*

This is a bit tricky because the truth of this sentence seems to entail the position Micheal Ayers labeled actualism (in his brilliant The Refutation of Determinism: An Essay in Philosophical Logic, London: Methuen (1968)). That is the position seemingly endorsed (at least tacitly) by many Humeans that whatever is possible is actual, and whatever isn't actual is impossible. This is also the view that there are no unactualized powers. That's because the subjunctive conditional statement that you propose would entail that the failure for Pierce to exercise his power would count as (conclusive) evidence that he lacks the power.

hmm, I wasn't trying to suggest an actualist view. I think my intent may have been unclear because the example we were playing with (pierce, rock, gravity) doesn't lend itself gracefully as an example.

Say we're talking about someone else, alex, who has the power to benchpress 400 pounds. We could say: if alex lacked the power to benchpress 400 pounds, then if he attempted to benchpress 400 pounds, the bar would raise 3 inches (whereas a full benchpress would raise it mich higher)

This seems (1) to be true & (2) true in a way that cannot ultimately be explained by the fact that an existing being possesses (either latent or actualized) powers.

It seems like the difference between this sort of counterfactual and the orginal pierce example is that in this case, it is not a matter of counterfactual events, but of counterfactual possesions of powers (What if alex didn't have that power? what if eric did? etc. )

It may be that I'm just not familiar enough with the subject and counterfactuals are always of the possible future event (sea battle, say) type?

Though I am not a logician, it's not even entirely clear to me if there is an unambiguous meaning to the "if and only if, if" complex logical connective that shows up here (even after scope disambiguation). In any case, the strategy that I had suggested might work to simplify the modal semantics a bit (as well as the metaphysics of counterfactual conditionals) is to construe the sentence's meaning as being parasitic on the meaning of a categorical statement about the real power of something. What makes "If Pierce had dropped the stone during a lecture, it would have fallen." true is that "Pierce has the power to see to it that the stone drops during a lecture." is true, since the first sentence can be derived from the second as a material inference from the second one. (i.e., a "material inference", in Wilfrid Sellars's sense, warranted by the conceptual content of the term "power"). And finally, what makes the second sentence about Pierce's power true is that Pierce indeed has this power, as can be ascertained empirically through testing this power of his in some specific circumstances.

What about: "If Pierce had the power to see to it that the stone drops during a lecture, then, if Pierce had dropped the stone during a lecture, it would have fallen."

It seems just as true as the first sentence, but not to be ultimately grounded in some existent having any latent power.

Sure, but I also have a keen, personal, interest in people who argue in this way, because I've got a bit of that myself. It makes me want to stop and ask: alright, all the bullshit out the way, what are you really asking, what are you looking for? It's clearly not what you say you're looking for, you've demonstrated that, so what are you actually after?

I can't answer that for myself, at least for the part of me that's drawn to provocation for the sake of provocation (which, say what you want, is all this thread really amounts to.) So maybe I want to provoke you into giving an answer that'll help me.

I wasn't using "charity" in a moral sense, but in a argumentative-methodological sense. As in the "principle of charity." Both Pierre and apo engaged you as though you (1) had a strong point to make and a solid background from which to make that point (2) were starting a thread in good faith, open to potential answers, rather than simply asking a rhetorical question in order to grind a boring, familiar axe.

Apo gave up quickly, realizing you weren't for real. Pierre, with saint-like patience, has continued, which I'm thankful for, because his posts have been enlightening.

As for me, I lack the consitution to deal with the kind of thing you're doing. I'm not sure you're even aware what you're doing. There's a type of person wants to exemplify a certain virtue (in this case no-nonsense rationality) but, since they don't actually have this virtue, merely want it (or want others to see them as having it), they latch on blindly to another figure (in this case weinberg) - this type of person will never be a good defender of the person they latch onto, because they haven't really engaged with their ideas in a meaningful sense. They've merely identified their hero as someone who exemplifies the virtues they want to possess and, on a purely psychological level, aligned themselves with them.

This type of person is quickly revealed - they seem to have a distinct incapacity to argue coupled with a distinct compulsive need to keep the conversation going, by making trivial and confused points about marginal issues.

Pierre's a good dude, I think, but I'm not, really, and I have no patience for the thing you're doing. It hurts to watch. Find a hobby, meet some people, do something else.

That's fine but (1) neither pierrw nor apokrosis are anywhere close to being postmodernists (pierre's more in the analytic traditon and apo is peirceian/biosemiotic and (2) they've both charitably engaged you, but you've deflected all their points in a manner most closely reaembling the stereotype of pomo sophistry

What do you find most irritating about the ways in which 'postmodernists' argue or discuss? Having witnessed your approach on this thread, I'm curious to hear how you would characterize the flaws of your bugbear.

in short: the ideal state the fascists want only can exist as an mobilizing ideal. (so, yeah, a lot like permanent revolution.)

But again, it's this focus on the state which I think really distinguishes the two, where, to paint it broadly, the state works for the people, and not the people for the state.

Yeah, that's legit. I was also very unclear in my post above, when I said Fascism wants to remain separate from the state despite being the state. It would be more accurate to say that, on an ideological and ideal level, it totally wants to be the state, but, since that doesn't really pan out (it always finds itself forced to cater to - or at least cut deals with- entrenched powers) there ends up being a de facto dual state. The fascists fail to live up to their fantasy. That's where the mobilization thing comes in. If things settled, it would become clear the fascist state was not the unified absolute-everything it's claimed to be. But if everything's running at a high-pitch, it's easier to delude oneself and others, that there's a unified fascist state growing stronger every day, heading toward perfection.

Very interesting passage.

But it does seem like a good opportunity to bring up one of Paxton's big talking points: the self-explanations offered by fascists should be taken with a grain of salt. What they said isn't always in line with what they did (in fact, it usually wasn't.) It's a familiar historicist point, but one that is somehow often overlooked in this particular case. We're eager to deconstruct the self-narratives of the guardians of western democracy, but willing to take the statements of fascists at face value.

Hah. I'm glad this turned out to be just an extended in-joke and you don't want to make any serious point.

Having followed this thread from its inception, I think it's clear all he really wanted to do was take a potshot at POMO under the pretense that he was well-versed in the real, hard-stuff the frenchies are too crazed to countenance. As soon as you & Pierre stepped in, he quickly adopted the tactic of ignoring the main thrust of posts in order to feebly debate this or that tangential point (as someone may move a pawn around meaninglessly to defer checkmate)

None of which vindicates pomo (whatever he means by that) but it does reinforce my belief that many of those who are fixated on undermining it, are really just trying to reinforce their sense of being cool-headed rational straight-talkers. They're LARPing being rational, and need a Big Baddie to sustain the Drama. The whole thing falls apart when the people who actually occupy the role they're pretending to play show up.

I've been reading Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism with an old friend, largely in order to appraise contemporary sounds of alarm.

I'm still less than halfway through it, but my impression is that, in Paxton's view, 'fascism' is something that flourishes by exploiting blind-spots in the State. It sets up de-facto mini-governments and police forces in order to garner the support of marginalized folk. A 'fascist' organization makes a name for itself, first, by violently maintaining order in places beyond the scope of a limited state. Then, having gained recognition, the organization (and/or its leaders) begin to cut political deals with the establishment, slowly getting their foot in the door. It comes closer to the mainstream while keeping its alternate force in reserve.

What makes fascism feasible, then, is that it is capable of providing an alternative state to those marginal regions and groups who fall through the bureaucratic gaps. But its weakness is that it wants to remain that kind of alternative state, even while in power. It has to maintain a sense of being a movement separate from the state, even when it is the state.

Fascism's roots do, indeed, lie in socialism (as well as nationalism, militarism, futurism). It wants to be a radical, unified, overthrowing, restoring movement. But it also wants to be in power. And that doesn't really work (unless you have a war deferring the realization of that essential contradiction.)

One way to look at fascism is as a movement that wants to make Mobilization, a necessarily provisional state of affairs, something permanent.

Obviously when I say "fascism" I have in mind something very different from what the Nazis perverted into their own ideology.

Obviously? Most scholars take Nazism to be an exemplary case of 'Fascism.' What do you mean when you say fascism?

Looked up the Latour essay that claim comes from...it's a little subtler than that allegation suggests, but not by much. It's pretty weak stuff.

What does reductionism have to do with the validity of DNA testing? What do you mean by 'reductionism'? Which 'postmodernists' do you think wouldn't accept the result of a DNA test? Why is your post formatted like a poem?

Foam (Spheres vol. 3) - Peter Sloterdijk
Underworld - Don Delillo

Can you expand on that? I haven't encountered that argument before and it feels a little confusing prima facie

Conjunction doesn't need to be constant at all. In terms of a cause, it only needs to happen once. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I stopped reading here, because here it became very clear you either haven't read Hume or you've utterly forgotten what you've read.

I like to think I have a non-kantian enough soul that I don't instinctively recoil from that kind of thing. But what's Hume's soul like? I think he's dead-earnest about his explanation, and also wants it to be received in earnest.

So: the least Kantian of souls would recognize that one thing always leads to another, that whats going on now is tied to what happened before, and is leading to what will happen next. That's just how it goes, because that's how it goes.

A slightly more compromised soul, one exposed to ideas about "ideas", about decontextualized objects which press against the mind, might start to see experience as a series of these isolated impressions. It might seem like experience is built up of instances -perceptual freeze-frames of various objects and ideas -& that awareness is always awareness at an instant, utterly disconnected (or at least disconnectable) from other instances. So then: how do we connect them??

All of which is to say Hume is as steeped in artifice and inherited ideas as Kant, imho, but it doesn't seem like it because his prose is fun and avuncular.

If Hume isn't important for what he says he's doing but because he helps us see our own case from within, then, I mean, Kant just as easily can be someone who helps us see, from within, that we're always caught up in a causal series etc etc

I agree that he doesn't give a reasoned justification. But he does give a causal explanation which is presented as being true. People believe x because y. I'm not trying to do a cute reversal for the sake of cute reversal, but the Humean (anti)project really is seriously compromised by this kinda self-contradictory maneuver. Conjunction has this effect on the person who witnesses it...

I think it would be fun to dig into Kant's second analogy (which, google has refreshed me, is where he deals with cause and effect most explicitly).

I really like that Stove idea, and agree that it works well with approaching Kant.

But the Humean doesn't say "I don't know" really, does he? He explains it forthwith. Constant conjunction, habit, custom.

I'm going to give you a 'bad' answer, because I gotta finish a paper (on the goddamn Iraq War) before midnight, and have to tear myself away from the forum for now. But I think the obvious rejoinder to Hume is that the sun-not-rising tomorrow is utter bullshit. It will. So: anything could happen, at any moment, but the things that do happen, always fit the model, every time, well.... aren't we lucky?

Conjunction leading to an association leading to the idea of cause and effect only works if the conjunction is constant. What are the chances? (Meillassoux, who is kinda like 21st century Hume, tries to explain that probability doesn't obtain here, because of set theory. But his explication of how this works is...limp. IIRC, it's something like the rules of probability doesn't work when the possible outcomes are infinite. Like: since there are infinite possible outcomes, it's less strange that the outcomes that do happen aren't distributed as you'd expect? It's not a very good line of thought. )

We're contingently, factically (sp?) in this, but 'this' follows certain rules.

I think you may have meant to respond to @Moliere (though I agree with his post)

Edit: Or maybe not. The word "tension" stuck out.

ha i get that. Deleuze got fired up about Opum, I think in What is Philosophy, but was reallly vague, and didn't say much besides connecting it to Turner's late paintings and old age :s

man, I'd be interested in reading COJ again, some day. I'm also very curious about his final work, Opum Postumum, but its suuper expensive.

@The Great WhateverThat's fair, and I've been defending Kant a little more fiercly than my own beliefs warrant - I think there's a lot to take issue with. I think parts of him are very useful and still relevant, while much is questionable. But, to return to your initial question, about why philosophers often believe odd things - I think the dialectical/historical narrative, however crude, helps explain a bit. At worst, he at least makes clear how radical Hume's treatment of cause and effect really is. Like: ok, you can agree with hume and you can agree with newton, but how are you going to reconcile the two? This is a valid and difficult question. (newtonian physics still holds more or less good to this day, doesn't it? It's just a little too baggy and restricted to certain scales?)

I personally think Kant's good on the conceptual nature of perception, and the broader idea that the relationship of the mind and the world involves a complex process of mediation.

I agree. I probably should have been clearer, but I was trying to say that the picture people seem to have of Kant is way off.

Would you say that Hume makes the same error when discussing necessary, demonstrable truths stemming from the 'relations of ideas'?

oh whoa, I forgot all about the teleological judgment section. I remember it being weird, and there was a bunch about 'the organism' but not much else. Do you remember what struck you, charitably or not, as being like knowing the noumena?

What I vaguely remember is that certain objects introduce either discord or increased harmony between reason/understanding/sensibility. (one species of) the beautiful isthis kind of free-play where the object doesn't get quite subsumed by the concept, and so there's a self-sustaining pleasant play of the faculties rather than a cognitive process with a clear moment of completion (which i guess would be recognition?) And the the sublime is something like the understanding failing in the face of natures wonder or terror, and that failure kind of sends reason whirring - but in this weird precise way, I can't remember. Not sure how accurate that is though, been a while.

Yeah, and also it's Konigsberg, not Leipzig. I botched that one, and your general point about biography is good.

I'm sympathetic to a psychological reading of Kant's system, and it definitely gibes with the biographical info we have about the guy - how he never left Leipzig, observed strict daily routines etc etc. I think it's true that you need a guy with death/outside anxieties as deep as Kant, to so seriously and painstakingly work out such a system.

But I also think Kantian thought makes sense, given what it responds to.

In broad strokes, I think the story is something like this:

- Descartes, through radical doubt, opens the possibility of utter solipsism. But he avoids it by bringing in a benevolent God who guarantees a harmony between mind and world.

-Cartesian thought, initially radical, becomes the new standard. This or that 'rationalist' may disagree with this or that cartesian point, but they accept the broad framework. So: it calcifies and what was once radical, begins to become dogmatic.

- The British empiricists react against this, the pendulum swings, and they emphasize experience and impressions. However, in giving up the god-mind-world system, they re-open the possibility of radical doubt that Descartes tried to foreclose.

- The gap is filled this time w/ habit and custom. Anything we know about the physical world (as opposed to relations of ideas) is utterly contingent.

- Yet here's Newton with his iron-clad physical laws that seem absolute, to hold for any rational observer whatsoever. There's something distinctly mathematical about them. They seem universal and necessary (any rational natural scientist would have to agree with them)

- Kant


I don't claim this story is original, but I think it's compelling. If the context is ignored, then its easy to miss that the motivation for for such protracted treatment of the synthetic a priori is largely one of explaining agreement, and the focus, ironically, becomes the image of an isolated self producing its own experience.

What I'm trying to convey is that, in my understanding, CPR is dealing very specifically with the cognition of objects (and their relations.) It's about what is required to experience an object as an object, and about how we're led astray if we try to treat, as objects, things that don't lend themselves to that kind of treatment (the cosmos as a totality etc.) It makes sense that he's focusing on the experience of objects (especially the visual experience of objects) because that's what everyone else was focused on. That was the thing to figure out. I don't disagree that there are echoes of Locke, but I think it is very clearly wrong to say that Kant was accidentally re-doing Locke for an audience who didn't know him.(Do you really think this?)

But there all sorts of cracks in the harmonious machinery of the faculties and Kant himself makes those cracks features of his thought in other works. I don't think Kant is right on everything, and I agree that the facticity of the faculties is a big problem, but I am definitely skeptical of the idea that Kant was basically dumb and that people only find his thought worthwhile because they're told he's a genius by cultural arbiters.

We're always least kind to those positions we once held tenaciously but have come recently to disavow. It's a solipsistic kernel in Kant you're objecting to, right?

Sure, people of all stripes and creeds selectively quote anyone with perceived cachet to support their viewpoints. That's what people do!

In any case, I don't think I'm making that controversial a point. Kant's philosophy makes much more sense in the milieu of Newtonian physics, British empiricism & (I forgot to add) the (post-)cartesian rationalism to which that empricism responded (and with which it remained engaged ( Locke vs the 'innatists' etc) )

Wittgenstein makes much more sense if you're conversant with logical positivism. Heidegger makes more sense if you're versed in Husserlian phenomenology (which in turn makes more sense if you're versed in the psychologism debates of the time.)

Why are you skeptical of the importance of intellectual context?

I wouldn't put it that strongly, but, yeah, I think a lot of context is lost.

Another way to put is that Kant may not have futzed around with something like, say, Heideggerean being-in, because being-in was already taken for granted, it was background. To philosophize about anything, something has to remain in the background, while something else is foregrounded. The history of philosophy, maybe, could be seen as a series of changes among the background-foreground relationship. But there will always be something in the background, blurred, to make the foreground stand out. The foreground, for ppl at Kant's time, was 'Ideas' and 'objects' (billiard-ball level stuff w/ mass) etc.

Kant does not, so far as I can tell, have arguments for the position that we can't get outside of our faculties. To be sure that's something he says many times. That might be because of my unfamiliarity with, or lack of understanding of, the text. But I've read CPR, so if I'm too stupid even to find that there are arguments, I don't know what reading again would help me to do.

Kant's style is generally one of outlining and repetition – he's more like a world-builder than an arguer. He does provide a few arguments, such as the refutation of idealism, and some truncated syllogisms about why representations of things cannot be things in themselves. But the broad picture seems to be one of making a big frame, repeating it, and letting the reader acclimate themselves.

I know I already mentioned it, kinda, but I think Kant's position makes perfect sense as a response to British Empiricism and Newtonian physics taken together. I don't think his reasoning is simply bad. I think it's solid reasoning, for a reason set down among the limited concepts and problems of a limited tradition.

Maybe that's another avenue to go down. If we, as a species, are bad at philosophy, that's in part because we have to work within a tradition. Even if we break with that tradition, we have to, at least in part, define ourselves in opposition to it.

(also worth nothing that Kant def thought we could get outside our faculties, that they could be severely disrupted, and that that would afford us novel and powerful insights and experience. But that's Critique of Judgment stuff, so it doesn't get as much attention. I think Kant, in works like CPR, simply wasn't tackling the things the exceed his philosophy, because his philosophy wasn't meant to deal with them, because it was meant simply to deal with newtonian objects. (& I personally think the noumena as limiting concept is still really powerful and good and probably right. It's still big, today, of course- it just morphed into 'Otherness' and got some new soil)

I'm sometimes tempted to see philosophy as a kind of restricted form of metaphor/myth building, or imaginative play, that kind of forgets what it's doing. Not in the fine-grained step-by-step reasoning, but when it comes to Big Pictures and their argumentative linchpins. So the plausibility is emotional, rather than rational, but somehow mixed up with the rational nevertheless?

@The Great Whatever It's been a while since I read the critiques, but my two cents is that Kant was right enough, but that the domain of experience about which he was right is far narrower than he would have liked to admit. I think he's broadly right about, like, looking at simple objects interacting from a distance. Again, it's been a while, but I remember it being kind of just like an epistemology tailored for newtonian physics, and correspondingly simple. CPR, at least. I don't remember the Critique of Judgment all that well anymore.

His sister recalled playing piano in the big rich Wittgenstein household, and her brother (the man in question) being in another room, and her playing piano but not being able to concentrate because she could feel his judgment seeping into the room.

Wittgenstein scares me a little, because I see some of him in me. Not the genius or sheer intellect, don't get me wrong, I'm not conceited enough to think I'm at his level. But I always imagine his works, fine on paper, shadowed by his irl reflexive disdain for others. I'm a judgy person, and so was he (though he may have actually merited his judginess). He's always been a cautionary tale for me, not a role model.