Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

This sounds so hopeless. "If we can't know something, oh well; let's move on..."

It's kind of disappointing.

Why hopeless? My arms won't allow me to fly (although it doesn't stop us from flying). I think the Wright Brothers were much less disappointing than Icarus (granted, wax and feathers aren't the best analogy for an innate flying ability but I think it illustrates the point). We do have to accept our limitations before we can move forward productively, and the disappointment or hopelessness of such admittals is subjective. I counter that it can equally be seen as a victory.

There is nothing that inheres in the world that firmly states: "Humans should not know this."

I think this is something else all together. Can/can not vs should/should not are different.

The old mantra "There are some things humans weren't mean to know" is an illusion and a joke; we can push our knowledge to any territory, but this doesn't mean we expose objects in their entirety. Every new object introduces something new about the way we perceive, think, know, etc. All of the above.

But I haven't thought this to be the discussion in general and certainly not the source of any disagreement about horror. I don't see anything here that warrants any real disagreement, except that it should be pointed out that not only do we not expose objects in their entirety, we can expect that there are always objects which we cannot expose at all.

Well, that's probably due to your lack of reading the necessary material in the field. Horror is something more specific than a psychological/affective reaction, which is the only way you're familiar with it.

Well that is the limit with my familiarity with it, but I want to reiterate that I don't see anything to differentiate this non-terror understanding of "horror" from "the unknown" (the unknown object in the Outside, if not the Outside itself).

 

[Einherjar86]

Why hopeless? My arms won't allow me to fly (although it doesn't stop us from flying). I think the Wright Brothers were much less disappointing than Icarus (granted, wax and feathers aren't the best analogy for an innate flying ability but I think it illustrates the point). We do have to accept our limitations before we can move forward productively, and the disappointment or hopelessness of such admittals is subjective. I counter that it can equally be seen as a victory.

This is not an intellectual contribution to this discussion at all. Your arms won't allow you to fly; and so this inspires new technological modes of doing so. We cannot see radio waves, so we develop other means of doing so. We intuit and create in order to account for things that we cannot know in an immediate sensory way.

You are trying to simply write off the possibility of making any technological headway when trying to understand certain phenomena that perhaps elude us. You're being exactly the opposite of an engaged and eager intellectual, as I understand it. Philosophy informs technology, and vice versa. Just simply dismissing the unknown as contitutively unknowable affords us nothing.

I think this is something else all together. Can/can not vs should/should not are different.

Of course, but necessity applies to the "should" category. "Can" is contingent upon material circumstances; there's nothing necessary or inherent about it. "Should" entails something necessary about the object in question.

But I haven't thought this to be the discussion in general and certainly not the source of any disagreement about horror. I don't see anything here that warrants any real disagreement, except that it should be pointed out that not only do we not expose objects in their entirety, we can expect that there are always objects which we cannot expose at all.

We disagree on the importance of those things we don't know. You would rather dismiss things we "can't" know as things we eternally cannot know. This seems to be your position. I understand your conservative appeal to some sense of normality in order to function at all in the real world, but this is a poor philosophical position if we're seriously considering the consequences and/or possibilities of something.

Well that is the limit with my familiarity with it, but I want to reiterate that I don't see anything to differentiate this non-terror understanding of "horror" from "the unknown" (the unknown object in the Outside, if not the Outside itself).

The terroristic, or emotional, aspect of horror derives from the notion of the unknown and the Outside. Without these material notions, there is no horror. I'm tracing horror back to this very foundational concept.

 

[Dak]

This is not an intellectual contribution to this discussion at all. Your arms won't allow you to fly; and so this inspires new technological modes of doing so. We cannot see radio waves, so we develop other means of doing so. We intuit and create in order to account for things that we cannot know in an immediate sensory way.

You are trying to simply write off the possibility of making any technological headway when trying to understand certain phenomena that perhaps elude us. You're being exactly the opposite of an engaged and eager intellectual, as I understand it. Philosophy informs technology, and vice versa. Just simply dismissing the unknown as contitutively unknowable affords us nothing.

I thought I was pretty clear in supporting technological innovation to overcome any particular biological lack we might have (e.g. the Wright Brothers and Aviation). But that doesn't make innate flight ability knowable in the sense that a bird knows it, and doesn't mean there won't always be some unknown left, no matter how many things move from unknown to known. It is that, or in that, permanently inaccessible unknown (even deepening unknown) that you have appeared to place horror - which will forever elude the light of knowledge and innovation, as The Unknown can by definition never be known or revealed.

Of course, but necessity applies to the "should" category. "Can" is contingent upon material circumstances; there's nothing necessary or inherent about it. "Should" entails something necessary about the object in question.

We disagree on the importance of those things we don't know. You would rather dismiss things we "can't" know as things we eternally cannot know. This seems to be your position. I understand your conservative appeal to some sense of normality in order to function at all in the real world, but this is a poor philosophical position if we're seriously considering the consequences and/or possibilities of something.

I am distinguishing between the unknown and The Unknown, and investigating The Unknown seems like something that needs to be left until all else is exhausted. Of course, the limits and boundaries of The Unknown are possibly unknowable or Unknowable. But that is the sort of problem that works itself out as we push back the unknown.

The terroristic, or emotional, aspect of horror derives from the notion of the unknown and the Outside. Without these material notions, there is no horror. I'm tracing horror back to this very foundational concept.

Well I understand where terror can come from, but I don't the difference between The Unknown and horror (hopefully a distinguishing between TU and tu will help explain my position).

 

[Einherjar86]

I thought I was pretty clear in supporting technological innovation to overcome any particular biological lack we might have (e.g. the Wright Brothers and Aviation). But that doesn't make innate flight ability knowable in the sense that a bird knows it, and doesn't mean there won't always be some unknown left, no matter how many things move from unknown to known. It is that, or in that, permanently inaccessible unknown (even deepening unknown) that you have appeared to place horror - which will forever elude the light of knowledge and innovation, as The Unknown can by definition never be known or revealed.

I am distinguishing between the unknown and The Unknown, and investigating The Unknown seems like something that needs to be left until all else is exhausted. Of course, the limits and boundaries of The Unknown are possibly unknowable or Unknowable. But that is the sort of problem that works itself out as we push back the unknown.

There are, perhaps, an infinite number of unknown things; and since all things are changing, this infinity is likely growing. But nothing exists as an "Unknown", a categorically imperative unknown. The very fact that you can hypostatize the unknown in this sense points directly to what I'm saying about horror. It is a condition of our perception, of our representation, of our knowledge; it is not an essential condition of the object itself. And our means of knowing are always changing, being conditioned by new technology.

The fact that you can actually abstract the unknown into this mystical entity, "the Unknown," explains where horror lies. You may not be afraid of it; but that's beside the point. Horror is simply this paradox of correlationism (i.e. between mind and external reality). So, moving on...

Well I understand where terror can come from, but I don't the difference between The Unknown and horror (hopefully a distinguishing between TU and tu will help explain my position).

...there isn't any difference.

You can keep insisting that I haven't explained anything to you, but that would be wrong, to put it bluntly. I'm not using "horror" in a traditional sense, and I'm aware of that; I'm saying that horror, in all shapes and forms, traces back to this originary correlationist breakdown. It has nothing to do with fear. It precedes fear. It may give rise to fear, or it may not; but all emotionally horrorist texts and/or events can be traced back to this divide, the very same divide that you've absolutized by terming it "the Unknown."

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Cool Podcast. Always love Schopen...Such a happy fellow!

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/05/22/ep94-schopenhauer/

 

[Dak]

There are, perhaps, an infinite number of unknown things; and since all things are changing, this infinity is likely growing. But nothing exists as an "Unknown", a categorically imperative unknown. The very fact that you can hypostatize the unknown in this sense points directly to what I'm saying about horror. It is a condition of our perception, of our representation, of our knowledge; it is not an essential condition of the object itself. And our means of knowing are always changing, being conditioned by new technology.

Of course it is relative to us. But for or to us, ultimately that relation is of supreme importance - for or to us. That something or someone or some-x does not possess the same relative limitations does not un-Unknown the Unknown for or to us. But more directly to this discussion:

It may give rise to fear, or it may not; but all emotionally horrorist texts and/or events can be traced back to this divide, the very same divide that you've absolutized by terming it "the Unknown."

I still don't see how you are using horror as anything other than a word substitution for "the Unknown". Which is fine, but then I would like to know the purpose for the word substitution. I apologize if that seems daft or whatever but that is all I am getting out of the explanation.

On a lighter note, these are great:

Existential Comics: The Germans play Monopoly

 

[Einherjar86]

The purpose is that it's enlightening. If it helps us to understand where horror as an affective response derives from...

 

[Einherjar86]

New post on "planetarity."

http://borrowingfromthefuture.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-orbital-subject-on-question-of.html

EDIT: and, in other really interesting news, this:

Spam or aesthetics may have initially been a useful adaptation: this is the only way that it could have arisen in the first place (see Darwin on sexual selection, and Elizabeth Grosz’s recent gloss on this). But spam or art quickly outgrew this purpose; it has now become parasitic, and replicates itself even at its host’s expense (cf: peacock’s tails). It serves no further purpose any more. Spam or art is a virus; and, insofar as we have aesthetic sensibilities (including self-consciousness and dwelling just in the present moment), we are that virus. Our thoughts and bodies, our lives, are “needlessly recursive” and wasteful. Our lives are pointless luxuries in a Darwinian “war universe” (Burroughs). If we are the dominant species on Earth at the moment, this may only be — as Watts suggests — because we are in the situation of flightless birds and marsupials, in areas where the placental mammals have not yet arrived (cf. the biological histories of Mauritius, South America, and Australia).

Watts also suggests that, even on Earth, corporate culture is in process of “weeding out” anything like self-consciousness or nonfunctional recursion. (Evidently, this is why — for instance — humanities programs in universities are being whittled away or destroyed; even the supporters of such programs only dare to justify them in terms of economic utility). At the end of Blindsight, the narrator, off in deep space, but observing from a distance the way that a vampiric (both literally and metaphorically) corporate culture has taken control of everything, speculates that “by the time I get home, I could be the only sentient being in the universe.” And in fact, he is not even sure about himself; he knows that zombies are “pretty good at faking it.”

The logic of spam tells us that sensibility, awareness, and aesthetic enjoyment are all costly luxuries. From a political and economic point of view, they can only be promoted — and they should be promoted — on this basis.

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1233

 

[Dak]

Those definitions of spam and economics are confined to Watt's extensive and profitable imagination. I can't really offer any sort of input on them in any meaningful way.

 

[Einherjar86]

The blog is by an academic named Steven Shaviro, not Watts. Watts never uses the term "spam," but he does comment on aesthetics in his novel Blindsight:

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains–cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.

This is the most scientific way to understand both aesthetics and subjectivity, and Shaviro is interested in pursuing these configurations and teasing out their consequences. In my opinion, it seems pretty obvious that "corporate culture" (we'll use Shaviro's term for sake of ease) is certainly weeding out self-consciousness and any remnants of the archaic notion of human subjectivity.

 

[Dak]

The blog is by an academic named Steven Shaviro, not Watts. Watts never uses the term "spam," but he does comment on aesthetics in his novel Blindsight:



This is the most scientific way to understand both aesthetics and subjectivity, and Shaviro is interested in pursuing these configurations and teasing out their consequences. In my opinion, it seems pretty obvious that "corporate culture" (we'll use Shaviro's term for sake of ease) is certainly weeding out self-consciousness and any remnants of the archaic notion of human subjectivity.

Well I saw that the blog was not Watts', but the commentary appears based on definitions or conceptual construction by Watts. While that definition of spam, and concepts of the relation of spam/aesthetics with economics might be coherent and meaningful in the universe that Watts constructs and Shaviro investigates, they do not apply outside of it, and attempting to do so reveals an underlying misunderstanding of economics, and certainly not seeing it as something of a social science.

In regards to "corporate culture", that is such a vague statement and label it cannot help to be wrong or right, depending on where it is focused. Study after study has shown that restricted group think within an organization is as "genetically" damaging as biological incest. Successful organizations have a narrow (but also flexible) guiding vision with a lot of latitude for accomplishment and hire diversely. Hardly "stamping out subjectivity".

 

[Einherjar86]

Half the time I don't understand where your objections come from.

I also think "corporate culture" is as obvious a term as "bubble gum."

Your closing comments about group think and genetics don't quite make sense to me (i.e. why they matter).

 

[Dak]

Half the time I don't understand where your objections come from.

Possibly radically different reference points? Data?

I also think "corporate culture" is as obvious a term as "bubble gum."

Your closing comments about group think and genetics don't quite make sense to me (i.e. why they matter).

It isn't so obvious to me because I know the word is too loaded. Whatever imagery is conjured in your mind is not uniform with the everyone, and in either or all cases may be inaccurate.

One particular inaccuracy is seeing corporate bodies as something approaching uniform outside of basic social organization, and then specifically here as seeing them uniformly stamping out subjectivity - particularly in a business corporate sense. We might see something less Brutalistic in politics if the US had a multiparty democracy. For the monolithic organization, aesthetics and subjectivity are troublesome. Conversely, aesthetics both is and enables competition.

Spam, in the real sense, and where Shaviro fails to overlay with reality, is economic for the spammers and provides the greatest available utility. It is also economic for the spam blockers. Extending the definition of spam to cover everything we see unneedful, that is merely subjectivity masquerading poorly as objectivity - all the while declaring the end of subjectivity. Of course Democrats don't believe a Green or Republican party is needful. Of course Google doesn't see Apple as needful. Of course Coke doesn't see Pepsi as needful. The plethora of flavors, parties, and phones is mere spam. Except for Coke. All you need is Coke. But Coke needs phones and politics and all the employees like Starbucks and each one has a variety of paint color schemes they employ in their domiciles and vehicles and cell phone cases. All spam. All economical, all following the supposed stamping out of subjectivity in the phrase All You Need Is Coke.

But what if Coke only hired people who really believed All You Need Is Coke? Corporate incest as it were. They would be out of business before you can say Diabeetus.

 

[Einherjar86]

Possibly radically different reference points? Data?

That isn't what I mean. You write sometimes as though you've never read anything I've written before.

It isn't so obvious to me because I know the word is too loaded. Whatever imagery is conjured in your mind is not uniform with the everyone, and in either or all cases may be inaccurate.

It is uniform within a certain branch or field of study, and at this point you should be able to intuit what that uniform definition is when it comes up in my comments. You act as though it's impossible for you to comprehend what Shaviro means, when in fact - if you're at all familiar with the tradition my posts have exposed to you - it's quite obvious.

One particular inaccuracy is seeing corporate bodies as something approaching uniform outside of basic social organization, and then specifically here as seeing them uniformly stamping out subjectivity - particularly in a business corporate sense. We might see something less Brutalistic in politics if the US had a multiparty democracy. For the monolithic organization, aesthetics and subjectivity are troublesome. Conversely, aesthetics both is and enables competition.

Corporate organization is uniform; how else could there be laws that apply to corporations? Aesthetics certainly play a role in competition, but so what? As far as subjectivity goes, it isn't "stamping it out" in any empirical sense. It's making subjectivity obsolete, as is demonstrated by numerous trends and studies of the past half-century in philosophy, the sciences, and technologies.

Spam, in the real sense, and where Shaviro fails to overlay with reality, is economic for the spammers and provides the greatest available utility. It is also economic for the spam blockers. Extending the definition of spam to cover everything we see unneedful, that is merely subjectivity masquerading poorly as objectivity - all the while declaring the end of subjectivity. Of course Democrats don't believe a Green or Republican party is needful. Of course Google doesn't see Apple as needful. Of course Coke doesn't see Pepsi as needful. The plethora of flavors, parties, and phones is mere spam. Except for Coke. All you need is Coke. But Coke needs phones and politics and all the employees like Starbucks and each one has a variety of paint color schemes they employ in their domiciles and vehicles and cell phone cases. All spam. All economical, all following the supposed stamping out of subjectivity in the phrase All You Need Is Coke.

But what if Coke only hired people who really believed All You Need Is Coke? Corporate incest as it were. They would be out of business before you can say Diabeetus.

Dak, "spam" is a metaphor:

Spam is communication without (Shannon) information, or a message that is nothing beyond its medium (McLuhan). Spam has no utility, and no cognitive point, for its only aim is self-proliferation. This is why Watts’ and MacLeod’s aliens hate it, and seek to destroy it (or destroy its source).

 

[Dak]

That isn't what I mean. You write sometimes as though you've never read anything I've written before.

It is uniform within a certain branch or field of study, and at this point you should be able to intuit what that uniform definition is when it comes up in my comments. You act as though it's impossible for you to comprehend what Shaviro means, when in fact - if you're at all familiar with the tradition my posts have exposed to you - it's quite obvious.

It appears then that "corporate culture" takes on the appearance of a shibboleth akin to the Cathedral. It is useful as far as it goes, without being too terribly nuanced.

Corporate organization is uniform; how else could there be laws that apply to corporations? Aesthetics certainly play a role in competition, but so what? As far as subjectivity goes, it isn't "stamping it out" in any empirical sense. It's making subjectivity obsolete, as is demonstrated by numerous trends and studies of the past half-century in philosophy, the sciences, and technologies.

Which type of corporation? Of what size? In which industry? Public or Private? Charitable or Business? Etc. People are uniform in basic shape, and we obviously have laws governing people, but the individual nature of people is diverse.

A news headline from yesterday to illustrate:
Silicon Valley and Hollywood Corporate Culture Clash

Aesthetics drives much of the market, business, economics. Apple climbed to the top of Wall St by focusing almost exclusively on it.

How is subjectivity "becoming obsolete"? I read tech blogs, I'm in philosophy and science, and haven't heard any such thing - which I should have expected to if the sources were numerous.

Dak, "spam" is a metaphor:

A metaphor for consciousness correct?

One cannot accurately fashion a metaphor when they don't understand the source, as evidenced here:

‘Spam is, um, sort of mindlessly repeated advertisements and shit. Junk mail. Some of it comes from start-ups and scams, some of it’s generated by programs called spambots, which got loose in the system about fifty years ago and which have been beavering away ever since. You hardly notice it, because so little gets through that you might think it’s just a legit advertisement. But that’s because way down at the bottom level, we have programs to clean out the junk, and they work away at it too.’ I shrugged. ‘Spam and antispam waste resources, it’s the ultimate zero-sum game, but what can you do? You gotta live with it. Anti-spam’s like an immune system. You don’t have to know about it, but you’d die without it. There’s a whole war going on that’s totally irrelevant to what you really want to do.’

This is summed up with:

Spam has no utility

This is completely false, and if one cannot understand basic economic concepts, how can one accurately apply, parallel, construct metaphors, etc. them?

Of course, the irony is that the author cannot even allow the ETs to escape:

“They don’t like spam.”

‘That’s how the ETs feel about it, too.

 

[Einherjar86]

It appears then that "corporate culture" takes on the appearance of a shibboleth akin to the Cathedral. It is useful as far as it goes, without being too terribly nuanced.

That's often how such terms work.

Which type of corporation? Of what size? In which industry? Public or Private? Charitable or Business? Etc. People are uniform in basic shape, and we obviously have laws governing people, but the individual nature of people is diverse.

A news headline from yesterday to illustrate:
Silicon Valley and Hollywood Corporate Culture Clash

I believe you're confusing values with structure. It's certainly true that corporations might be run differently, and that their management may espouse different values; but this doesn't alter a certain basic corporate model. Even when you say the "individual nature of people is diverse" while people are uniform in shape, you're making a false qualification; that is, you're saying that corporations (as far as this analogy goes) correspond to the intentions and will of the "people," which can be diverse. This is incorrect; the corporate model corresponds to the "uniform" model of the body.

So, you're correct to draw the distinction between human "nature" (I don't like this term, but I'll use it for sake of ease) and biological constitution; but you're wrong to draw the parallel between corporations and diverse human natures. Corporations, in this sense, must be compared in a material and structural sense to the "body"; after all, this is what the term translates into.

How is subjectivity "becoming obsolete"? I read tech blogs, I'm in philosophy and science, and haven't heard any such thing - which I should have expected to if the sources were numerous.

I don't mean any disrespect, but you're not really "in" either of those fields. I'm sure if you ask any of your philosophy professors about the antihumanist turn in later-20th-century philosophy, they would be able to explain it. More often than not this topic is reserved for more advanced philosophy courses since it isn't something that most find easy to grasp (I'm not saying it wouldn't be easy for you to grasp, just that most of the students in your courses would likely not find it accessible).

A metaphor for consciousness correct?

Spam? Not at all; it's a metaphor for the exact opposite of consciousness. Spam consists of iterations with no discernible motive or intention toward interactive communication.

Think about how most people view spam; not as something profitable, even to those who perpetuate it and send it out. It's seen as a nuisance and as senseless, or even purposeless, since most people delete it or ignore it. On a vast popular scale, spam is a non-conscious entity.

You mentioned that it yields economic reward for those who send it; but that isn't how the metaphor works because that's not how the vast majority of people understand spam. Metaphors need not be logically correct; they're anything but logical. "My love is a red rose" contains nothing logical; the associations work because the phrase appeals to popular cultural knowledge. That's what Shaviro is commenting on, and that's why the spam metaphor does work.

 

[Dak]

That's often how such terms work.

I believe you're confusing values with structure. It's certainly true that corporations might be run differently, and that their management may espouse different values; but this doesn't alter a certain basic corporate model. Even when you say the "individual nature of people is diverse" while people are uniform in shape, you're making a false qualification; that is, you're saying that corporations (as far as this analogy goes) correspond to the intentions and will of the "people," which can be diverse. This is incorrect; the corporate model corresponds to the "uniform" model of the body.

So, you're correct to draw the distinction between human "nature" (I don't like this term, but I'll use it for sake of ease) and biological constitution; but you're wrong to draw the parallel between corporations and diverse human natures. Corporations, in this sense, must be compared in a material and structural sense to the "body"; after all, this is what the term translates into.

I think you are stopping short, or confusing what I mean here.

Different people have different values, specialties, methods etc. Of course there might be some relatively identical models here and there, and there will be overlap very often in any given area, but there is still a significant amount of uniqueness in behavior, despite humans having the same basic structure (organs, limbs, skeletal structure).

This is seen also in corporations, except that there are more variations in structure along with variations in values, specialties, methods, etc. You have basic legal differences like LLC, S, C, non-profit, etc. and then you also have structural differences within each of those, once the legal requirements for classification are met.

I don't mean any disrespect, but you're not really "in" either of those fields. I'm sure if you ask any of your philosophy professors about the antihumanist turn in later-20th-century philosophy, they would be able to explain it. More often than not this topic is reserved for more advanced philosophy courses since it isn't something that most find easy to grasp (I'm not saying it wouldn't be easy for you to grasp, just that most of the students in your courses would likely not find it accessible).

I am participating in scientific research within the social sciences, so I feel I can at least claim that. If you want to submit that social sciences aren't "real" science that is something else.

I also disagree about not being "in philosophy". However, given that due to scheduling all my classes and readings in school have been surrounding Ethics, it would indeed be unlikely to see anything antihumanist within Ethics classes, regardless of level.

Spam? Not at all; it's a metaphor for the exact opposite of consciousness. Spam consists of iterations with no discernible motive or intention toward interactive communication.

Think about how most people view spam; not as something profitable, even to those who perpetuate it and send it out. It's seen as a nuisance and as senseless, or even purposeless, since most people delete it or ignore it. On a vast popular scale, spam is a non-conscious entity.

You mentioned that it yields economic reward for those who send it; but that isn't how the metaphor works because that's not how the vast majority of people understand spam. Metaphors need not be logically correct; they're anything but logical. "My love is a red rose" contains nothing logical; the associations work because the phrase appeals to popular cultural knowledge. That's what Shaviro is commenting on, and that's why the spam metaphor does work.

I think people do understand spam that way, depending on its location. The spam in your mailbox is no different than what can wind up under your windshield wiper while you shop, or the posters slapped on every available surface in an urban area. To suggest that something ignored at any given juncture is purposeless is too obviously prey to reductio to bother with it. Defense of this position also appears headed straight for a No True Spam defense - as in if it is *not ignored/deleted/seen as a nuisance" by someone, then that particular instance is not spam. EG, The 1 out of 100 cases where someone clicks the spam.

Let us look at Facebook. People are FWDing this stuff for some personal reason, even as you and I want to claw our eyes out at the steady stream of "JESUS LOVES YOU - LIKE IF YOU AGREE", "SHARE THIS WITH TEN PEOPLE SO I CAN GO ON A TRIP", "LITTLE OLD LADY IS MUGGED - YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS", and so on. Is it spam or is it not spam? Looks pretty subjective to me. About as subjective as the opinion of Shaviro, or the opinion imaginary aliens in the story, etc.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think you are stopping short, or confusing what I mean here.

Different people have different values, specialties, methods etc. Of course there might be some relatively identical models here and there, and there will be overlap very often in any given area, but there is still a significant amount of uniqueness in behavior, despite humans having the same basic structure (organs, limbs, skeletal structure).

This is seen also in corporations, except that there are more variations in structure along with variations in values, specialties, methods, etc. You have basic legal differences like LLC, S, C, non-profit, etc. and then you also have structural differences within each of those, once the legal requirements for classification are met.

I'm not concerned with the variations in values, specialties, methods, etc. That's what my previous post just explained. I'm saying that we can assess corporations according to a theoretical model based on their material structure, since this heavily conditions their operations. Nothing you just said changes anything from my previous post.

I am participating in scientific research within the social sciences, so I feel I can at least claim that. If you want to submit that social sciences aren't "real" science that is something else.

I also disagree about not being "in philosophy". However, given that due to scheduling all my classes and readings in school have been surrounding Ethics, it would indeed be unlikely to see anything antihumanist within Ethics classes, regardless of level.

Agree, disagree, whatever; but I'll bet you can find professors in your department who would talk to you about it. If you're uninterested, and so avoid such subjects, then that's fine; but it's no reason to claim that they don't exist or aren't important.

I think people do understand spam that way, depending on its location. The spam in your mailbox is no different than what can wind up under your windshield wiper while you shop, or the posters slapped on every available surface in an urban area. To suggest that something ignored at any given juncture is purposeless is too obviously prey to reductio to bother with it. Defense of this position also appears headed straight for a No True Spam defense - as in if it is *not ignored/deleted/seen as a nuisance" by someone, then that particular instance is not spam. EG, The 1 out of 100 cases where someone clicks the spam.

Let us look at Facebook. People are FWDing this stuff for some personal reason, even as you and I want to claw our eyes out at the steady stream of "JESUS LOVES YOU - LIKE IF YOU AGREE", "SHARE THIS WITH TEN PEOPLE SO I CAN GO ON A TRIP", "LITTLE OLD LADY IS MUGGED - YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS", and so on. Is it spam or is it not spam? Looks pretty subjective to me. About as subjective as the opinion of Shaviro, or the opinion imaginary aliens in the story, etc.

I honestly don't know what else to tell you other than that metaphors work in a vague and expansive cultural sense. They don't expose logical formulae or fit nicely into equations. I think you're looking at the whole thing too narrowly.

Some people may look at spam the way you describe; but the point is that the metaphor works because a large number of people probably read it in the sense that Shaviro describes. You can take issue with the "logic" of the metaphor (as futile as this is), but you can't claim that it doesn't work because it obviously does. If these books sell, it means they're communicating effectively with a substantial demographic; which in turn indicates that something about the metaphor is hitting home.

Long story short, you're arguing with the text as though it's a rejoinder in a debate of logic rather than a work of fiction.

 

[Dak]

I'm not concerned with the variations in values, specialties, methods, etc. That's what my previous post just explained. I'm saying that we can assess corporations according to a theoretical model based on their material structure, since this heavily conditions their operations. Nothing you just said changes anything from my previous post.

Well sure some limited assessment is available at that level, but I don't see how one can make the leap that "self consciousness is being weeded out" based on such a rudimentary evaluation.

Agree, disagree, whatever; but I'll bet you can find professors in your department who would talk to you about it. If you're uninterested, and so avoid such subjects, then that's fine; but it's no reason to claim that they don't exist or aren't important.

It would be nice if professors were in their offices more. I haven't avoided non-Ethics classes, I have scheduling constraints and Ethics classes have been all that is available. It's actually been a little frustrating, but that changes in the Fall and Spring. I'm not denying existence, but importance is pretty subjective (irony?).

If these books sell, it means they're communicating effectively with a substantial demographic; which in turn indicates that something about the metaphor is hitting home.

I don't think it necessarily follows that a particular metaphor is hitting home (or that hitting home is important) based on book sales. But that is a pretty market oriented argument so I am happy with that at least .

 

[Einherjar86]

Well sure some limited assessment is available at that level, but I don't see how one can make the leap that "self consciousness is being weeded out" based on such a rudimentary evaluation.

It's the most important level, in my opinion. The material corporate form might be partially conditioned by its individual parts (i.e. people), but this form in turns conditions how it operates in the world. The easiest evidence is to point to the fact that corporations are basically treated like people, and yet they're supra-human, non-conscious entities. They function without recourse to a central consciousness - they are either consciousness-less, or a multiplicity of consciousnesses.

I also think that corporate culture refers to the atmosphere of consumerism and the bombardment of images and slogans that we endure each day. I know you have some objections here, but I personally see our epoch as one of resistance toward consciousness and subjectivity, as influenced by an increasingly technologized globe. This is why we see evidence of anti-humanism in everything from the poststructuralism of the 1960s and onward, to the speculative materialism of Meillassoux and Brassier, and even in texts on cognitive science and consciousness by people like David Chalmers and Thomas Metzinger. You can say that this trend is entirely separate from economic development, but I would disagree; I think the evidence suggests that such theoretical concepts accompany technological (which I'm basically conflating with economic) development.

It would be nice if professors were in their offices more. I haven't avoided non-Ethics classes, I have scheduling constraints and Ethics classes have been all that is available. It's actually been a little frustrating, but that changes in the Fall and Spring. I'm not denying existence, but importance is pretty subjective (irony?).

I appreciate how you consistently bring up this point; i.e. that resisting subjectivity requires a subjective position. I would suggest, however, that it's actually easier for us to reduce certain things like importance and value to subjective experience because that's how we encounter them. Voluntarism does not alter or create value; voluntarism merely allows us to participate in already-existing systems of value.

I'm going to be a tool and quote... myself:

Vision is Meaning. Meaning is Historical.

The title is excerpted from a line in HBO’s True Detective. I included it here for two purposes: first, it’s a fantastic quote that I happen to agree with; and second, it has profound implications, which I will briefly cover now. If meaning is historical, then this must lead us to the conclusion that meaning is neither a) objective, in the sense that it cannot be found in reality as it exists external to our own minds, but neither is it b) subjective, in the sense that it cannot be reduced to the singular intentions of an atomic individual. However, this does not mean that meaning is illusory. It is very real – but it exists on a plane, or in a manner, or functions among us in such a way that it is neither absolute (or universal) or individually created.

[...]

Therefore meaning is not private – it does not issue from an individual, even if that individual takes on the task of interpreting a text; but neither is it universal, in which case it would exist in an idealistic crystalline form prior to any conscious mind apprehending it. The communicative kernel, the expressive kernel, the origin of meaning itself – where are we to locate such an ephemeral thing? This is the central concern of True Detective. Cohle understands that humans create meaning, but he also knows that meaning is not individual: “meaning is historical.” Meaning is thus, and can only ever be, a collective operation. Language only arises from the need for communication, as Marx said; and the creation of meaning does not originate with a single person who picks and chooses words that mean certain things, and then tells this to others: for how could a person educate others on what words mean before those others know what words mean? Education of any sort presupposes the embedment of an individual within a collective symbolic network. If we proceed from this juncture, we arrive at a confounding paradoxical axiomatic (does it even make sense to say this?): that is, in order for meaning to happen, for it to emerge collectively, language must somehow precede meaning.

To highlight why I posted this: just as language must operate as though it precedes communicative speech, so value operates as though it pre-exists any subjective projection of value. It cannot be reduced to either subjective experience or any absolute existence in reality.

I don't think it necessarily follows that a particular metaphor is hitting home (or that hitting home is important) based on book sales. But that is a pretty market oriented argument so I am happy with that at least .

Thanks. I don't deny market processes, by the way; I believe they're alive and well, and that they can help us understand cultural phenomena.

EDIT: I also wanted to post this here:

As a result, there are three basic positions apropos of money: (1) the mercantilist one: a direct naive fetishist belief in money as a "special thing"; (2) the "classical bourgeois political economy" embodied in Ricardo, which dismissed money-fetishism as a mere illusion, and perceived money as a mere sign of the quantity of socially useful labor - here value was conceived as inherent to a commodity; (3) the "neoclassical" school, which rejected the labor theory of value and also and "substantial" notion of value: the price of a commodity is simply the result of the interplay between supply and demand: of the commodity's usefulness with regard to other commodities. [...] Marx broke out of the confines of the "classical" Ricardo labor theory of value through his reading of Bailey, the first "vulgar" economist who emphasized the purely rational status of value: value is not inherent to a commodity, it expresses the way this commodity relates to all other commodities. In this way Bailey opened up the path toward the structural-formal approach of Marx, which insists on the gap between an object and the structural place it occupies: just as a king is a king not because of his inherent properties, but because people treat him as one (Marx's own example), a commodity is money because it occupies the formal place of the general equivalent of all commodities, not because gold, for example, is "naturally" money.

This illuminates the difference between understanding something in a formal sense, as opposed to simply understand its content.

I.E. - people know that money is inherently worthless (content), but they function as though it is value incarnate (form).