Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

Your recourse to biology is misleading. Of course we're two separate bodies, having our own thoughts and feeling our own feelings. But a communication is meaningless without the concept of a "We" that can potentially receive it. The existence of more than one subject grounds the possibility of communication, and its meaning is decided not by a single individual - not by "you," or "me," or any single subject. Meaning is collective. I know you like to think otherwise, what with your whole "intentionality" bias; but you're well outnumbered and out-researched in this case.

I'd suggest you go and read Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, Daniel Dennett, and a slew of other language philosophers who have studied and written extensively on this issue. Especially Dennett's chapter "How Words Do Things With Us." Or read Wittgenstein's commentary on how what the essence or individual meaning of a message is doesn't matter; what matters are the agreed upon rules of the language game. These rules are not decided individually, nor are they subjectively communicated. Rather, they are collectively agreed upon through complex cultural processes. Communication, as it practically occurs in actual use of language, is predicated entirely upon previously established rules and meanings in which multiple parties must take part.

 

[Dak]

Your recourse to biology is misleading. Of course we're two separate bodies, having our own thoughts and feeling our own feelings. But a communication is meaningless without the concept of a "We" that can potentially receive it. The existence of more than one subject grounds the possibility of communication, and its meaning is decided not by a single individual - not by "you," or "me," or any single subject. Meaning is collective. I know you like to think otherwise, what with your whole "intentionality" bias; but you're well outnumbered and out-researched in this case.

An appeal to authority and majority?

I'm not saying "we" isn't a useful reduction. Merely that "We" don't exist.

I'd suggest you go and read Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, Daniel Dennett, and a slew of other language philosophers who have studied and written extensively on this issue. Especially Dennett's chapter "How Words Do Things With Us." Or read Wittgenstein's commentary on how what the essence or individual meaning of a message is doesn't matter; what matters are the agreed upon rules of the language game. These rules are not decided individually, nor are they subjectively communicated. Rather, they are collectively agreed upon through complex cultural processes. Communication, as it practically occurs in actual use of language, is predicated entirely upon previously established rules and meanings in which multiple parties must take part.

Multiple individuals making agreements.

 

[Einherjar86]

No. No one is making agreements or decisions. They occur without any individual "making" a decision. I know this is difficult to grasp, but it's actually how these processes take place. No one is making agreements; they occur beyond individual subjecthood.

 

[Dak]

No. No one is making agreements or decisions. They occur without any individual "making" a decision. I know this is difficult to grasp, but it's actually how these processes take place. No one is making agreements; they occur beyond individual subjecthood.

Not true. Someone creates a new word or term or derivative of an old one. This was individual. Even if it was a callaborative effort, we have multiple individuals. Then each subsequent user has to decide whether or not they will utilize this new word/term. Like, no one had to pick up "YOLO", or the overuse of the word "like". People evaluate,although not necessarily a conscious process, the value of adding or ignoring new information all the time, and pieces of language are no different.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not going to keep going back and forth with you on this. That's not how it happens, but feel free to keep believing that. Terms like "create" and "decide" don't apply here, and you're in no position to claim otherwise, not having studied the phenomenon of language. I'm not going to go through all the references and citations of language theorists and philosophers who have researched and written on this. Words aren't created by single individuals, and their meaning isn't determined solely by the first subject that happens to contingently utter them. You're thinking on this whole subject is flawed and deeply dependent on a Cartesian ideology that firmly cements meaning and intention within a subject. It's been thoroughly proven that language doesn't work this way; it's an institution that only makes sense as a network, as infiltrating a multiplicity of subjects and parties. No one creates words and their meanings.

 

[Dak]

You are missing the point. It's equivalent to missing the trees for the forest. In fact, what I am saying is exactly the same as saying "there is no forest, there are only many individual trees". While forest is a convenient reduction, forests are subjective and abstract. I think that what you appear to be suggesting, if taken without any attempt at nuance, completely flies in the face of your materialist (if that label is incorrect I apologize) view of the universe.

 

[Einherjar86]

Except that trees' root systems are often interconnected.

Just because words and meaning don't derive from specific or identifiable individuals doesn't mean they don't emerge materially.

 

[Dak]

Except that trees' root systems are often interconnected.

Yes and they may depend on many critters and the sun and all sorts of other things to grow successfully. That's beside the point. It is a rather poor analogy since trees, for all we know, cannot be conscious (or even subconscious) agents.

Just because words and meaning don't derive from specific or identifiable individuals doesn't mean they don't emerge materially.

There is ink on a specially processed thin layer of wood or other substances. The form the ink takes is abstract and immaterial.

 

[Einherjar86]

Your cryptic little comments don't work for me. Not only do I not understand what you mean, I don't think you're correct. How can something's form be abstract and immaterial? Form cannot be separated from content.

 

[Dak]

Your cryptic little comments don't work for me. Not only do I not understand what you mean, I don't think you're correct. How can something's form be abstract and immaterial? Form cannot be separated from content.

Immaterial was a poor word choice but atm I do not have something more appropriate. These letters, their shape and arrangement to include syntax, don't have any sort of inherent properties, rules, etc. It is all completely arbitrary and abstract. There is nothing inherently "A-ish" about the letter A. I'm not sure if that is sufficient to explain what I am calling into question regarding their "materialness".

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm going to try and follow this:

Just because words and meaning don't derive from specific or identifiable individuals doesn't mean they don't emerge materially.

There is ink on a specially processed thin layer of wood or other substances. The form the ink takes is abstract and immaterial.

Immaterial was a poor word choice but atm I do not have something more appropriate. These letters, their shape and arrangement to include syntax, don't have any sort of inherent properties, rules, etc. It is all completely arbitrary and abstract. There is nothing inherently "A-ish" about the letter A. I'm not sure if that is sufficient to explain what I am calling into question regarding their "materialness".

The materiality of the signifier is entirely contingent; the fact that signifiers assume the form they do is not in accord with some predetermined essence. I'm not sure why you think I'm suggesting that's not the case, or how anything I've said contradicts this.

Language, in this material sense, is not "created" by any single individual, nor can its "creation" be quantified among multiple individuals. The entire process of language production is an unconscious, collective effort that would not have even found the need for existence among only one individual.

There was no first person to use a signifier; the use of any signifier, for the very reason it comes into existence, is predicated upon an acknowledgement that its use is communal and is only effective if one person is not the only individual meaning it (or making it "mean"). There can only have been the first group of people to use a signifier, and the individuality of these people, while biologically true, cannot be ascertained from their participation in the use of a signifier.

Your approach suggests that a message can, theoretically, be quantified and its pieces be parceled out among the group, thus committing each portion to the proper individual who meant it. This, however, is not even the case theoretically; meaning cannot be traced back to parties in this way. Individuals only mean something based on what prior rules/norms have been established by the group. Meaning is never entirely individual; it is always collective.

I'm not denying that individual sensations and emotions taking place within the body aren't individual; but the linguistic process is not individual, and by taking part in language a subject assumes the role in an institution that is determined collectively. In "How Words Do Things With Us," Dennett writes:

The back-and-forth process that narrows the distance is a feedback process of sorts, but it is just as possible for the content-to-be-expressed to be adjusted in the direction of some candidate expression, as for the candidate expression to be replaced or edited so better to accommodate the content-to-be-expressed. In this way, the most accessible or available words and phrases could actually change the content of the experience

What Dennett suggests is that individuals certainly experience sensations that aren't felt collectively; but their expression is determined by collective terms, by linguistic processes that are not the result of solely individual creation or decision. The group decides the best signifiers to use, and unconsciously conditions its members to navigate language based on the assumption that it is a collective institution.

 

[Einherjar86]

This is a great critique of Žižek's political praxis. I'm always confused as to what exactly the crazy Slovenian's vision for a political utopian future is, but Roos makes some excellent points in this little piece:

http://roarmag.org/2013/04/zizek-indignados-occupy-direct-democracy-critique/

In his typical academese jargon, Žižek argues that “the ongoing popular protests around Europe converge in a series of demands which, in their very spontaneity and obviousness, form a kind of ‘epistemological obstacle’ to the proper confrontation with the ongoing crisis of our political system.” Rather than transcending the thoroughly discredited system of political representation by moving towards an emphasis on political participation, Žižek seems to argue that we should abolish representation and participation altogether and impose a form of authoritarian leadership by — and I quote — an “elite class” that will “act as a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy: the impossible ideal of the ‘omni-competent citizen’.” What we need, in other words, is a new technocratic elite. According to Žižek, the people “need a good elite” because they do not know what they want. Indeed, “it is through [the Master] that they discover what they ‘really want’.” Only the sovereign decision of a strong leader can create the preconditions for the great Rupture.

Oh my...

 

[Dak]

Statists gonna state.

 

[Einherjar86]

A while back, Dak and I were having a conversation about value scales somehow in relation to Egyptian pyramids. I was trying to argue that we can't view the construction of pyramids, or comparable monuments in ritual-based cultures, the same way we can view decisions being made today. Interestingly, this morning I'm reading through a Fredric Jameson article, titled "The Vanishing Mediator; or, Max Weber as Storyteller," that effectively makes the point I believe I was failing to make:

In a tradition-oriented society, indeed, where tasks are assigned by birth or by ritual, the internal temporal dissociation within the act itself that characterizes the lag between an aim and its execution is not yet present. The techniques for achieving a given end are themselves sacred, are therefore performed for their own sake and in their own right.

[...]

It is worth noting that even when we reach the birth of philosophical abstraction in classical Greece, the elaborate Aristotelian system of the four causes (material, effective, formal, and final) implies a somewhat different orientation toward activity than our own stark opposition between means and ends.

[...]

Thus, for Aristotle, the clay (material cause) still demands to be formed into the pot; the métier still has a kind of inner logic, a voice of its own; and the preexisting forms and patterns do not yet have the stark independence of the modern notion of an 'end.' Obviously, the modern notion is implicit in the Aristotelian scheme, but it does not yet function with the abstract and depersonalized force it has come to have in the modern secular market culture, in the world of desacralized technique.

[...]

Now [i.e. modernity], for the first time in human history, the realm of values becomes itself problematical and can be isolated and contemplated independently; now in the new middle-class culture for the first time people weigh the various activities against each other; what we call private life or individualistic subjectivity, indeed, is precisely the distance that permits them to do so and hold their professional enterprises at arm's length.

 

[Dak]

I don't see how the idea of the equal value of performance with end disproves valuations. We aren't discussig the nature of where the values come from. I reject labeling certain cultures as "ritualistic". All cultures have rituals, from the mundane to elaborate. They just don't all look like indian dances or incantations etc, and they do all affect value scales.

 

[Einherjar86]

As I understood our discussion, you wanted to separate the finished product (e.g. pyramid, or temple, or idol, etc.) from the process of production itself. What I was saying (and what Jameson says) is that you can't do that. The ritual itself is sacred, and thus can't be valued according to the time and effort required to create the finished product. Older cultures don't weigh activities against one another, as we do today, according to what end they might achieve. They didn't conceive of action in this way.

 

[Dak]

Sacredness is a valuation set by some original person or group of persons, which then affects the valuations of others.

 

[Einherjar86]

Okay, I'll agree; but it isn't acknowledged in an evaluative way precisely because the "realm of values" hasn't historically come under scrutiny. Rather than a set of values, it's contemporarily understood as just the way things are.

Now, on top of that, we can see how evaluating something like a pyramid based on cost-benefit analysis of its construction is anachronistic and doesn't apply to ancient Egyptians. If the process/act itself is considered sacred, then its relation to the finished product assumes an entirely different form than it would today.

 

[Dak]

I think we've touched on this a few times before much further in the past. I agree that the "cost/benefit" valuation of a religious/ceremonial type event or structure is not necessarily going to correspond to some sort of material benefit (although it absolutely can). It will, however, yield a benefit of some sort to those responsible for initializing construction/planning of the event/etc, and then also the participants, spectators, and so on. Otherwise, they would not participate in whatever facet they did (not even taking into consideration the possibility of coercion). Opportunity cost dictates this. Anything we do, resources we use, etc., rules out all other potential other activities, uses, and so on.

It's we might spend money to attend a concert which leaves us worse off materially but not "spiritually", or however you want to label the benefit of unique experiences.

Now, that the superior value ranking can come from religious creeds, or communal norms, etc. doesn't abolish them. I think this is where your critique of the market being "value-less" enters in (although critique might be the wrong term, since it's readily admitted by market proponents).

As far as material vs immaterial benefit, a classic example is the mother who starves so that her children will live in the case of limited food stuffs. Obviously the benefit to her is not material, yet she is obviously happier choosing the negative material personal outcome to achieve the immaterial beneficial outcome.