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Currently ReadingReal name - Adrian Czajkowski — T Clark
Just a different spelling. People don’t buy books by apparently unpronounceable authors. -
Currently ReadingJust read The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard.
The last time I read a Ballard novel (Crash) and gave it a review, I was too hasty—I’ve since revised my estimation upwards—so I’ll refrain from saying much about this one. Once again, I didn’t like it much, but who knows what I’ll think in a few weeks. Some quotations:
Soon after dawn I stood naked on the lawn among the drowsy pelicans.
Again I ejaculated beside the tennis courts, and hurled my semen across the flower-beds.
At the filling-station I ejaculated across the fuel pumps, and over the paintwork of the cars standing in front of the showroom. — Ballard
Adrian Tchaikovsky — T Clark
I like the spider stuff.
Both from The Atrocity Exhibition. Weird stuff — Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I should probably read them as part of that book, as they were published.
But don't miss Vermilion Sands for the other side of Ballard — Srap Tasmaner
Now on my list :up:
Currently reading The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. -
What is a "Woman"Has no one on this site read any sociology or anthropology? — unenlightened
I can name three or four members who probably have. Only slightly fewer than those who have read any philosophy. -
The Argument from ReasonIt seems to me a lot of our traditional "mental" vocabulary does not refer to exclusively internal states of human beings, but rather to mental rather than, I guess, bodily interactions with the environment and objects. We distinguish, and presumably have for a very long time, between chopping down a tree and looking at it, wondering if it's big enough for the beam we need. Both descriptions involve both the guy with the sharp implement and the tree, so just as <chopping down a tree> doesn't map cleanly onto postures and movements of my body alone, in the absence of a tree, so <estimating a tree's yield> needn't map onto something going on in my brain in the absence of a tree. — Srap Tasmaner
I agree. We talked about the mind long before we gave much thought to brains--that is, when we were describing certain activities rather than describing something the brain does--but even from this point of view, what is mental can still be seen as material, just not in the neuro-reductionist way.
As it happens, representational theories of mind will map the necessary tree onto my internal representation of the tree, and you'll see often on this forum theories that claim my goal in either case to produce a certain state of my internal model. I think that's a very different issue from whether our everyday vocabulary around thinking, perceiving, imagining, remembering, and so on, not only presupposes objects for these activities but folds them into terms that are in some ways holistic. — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not quite clear what you mean here. If you mean that a non-neuro-reductionist understanding of the mind, while it does presuppose mental objects, need not presuppose internal representations, then I think I probably agree. -
The Argument from ReasonDoes that make any sense? — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not finding much time to dedicate to TPF right now, except for posting photos of my lunch. I'll try to come back to it. -
Best weather to buy pizza?The last time I had a pizza, probably two months ago, it was quite chilly. Maybe around 10-15 Celsius. I still wanted to sit outside in my shorts and t-shirt, and I refused the kindly offered blanket until I changed my mind and asked for a blanket after all. The pizza, which did not have a blanket, got cold very quickly, but it was good.
My favourite weather for eating asparagus is drizzle. -
The Argument from ReasonI can see you have not been persuaded by the argument thus far and probably won’t be, until you can see a reason why you should accept. At that point, you might typically say I see. So - what is it that you see? (Or in the other case, what is it you’re not seeing?) Whatever it is (or isn’t) it won’t be seen as a consequence of anything physical that has passed between us. — Wayfarer
If you think that the use of reason within this discussion demonstrates the soundness of the argument from reason, I think you’ve misunderstood Srap’s criticism.
He asked you to defend this:
No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes — Wayfarer
That you will defend it with reason is irrelevant (although you haven’t actually defended it yet).
I’d add that metaphysical naturalism can be true even if beliefs cannot be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. Nonreductive materialism is popular among philosophers. Which takes us back to @180 Proof’s early response, which I don’t think you’ve addressed. -
Best weather to buy pizza?Confusing. Firstly, the most important things you can do with a pizza are make it and eat it, and yet you only mention buying and ordering. Secondly, I know of the Fahrenheit scale but the numbers mean nothing to me, except that higher numbers are higher temperatures, just like other temperature scales. Thirdly, I don’t know what ambient temperature has to do with pizza. Certainly, I eat pizza in warm weather more than cold, but that’s mainly because I eat pizza only when I eat out, and when I eat out I like to sit at outdoor tables and don’t like sitting inside very much.
So I voted while imagining that the numbers were Celsius, according to which I’d happily eat pizza in temperatures around 25 degrees, which is warm. -
Bannings
You must have missed when I called you a radge here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/752675 -
Currently ReadingThe Terminal Beach by J. G. Ballard.
A collection of some of his earlier short stories. Mostly great. Lots of surrealism, Freud, Jung, and genre-wise more slipstream than science fiction.
I’ll probably read a volume of his later short fiction next. Two stories I’m particularly interested in are “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “The Assassination Of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race”. -
Morality is Coercive and Unrealistic
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Atheist Dogma.I think the content of your post that I took the above quotes from is fair enough but I think the assumptions made in your last sentence are inaccurate. You assume I don't understand before rejecting.
I disagree. — universeness
Yes, that was unnecessary. I was probably just trying to wind you up. It's a Scottish tradition; you can take it.
My point is that identifying reasons for falling in love with someone is not post hoc. They are present in your thoughts during the very moments that the experience starts imo, the reasoning is just very fast and 'flash like'. — universeness
This is the issue and I think you're wrong. It reminds me of something that Bertrand Russell said about perception somewhere. He said something like, perception is inference from sense data to an image or model of the environment, and when it's automatic--because the environment is familiar and doesn't contain any surprises--it just means that the inferential process has just got really quick. This idea works no better for perception than it does for love, and I just think you're misunderstanding your own feelings.
You, and imo, Zizek are suggesting that such as 'oh my goodness look at her over there, I think I'm in love!!' has no reasoning behind it. I think that's untrue. It's just that all the reasons are happening at top speed in your head. — universeness
So you might be conflating causes and reasons.
Aesthetically stunning ....... tick
Posture alluring (sitting or walking) ...... tick
Body language ....... tick
These reasons are manifest in parallel thought. — universeness
This is quite comical though. You don't fall in love using a checklist.
But what you're talking about here is an assessment of attractiveness, which I accept might have a checklisty character, although even then I think it's probably post hoc. In any case, the assessment of attractiveness is not falling in love. -
Atheist Dogma.Basically I agree with you. But the local religion is also part of the social and geopolitical situation. So perhaps it might be more accurate to say that religion is only part of the problem, or one factor in the problem. Or, perhaps still more accurate, that the local interpretation of the religion is a factor in the problem. — Ludwig V
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Atheist Dogma.And when I say the things I've been saying it feels kinda wrong, in that I'm speaking from a position of privilege: the privilege of living in a liberal secular society that makes it too easy to take a contrarian anti-militant-atheist line.
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Atheist Dogma.Religion's an enabler of those prejudices though innit. Not in the abstract. But would the world have had Qutub without an amenable Islamic ideology? I doubt it. Female genital mutilation without the religious practices that mandate it? I also doubt it.
Being strongly critical of politically ascendent religion is an attempt to create a liberal notion of freedom, which must be affirmed to make more radical freedom possible. IMO anyway. — fdrake
I agree. But being strongly critical of politically ascendent religion is not the same as being critical of belief in God as such. Militant atheism seems precisely too much "in the abstract". I mean, it doesn't seem fit for purpose in undermining fundamentalism and female genital mutilation; these might be better undermined by variant interpretations of scripture.
But I'm not strong on that point. I'd probably applaud a stronger anti-theistic movement in those parts of the world where theocracy is strong. -
Atheist Dogma.Some of the conversation here has got me thinking. In my extremely secular milieu, militant atheism seems ... silly. But in, say, the US Bible belt or the Middle East, religion is still a very big deal and causes a lot of problems. There is an Islamic civil war on several fronts, one of which is a meaningful yet mostly religious dispute between different interpretations and traditions of Islam (Sunni vs Shia). In those circumstances I imagine an atheist might develop an extreme antipathy to religion in general. And in fact I know some Iranian Leftists who go out of their way to offend against Islamic customs and assert their atheism (they're not living in Iran).
On the other hand, even in those circumstances, I can't really see how militant atheism would be either effective or necessary, since for most Muslims, their religion is just what gives shape and meaning to their lives at the ordinary everyday level. It's a luxury for me to say it, but it still looks to me like religion as such is not the problem, but the social and geopolitical situation in which religious divisions take on greater significance than otherwise. -
Atheist Dogma.Absolutely. And this opens up a related can of worms. It turns out that there is no neat separation of reason and emotion, that in fact reason is not even reasonable without emotional motivation and guidance. This is what Antonio Damasio‘s book Descartes’ Error is about.
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Atheist Dogma.If you have reasons to love someone, you don't love them — Zizek
Are you looking for the opinion of others regarding this quote, before you offer your own?
Is another way of putting this:
If you love someone then you must have no reasons to! — universeness
Well, it seemed relevant to your debate with unenlightened, and I agree with it.
Of course, maybe you can come up with reasons if you think about it, and this doesn’t necessarily negate the love. So, sure, it might be an exaggeration…
But only exaggeration is true. — Adorno
What this means is that sometimes you have to exaggerate to speak the truth. It’s a way of uncovering the essence of an object by pushing against the limitations of reason. Or, it’s a way of cutting through the bullshit, directing your thought in a motivated way that has no time for trivial counterexamples. A dangerous game, but probably important to insight in general.
But it could also be interpreted not as an exaggeration. What is it to “have reasons”? If it’s to have arrived at the love through ratiocination, or if it means that reasons are somehow constitutive of it, or are the motivation for it, then the statement is accurate. I don’t decide to love someone based on a deduction.
So under that interpretation, giving or thinking of reasons post hoc is not what “having reasons” means.
Neither does it mean the causes of your love. An omniscient psychologist’s discovery of the objective “reasons” that you love a person—which would mean the causes of your love—is not what is being discussed. What it’s about is having reasons of your own, as justification for your feeling.
It’s a rich insight (though hardly an original one), so try to understand before rejecting. Be curious. -
Atheist Dogma.It still looks like shouting to me, even if it’s single words. I suspect others feel the same, but I could be wrong.
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Atheist Dogma.I don’t think I need to quote you, since I estimate that most others reading this exchange will see exactly what I mean. I’m not trying to convince you that you’re fanatical.
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Atheist Dogma.Debating you on the area then, is only of value to any readers, of the exchange who may be in danger of theistically ossifying as you seem to have. That possibility alone is worth my effort and my attempt. — universeness
This was in response to @Hanover but it struck me as especially deluded, so I’m butting in.
You give the impression of someone who has waded into a conversation without understanding what the conversation is about, but decides to rant and rave anyway. If I were undecided on the God question, and if your posts had any effect at all, I think you’d turn me towards God. As it is, I’m an atheist, but still think Hanover’s position is far more interesting than yours.
Atheism as such is not a religion, but your sort of atheism is fanatical. Earlier on in this discussion, people including me and you were discussing the causes of oppression, totalitarianism, and genocide, and we broadly agreed that religion could not be identified as the central cause. Better candidates for that cause would be fanaticism and absolute certainty. -
Technique & Will: A Connection Between Schopenhauer and Ellul?Not explicated in his theory is a comprehensive account of how the Will (as manifest in humans or rational animals) utilises its immediate environment. Ellul's conception of technique appears to provide a tenable hypothesis of how humans have come to utilise both inherent faculties (such as cognition) and external resources to reach optimum conditions for evolution. I believe (though I admittedly could not argue this yet) that technique provides adequate motive for the actions of an organism that could not otherwise be reduced to the driving force of Will. — Victor C
This will be a superficial response…
On the face of it, Ellul’s concept of technique, rather than providing a motive or force where the Will fails to provide one, just fills in the details, i.e., describes some of the ways in which the Will is manifest. Technique is, if you like, the particularly human, and particularly modern, manifestation of the Will.
It’s essential to Schopenhauer’s concept that the Will underlies everything, that there isn’t anything that doesn’t ultimately reduce to it. So (again on the face of it), it seems at least compatible with Ellul’s technique, since the latter doesn’t appear to be operating at the same transcendentally metaphysical level.
Oh, and welcome :smile: -
Currently ReadingThe Genocides by Thomas M. Disch — Jamal
I liked it. It’s a short apocalyptic science fiction novel that subverts the escapism and nostalgia of cosy catastrophe by reducing the protagonists to selfish, deluded, incompetent “worms” in a world of transcendent evil. The humans, caught up in…
their own, purely human evils, were not aware of the all-pervading presence of the larger evil that lies without, which we call reality. There is evil everywhere, but we can only see what is in front of our noses, only remember what has passed through our bellies.
There is a lot of biblical allusion too, but none of it offers redemption or hope. It seems to be employed to mock religion, and to mock humanity itself.
I was wondering what made it enjoyable despite its unremitting pessimism and several disturbing scenes. I think part of it is the perverse sense of fun in trashing the facile tropes of popular post-apocalyptic fiction, which is at the same time a more general critique of human delusions. The art of its execution, and the simple thrill of subversion, are what’s enjoyable. In a pleasing dialectical twist, the artistry of the most pessimistic fiction is itself life-affirming.
That said, none of it feels so shocking and important as it probably did in 1965, it falls a bit flat in the middle (I got pretty fed up with the long section set inside the roots of the giant plant), and it’s not as experimental or interesting as I’d been led to believe by Disch’s classification as a New Wave writer. Still, I’ll read more of his work; this was his first novel. -
Atheist Dogma.
For what it’s worth, my own meagre experience writing stories aligns with what you’re saying, Tom. To a surprising extent, I don’t know what I wrote until someone else points it out, or I see it later on when I’m revising it. Working on it to get it right is not an exercise in consciously sharpening the intended meaning of the piece; it’s a formal or intuitive activity. This is why writers, musicians, and other kinds of artists often talk about channeling a greater force, rather than commanding all their resources in an explicit and conscious way. -
Atheist Dogma.If I get the time I think I’ll make a new discussion about it. There are a few ways art can be truthful. Making connections, cognitive estrangement that allows us to see things anew, analysis of personal experience (the phenomenology that @Janus mentioned), and so on. But the thing that springs to mind is Adorno’s notion of the non-identical. There is always something about the object (a pair of boots, a gas station, marriage, or the Russian aristocracy) that escapes our concepts (and thus escapes science), and yet is not necessarily always perceptible merely by sitting there looking at it or by contemplating it. This is where art comes in: to give shape to this experience. That’s roughly the idea.
In War and Peace Tolstoy occasionally leaves the story to expound non-fictionally on the causes of historical change, but it’s a common observation that these bits are less true to life and the world than the fictional bulk of the book. It’s interesting to look at how this works. -
Atheist Dogma.And an offshoot of theism, which is that there is an intentional creator, is that the non-fiction is as much a creation as the human fiction, allowing both the same sort of analysis. That is, read the tales of your life as you would a novel. — Hanover
Does it follow from this that the creator is created too? Anyway, as you might expect, I’d go a bit further and say that the creator is also a fiction. A meaningful one.
the world could not exist without you — Hanover
Thanks.
And none of this requires some leap of faith. It's just a perspective (either culturally instilled or by personal decision) of how you look at things. — Hanover
I think it’s a fundamental social perspective though. It’s what underlies the idea that alongside science, we can investigate the world with the arts and humanities. The latter explore meaning, including the meaning of that which is investigated by the former. -
Atheist Dogma.:up:
The reduction of truth to facts and information is characteristic of our age, with its “strong fact/value distinction” (quoting the OP).
It’s kind of frightening that the idea of artistic truth seems so alien to people now. Worthy of a separate discussion I’d think.
People nowadays think, scientists are there to instruct them, poets, musicians etc. to entertain them. That the latter have something to teach them; that never occurs to them — Wittgenstein, Culture and Value -
Atheist Dogma.I think you successfully interpreted my cryptic comments, which I didn’t realize were cryptic. I was mostly just summarizing the Frankfurt School and similar critiques of positivism, scientism, the administered society, and the Enlightenment.
I shouldn’t have said “a norm of rational behaviour where the means are paramount”. What I meant was the social situation in which it is the means that are susceptible to rationality, rather than the ends. At the personal level, ends may remain paramount, but these tend to be seen as subjective, a matter of taste or whatever. At the social level, political parties campaign on how best to run the economy, not on what kind of economy there should be—and there too, ends may remain paramount (winning elections for the party, profits for owners of capital) but the rationality of basing a society on the profit motive is not questioned, thus the ends here are unexamined.
What I’ve just written might be a bit of a mess, but since your hermeneutic track record is so good, I’ll lazily leave it to you to work it out.
Jamal
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