything so extreme as your posited scenario. I've broken laws in the defense of causes which include the broader idea of democracy, and put a pause in my career for several years, but that pales in comparison to what others have done and in your hypothetical.

a priori nothing is ruled out, but at the same time it doesn't seem to me that this sort of thinking really answers the question. I think it's the sort of question you answer and find out for yourself in the moment.

https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Legacy-Germany-Cultural-Criticism/dp/0520085558/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503110654&sr=1-12&keywords=nietzsche+and+cultural+history

Not exactly an interpretation, but it's an interesting look at how other's interpreted Nietzsche through time. I thought of it as related at least, and it was a really interesting read.

I think perhaps the more pertinent question - and I think - I hope! - you agree - is what on earth would make anyone think these two characteristics are in any way incompatible. As if we and our creations do not in the first instance belong to the environment! — StreetlightX

That is a good question....

I think it's something to do with how we tend to think about things. I certainly think about the world as something "outside", at times, even while believing that it isn't! :D The play between outside/inside, outside of my power and within my power, world and self starts to look fuzzy when it comes to our social world.

In a classically scientific picture, I have my beliefs about the world. I support or refute my beliefs with reference to either logical consistency or with respect to the facts. I act on the world of which I am a part, but through said action -- through experiment -- I discover the contours of the world which are "outside" of action, "outside" of belief.

Also, I think it has something to do with our political tradition. Nature vs. Nurture, and the state of nature being concepts which seem to oppose ourselves to our environment -- and environment, as a concept, is often set up in opposition to the individual... though I suppose that it is often done does not actually answer, why is it done?



I will say that I am not a naturalist, so we may also differ somewhere on that point. But, as per what I've been saying previously, I think that one's ultimate metaphysical position can be "passed over" in investigating the social.

I'm going to try something here that might be a divergence, and it might help to bridge our understandings too. It's long-ish. Sorry. Consider it a play of ideas, ideas that influence why I'm saying what I'm saying, but to which I am not married. I'm open to retooling them.

Here I think the primary point of difference is:

If you want to stop a stampede that you are part of, the first thing to do is to stop trying to get to the front. — unenlightened

Where I would say there is no outside to the stampede, when it comes to social movement. Or, perhaps, the stampede is just one movement within a grander dance of movement, so there is an escape from the *stampede*, but not from the social world (hence why it really and truly is a world).


I have in mind movement, constant movement. I have in mind machines, in particular -- large, intricate machines, like a rube goldberg machine, but machines which reproduce and retool themselves. To use Deleuze, there are desiring-machines, organs placed on a body without organs (attempting to eliminate the body without organs), made of partial objects and flows. The flows are coded, chained. The machines produce, and are themselves connected to other machines through the flows.

I only refer to him as a kind of way of looking at social ontology, not as an answer. I think Deleuze is a bit too abstract for my taste -- it kind of reads in a way that doesn't seem specific enough to particulars. It's attempting to reach for something too universal. But he does propose mechanisms for social movement. He proposes entities which are not us. He proposes something which is both us and isn't us, which seems to be the right way of looking at society to me. It is and is not our movement. We all move within, and there is no stopping the stampede. There is no outside of the stampede, the hurricane, or social movement. (or, again, there may be an outside to the stampede, but not to the social world -- sort of depends on how you meant "stampede" or "hurricane" in your metaphor)

My preference is more rooted in historical method, which itself is already multiple. Also, it seems to me that Deleuze is too rooted in psychology for my taste. This misses out on some of the nuances of social entities which are more alien to us than a psychological theory can capture. But what I like is his focus on flows, break-flows, coding and re-coding and surplus code. It's this bizarro synthesis between Marx and Freud which simultaneously rejects them both. I am somewhat skeptical of him, and at times don't really make a connection in what he is writing, but the flows of production makes sense of a good deal of particular social situations, from my perspective -- and not just at the workplace, but also within the state (and other social entities).

Since there is no escape, and yet we can still influence what rules over us, how can we account for that?

Social entities are birthed by collective action. And then we live within them, like children with more power than their parents, or young gods who have yet to find all their powers.

Hannah Arendt has a useful theory about the social for this purpose in The Human Condition. She divides the human condition up into labor, work, and action. The latter, action, is what I have in mind in terms of genesis.

From the beginning section on Action:

With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative

Later, in On the Process Character of Action...

In this aspect of action...processes are started whose outcome is unpredictable, so that uncertainty rather than frailty becomes the decisive character of human affairs. This property of action had escaped the attention of antiquity, by and large, and had, to say the least, hardly found adequate articulation in ancient philosophy, to which the very concept of history as we know it is altogether alien. The central concept of the two entirely new sciences of the modern age, natural science no less than historical, is the concept of process, and the actual human experience underlying it is action.

This uncertainty I'd attribute to the reality of social entities. We create them and they take a life of their own. So to stop a stampede, a social movement, since to be who we are is to be social beings and to remove ourselves from said movement is to kill ourselves, rather than removing ourselves -- becoming the body without organs, the subject whose ephemera forever hangs outside of the chains of production -- we build other machines. But rather than desiring-machines, I think it would be safe to say that social movements are social-machines whose production can take place outside of the codes of desire.

What might they be? Well, they're novel, as per Arendt. So it's not something we can answer in the abstract, but only together. And then we sort of have to just see what happens, too. Like a child is a part of ourselves, it also has a mind of its own and develops into something outside of our intents.


Hence why I'm saying that social entities -- social constructions -- are made by us, and then what they are made of is determined by the historical method. It just depends on the particular entity -- white supremacy operates in its own fashion, capitalism operates in its own fashion, patriarchy operates in its own fashion, private property does as well, and we see how these things operate by attending to their history.

Right. In my view this is a misunderstanding of the normal meaning of 'social construct', which does not mean 'stuff we made together'. I'm happy to call it a constructed river to distinguish it from a Nile type river, though that too is constructed in places. What makes something a social construct is that it is made of society, not by society. The artificial river enables a certain structure of human relations, and that structure of relations is a social construct, not the river itself.

So the pyramids are constructions that were provoked by a social construct of religion and government that has passed away, and they now partake of a completely different social construct called 'tourism'. — unenlightened

There are two characteristics about of social entities which are, at first blush, seemingly difficult to resolve. One is that social entities are real, and the other is that they are mutable by us. In the first instance social entities are part of our environment, in the second we are the artists of products and tools. So how is it that any entity has both of these characteristics? How can an entity be both unchangeable and changeable? How is it that we are able to manipulate something which, at the same time, manipulates us? How is it possible for the same entity to have this double character which is seemingly a contradiction?

What the standard notion of social construct emphasizes is one aspect of this character -- its mutability. But it leaves out the very real part where social constructs take on a reality of their own, influence us, and aren't immediately reconfigurable (and, potentially, *can't* be reconfigured).

Maybe there's another way of resolving this tension, but this is what I have in mind when proposing looking at social entities in terms of genesis and mechanism. The birth of social entities occurs in a different manner from the life of social entities.


When you say "of society", what are the parts? I have tourism, here, made of society. It seems to me that the normal understanding of society is that we are the parts. So if I were to dismantle tourism then I wouldn't go see the pyramids on vacation, for starters, and I'd do what is in my power to stop others from doing so as well. I might write appeals, pass laws, set up blockades, and enforce them with ground to air missiles if necessary.

But I'd say this picture misses on the real parts of social entities -- that they aren't something where we just do stuff and have happen. Those in charge, those purportedly in power, are often caught up within social entities just as those without power are. They don't have the power to change the entities they live within -- they act within the institutions that already exist.

But what would you propose instead, then? Or does this just seem like something which isn't a real issue, to you?

Cool. I think that lays out the disagreement/confusion very cleanly. I'm about to head off to work now, just fyi. That gives me something to think about.