Comments

  • At The Present Time
    On the one side, the statement “time today” may have a sole significance. From the other side, it implies another sentence #2, indicating the exact time of the occurrence of the first one. For instance, “sentence #1 took place on the 12 March,
    at 1:45 p.m.”. Therefore, there has been the operation of objectification of sentence #1. The particular meaning of sentence #1 has been transformed and reduced to an objective and common sense.
  • Monism

    If you say that everything is matter

    Someone can ask: As opposed to what?

    You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'

    But once you do answer - 'Matter as opposed to [the other thing]'

    Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?

    Now you have to explain how matter produces an understanding of something other than matter.


    *****
    If you say that everything is Mind

    Someone can ask: As opposed to what?

    You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'

    But once you do answer - 'Mind as opposed to [the other thing]'

    Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?

    Now you have to explain how mind produces an understanding of something other than mind.
    csalisbury

    In both cases, there have been some presuppositions applied: the monism of the statement is based on the monism of the speaking subject (and vice versa); so it is possible to differentiate between the two kinds of the monisms. Another difference can be found in the relation between the two ones. Further, the unity of the speaking (thinking) subject can also be questioned: the process of thinking has not been a simple indecomposable thing - it implies time. The most fundamental difference undermining monism is time.
  • God and time
    God is understood to be changeless, and therefore timeless, but God is also understood to be the creator of time.

    If God creates the physical world along with time, then God experiences a change - from existing alone to existing along with time.
    Walter Pound
    When we think of time, we apply the synthetic principle of grasping ceaseless changing – one needs to grasp the changes in the thought, to exit their flow for some instant. Similar thinking has been exercised for understanding the essence of God.
    Probably, the idea of universal God coexists with the notion of time.
  • Trauma, Defense

    the psychological response to trauma is a defensive splitting, and the divided selves are mutually antagonisticunenlightened
    This approach has perpetuated the vicious circle - suffering
    has been propped up and amplified by some psychological authorities, theories, and practices.
  • How to go beyond an agonal vision of Reality?
    Spain, my country, is suffering a coup d´etat supported directly by Soros (who met in secret our "president" in La Moncloa),DiegoT

    Could you explain it? It looks like another conspiracy theory...
  • Brexit
    There are numerous attempts to represent the majority of those who voted in favor of Brexit as mislead by irresponsible politicians, ignorant, not sufficiently informed, not responsible, etc. Therefore, now they are given a precious and rare opportunity to fix the mistake, to conduct another referendum or just to cancel the previous one. Nevertheless, if one considers that Brexit has been an outstanding example of the contemporary direct democracy when people directly and openly expressed their will, its failure will demonstrate the supremacy of elite over defenseless people.
  • The Lame Stoic
    I completely agree with your way of defining a classical stoic doctrine – you keep stating it (and, I think that this stoic truth worth being said again and again!)
    Nevertheless, nowadays we encounter new realities that make practicing Stoicism almost impossible. When one watches a movie, plays a video game, works as a financial trader – she has minimal control over her thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. Further, most of the contemporary intensive working and stimulating
    environments completely subjectivate individuals. They in-form them, imposing composite and inevitable Modi of being and thought. Therefore, today it is much more challenging to obtain autonomy and independence of mind than 2000 years ago.
  • The Lame Stoic

    It's possible, though, to distinguish what I think, feel and do as a part of the world from other parts of the world.Ciceronianus the White
    Sorry for being vague. I tried to point out that quite often what I think, feel, and percept has indeed been induced and enforced by external socio-cultural forces; and, in most cases, I do not recognize it. Further, under these circumstances, it can be challenging to practice Stoicism in its classical form. I may think that the most intimate parts of myself are under my control, but actually, they are not.
  • The Lame Stoic
    I think that you are right in defining the central theme of Stoicism. I just want to add
    two more points about difficulties of practicing the stoic “indifference” today. First, after understanding what his true possession is, the Stoic had started practicing the indifference, and the main part was the ceaseless oral and mindful repetition of “handy” truths and maxims so that they had become his inner beliefs. How to differentiate such a practice from numerous auto training psychological recommendations? Second, there is an impossibility to find a clear border between “inner” and “outer,” an inner mind and an external world. How can we determine an authentic mine-ness? So many people cherish, strengthen, and cultivate their “I”; nevertheless ones have become more obeying the dominating outer norms.
  • The Lame Stoic
    how do you strike a balance between the internal conflict dwelling within and the external day-to-day issues, sturm und drang,Wallows
    I was struck by the following fragment from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:
    "always to define
    whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can
    see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a
    whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing
    itself and its components, to which it will eventually return.
    Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity
    for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens
    to us. To look at it in such a way that we understand what
    need it fulfills, and in what kind of world. And its value to
    that world as a whole and to man in particular—as a citizen
    of that higher city, of which all other cities are mere
    households.
    What is it—this thing that now forces itself on my notice?
    What is it made up of? How long was it designed to last?
    And what qualities do I need to bring to bear on it—
    tranquillity, courage, honesty, trustworthiness,
    straightforwardness, independence or what?"
    It includes the most important and interdependent themes of Stoicism
    that one could apply nowadays – spiritual growth is impossible without logical
    and accurate analyses of one’s habitual surrounding. Therefore, the endless accumulation of knowledge and concepts that have not applied to one’s life is meaningless. And, it poses a problem: how to call things by their names, what language should be used?
  • The Lame Stoic
    No, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, we're not "Lame Stoics", however, Epictetus literally was. I speak of just the "apatheia", characteristic of Stocism, which is actually encouraged by the Stoics.Wallows
    As far as I know, even Epictetus encouraged his pupils to be actively engaged in the
    “outer” world. And, himself, as a spiritual leader and teacher, he did not dispose of his duties in his school. In general, one could claim that the central theme of Stoicism was not simple “indifference” and becoming “apathetic,” but also a passion of working on self, of indifference while being fully involved in the "external" events.
  • The Lame Stoic
    "indifference" (the central theme of Stoicism)Wallows

    If “indifference” is the central theme of Stoicism, how could you explain that both Marcus Aurelius and Seneca were the most powerful people of their time, effectively ruling and governing the Roman Empire? Were they The Lame Stoics?
  • Direct Realism as both True and False
    Well, it depends on what's meant by awareness. A computer program could be said to be aware of its inputs. A simulation of perceptual awareness could be built into a robot.

    That's different from having a conscious perception.
    Marchesk

    As far as I see, you differentiate between conscious perception and the state of consciousness.
    Could you define both rigorously?
  • Direct Realism as both True and False
    I accept that direct realism is the case when perception is non-conscious. I'm driving down the road on autopilot. My hands, eyes and ears are directly perceiving the environment as I successfully navigate the car down the road.Marchesk
    Anyway, you are aware of your perceptions. So, what is this awareness, if not consciousness?
  • Time to reconsider the internet?
    We get the answers we seek instantly, we keep up with friends without speaking to them, we get the news as it happens, we watch loops of videos an algorithm chose for us, we click once and get any product in the world delivered to our doorsteps in less than two days.

    Less friction means more time spent, more ads seen, more sales made. Tech companies lose customers during login screens and security verification, and as a result of slow load times. The country’s top computer science talent is paid billions of dollars to further reduce the milliseconds of delay separating our desires and their fulfillment.
    Brian Jones
    As was pointed out in many responses of this thread, we cannot change the course of the internet development since it has reached the point of no return. And, as numerous previous revolutionary inventions, it brings us both advantages and disadvantages. In addition to already mentioned points, the radical novelty of the internet has also been based on the construction of the interaction interface that modeling, enforcing, sustaining, and modulating the whole complexes of human behavior. Using many sites or programs, one must ultimately follow the previously designed patterns and algorithms, interacting with and programming one’s cognitive, perceptual, and volitional reactions. Probably, these tendencies will be further augmented by the intensive AI development. Of course, we benefit from and enjoy the continually growing effectiveness, convenience, and productivity. Yet, aren’t we able to find behind the conventional interface the cybernetic and informational machines’ networks, interacting not with a particular internet user, but with a set of non-individuated intelligence, affects, sensations, cognition, and memory?
  • Time to reconsider the internet?
    Is it not time to consider the possibility that the internet, like Freud’s airplane and Bell’s long-distance feeling, might in fact not be bringing us closer together (etc.), but only pretending to, and in the end doing quite the opposite?Brian Jones
    There are so many clichés and banalities about the internet – to your points, it is possible to add that there has been an ongoing and free exchange of ideas, technologies, and knowledge (in fact, you need to pay for all these). That the internet
    brings people with different cultures and views together (actually, social networking are divided into isolated communities of like-minded persons). That the world has become the global village (very few people have been interested in and follow the global affairs). By the way, what is “the voice of the global village”?
    Has it been the voice of few media giants, dominating the cyber-space?
    we must stop being informed and start forming well, again?Brian Jones
    To stop
    being in-formed, we need to better understand how we are in-formed. As internet users and consumers, haven’t we taken part in numerous machinic and automatic processes?
  • Francis Fukuyama's argument against Identity Politics
    The basic question here is if Fukuyama is correct about identity politics or is this identity politics more of a media talking point than a change in political reality?ssu
    The entire concept of identity politics has still been based on the notions of ideology, rationally behaving political actors (groups or individuals), and political representation. Haven’t we already seen the failure of this theoretical scheme in Fukuyama’s “ End of the History”? Yet, Fukuyama himself has not cared about choosing different concepts. One could find out that the politics of identities has based on the same theoretical base as the notion of populism and Steve Bannon’s thesis and narrative that “The future of Western politics is populist, not liberal”. Yet, both should be explained using more fundamental and appropriate concepts.
    There are attempts to conceive contemporary politics as politics of affect. Understood ideologically, affect is the set of means that the dominating group has applied to make the dominated ones to mislead their own interests and instead to invest into the foreign ones. Nevertheless, affect can be understood as the primary process, whereas ideology has become a secondary effect. Accordingly, politicians and acting groups have not acted and thought primarily pursuing long-term plans and programs. What are matters – an immediate effect of catching a maximum of public attention, getting a positive resonance in mass media, changing a focus of discussion to a more appropriate one, adjusting a discourse and lexicon to momentarily political needs, etc.
  • Renewal and Remembrance.
    Remarque "All Quiet on the Western Front":
    "For us lads of eighteen, they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress--to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs.
    They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.
    While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards--they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone, and alone we must see it through.
    ...we stood on the threshold of life. And so it would seem. We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away. For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the end may be. We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland. All the same, we are not often sad. "

    Millions of people, whole generations had been sucked into the enormous vortex
    of the WW1. Can we understand their experiences?
  • Being interested in words vs things
    You say two contradictory things - or at least two things which appear to be in tension. On the one hand, you seem to claim that discourses involving certain words, and things featuring in our forms of life, interact with one another. That's not surprising, since the way we talk and what we do are intimately related. How I think and talk about chairs partly determines what I do with chairs; what I do with chairs partly determined how I think and talk about chairs. But on the other hand, you claim there is an "abyss" between the two.Welkin Rogue

    Thank you for your point.
    Seemingly, both of us, discussing the word chair, have in our minds kind of an image
    of our own home chairs, and our habitual actions: to move the chair around, adjust it, etc. The meaning of the word accurately corresponds to the regular usage of the item. There are no problems, no abysses… The problem can appear if your company decided to allocate you with some money to order a chair for yourself. You remember that in the similar situation your colleague made a wrong choice, and, after sitting some while improperly, got severe back pain. So, to choose an appropriate chair, you start doing research, reading articles, watching YouTube – just to find out that there are entirely opposite views and options!
    Moreover, you start to doubt in your definition of the chair, the right chair, and the most appropriate chair. You do not know anymore how the chair was designed and produced, what materials were used, how long it can serve you (comparing with old furniture production). Even after careful deliberation, after you made your choice and ordered the chair, you may find that it does not fit your body completely. And, when you decide to come to a store in person you may be stunned by a tremendous variety of chairs – some of them are similar to beds, other ones to stools. In most cases, when one says the world chair, she does not realize the enormous complicity of the real functioning and interrelations of the word and the notated item in society. Yet, they are definitely present even in the most habitual and naïve usage of the word. The gaps and abysses compose the necessary conditions of any linguistic act.
  • Being interested in words vs things
    The “things” have their own form – the state of things, or all actually existing separate bodies with their use, means of production, use, dispose of, etc. So, the word chair, as well as I, have been used simultaneously in two separate registers.
    — Number2018

    Is 'thing' just the ordinary sense of 'thing' here? What does it add to say ""things" have their own form"?

    What are the two registers of use for the word 'chair'?
    Welkin Rogue

    One may think that there is no difference between the word “chair” and the physical item that she sits on. So, there is a naive, routine, and automatic use of language when words have been identified with things. Yet, there are many situations where this practice becomes problematic. A poet, a writer or a marketing specialist may find it more appropriate to apply a chesterfield instead of a chair. Or, if one works in front of computer 8 – 10 hours a day, experiencing back pain, she may start looking closely at her chair, doing research and even asking for an advice, applying to ergonomics’ specialist. So, if we do not take for granted the encounter between the word and the physical item, we can realize that they have entirely different nature. The word belongs to the world of discourse, spoken or written. One could trace the etymology of the word chair, the use of it in different texts, dictionaries, situations, manufacture, marketing, and ergonomics instructions. On the contrary, the physical item “chair” does belong to the world of practical and aesthetic use, design, and production. Therefore, when one is in front of this given chair, it is not just about visual and tactile perceptions of it, one deals with a set of implicit cultural, economic, and social practices. Finally, it is possible to find out that indeed we do not deal with the encounter between one particular given word and an opposite single physical item, but there are the complicated interactions between the two heterogenic registers – chairs as words and chairs as things. “Words” have their own discursive principles of organization and existence, whereas a network of functional, informational, and material processes creates the states of things. Maybe, the case of the chair is not the best example of how Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of expression can be applied. Yet, when one looks at the multiplicity of political discourses, competing for a better compatibility with the same society; the speed with which explanatory narratives and theories appear, flourish and vanish; the enormous intellectual and material resources, applied for maintaining the realm of the words; – one may start to understand better the abyss between words and things.
  • Being interested in words vs things
    I am struggling to make sense of the distinction that seems to be assumed in such remarks between matters of language and matters of fact, as it is sometimes put. So again, I ask, what does it mean to be interested in (or to investigate) X, rather than in the meaning of ‘X’? Or to be talking about X, rather than talking about the meaning of ‘X’?Welkin Rogue

    The mysterious version of the <self> concept doesn’t refer not because there is nothing in the world that satisfies its conditions, but because its conditions are unspecified!Welkin Rogue
    There is a linguistic theory proposed by Louis Hjelmslev and developed further
    into the philosophy of expression by Deleuze and Guattari. Accordingly, an
    Expression/Content relation has been radically reformulated. Simplistically, both
    words and things have their own expression (form), and content (substance).
    The form of expression on the most general level is composed of words and their combinations. The substance of expression is the phonemes of speech, or the letters
    on a printed page, etc. – all possible material means of the medium. The “things” have their own form – the state of things, or all actually existing separate bodies with their use, means of production, use, dispose of, etc. So, the word chair, as well as I, have been used simultaneously in two separate registers. There are no cause and effect relation between both, neither “words,” nor “things” have an advantage or a privileged status. To make this entire scheme working Deleuze and Guattari added
    the concepts of the encounter, diagram, field of forces, actual, and virtual. So, there is nothing mysterious or controversial when somebody says I. You’ve heard (or read) somebody saying it; and you have your particular, but recognizable and similar to somebody else state of mind. So, saying I, you actually repeat the other, who had been already done it. The encounter between the I as a word and me as a definite state of mind/body has been facilitated/forced by the whole assemblage of discursive and non-discursive relations and forces, acting in this particular social field. An individual who says I can possess certain beliefs, emotions, and feelings; nevertheless, all of them are secondary. Yet, the theory proposes the continuum of variations due to the unstable conditions of the encounter between heterogenic components of the enunciation.
  • The Objective Nature of Language
    One of the definitions I use when referencing what's an objective fact, for example, is that which is mind-independent. This definition doesn't cover every use of the word, but generally covers a large swath of uses.Sam26

    Is the synthetic a priory proposition 7 + 5 = 12 mind-independent?
  • Consciousness and language
    You can only find a language useful if you already are aware of your self as seperate from others and that others have seperate minds need to be informed of something that you know but they don't. When we realize that other people have minds too, we find language useful.Harry Hindu
    It would be a mistake to represent acquiring language by babies as the result of fulfilling a recognized need. (Does a child grows up because she wants to become an adult?) And, in the first stages, the acquired language is too weak to serve as a simple mean of communication. So, your point is just a simplifying presentation of the real process of acquiring language as well as the use of language by adults. Yet, you are right that the existence of preverbal self is an absolutely necessary condition. The preverbal self possesses self-awareness and means of communicating with others. A non-verbal child or adult can be aware of her inner states and differentiate them from other minds, as well as inform them through gestures, facial expressions, etc. So, what is the main difference between a non-verbal awareness and mediated by language consciousness? Verbalized thinking, or so-called inner speech does not necessary have explicated grammatical and syntactic structure.
    In most cases, it uses not even words, but amalgamated mixture of symbols, quite often not translatable, a creation and possession of a particular individual mind.
    Nevertheless, an inner speech is the result of a process of internalization of an external language. The inner speech has become an important component of thinking, will, memory, and attention. Mediated by language, conscious psychological processes and acts have become voluntary and non-compulsory, in contrast to impulsive ones.
  • Consciousness and language
    Language doesn't make us self aware. It allows us to express what is already there. It allows us to express ourselves in greater detail and with better efficiency than simply using hand signals and noises.Harry Hindu
    we have selfhood prior to learning a language. Words and grammar simply allow us to use shared symbols to refer to what is already there.Harry Hindu
    Definitely, babies have kind of selfhood before learning a language. Psychologists even differentiate few different selves, acquired by a preverbal child. Accordingly, we can propose the existence of various kinds of self-awareness. Yet, it would be a mistake to underestimate
    the importance of the emergence of a verbal self. Vygotsky showed that the appearance of a verbal -social self profoundly changed the performance of the child's leading psychological faculties – will, memory, attention, and thinking. So, taking Idefonso for conducting psychological tests would probably demonstrate the difference in completing even simple tasks. Your main argument is that Idefonso was able to fulfill essential human social functions. But what about more complicated ones? Could he successfully orient and perform in our digital society?
  • Consciousness and language
    Individuals can now learn to take the collective social view of the psychological fact of their own existence as "conscious beings". Awareness of self is awareness of self as an individual actor within a collective social setting.
    But every language serves that purpose.
    apokrisis
    It looks like you try to represent one particular moment in human history as the universal one. In the vast majority of known cultures “awareness of self as an individual actor” never existed. It is a relatively new Western invention.
    Individuals knew themselves as members of different communities, so their awareness was rather collective than individual. Accordingly, language had not functioned as an individuating and personalizing tool.
    .
    We say, there "I" go, experiencing certain qualia, having certain thoughts, feeling certain things.
    Our mentality shifts up to a sociocultural level where everything is happening to a spectating self - a self that is understood as a contrast to the collective. We now see ourselves living in a world of the like-minded, and so see ourselves as "one of that kind of thing".
    apokrisis
    Even in our individualistic culture, acquiring language and saying I do not necessarily mean that self automatically begin possessing mirroring – spectating qualities. No doubt, that “I” is socially generated and effectuated, but the equation “I am the other” should never be taken for granted.
  • Consciousness and language
    understand what that means for the relationship between consciousness and language.Harry Hindu

    Could you expand? How do you understand the relationship between consciousness and language?
  • Consciousness and language
    Is a new-born baby conscious?Tim3003
    Daniel Stern in his book The Interpersonal World of the Infant proposed a theory of emerging Self and related states of developing consciousness -
    he denoted the sequence of consecutive stages as the Senses of the Self. They include the Sense of an Emergent Self (birth‐2 months of age); Sense of Core Self (2–6 months); Sense of Subjective Self (7–15 months); Sense of a Verbal Self (15 months on). Each stage has been composed by the unique combination of a child’s cognitive, emotional, affective and kinetic attitudes.

    without language that is the limit of our capabilities.Tim3003
    There are different states of consciousness, where individuals are able to do well without
    language: when one attends a concert of symphonic music, her mind deeply immerses into a nonverbal aesthetic experience. Or, when Napoleon observed the field of Austerlitz, he immediately grasped the winning strategy of the battle.
  • Subjectivities

    Walking on the street
    is a good introductory example of an acting subjectivity. Next example could be driving a car, when a driver is not just interacting with external road conditions (in a similar way as a streetwalker does), but also composing a part with a variety of a car’s technological systems and mechanisms. There is no “individuated subject” that is in control of the driving. If one knows how to drive, one acts without thinking about it, without engaging reflexive consciousness. Her actions and subjective components (memory, attention, perception, etc.) are “automatized.” Driving mobilizes different processes of cognition and a driver’s engagement, one succeeding the next, superimposing one onto the other, connecting or disconnecting according to the current events of driving. To reflect on this situation and to shed light onto the nature of contemporaneity subjectivities, there was proposed the notion of machinic assemblage. One could ask a question if
    this notion can be successfully applied further. When our driver arrives at her destination, and (as a customer or employee) enters an office, hasn’t she taken up
    by another machinic environment? If for Tailor and his followers there were humans that had executed the optimized processes, today’s agents of execution
    have been split between entirely heterogenic levels, maintaining interdepending and mutually supportive relations.

    Now that I think about it, to drive the point home, one might even consider taking into account the subjectivity of a cooperation, or the subjectivity of a state: what is the range of action of a state?StreetlightX

    According to Manuel de Landa, the author of “Assemblage Theory,” it could be more productive to conceive they are assemblages of assemblages.
  • Subjectivities
    Subjectivities are more than roles, they become integrated capacities of a person which are exercised in how they live their life.fdrake
    The “old,” personifying discourse (roles, subjects, objects, etc.) has not been appropriate today. Nevertheless, intersubjective, conscious relations have not entirely disappeared; they have been transformed and incorporated into contemporary subjectivities.
  • Subjectivities
    Their habits and personality were formed in the wake of their trauma, and only later did it catch up to them; when they felt things were normal, and suddenly they were not.

    I would suggest that similar things happen even with walking, seeing a child playing in traffic produces an involuntary response; run to help or freeze in terror. This is because we know the norms and know the dangers... But not just know or feel or experience, we only have those attitudes because we live in way which affords them.
    fdrake
    Is that possible to try to broaden farther the notion of trauma to explain child’s integration into pedagogical institutions? When a child for the first time brought to a kindergarten, she finds herself in the entirely new environment, has been forced to adjust her behavior and habits to a set of institutional norms and rules. Outside of her house and family, she has been learned new ways of talking and playing with her peers, as well as expressing her concerns and interacting with pedagogical staff. This transition is quite challenging, and a failure to adapt causes a series of corrective disciplinary interventions. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to attribute the notion of trauma a status of a general explanatory principle. Disciplinary and panoptic spaces and institutions do not play anymore a unique and privileged role in forming and in-forming subjectivities. There is no outer space or position, out of which one could isolate processes of subjectivization. If subjectivities are indiscernible from our social and living environments and actually proceed avoiding conscious representations, the new thought and philosophy are required.
  • Death: the beginning of philosophy
    For a long time the so-called “Russian roulette,” a dangerous, deadly game, has been an extreme way to recognize the value of life and start thinking differently.
  • The Death of Literature
    So, the novel isn't eternal. The Elizabethans didn't write novels. Other forms had popular preeminence--verse and drama.

    What cultural forms will be most celebrated in 20 years is uncertain, let alone what will be most celebrated 200 years from now. Who in 1940 would have anticipated the beat movements of the 1950s? Or the 'psychedelic art' of the 1960s? What will the state of (big C) Cinema be in 20 years?

    Cultural Cassandras are always wringing their hands and bemoaning the decline of [music], [art], [manners], [writing], [you name it]. With some justification, of course. Culture, like a glacier, is always declining. It always heading down and ending up in the sea. But at the other end it's always being renewed.
    Bitter Crank

    You are right in everything, no doubt that new generations will be doing well without the serious novel and other cultural forms will be invented. I just try to figure out how “the death of literature” affects my talking and writing.
    “Absent thee from felicity awhile,
    And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
    To tell my story” (Hamlet V,2).
    What is the way of telling a story today?
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    The judgments psychology make determines the individual and precede all experience.
    How could a knowledge attain that status?
    Blue Lux
    It could be more productive to narrow down an overinflated field of contemporary psychology to attempt to trace the genealogy of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. A scene,
    where an individual comes to a specialist (psychoanalytic or psychotherapist) to get qualified help, advice, and/or got been judged, labeled, and identified is still quite common and has numerous interrelations with general psychology. It can help to expose an authoritative, arbitrary and forcible character of psychological knowledge. Starting from 19 century, the new, restrained and nuclear family (father/mother/children) had been invented and constructed to replace the old, traditional one. There was a set of political, judicial, civic, pedagogical, and scientific measures applied.
    During the creation of the new family, parents were encouraged and instructed to watch, control and appropriate the child’s sexuality, in parallel to the submission of all the process surrounding the infantile body to the disciplinary dressage outside the family. The capitalistic power needed permanent support from psychological and pedagogical knowledge, and vice versa, the new knowledge would be impossible without powerful and institutional support. The establishment of the new family had caused an intensive circulation of incestuous desire so that an
    incest had become a result and an instrument of these politics of family. Later, when Fried and his successors have asserted the incestuous Oedipal child’s desire as the founding knowledge of psychoanalytical theories and practices, they have actually incarnated and reactivated the 19-century’s power-knowledge dispositif.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    it seems to me that scientific knowledge is based on certain postulates and premises of which are supposed to be capable of giving one insight into the nature of the human, but these premises are saturated by the same very human intentions they lay claim to. It seems that psychology has no foundation, but rather that the foundation is set apart in its own, according to its own set of rules, namely the understanding of human intention, drive, volition, etc, which are fundamentally centered around univeral human experiences and desires. These aspects of the human are premised, and the unintelligibility of their metaphysical constitution is rendered obsolete. This is precisely what Nietzsche speaks of. A seeing through the abyss and overcoming Man.Blue Lux

    It looks like you try “to catch up” psychology, to point out its
    inconsequence, to attribute it some “intentions.” Nietzsche’s “will to power,” Foucault’s “will to knowledge.”
    - are these illustrate similar attempts? You are right; it is possible to single out the set of premises which composed the scientific foundations of psychology. Nevertheless, it would be just an abstraction. When somebody, as amateur or professional produces a psychological statement, she does not think about this abstractions – she takes part in complicated institutionalized practices, producing herself as a particular subject of enunciation – most of which
    she applies automatically, almost unconsciously. So, according to Nietzsche’s philosophical tradition, it could be more appropriate to discuss not the hidden intentions of psychology, but its diagrammatic functions and mechanisms.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    Can you explain Kierkegaard's conception of Xhristianity?Blue Lux
    As far as I see it, Kierkegaard’s tremendous effort and genius, aimed
    to save Christianity were not productive – especially after Nietzsche. Kierkegaard said that he was a poet of the faith rather than a knight –he knew he was not up to the task of being a knight of faith, which requires absolute commitment and detachment from what he called hereditary sin. Such a person could be on the surface entirely ordinary, but within she had made the essential qualitative leap of faith. K didn't really know what this was himself, he could only talk about it in his endless "nights of inwardness." So, he rather played, performed zealot of faith instead of he actually had been one. Yet, paradoxically, this Kierkegaard’s failure has become his most successful invention of contemporarily and philosophical ways of being.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    The narcissist is who assumes himself too much significanceBlue Lux
    It is a common sense definition. One could apply it to Nietzsche himself, or to Dostoevsky or Kafka’s heroes,(are they narcissists?)
    asserting that they are entirely absorbed into their own
    hyper-intensive conscious. Yet, what was your intention when you brought narcissism as your primary example?
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    Is there a philosophy that can firmly, for instance, characterize someone as narcissistic?Blue Lux
    It is possible to attempt to apply some of Kierkegaard’s
    concepts from his book “Repetition, the essay on experimental psychology,” as well as Deleuzean ones from “Difference and Repetition” and “1000 Plato”. Narcissism may be understood as staying at one of the stages of the emerging subject. Kierkegaard stated and demonstrated that Repetition is the main force of contemporaneity. There are two kinds of repetition - the subject explains and understands universal as repetition, while his own conscious is a repetition in a different sense, has been doubled and become a repetition of a second degree. Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari proposed their notion of “an abstract machine of faciality,” so that the two different repetitions, significance, and subjectivization work simultaneously, producing the particular subject with narcissistic characteristics. There is the necessary doubling of the conscious when “I“ has converted into the other and vice versa, maintaining close interdepending relations. At the same instant, signifying provides this conscious with the familiar, universal and unlimited world, so that the reflective doubling may endlessly project itself.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    The rift between psychology and philosophy is now distinct. Is it?Blue Lux
    It would be a mistake to represent philosophy vs. psychology relations anthropomorphically: patronage, partnership, divorce, and competition; experimental philosophy and existential psychology show that they are much more complicated.
    Psychology completes what philosophy cannot, which is, define the individual. Psychology objectifies the human as an objective fact. This is the greatest leap in logic. It is true, is it not? It is true that we are an objective fact... But nothing could designate this by virtue of reason or logic alone.Blue Lux
    Intention. The intention of a psychology has as its object something philosophy can never base.Blue Lux
    Nevertheless, one could argue that “intentions of psychology” are quite the opposite to “objectifying of Man," converting human being into a scientific fact.
    By founding an individual as an objective fact, in spite of logical and analytical leaps, psychology nevertheless supports a whole humanitarian discourse. Thus, asserting that somebody is a narcissist implies the existence of psychic instances of the self, id, and superego. Furthermore, it facilitates the production of the individuated subject with a representational conscious and personological unconscious. Next, economics endows the individual with rationality that establishes him as a person free to chose and decide, while political science makes him the agent of individual rights. All these operations lead to a direction, which is quite the opposite to Nietzsche’s project -instead of deepening and exploring the abyss, discovered by Nietzsche, psychology tries to cover the gap, to disguise it, and to facilitate “the return of the Last Man.”
  • Plato vs Socrates
    It is difficult to find out why Plato chose this literary form of his works, where the author is entirely hidden, overshadowed by his hero. Yet, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche showed effectiveness and actuality of this philosophical discourse: it is dialogic not just by its form, but it also applies an essential inner dialogic relation with the other. This new way of thought has been a true philosophical metamorphosis, opening a space for a new sphere of being.
  • Re: Kavanaugh and Ford
    I think that you contradict yourself. From one side, you provide a long list of supposedly real facts and motivations regarding Kavanaugh vs. Ford situation. From the other side, you bring good quotes from Debord, asserting that in Society of the Spectacle, images, and presentations -the power of the false, overshadow and substitute so-called “real.”