Does it however explain the difference between a live cell and a dead cell? — Samuel Lacrampe

It explains that the difference between a living cell and a dead cell is not fundamental.

It makes no sense to classify swarms of atoms as dead or alive. Whether it makes sense to classify a chemical compound as organic or inorganic seems to depend on the context.

On a molecular level carbon atoms, or hydrogen and oxygen atoms etc., may interact in various ways depending on the circumstances. A change in the environment, for instance, could cause an imbalance in the polarity of the water molecule, which in turn might cause irreparable imbalance or damage on the possibility for other non-living components in the cell to interact with each other. When they cease to interact it makes sense to talk of a dead cell.

"spirit or soul" and the more scientific "set of capacities", and then figure out which one is closer to truth. — Samuel Lacrampe

As far as I know the debate on vitalism had more or less dissolved by the 1930s, when there was genetics and a more refined understanding of bio-chemistry.

The synthesis of urea (and other organic substances) from inorganic compounds was counterevidence for the vitalist hypothesis that only organisms could make the components of living things. — Wikipedia

biology, the study of living organisms, does not apparently have a clear definition of the concept of life. — Samuel Lacrampe

The concept refers to many things with different definitions. Hence the lack of one clear definition.

It used to refer to an assumed essence, élan vital, or spirit, that would fundamentally distinguish living things from dead things. But nowadays it is more often used for a set of capacities which arise from the mechanics of bio-chemistry and characterises organisms which can respond to the environment intentionally. Life can also refer to our given time, as in "My life", and as such include my experiences and effects on the world. Unlike the given time of dead things such as rocks my time is probably shorter, but unlike the rocks I can use them intentionally for constructing buildings or sculptures etc., tokens of life.

You can have economic democracy in a company (owned by its workers) operating in a capitalist market. Likewise you can have a capitalist market in a society ruled by a socialist government (eg China). The market is not the whole of society, just the activity of trading goods and services.

But it seems as a technical person you have to be much more rigorous and its alot more challeging to solve problems compared to music. — rohan

Some decades ago there used to be a misconception about black jazz musicians that they would only be improvising, playing by ear and so on instead of studying music theory and history. But you don't get to play like Miles Davis, compose like Charles Mingus etc. without the knowledge and skills you get from rigorous study of theory and practice. John Coltrane honed his skills every day for 17 years before he could begin to make a living as a musician.

Competition is cut-throat for musicians, it pushes the best of them to be rigorous on the border of insanity. Life as a technician is easy in comparison.

Here's a link to a musician's take on practice and learning.

The concept 'happiness' does not arise from there being another concept, 'suffering'. Happiness is an experience, recall, a biological phenomenon. That's what the concept refers to.

The value of happiness arises from the effects of being happy, e.g. its benefits on your health, fitness, and ability to interact socially. Neither the presence nor the absence of suffering is necessary for the value of happiness.

Could happiness exist without suffering? — MonfortS26

Yes.

Happiness can be derivative from identifying that suffering has diminished or disappeared, for instance. But it is not necessary to suffer in order to be happy. Nor is a lack of suffering sufficient for being happy.

Perhaps it has to do with the society that nurtures the artist. — Cavacava

What society has ever nurtured artists? How could anyone invent anything valuable if the values would be predetermined? Allegedly John Coltrane played his instrument for 17 years with few if any other rewards from it than what he himself could hear. His art emerged from practising the necessary skills, not from predetermined cultural values.

If you would do art primarily for applause, as a means to satisfy other interests, like being modern, then that's probably all you get. You don't have to love art, nor be interested in art, to be a modern artist.

So what made Rimbaud assert the necessity to be absolutely modern?

I think it is fairly clear that art is an end in itself, many artists wouldn't care less whether Society expects their art to be modern. We produce and consume art primarily because of its real qualities that we identify and enjoy, regardless of whether they satisfy the ideology of being modern.

Outside modernised societies it is easy to find art which is not modern, but also inside modernised societies you can find contemporary art which seeks to be eternal rather than fashionably transgressive or whatever it means to be modern.

"It is necessary to be absolutely modern" has always held. — Cavacava

It is not necessary to be a Hegelian, nor a Modernist.

no one acknowledges the inevitable flow of how art evolves with consciousness. — Noble Dust

19th and early 20th century historians of art and architecture did, but they were wrong. For example, Wölfflin, Schmarzow, Gideon and others worked under the dubious assumption that art evolves with consciousness from, say, something simple to something advanced.

The tiny space inside ancient Egyptian pyramids, for instance, was explained as the expression of a less developed consciousness than the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. The most advanced consciousness was supposedly exemplified in the austere modern designs of the modern architects for whose organisation Gideon was the secretary. His "operative historiography" of architecture made the consciousness of the members seem to be the most evolved in human history. Megalomaniacs.

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The ancient Egyptians depicted what they knew, not what they saw. As far as I know it was not until the 19th century when the very idea of art began to orbit around the latter idea, that art would only be what an artists sees from his/her subjective point of view. The idea of art as something objective was covertly banned.

“Valuation as a real psychological occurrence is part of the natural world; but what we mean by valuation, its conceptual meaning, is something independent of this world; is not part of it, but is rather the whole world viewed from a particular vantage point” — River

It seems to be the dubious assertion that what we mean by 'valuation' would not be set by us, nor its real occurrences in the natural world, but some otherworldly "conceptual meaning" that suddenly arises by viewing the whole world from a particular view point.

what's wrong with fascism? — Question

Many things, but I'll mention two: anti-intellectualism and violence. WW1 and socio-economical unrest pushed people to embrace fascism. But where did fascism come from? The ideas of the ideology didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere: they have a history, and they appear elsewhere too, in philosophy even.

The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s, and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time. The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and democracy. The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism. The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. The fin-de-siècle intellectual school considered the individual only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of individuals. They condemned the rationalistic individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society. — Wikipedia

Hi, I don't think we debate whether absolute truth exists. If you look at the premise of the archaeological method, there is an assumed ground for thought beyond logic, grammar, and beneath consciousness. I question whether such a ground for thought exists. What conditions satisfies its possibility?

Absolutism is hypocritical in the sense that it asserts its "truth" regardless of what is true. It is indifferent to sufficient reason to believe x. Instead there "I want x!". That's not so scientific.

One Foucault's major points is that an argument (or discourse) is itself an expression of power. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sure, but powers beyond grammar, logic, and awareness are not part of, nor do they necessarily influence, the grammar, logic and truth of words from which the explanatory power of an argument arises.

When we argue a case we do violence to other ideas, cordoned them off, make them unacceptable, believe they are meaningless and cause other to reject or denounce them within their own thoughts-- it's the ground of thought which sets-up the violence committed against particular people (e.g. the mentally ill, the criminal), to a point where it cannot even recognised as an act or violence and power), such as thinking the punishment of a criminal is just "inevitable" or that someone with a mental illness cannot make truthful (or "reasoned" ) comment or have honest motivation.

It's this awareness of power you are struggling with. Your problem is really not that Foucault somehow rejects truth. . . — TheWillowOfDarkness

He also sneaks in powers beyond logic and grammar, recall. I doubt there exists a "ground of thought" of powers beyond or beneath thought. If it exists, would we not still be free to veto the outcome of our supposedly power-induced thoughts?

The myth of The Truth no longer functions. We are cursed (blessed?) to recognise what our understanding, culture and actions do to others in the context of power. The blindness to the violence which accompanies our understanding of others and the world around us is lost. — TheWillowOfDarkness

One does not have to explain away truth as a myth in order to understand and avoid bad effects of power, ignorance and so forth.

All along you have been accusing Foucault of taking aways the relevance of truth — TheWillowOfDarkness

Right, but I never said that he was terrible, nor that he was just reducing argument to discourse. He did many things, and perhaps he was a great guy. I'm neither attacking the person, nor all of his work, only that premise of his method, from which it seems possible to infer something that to me looks like a philosophical disaster. I hope I'm wrong..

Why would a widening of what we understabd to be argument 'dilute it's significance' rather than amplify it? — StreetlightX

Well, you neither amplify nor widen the explanatory power of an argument by adding the power of physical violence, for instance. We might be exposed to many different powers. But violence won't change the truth of words, their conclusion, nor the explanatory power which arises from a conscious use of grammar and logic.

Now suppose Foucault's premise is correct, that an argument consists not only of its explanatory conscious use of grammar logic, but also other powers beyond them, such as violence. Then we are not only exposed to many different powers, but we are helplessly infuenced by them, as well as our conscious use of grammar, logic. That's how the power or significance of the truth of words is reduced or diluted to a point of homeopatic nothingness. In effect a sneaky covert way to replace true argument with his own version: discourse.

Again, this is not an argument made by Foucault — StreetlightX

And again, it is inferred from the premise of his method.

More than half of your posts attempt to intimidate and diagnose my alleged ignorance. That's low quality argumentation. Someone who is confident about a subject does not usually behave like that. I think we're done.

No, you circumvented my inference by saying that Foucault's focus on power would entail "a widening of what an argument is". That's effectively a dilution of the significance of argument, hence my reply:

The explanatory power of the argument is thus made less significant. . . . Hence Foucault sneaks in his own version of "argument": discourse. — jkop

Furthermore, you obsess about how critics tend to misread Foucault, but I never said that he opposes truth with power, nor argument with discourse: it is trivially true and uncontroversial that we are exposed to many different kinds of power.

What I think is controversial, however, is the belief that powers beyond or beneath an argument would somehow compromise the argument or its outcome, and thus render the truth of words insignificant... simply put: anything goes, and its deplorable effects.

You're a hypocrite who insists on truth while thinking that you can exempt yourself from it's standard when it come to your unstudied dismissal. — StreetlightX

Again you attempt to merely diagnose my criticism from a superior vantage point, and assert that I'm ignorant of details in Foucault's work. What's the benefit of that?

If you know better, then why don't you engage with that premise of Foucault's method which I found problematic. I explained why I find it problematic.

Moreover, isn't Foucault and his own claims susceptible to the alleged powers beneath our consciousness and beyond logic? Can we not discuss this on the ground, without superior vantage points, intimidation, and so on? I mean, that sort of behaviour also a good reason to not read a writer.

This is nonsense though, for author's like Foucault are hardly that obscure. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Authors like Foucault ain't that clear either. The context of my previous post was that obscurity of expression might be sufficient reason to skip reading a writer, such as Heidegger or the postmodern writers mentioned by McDoodle.

Reading Foucault, it's not hard to understand, for example, that he's not just reducing knowledge to discourse or power. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I never said that he would just reduce knowledge to discourse.

Yeah I guess. :)

Which 'postmodernists' do you think wouldn't accept the result of a DNA test? — csalisbury

Social constructionists might want to challenge the test as anachronistic if the birth in question occurred before the 1980s when testable DNA had yet to be "socially constructed".

Allegedly Bruno Latour has claimed that the ancient pharaoh Ramses II couldn't have died of tuberculosis since it was yet to be socially constructed as a single identifiable disease in the 19th century.

Not only are they against postmodernism, they do indeed have some sort of disdain even to read the people they believe they will disagree with profoundly. More than one told me it was sufficient reason not to read Heidegger that he was a Nazi, for instance, — mcdoodle

Heidegger's obscurity makes him more of a guru than a philosopher, which might be sufficient reason for students or teachers of philosophy to skip some of his work. Being a Nazi is also part of his obscurity.

Obscurity might intrigue us, but we shouldn't take for granted that something with an assumed meaning has a meaning. Meanings can be absent, and obscure jargon can make trivial meanings appear more significant than they are. To skip obfuscatory literature does not mean that we lack curiosity, an open mind, nor ability to comprehend the language. Bullshit wastes lives.

Furthermore, a writer and a reader share a responsibility to maximise comprehensibility. To simply expect one to "qualify as a reader of Foucault" puts all responsibility on the reader, whereby the writer (or his fan) becomes a self-appointed authority on how to interpret the assumed meanings; anything else can be dismissed as a "misreading". But we don't get constructive debates without a shared responsibility or respect for the truth of words.

I think his method is tremendously powerful and is firmly in the philosophical tradition. He reaches back to Plato and Aristotle — mcdoodle

I get that Foucault was a true intellectual, but I think the premise of his method is effectively anti-intellectual, It is arguably related to today's "alternative truths".

I get how the assumption of powers beneath consciousness and beyond logic can have such a deplorable influence on people's respect for argument and the quality of thought.

If uncritical acceptance of his doctrines qualifies a reader of Foucault, then I'm happy to decline. But I was never applying to be "a reader of Foucault", Instead I am criticising claims ascribed to Foucault, his method, and the deplorable influence they have on the quality of thought (for example, in our universities).

Furthermore, your claim is false that I would be opposing argument with power. It is open to read:

The explanatory power of the argument is thus made less significant, or irrelevant even, compared to, say, bribery, good looks, or whatever powers there could be lurking beneath consciousness. — jkop

It is neither equivocation nor misreading to infer that he is, in effect, replacing argument with discourse.

He does so by introducing alleged powers beyond argument, which may compromise the argument even. The explanatory power of the argument is thus made less significant, or irrelevant even, compared to, say, bribery, good looks, or whatever powers there could be lurking beneath consciousness. Hence Foucault sneaks in his own version of "argument": discourse.

Does my use of the word "replace" matter a lot? Foucault's prose is notoriously dense, so let me quote what is written on the subject in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The premise of the archaeological method is that systems of thought and knowledge (epistemes or discursive formations, in Foucault's terminology) are governed by rules, beyond those of grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period. — SEP

As I understand it, what governs the outcome of an argument is, then, not the truth of its premises but some force beyond it and beneath our consciousness. That sounds like a rejection of argument to me, and without argument there are just thoughts and discursive formations (e.g. formed by the act of discourse).

Neither did he equate discourse with rhetoric (and indeed spent alot of time and effort trying to disentangle the two). — StreetlightX

I'm sure he did, but did he succeed, or just try, and thus failed to disentangle discourse from rhetoric? Sorry for being so vulgar not being a fan of his.

Not if one is arguing for the benefit of the audience — andrewk

Foucault replaced argument with discourse, recall, so, you don't get to argue at all. Instead there is discourse, and whatever rhetoric you can muster e.g. by word play, charm, bribery, populism... anything but words that refer to facts. Explain the benefit of that.

But my earlier point is, people are often saying this sort of thing, but not citing the apparent purveyors of it. Who are these postmodern 'thinkers'? What is the detail of their claims? How do they get to be so influential? Why is it so hard to name or quote them? It would be good to get to grips with them. — mcdoodle

If one that I dislike has actual social implications, I will argue against it on a political level. But that's arguing against the idea, not against a nebulous 'ism'. — andrewk

What you guys want seems unreasonable. Foucault, for instance, replaced the very idea of argument with discourse, and truth with power (Archaeology of Knowledge). Under such premises it is futile to argue against anyone's detailed ideas.

this is more of a historical period — Moliere

According to Chomsky it was around the 1970s when a group of Parisian intellectuals and maoists (e.g. Julia Kristeva & Co.) could no longer deny the atrocities in Asia for which other maoists had been responsible. So, did they reconsider? No, instead they became outspoken post-structuralists who rejected the self-sufficiency of right, wrong, true, false, good, bad and so on. As I understand it they exploited problems of philosophy as a means to get away with a dubious past.

Not all Parisian intellectuals were maoists, of course. But most of them had (or still have) an obfuscatory style of writing which has the illegitimate benefits of making themselves (or their interpreters) the sole intellectual authorities of their claims, and thereby also immune to criticism. If one does not blindly accept their claims one runs the risk of being intimidated and accused for being ignorant.

I think postmodernism has little to do with philosophy, although demarcation seems to be a recurring theme. Kristeva, Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault, Deleuze etc. became intellectual rock-stars by making all kinds of outrageous claims embedded in impenetrable jargon which attracted the intellectually curious as well as those with a grudge against established knowledge, skills, or habits.

It is not over yet, though. Currently many professors at our universities are old fans of these rockstars. Most graduates from my school of architecture know very little about how to build, because many of their teachers think it is naive to believe that there would be right or wrong ways to build. As if an absence of right and wrong would make us creative. But the way we build will therefore be determined by power instead of knowledge or rightness. I don't think that's so creative.

Not when the claim is supported by good reasons. But to say that no reason is better than another would be dogmatic, because without the possibility to distinguish the quality of a reason from another one would merely think what is good or true (or whatever some threat or power makes one think) without the support of good reason.

Great! (Y)

Postmodern "thought" is among the most pernicious anti-intellectual movements in modern times. In philosophy it matters little (most of it is sophistry) but in practice it matters quite a lot when teachers and intellectuals obfuscate right and wrong, true and false, good and bad. When large parts of the population no longer know or care about what is right or wrong, they are more susceptible to irrational decisions, unethical management at work, unethical research, or whatever power tells them to think or buy. Only might makes right in a postmodern society.

By distinguishing one's personal experience as a fact from one's personal belief about its meaning or interpretation.

For example, I taste a sip of coffee, and the experience lets me know, directly, what it tastes like. Now I may form a belief about it, predict what the next sip might taste like, under other conditions etc.. My belief can be right, or wrong, because it represents a probable taste of the coffee. The experience, however, doesn't; it gives me direct access to what the coffee is like, its taste is not represented but presented in my conscious awareness. There is no ultimate coffee-taste "in-itself" which each sip would somehow represent more or less successfully (not to be confused with an intended taste that a barista, for instance, might want to achieve as s/he prepares the coffee).

The idea that experiences would be representational is utter nonsense, yet persistent in thought about perception where it is fueled by bad arguments, such as the argument from illusion.

What exactly could be in doubt when you're having a personal experience?

In order to be fallible and something to doubt the experience would have to represent something. There is no point to treat the experience as fallible except under the assumption that it would be a representation, like a description, picture, or a model of what you experience. But I think this assumption is false; experiences are not representations.

An experience is what it is: the conscious awareness of some object or state of affairs under such and such conditions of experiencing it. Then it is neither right nor wrong, just how the object or state of affairs is experienced under such and such conditions, as a matter of fact. Nothing is then represented in a right or wrong way, but presented in your experience.

England, actually (if you're referring to the hosting company). — Michael

No, in PayPal one is asked to choose the currency, and at the forum's subscription page it says $, hence I assumed that this is managed in the USA, or at least that donations should be made in $.

I assume that the site is managed in the USA, so I sent some US $ (via PayPal).

Another thing which can help keep the site going is a secure connection for the login page, as explained here:
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Protect-your-privacy/Insecure-password-warning-in-Firefox/ta-p/27861
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Insecure_passwords

What philosophical question gets under your skin? — csalisbury

What sometimes gets under my skin is not a particular philosophical question, but the misuse of philosophical questions. For example, when the problem of demarcation in the philosophy of science is used as a means to get away with pseudo-science, fake news, mysticism, or other shady businesses that thrive on a mistrust of the intellect.