If you don't minutia-monger, you are simply babbling fantasy nonsense and unnecessary noise out of your mouth hole. You are here to contribute to the techno-economic system. — schopenhauer1
If only their deep truths could have the prestige of shallow truths of sciences... — old
One has to specialize. So philosophy remains valuable as an attempt to make sense of the big picture and not drown in the details. — old
'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance. It's possible to be adored and even followed while being scientifically/technologically ignorant. I think you should add that to your calculations. — old
Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. — schopenhauer1
I get you, but all of these nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. — schopenhauer1
But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals. — old
As to the question of the alleged superiority of science-math-technology over other cultural modalities with regard to securing meaning or truth or progress or objectivity or some such thing, it should be noted that changes in worldview within science and technology parallel those in all other modalities within an era. Thus we have Greek or Reconnaissance, or Enlightenment or Modernist or postmodern eras which their own art, science,philosophy, literature, political theory, united by overarching metaphors of meaning. — Joshs
Information and probability are dual notions; wherever you have a probability distribution you have an entropy. The connection between the two is particularly intimate for discrete random variables - like when there is a given probability of being in one of countably many eigenstates of an operator. Quantum entropy measures the degree of mixing in a state; how close it is to behaving in a singular eigenstate (unless I'm misinterpreting, I am both rusty and mostly uneducated here). Information measures are derivable from probability distributions, but the process of mapping a distribution to an entropy value is not invertible - so the two notions can't be taken as inter-definable. As in, if you have an entropy, you have a single number, which could be generated from lots of different quantum states and probability distributions.
I'm sure there are problems, but I think there are good reasons to believe that information is just as much a part of nature as wave functions. — fdrake
As text, a technology has no existence apart from the ability of its users to read and interpret it. It is just one cog in a matrix of cultural readabillty . That's why a technology cannot be a technology until a community is ready to understand it and thereby see it as useful. Technology means nothing without usefulness and usefulness is a cultural artifact. It also defines a certain conventionality and common denominator. By definition, technology can only be what it is because it exemplifies the familiar and widely understood. — Joshs
Thanks for the mention, looks a good read! Interesting author, also. — Wayfarer
Absolutely nothing is more real than this. And the reason is that the very claims of reality to being able to 'get things done' via its connection to the natural and the lawful already presupposes what it aims to prove. For notions like 'lawful', 'natural', 'real', all derive from the same metaphysical pre-supposositions concerning the conditions of possibility of there being such a thing as an object.
The deconstructive move of Heidegger or Derrida aims not to disprove, but argue that the very idea of 'correctness' as agreement between a subject and object of a proposition stands at the basis of the determination of objectivity and the notion of the 'real'.
Is there anything about a physical device that we understand identically , whose inner working everyone can describe identically? Are there ever two people who use a device in the identical manner? IF not, then what distinguishes such objects from texts?
And of course, I dont need to point out the profound ways in which any other cultural product, from music to the political to the philosophical, can reorganize communities. — Joshs
Thought most primordially, Dasein doesn't 'use' or 'depend on' tools. Dasein is always already in between, in transition, in creative engagement with a world, prior to its being a subject. — Joshs
The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. — Joshs
When we determine the presence of a thing in terms of a propositional subject-object statement we cut off our experience of something from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself. — Joshs
It's not a huge issue, but I'll try one more time. I don't claim to be able to define reality. Consider what it would mean for me to do so. I'd be showing or making known what reality is, what reality 'really' is. I connect this to:I have to confess I'm not sure how you want to define reality. — Joshs
"...statement means pointing out. With this we adhere to the primordial meaning of logos as apophansis: to let beings be seen from themselves." — Joshs
If I may make use of Richard Rorty here instead of Heidegger, the postmodern pragmatist sees 'reality' as resting on the idea of truth as the mirror of nature, a correspondence between human constructions and an external world. — Joshs
they show us that the notion of "accurate representation" is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do." — Joshs
The argument goes something like this: "If your claim is that no metaphysical ground for reality can justify itself, then isn't your very claim a sort of ground in itself"?
It would be unfair to answer this question by suggesting that it is only an issue when one has failed to understand the nature of a thinking that frees itself from foundationalism. — Joshs
The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. What objective thinking does is arbitrarily separate certain types of relational contexts, those you would call tool invention, from all others, including making music and philosophy.
you speak about the critical importance of the presence or absence of tools throughout history to particular cultures. In my own life, the development of my philosophical thinking has had an infinitely more profound effect on my life than exposure to any 'objective' technologies. That is as it should be, given that there is no way in principle to distinguish between philosophical creation and technological creation. As Heidegger says , the essence of technology is nothing technological. — Joshs
What if showing is transforming? What if representing is an an altering interaction? What if the constraints imposed by reality are normative constraints that are only relevant and coherent within a contingent scheme of understanding? Do you support Kuhn's anti-foundationalism or do you think he goes too far? — Joshs
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