More lectures by Adorno: An Introduction to Dialectics.

Looks like a great topic but I think I’d have to divert my reading plans to contribute adequately (or even inadequately).

On Certainty — plaque flag

And that reminds me of this:

The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says — Wilfrid Sellars

But now I’ve probably veered off topic, not only from this thread and your comments, but from myself.

So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute the purely or only mental — plaque flag

They’re both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. It’s a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality.

I apologize. That was not my intention; I was only trying to make the same distinction as above: to separate personal conviction from general perception, professional analysis and political platform. Those perspective strike me as each markedly at variance with the others. — Vera Mont

No worries, I see where you’re coming from better now :cool:

You raise interesting questions that revolve around nationalism. I think there is definitely a tension between the modern nation-state and individual conservatism (and traditional conservatism, the philosophical position). The nation-state was in many ways, at least in some places, a liberal and ideological project, and thus not something that conservatives should have been very happy about. If conservatives as representing the -ism of conservatism were able to recalibrate their political positions and take the liberal nation-state as the new status quo, that doesn’t necessarily mean ordinary conservative people did the same.

And yet, they did: the First World War was initially hugely popular, for example, and nationalism, even aggressive adventurous nationalism, has at times been associated with conservatives.

But if it’s true that conservatism is supremely adaptable and anti-doctrinal, lacking in dogma, perhaps this actually frees it to be inconsistent and sometimes embrace dogmas as and when it suits them.

I think it depends on each state we are talking about — javi2541997

Yes indeed, and this is an example of the relativism of conservatism. Conservatisms in different places and different times don’t share much beyond their basic defence of the status quo, whatever that status quo is. It’s interesting to think that conservatism is historically and geographically relative even though conservatives often complain about relativism.

Is that an inconsistency or are they just different kinds of relativism? I think it’s probably an inconsistency, sort of: you cannot, qua representative of conservatism, uphold values as absolute if conservatism in different times and places has defended different, opposing values.

If none of that makes sense it’s because I’m thinking on the fly.

But I wasn't asking about books or philosophers — Vera Mont

I really find this attitude needlessly combative. I wrote what I though about, pretty much off the top of my head, in response to your questions, and because I don’t have all the answers to those questions I figured it might be a contribution to the discussion to mention the philosophers who can help answer them. That you didn’t want replies to mention philosophers or books—this is weird to me but fair enough—is of no concern to me. Just ignore that stuff if you’re not interested.

Thank you — Vera Mont

You’re welcome, but the bit that came after that is crucial.

At least, that was the formula used by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher — javi2541997

They represented a departure from conservatism, and some conservatives doubt that they were conservative at all. Thatcher was a radical. She rocked the boat. The conservatives went along with it, because conservatism is adaptable and she was not threatening many of their interests, even though she was not really a friend of the aristocracy.

Conservatives created the first welfare state and were quite happy to go along with a mixed economy in the UK from the end of the Second World War until Thatcher.

Conservatism is not essentially pro-free-market, but this might be because it has little in the way of essence—it defends hierarchy and power, and that takes different forms. Traditionally, conservatives are pragmatic, not doctrinal.

Generally, what you are describing is the popular, very modern use of the term “conservatism”, but because it is also a political philosophy that’s a couple of centuries old, one which is still influential, it’s worth looking at that too. Vera’s questions pertain to the discrepancies between the two.

Someone mentioned Roger Scruton. He was one of the most prominent conservative philosophers until he died recently, following on from Michael Oakeshott and going back ultimately to Edmund Burke. I see this as the main conservative tradition and the modern use of the term as hopelessly confused. There must be a book about what has happened to conservatism in the past fifty years, and no doubt it’s a strange and interesting story. And unfortunately I can’t just say that what is referred to now as conservatism has absolutely nothing to do with conservatism—it’s more complicated than that.

The SEP article might help sort out some of the confusing uses of the word:

It is contested both what conservatism is, and what it could or ought to be—both among the public and politicians, and among the philosophers and political theorists that this article focuses on. Popularly, “conservative” is a generic term for “right-wing viewpoint occupying the political spectrum between liberalism and fascism”. Philosophical commentators offer a more distinctive characterisation. Many treat it as a standpoint that is sceptical of abstract reasoning in politics, and that appeals instead to living tradition, allowing for the possibility of limited political reform. On this view, conservatism is neither dogmatic reaction, nor the right-wing radicalism of Margaret Thatcher or contemporary American “neo-conservatives”. — Conservatism, SEP

On neoliberalism, libertarianism, etc:

Conservatism is popularly conflated with neo-conservatism and with libertarianism. But right libertarians and neo-conservatives, unlike Burkean conservatives, reject state planning for doctrinaire reasons. Making anti-planning into a principle, or economic liberalism into an ideology, offends the conservative’s pragmatic, sceptical temper, which could admit a role for state planning and economic intervention were such things shown to be effective. Conservatives reject ideologies, of which neo-liberalism is one. — Conservatism, SEP

For me, if there is a core of conservatism it’s a basic suspicion of Utopianism and of the idea of the “perfectibility of man”; a resultant pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain a harmonious community in which change happens only slowly and organically on the basis of experience rather than on the basis of doctrines and principles. Of course, this is to represent it in its best light, according to its self-image, and I can also describe it differently: a pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain traditional hierarchies and relations of power, which are regarded as natural. This last point is crucial I think: class and war and inequality are naturalized in conservatism, and particular social formations dehistoricized.

I didn't say I have problems with notifications in general. I referred only to private messages. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I understand.

I have asked javi2541997 about the same thing today and he told me, I quote, "TPF didn't notify me about your reply either." — Alkis Piskas

So that’s at least two people. I guess I’ll need to have a look!

Well I don’t know why you’ve had problems receiving email notifications. If someone else confirms they’re having the same problem I’ll look into it and try to fix it, otherwise I’m thinking it’s something wrong on your side.

BTW, I found out today from a TPF member that it is you who has set up this place. Congratulations! — Alkis Piskas

Thanks AP :smile:

Mind-independence and indirectness, as concepts, have so far been my target as bothersome notions -- the former because we don't know enough about minds to know either way, and the latter because it seems to posit some kind of ultimate reality that we are approximating towards which is similar to the problem of mind-independence in that since it cannot be known we cannot know we are approximating towards that reality, and therefore we have no reason to claim our knowledge has any relation at all to that notion. It functions like a thing-in-itself. — Moliere

I admire the way you’ve combined topics that I primitively tend to compartmentalize.

When it comes to direct vs indirect realism, sometimes discussions focus on direct/indirect (I tend to be more interested in that), and other times on realism/anti-realism (@Banno seems to focus on that). This is why I tend to talk about direct perception rather than, or more often than, direct realism. It means I can talk about embodiment, affordances, and so on, without worrying too much about ultimate reality or mind-independence, which are bothersome topics.

seems a great segue back to the CPR which I also want to revisit — Pantagruel

I am toying with the idea of doing a CPR reading group here on TPF. I’ve read it once but feel I didn’t really crack it.

That’s a big project though.

As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in the construction of reality, then the assertion of a reality that is 'bigger than the observers' begs the question - it assumes what needs to be shown. — Wayfarer

Fair point, but since I wasn’t trying to show that there is such a reality, this might be a slightly unfair accusation. When I said that idealism is parasitic on the real, it was semi-rhetorical; I perhaps could have said, more boringly, that idealism is parasitic on that which is contingent and transient, which I happen to believe is the reality that is bigger than us. So Kantian-style idealism cannot thereby escape the accusation that it secretly depends on empirical facts--actual people and actual society--to ground its supposedly foundational pure a priori concepts, i.e., its posited transcendentally subjective conditions for objective reality. Since empirical facts are what this idealism is supposed to be explaining with these conceptual conditions, I'm effectively accusing idealism of question-begging.

In a nutshell I'm arguing that the subjective route to the objective, as exemplified by Kant and Schopenhauer, and more loosely other kinds of idealism that seek foundations in some pure and necessary universality removed from the quotidian chaos, are more grounded in empirical contingency than they think. This argument does not rest on realism, though it's motivated by it.

(that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer) — Wayfarer

And mine is straight out of of Adorno :grin:

However, it's interesting that Adorno's attitude differs from my own instinctive sympathies in that he is keen not to just join the realists against the idealists, while at the same time also criticizing idealism. This is to do with his basically dialectical approach to everything, where opposite poles are mutually dependent, and both idealism and realism are somehow true. Maybe.

But I’m probably some way off-topic here; I haven’t read up on Hoffman.

I think the later Wittgenstein is pretty close to the early Heidegger. Lee Braver's Groundless Grounds makes a case for this — plaque flag

Yes, I was thinking about that. I read it years ago.

I am certainly not arguing it is impossible to communicate them but it is difficult. The examples I have given is a sighted person who doesn't dream in images like me and My mother who hasn't had a headache. They can use the words "dream" and "headache" without referring to the same thing. — Andrew4Handel

Here you say it’s difficult to communicate one’s experience, but as support for this you give the fact that your mother can talk about experiences she hasn’t had. I would think this shows rather that the barriers to communication in these cases are not too high at all.

I haven’t read Heidegger. There was a time when I was very attracted to his early thought and I’d planned to read it, but lately I’ve been swayed by Adorno’s rather scornful criticism. But I see what you mean with respect to the observer. However, I think that aspect of Heidegger is shared among a few other twentieth century thinkers.

And who are these people just sitting around observing all the time? Why are they the paradigmatic subjects when others are busy doing stuff?

You say “only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful”, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist. — Jamal

Incidentally, epistemology steps in here to say it’s only from a in my single point of view that I can find any secure knowledge, the “community of speakers” being relatively uncertain. But that’s just the Cartesian mistake, based on a presumed gulf between inner and outer and the choice to begin with the former.

Actually that’s a lie, I’ve read his Philosophy of History.

The “universal form of subjectivity” is Kantian.

That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it? — Wayfarer

Not that I know of. I haven’t read Hegel. How so?

You mean, the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right? — Wayfarer

I mean the reality that the observers are part of and that is bigger than them.

What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer). — Wayfarer

And like all idealism his philosophy is saturated with what he is trying to ground through subjectivity: the objective world, language, and society. When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. When you say “the observer”, who are you talking about? I think you’re talking not only about yourself but about lots of other actual people. Or rather, you secretly or unknowingly abstract away from lots of other actual subjects to the pure form of subjectivity.

That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. Both idealists and realists begin with the objective world, that which is not encompassed by the mind, but idealists don’t realize it.

You say “only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful”, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist.

In the second half of the course, starting around lecture 10, he begins to build an elaborate argument, based on the CPR, against all idealism and all philosophy that seeks a ground of being or knowledge, and for dialectics. It’s rich stuff, though unexpected for an introductory course. It turns out he was doing immanent critique all along.

I’m currently at lecture 15 and eager to see where he goes next. I would honestly be pissed off if someone spoiled the ending for me.

Take your time. If it doesn’t appear for another five years, I can live with that. We’re all just excited about it.

If I read any SF in the near future it’ll be Ubik again so I can say something interesting in your possibly forthcoming discussion.

And a big nose. A nose than which none greater can be conceived.

very bizarre and rather hard to follow — Noble Dust

Perfect!

I hadn’t even heard of that one.

If two people have headaches there is no way of comparing whether both of them are having the same type of pain. — Andrew4Handel

Does this mean we are closed off from others in some kind of profound way? — Andrew4Handel

I think of my subjectivity as my point of view. My point of view is my own--only I can stand right here, right now--and expecting someone else to share it is to expect them to be me, and that doesn't make sense. It's too much to ask. Does this count as being closed off? Maybe it would if we didn't have language to communicate what we perceive and feel (having lived in countries where I don't know the language well, I know the feeling of isolation and powerlessness)--but then if we didn't have language we wouldn't be the kind of creatures who worried about being closed off. Maybe it follows that the conditions that lead us to think we are closed off--a rich inner life that owes its existence to the essentially social fact of language--are precisely those that allow us not to be.

Though I'm sure some people are just "built different" and maintain constant Zen — fdrake

Dicks.

Yep, and this is in line with the common sociological observations about our society of atomism, isolation, and individualism. Sometimes I feel like my interest in philosophy and politics is just an anachronism, like there’s no actual public sphere where any of it could matter. This is a feeling I resist, because I’m an optimist of sorts.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

But does a self help book really change your perspective, or does it just give you one to try on for a while? That’s pedantic though.

Otherwise, this is an interesting thread because I find myself agreeing with what @T Clark and @Michael have said, which has never happened before.

The complementary blue, rather than orange, is designed to undermine any suggestions of Irishness.

let their actions speak for its value — Mikie

Does that go for Heidegger too?

:up:

In the old forum users could pick their own theme but we can’t implement that here. We can’t even change the background colour of the main discussion area—the white is too bright for me but there’s nothing I can do.

Unfortunately we have members who are in the southern hemisphere, so that would not be fair.

EDIT: I could have worded that better.

Also, I was procrastinating.

merely a random change-up based on being tired with the old purple colour — Benj96

:up:

No symbolism.

By the way I've moved this to the Feedback section.

I am unable to understand that sentence. That is to say … huh?