I'm basically of the opinion that if you take everything Chomsky said about language, and then held the diametrically opposite view to anything he ever wrote on language ever, you'd be roughly on the right track. Like, you couldn't ask for a better, more exemplary, utterly wrong way to look at language than from a Chomskian POV.

Science is necessarily empirical and based on the assumption that B follows A (whatever A and B cause/effect pair we are considering) via a perfectly natural process. Absent either the empiricism or the assumption of naturalism (for practical purposes), it simply isn't science. — Siti

Great. All the more reason to ensure that we keep open the possibility that new evidence may prompt a revision of our theories, as a matter of principle.

Are you sure? — Siti

Yes. But I could be wrong :)

Maurizio Lazzarato - Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity
Paolo Virno - Deja Vu and the End of History

A couple of Italians to round off the year.

So is there any reason - now that we have happily discarded the argument for irreducible complexity - to doubt that it is equally obvious that A has indeed led to B "...via an evolutionary process"? I can't think of one. — Siti

The necessity of keeping science empirical. I said this from the very beginning so I'm somewhat bemused that we had to detour through a bunch of unrelated dosh to get there. And besides, I said nothing about doubt - a loaded term which I nowhere used - so to be honest it's probably more fair to say that what you've written here has nothing to do with my previous posts. Fallibism is not a question of doubt.

But then you are left with a null hypothesis (which is not really a null hypothesis anyway) that simply states that "you can't get from A to B" when the process has clearly (somehow) done exactly that! — Siti

Ugh, "...via an evolutionary process" obviously, I'd have thought that obvious enough.

As for null hypothesis I simply mean the idea that heritable change is not explained by evolutionary mechanisms. The thesis against which evolutionary science pitches itself. I'm not referring to a null hypothesis for ID or whatever.

The argument is that evolution could not 'select' in favour of a pathway leading to or including "parts" with no advantageous functionality — Siti

I'm entirely with you on selective pressure being a loose net and the reality of exaptation and so on. None of this I dispute. None of this has been in dispute - so maybe save your sermons for class? But I think it's quite possible to decouple, or isolate, as it were, the negative thesis - you can't get from A to B - from the positive one - that each part must have a functional role. I'm perfectly happy to discard the argument for IC - which is irrelavent for a null hypothesis in any case - and simply hew to the conclusion it wants to derive.

IC is committed to teleology because (as Behe defines IC) it makes the assumption that all the parts of an "irreducibly complex" system 'arose' (either by design or by evolution) to fulfill a particular function as part of a particular system. — Siti

But this is just crude adaptationism; the sting in the tail of IC is the second part, in which evolution could not have given rise to something because there was no available evolutionary pathway. But that's just the null hypothesis: that there is no way to get from A to B. That's what's 'irreducible'.

Seriously, that there may be a necessary but unselected for mutation requires no commitment to teleology. A teleological commitment would require the additional inductive leap that this mutation was designed. There is no necessary link between the two.

This is not a particularly complex point to grasp.

Oh I see, IC is committed to teleology because you said so. Cool.

Yes of course. But I simply don't care one bit about ID, which is on par with a belief in unicorns as far as I'm concerned.

Excepting Behe's unjustified leap from unlikely Darwinism to likely ID, how is any of that a commitment to teleology? Like really, explain it in your own words.

If you think the failure of a thesis necessitates the commitment to another - rather than simply leaving explanation in abeyance, as it should do - then you've simply recapitualted the magical thinking of ID proponents.

IC has no commitment to teleology. IC is essentially the thesis that shit happens; nothing more.

Then the rest of what you said is of no relevance, especially regarding teleology, which IC has no commitment to.

All we can do is try to do science to it or not, and if we do try, see if that’s making any progress yet[/] or not. — Pfhorrest

Yep.

The assumption of ID and irreducible complexity i — Siti

IC <> ID. What you say applies to ID, not IC. ID Is a positive thesis, IC a wholly negative one. I'm not at all taking about ID, which is beneath serious debate.

the "null hypothesis" should be the assumption that nothing extraordinary (i.e. 'supernatural') is going on — Siti

No. The null hypothesis is that nothing is going on at all. It has nothing to do with the supernatural, and nothing to do with the 'extraordinary'. That one's theory explains nothing at all is indeed an assumption, an assumption that all science must take seriously without which it gives up its right to call itself science at all. That science doesn't simply admit any theory with a semblence of correlation and is littered with the dead bodies of empty theories which have all attempted to claim explanatory relavence is among it's chief acheivements.

Supplementally, it is not within science's remit to decide beforehand whether or not the universe is amenable to it. Don't confuse science with a crude scientism. But that's another debate.

the whole point of science is to break the reality into smaller and smaller bits in the attempt to better understand how the bits all work together to make the whole. — Siti

Not in the slightest. The 'point of science' is to follow the evidence, and not make a priori assumptions as to what reality ought to be like.

As to the rest, I think any whiff of creationism is utter shit, so you're preaching to the choir. My point is simply that any scientific theory (evolutionary or otherwise), in order to remain scientific and not blind dogma, must be prepared to counternance it's being wrong, or open to future revision by new evidence. That's what a null hypothesis, taken seriously, is designed to guarantee. It's the thin wedge that keeps science from joining the ranks of religious fanatics. We don't counter creationism by absolutizing (existing) science, we do it by insisting ever more on it's irreducible grounding in empiricism.

My point was simply to 'co-opt' IC for science, and to show that taking it seriously does not in the slightest put one on the side of creationists.

Oh dear someone doesn't know what a null hypothesis is, how unfortunate. No wonder you want to defend an unempirical science. You can barely get the basic terms straight.

My favourite :)

What God is: Not.

Fixed it.

But no one takes seriously the possibility that some biological feature is not evolved — SophistiCat

If one is committed to science being an empirical discipline, rather than an ideological one, one had better take it seriously. Alternatively, you're welcome to set up your altar in the corner and join the rest of the fanatics.

Lectures on The Foundations of Mathematics is the source, no?

I don't think that any evolutionary scientists ever start from the assumption that something is irreducibly complex — SophistiCat

If one understands IC as simply a negative thesis ('X cannot be explained by means of Y') then it amounts to nothing but a base statement of fallibilism. It's the same principle as having control groups for tests: the base assumption is always that one's hypothesis makes not one jot of difference, and its only when measured against this standard does any science worthy of the name live up to it. Pretty basic stuff.

Perhaps ironically, 'irreducible complexity' is - or ought to be - the null hypothesis of all evolutionary science. That is, it ought to be the methodological starting point from which any empirical investigation ought to take it's lead - the idea that such and such a feature cannot be accounted for by evolutionary means just is the base hypothesis from which scientific evidence is marshalled to counter. So 'irreducible complexity' should not be seen as something extra-scientific. It lies at the heart of the scientific method without which science would simply become dogma.

Of course this is fudged by ID idiots when the absence of evidence is taken - by magical leap - as evidence for design. As usual it's shitty god of gaps bullshit, as all theology is and can only ever be.

Highly. It's Zizek's metaphysics without the fluff, and the way in which it triangulates Kant, Schelling, and Spinoza is just incredible. A seriously good work of philosophy.

Re: Steigler, I have the first two volumes of Technics and Time sitting under my bed, I just need to get round to them.

To be honest I reckon that kind of language makes me read faster. Like, I'm leafing through Moynihan's PhD thesis right now (also really good), but because it's written in a more careful, academic manner, I'm reading it alot slower (or I should probably say - at my 'normal' pace). I think there's a kind of intellectual fun to be had in writing like that which is exhilarating.

Funnily enough the last book I tore through at that pace was Joseph Carew's Ontological Catastrophe, a book about Zizek which actually (as the title might give away) overlaps considerably in theme.

Also one day I will get around to reading Steigler.

Because joy; because eros.

It's pretty fun right? Ended up finishing it on the same day. Definitely has a momentum to it, and the short chapters help.

Everyone else is always lacking 'critical thinking'. Never found it to be much other than an invective.

Thomas Moynihan - Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History

I hadn't planned on reading this, I started just to see what it would be like and now I'm more than halfway though... oops. Still. A nice break from Varoufakis, who is getting a bit drudgy for me. It's so good though...

"What then is the spinal column, if not a megalith raised to the mineralizing trace of the organism’s diaspora into its own bloating sensorium—each level of axial segmentation a monument to further neural self-entanglement— dorsally fulgurating our cephalocaudal axis, an outward memory of inward collapse? Indeed, despite the fact that cephalopods exhibit extravagantly complex nervous organization, the most integrated and encephalized CNSs belong unequivocally to vertebrates, for whom metameric spinal regionalization repeats into compartmentalizing brain. A pulsing paradox, intelligence enters the worldly scene by emigrating into its own chronotope."

His theories were mere word salads. Speedtime and timespeed and such. He used physical concepts that had not been defined by physics, his theories were really insane. I am not talking about the banned user necessarily, I'm talking about the one on philosophynow. — god must be atheist

Same fellow. Or at least, that's exactly the post I deleted.

We had something similar to that in an older incarnation of the forum. It - the trash can - was a pretty horrible place filled with the most asinine content you can imagine. I thought it was an ugly sore on the forum, and I wouldn't be keen to introduce it here. But that's just my opinion. The other mods and admins may feel differently (edit: not michael apparently!).

The posts can be recovered by other mods, just not me. I'm much too low on the food chain.

Re: appeals, one of the issues is that the forum software just don't provide a good mechanism for it. It's something we'd like, but it's technically hard to implement.

Without intending to be facetious, the posts were literal gibberish, a mix of pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy that could lead to only confused discussion. I'd be able to give a fuller engagement if there was an argument - or access to the posts, which I no longer do - but there wasn't one apart from a speculative word salad, and there's not much to say about that other than to point it out.

Hi. I removed the posts on account of their low quality.

As opposed to 'neosocialism' lmao.

One of the more interesting turns in the literature on neoliberalism that I've noticed is a recognition of a gap between neoliberalism-as-theory and 'really existing neoliberalism', where the latter has outrun the former in ways utterly unseen by it's promulgators. Wendy Brown puts it succulently:

"Instead of being insulated from and thus capable of steering the economy, the state is increasingly instrumentalized by big capital— all the big industries, from agriculture and oil to pharmaceuticals and finance, have their hands on the legislative wheels. Instead of being politically pacified, citizenries have become vulnerable to demagogic nationalistic mobilization decrying limited state sovereignty and supranational facilitation of global competition and capital accumulation. And instead of spontaneously ordering and disciplining populations, traditional morality has become a battle screech, often emptied of substance as it is instrumentalized for other ends." (In The Ruins of Neoliberalism)

Elsewhere, Michel Feher notes that the ascendency of finance means that it's become increasingly hard - per neoliberal theorizing - to approach markets as entrepreneurs, insofar as it's speculation, and not entrepreneurship that ultimately rules the roost: "Neoliberal reforms purported to fashion individuals who would rely on utilitarian calculus - rather than on collective bargaining and vested rights - to maximize their income. By contrast, the subjects of financialized capitalism tend to wager their prosperity on the continuously rated value of their assets - material and immaterial - that make up their capital... Contrary to their conversion to the entrepreneurial ethos, the subscription of economic agents to the dictates of financial markets does not deactivate the polarity between employers and employees without fostering another kind of conflict - one that involves the allocation of credit and that pits investors against the investees who depend on their largesse". (Rated Agency)

In other words, the model sold to people as the best way to get by in life under neoliberalism - you're a utility maximizing individual capable of rational decisions in a fully transparent information landscape! - is simply not fit - is utter garbage - for a world in which it's a literal case of making wagers - betting, gambling - on mostly unknown and unknowable futures that is the key driver of wealth creation in the modern economy. It's the ascendency of the 'animal spirits' (Keynes) that the price mechanism was supposed to put into abeyance.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the traditional distinction between state and market - the one acting as a bulwark on the other - is simply no longer conceptually feasible. The state - which is in debt everywhere around the world - is beholden to (extra-democratic) financiers' interests and is simply incapable of playing the extra-market role so often attributed to it by both neoliberalism and its opponents. So the irony is that there is more than a grain of truth in the neoliberal disdain for the state; only, the reasons are wrong. It's because, and not in spite of, neoliberalism, that the state is so fucking wretched.

Ah yes, the incredibly healthy and definitely not dying welfare state, which has not been dismantled piece by piece and is most definitely not bleeding out on the killing room floor of 'social democracies' everywhere, especially in the name of austerity all over the globe. And 'social justice', that regnant form of justice which is definitely enshrined in neoliberal justice systems everywhere and has also not been under withering attack from every possible angle in recent times. One would of course have to be a complete fucking moron to not notice the ascendency of these things!

Oh my sweet summer child.

Yes, and most cunts rejects the idea that they are cunts. Nonetheless...