You are against such totalising, even when it is a well proven success. You try to dismiss it as "pragmatic", as if being useful is a dirty word. You will blather on about poetry or feelings or other tribal artefacts of the anti-totalising brigade.
It's funny. Proper metaphysical strength Peircean pragmatism offends the objectivist and the subjectivist alike.
But that is because they are happiest trapped in that Cartesian dialectic. If its dichotomistic inconsistencies were resolved, they would no longer have anything to write poems about, or realist polemics about.
You are down that dark hole. I can hand you the ladder out but I can't make you climb. You have to want to leave the angry gloom that is the anti-totaliser's fate. — apokrisis
I just found it funny that I had paid some special attention to exactly that as a historical dynamic. Hegel is (in)famous for his dialectical claims about the German state representing an end to history to the degree that it had achieved a natural rational order - a state of Enlightened self-governing.
Neoliberalism felt it had achieved the same natural enlightened state of arriving at the end of history - at least according to Fukuyama.
So the question arises what is the true dichotomy that human history keeps trying to resolve in a synergistically valuable fashion? That was my research topic.
Clearly it is in some sense the balance between the forces of labour and capital - to follow the Marxist analysis. Or free competitive action within the cooperative space of a collective market - the neoliberal story perhaps.
My own answer is thermodynamic - the basic view of natural systems. Humanity stumbled on a fossil fuel bonanza that could be harnessed by industrial age machinery. If we learnt to think like machines - form a mathematical level of semiosis with "reality" - then we could burn through this bonanza at an exponential rate. — apokrisis
I guess I'm supposed to be a 'subjectivist' who refuses to 'escape the cartesian dialectic' — csalisbury
It's funny. Proper metaphysical strength Peircean pragmatism offends the objectivist and the subjectivist alike. — apokrisis
Still, I'm deeply skeptical of the thermodynamics-explain-everything approach — csalisbury
To reiterate, the 'success' of such an approach appears to me be a 'success' at avoiding any kind of surprise or any encounter with something outside one's grasp. — csalisbury
If anything can be shared, how do we know that we're sharing the same thing or not?What would that shared reason be?
— Harry Hindu
Anything. — Isaac
What did you intend when you use the word, "duck"? Using something requires intent.A somewhat idiosyncratic use of 'points'. I don't think you quite mean by it the same thing as others do. To say 'points to' seems ti me to be about drawing the attention. No attention is being paid to either ducking or riding a bike. If what you want to say is just "words have consequences", then I'd agree, I'm not sure many wouldn't, but that seems a rather trivial thing to assert. — Isaac
I'm saying there is a particular kind of total-surprise-avoidance that I think it best to avoid. — csalisbury
In all seriousness, though, I've met you in every way, while you've failed to meet me. — csalisbury
Christ, apo, if one were to read just your half of the exchange, they'd think I only said things like 'science can't explain feelings.' I half-think you do think that's all I've said.You really believe your own bullshit don't you. You haven't produced a coherent argument as yet. But you want to make that problem mine. — apokrisis
I half-think you do think that's all I've said. — csalisbury
In a sordid hour, I went and got drinks with a subjectivist and, as you'd expect from a subjectivist, he wanted to talk about literature. After saying 'fuck science' and showing me his grateful dead tattoo, he told me the story of Henry James' Beast in the Jungle. The protagonist, the subjectivist told me, spent his whole life waiting for his apotheosis - for the 'beast' to pop out in a single epic moment. The beast does pop up, toward the end, when the protagonist realizes that in focusing all his energy on this apotheosis, organzing his life around this moment, he's become absent to his actual life. This recognition is the beast, of course, what can you expect? 'Away with you, subjectivist' I yelled, 'this oatmeal-mush displays only your watery will!' — csalisbury
'set forth in such a way that it is already anticipated and comprehended by my approach'; — csalisbury
Your approach appears to be alienating, and so is worth avoiding (or disentangling oneself from). — csalisbury
I observe that you seem decidedly insensitive and unaware, especially when you're at your most totalizing. — csalisbury
I'm pretty sure that a big part of poking at you was to try to get a well-landed poke back at me, but unfortunately you keep poking the subjectivist. — csalisbury
Instead of seeing the world as two cosmic forces in great battle, resolved triadically, its makes good pragmatic sense, in my mind, to see that there are personality types within the world as doing a thing where they reframe it all in terms of two forces, and then resolve them triadically. Salesmen often end up talking to everyone by using their first name and identifying their interests, keeping them at arms length outside their commercial needs. Photographers see everything as potential photos. King Midas can't hug his kids, because it's gold gold gold. There're a lot of ways to develop a universal hammer for a universal nail and here is one more. (It's important to understand - I think this is the core - that finding fault with this way of framing things is not simply inhabiting its mirror image any more than playing basketball instead of painting is simply a form of 'not-painting' that requires painting as a backdrop.) — csalisbury
It's like a game of tennis. On the court, you do everything within the rules to win. Afterwards you shake hands. Leave it at that. — apokrisis
I'm pretty sure that a big part of poking at you was to try to get a well-landed poke back at me, but unfortunately you keep poking the subjectivist. — csalisbury
Of course we already have an understanding of what the words mean. (I wrote that sentence without consulting a dictionary.) It is only when we want to convey that understanding to others that we have to use the only tools of thought transfer that we have: words. It is imperfect an inaccurate since it is always difficult to find the right words for our thoughts. The right understanding of word is the one we have without using words (provided that understanding is shared by other language users)There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition. — Banno
I think the podcast is right to focus on trust... — csalisbury
It is only when we want to convey that understanding to others that we have to use the only tools of thought transfer that we have: words. It is imperfect an inaccurate since it is always difficult to find the right words for our thoughts. The right understanding of word is the one we have without using words (provided that understanding is shared by other language users) — Congau
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