Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I'm not making the argument you are trying to shoot down. I think we mostly agree, except you are saying we name things before they exist. Regardless of the accuracy respective to the person/concept, this simply isn't the case. Even if our attempt at explanation/labeling is poor, that has nothing to do with what came first. Of course language isn't private. We wouldn't have a word for "love" if only one person ever felt it.

This excludes so much of what's going on in language. You're not considering the fact that something as abstract as "love," something that requires the very knowledge of its own formation in order to be felt as such cannot exist prior to the concept being "created," and this comes about simultaneously with its name. Your view wants to boil it down to: "There are things, and so we name them." That cannot be how it works.

 

[Dak]

This excludes so much of what's going on in language. You're not considering the fact that something as abstract as "love," something that requires the very knowledge of its own formation in order to be felt as such cannot exist prior to the concept being "created," and this comes about simultaneously with its name. Your view wants to boil it down to: "There are things, and so we name them." That cannot be how it works.

I think this is the problem.

First of all, we can't be present now for some sort of language genesis absent some sort of informing or influencing other language. But were we able to, I'm picturing a person with no vocalization suddenly meet another person in the same boat. They both have a brain full of visuals and abstract emotions and thoughts to share but no way to do so, so they hash it out. Language is born.

It's not like Homo Adamus was making words up as he thought the thoughts requiring the words, with no reason to do so.

 

[Einherjar86]

First of all, we can't be present now for some sort of language genesis absent some sort of informing or influencing other language. But were we able to, I'm picturing a person with no vocalization suddenly meet another person in the same boat. They both have a brain full of visuals and abstract emotions and thoughts to share but no way to do so, so they hash it out. Language is born.

The fact that we don't have access to the "genesis" of language is telling. We don't have access to it because it's bound up with the same process that allowed it to come into being: consciousness.

When organisms that eventually became modern humans developed the capacity for abstract thought, they also developed the capacity for language. Consciousness and abstract thought did not come first; in fact, in order to even have abstract thought, an organism first needs something like language.

This does not need to be a language like you and I speak; all it needs to be is an abstract method of representation. In order to think things abstractly, we must think them as mediated; that means that they're available to us only as symbols, and that those symbols must mean something. In order for this process to even take place, something like language must already have come into existence. It's not as though consciousness appeared, allowing for abstract thoughts, and then language followed; abstract thought and language are bound up with each other.

Prior to abstract thought and language, something like "love" could not exist; the ability to think of "love" as something requiring expression means that it is already thought of in a linguistic sense. If it was not, then no need for expression would appear, since that bodily sensation would be immediate, or instinctual.

Furthermore, Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle essentially states that we cannot measure or monitor a system without intervening in, and thereby altering, that system. This applies to language also. The very immersion in language alters the systems of sensation and neurology that compose non-conscious organisms. Language is not an instrument that accurately or faithfully describes those sensations; it radically changes them. It is a technology in and of itself that contributed to the development of abstract thought, consciousness, and provided a space for something like "love" to exist.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Cypherpunk rising: WikiLeaks, encryption, and the coming surveillance dystopia

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/7/40...ge-wikileaks-encryption-surveillance-dystopia

 

[Dak]

The fact that we don't have access to the "genesis" of language is telling. We don't have access to it because it's bound up with the same process that allowed it to come into being: consciousness.

When organisms that eventually became modern humans developed the capacity for abstract thought, they also developed the capacity for language. Consciousness and abstract thought did not come first; in fact, in order to even have abstract thought, an organism first needs something like language.

This does not need to be a language like you and I speak; all it needs to be is an abstract method of representation. In order to think things abstractly, we must think them as mediated; that means that they're available to us only as symbols, and that those symbols must mean something. In order for this process to even take place, something like language must already have come into existence. It's not as though consciousness appeared, allowing for abstract thoughts, and then language followed; abstract thought and language are bound up with each other.

Prior to abstract thought and language, something like "love" could not exist; the ability to think of "love" as something requiring expression means that it is already thought of in a linguistic sense. If it was not, then no need for expression would appear, since that bodily sensation would be immediate, or instinctual.

Furthermore, Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle essentially states that we cannot measure or monitor a system without intervening in, and thereby altering, that system. This applies to language also. The very immersion in language alters the systems of sensation and neurology that compose non-conscious organisms. Language is not an instrument that accurately or faithfully describes those sensations; it radically changes them. It is a technology in and of itself that contributed to the development of abstract thought, consciousness, and provided a space for something like "love" to exist.

I have to disagree on the assumption that language arises simultaneously. Obviously we can never test out this disagreement.

 

[Dak]

Cypherpunk rising: WikiLeaks, encryption, and the coming surveillance dystopia

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/7/40...ge-wikileaks-encryption-surveillance-dystopia

The Verge's logo looks strikingly close to the Voluntaryist symbol. Anyway:

 

[Einherjar86]

I have to disagree on the assumption that language arises simultaneously. Obviously we can never test out this disagreement.

"Assumption"? I'm presenting an argument, not assuming something. You're saying that abstract thought must come first; but I'm asking how abstract thought is possible without language. Do you see the conundrum here? Abstraction means mediation; we think abstract thoughts by thinking them in a linguistic fashion.

 

[Dak]

"Assumption"? I'm presenting an argument, not assuming something. You're saying that abstract thought must come first; but I'm asking how abstract thought is possible without language. Do you see the conundrum here? Abstraction means mediation; we think abstract thoughts by thinking them in a linguistic fashion.

I'm talking about the feeling, not the abstract [understanding]. Feelings do not require an instantaneous label.

 

[Matt]

You guys need a separate thread for this shit.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

One thread for Dak ain't enough?

 

[Einherjar86]

Cypherpunk rising: WikiLeaks, encryption, and the coming surveillance dystopia

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/7/40...ge-wikileaks-encryption-surveillance-dystopia

This is a very cool article. Frightening no doubt; but the public has a lot of people on its side in this, even if the establishment tries to cast them in a criminal light.

If the post-9/11 world has exacerbated an already fragile human existence, it has also afforded us some positive disenchantment, and not only in the technological sphere. 9/11 put the kibosh on Fukuyama's "end of history." It threatens the holy sanctity of the Western analytic philosophical tradition, and has opened a space for new speculative criticisms, including cyberpunk, which finds its space more in fiction, but it has gradually been creeping into the critical work of people like N. Katherine Hayles and Reza Negarastani.

I heard a speaker at the MLA convention categorize the turn of the century in the following way (I'm elaborating a bit): he said that the late '80s and '90s were constituted by what academics call the "Cultural Turn," which was a form of ideology-critique encapsulated by Postmodernism and focused on "late capitalism." By contrast, the post-9/11 world is a world in which the dream of globalism persists despite the hideous remainder, or trace, left by the tragedy in 2001. This is a world in which the fantasy of free-floating capital has been proven unsustainable, but the perpetuation of its ideology (i.e. the ideology of late capitalism, or globalism, or global corporatism, etc.) encourages new critical forms, many of which are highly speculative (awkwardly mirroring globalism's own reliance on speculation). This has resulted in what's been dubbed the "Speculative Turn," a radical branch of Continental thought that eschews Postmodernism and its method of ideology-critique, and focuses on "late late capitalism," or techno-globalism, or (what one critic hilariously calls) "oh shit" capitalism.

Besides the political and the philosophical, the post-9/11 world also opens new directions of literature. The "lyric realism" of the French elites - Balzac, Flaubert - and the great English novelists - Dickens, Austen, etc. - has been exposed as insufficient and archaic. The briefly popular alternatives of the 20th-century - Robbe-Grillet, Pynchon, McCarthy, DeLillo, etc. - have been shown to be more than just attractive blips on the radar. They are predecessors of a new and quickening style, which can also be seen appropriating the SF underground. A style of un-realism, of anti-humanism, and of skepticism.

I'm talking about the feeling, not the abstract [understanding]. Feelings do not require an instantaneous label.

Well, I can't keep up with you if you keep changing what you say. A few posts ago you explicitly said "abstract thought."

I don't think you're following this logic anyway; once you've labeled something as "love," it no longer corresponds to that original, primordial feeling you're retroactively identifying. That's why I mentioned Heisenburg; once language intervenes in the "system" of biological sensation, it alters that system. What you call "love" doesn't actually correspond to any previous feeling humans might have felt before the advent of consciousness and language.

 

[Dak]

This is a world in which the fantasy of free-floating capital has been proven unsustainable, but the perpetuation of its ideology (i.e. the ideology of late capitalism, or globalism, or global corporatism, etc.) encourages new critical forms, many of which are highly speculative (awkwardly mirroring globalism's own reliance on speculation).

Free floating capital is a completely separate concept from corporatism. (And I wouldn't exactly say the current system has "free floating capital"). If you try to leave the US for good they are going to tax the shit out of you to keep the capital here.

Well, I can't keep up with you if you keep changing what you say. A few posts ago you explicitly said "abstract thought."

I don't think you're following this logic anyway; once you've labeled something as "love," it no longer corresponds to that original, primordial feeling you're retroactively identifying. That's why I mentioned Heisenburg; once language intervenes in the "system" of biological sensation, it alters that system. What you call "love" doesn't actually correspond to any previous feeling humans might have felt before the advent of consciousness and language.

I'm not saying it doesn't change. As we look at different languages we can all recognize subtle (And sometimes not so subtle differences) in words for similar concepts. But we have the feeling separate from the thought. Then thoughts can be in visuals, not words. Language is not necessary until we attempt to communicate.

 

[Einherjar86]

Feeling without thought has no relevance to this discussion, as it wouldn't present the need for communication at all; feeling, in this sense, is purely instinctual, immediate. Nothing needs to be communicated because it simply is.

Even thoughts in the form of visuals are already communicative; that is, they are already abstract and hence linguistic. Once an organism is able to conceive of things in representational terms, the communicability of those things has to have already been present; I'm not saying language precedes thought, but it has to appear alongside it. You cannot even have the visual thought of something without already having categories of representation.

And I don't understand how free-floating capital is completely separate from corporatism. Free-floating capital is simply that: capital abstracted from any tangible material. Derivatives, speculation, etc.: it's capital that derives from anticipated value.

 

[Dak]

SO you would need language to want or like something? I don't think so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_capital

Floating capital denotes currency in circulation and assets which are movable and storable. It represents working capital; assets which are in circulation or transportable; rather than those that are fixed, such as buildings, installations, etc.
It comprises the materials and components, constantly supplied in the effecting of all manufactures; currency used for the purpose of transactions, wages and salaries; products in transportation, or in the process of being stored in the prospect of being eventually utilized for this purpose; and the working, circulating capital; rather than that which is fixed as permanently stationary value.

Freely floating capital would be a "borderless world".

 

[Einherjar86]

SO you would need language to want or like something? I don't think so.

You should be skeptical about the facility with which you presume language operates. You have a very linear conception of the process, as well as a causal one; I'm not saying causality is certainly not there, but causality logically breaks down in this process.

An organism simply needs, it simply craves; this is instinctual and, of course, operates without recourse to language. However, we have to be very critical of the language we use. To answer your rhetorical question: yes, you need language in order to "want" or "like" something.

This does not mean that organisms do not derive some instinctual sense of pleasure from basking in the sun, or scratching their ass on a tree trunk, or eating, or mating. Pleasure is programmed into these operations in order to facilitate them; otherwise, animals might not do anything without this sense of stimulation.

However, this does not mean that they want to do them or like to do them. In order to think: "I want this," or "I like this" one needs to have recourse to a representational model with which one can refer to things, and refer oneself to other things. This is absolutely necessary in order to think those thoughts. It's thinking abstractly. An animal in its den doesn't sit around thinking, "Man, I'd like a gazelle" (or perhaps, more appropriately, "Animal, I'd like a gazelle"). The instinct and the action are bound to one another; when it's hungry, it gets food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_capital

Freely floating capital would be a "borderless world".

Ah, thanks. I was just using the term to refer to projected immaterial value; so, perhaps abstracted capital would be more appropriate.

 

[Dak]

Ah, thanks. I was just using the term to refer to projected immaterial value; so, perhaps abstracted capital would be more appropriate.

Derivatives, simplified, are primarily comprised of "side bets" on the market. These are heavily driven by fractional reserve central banking (although FRCB is not required).

Derivatives arise from those either chasing higher gains than standard investments (often due to interest rate policy), excessive reserves that need to have a place to go other than standard investment (often due to interest rate/money production), and those using them to hedge other investments.

It would be comparable to watching a game of poker and betting on which player is going to win the hand. A simplified analogy of what happened in the most recent crash was that a gambler at the table made a side bet with someone that he would win, based off the amount he thought he was going to win. Then the person he made the bet with made another bet assuming a win with that money, and so on. When Gambler 1 lost, not only did he not get the money from the game, he then did not have the money to pay the side bet. The person without the money coming from the side bet, couldn't pay off his/her losses, and so on it went throughout the entire system. You had bets on bets collateralized with bets. That last part is the key to the problem. You have nothing, or notional wealth, as "collateral".

Separately, although interwoven into the betting game, you have things like Mortgage Backed Securities. The theory/intent behind this is fairly solid. What wasn't expected was that almost the entire housing industry would be making piles of bad loans. Then of course, when they failed, more derivatives unraveled.

 

[Einherjar86]

I actually have some idea about derivatives, if only through literary theory. They play a significant role (I think) in contemporary SF and other forms of fringe fiction, or something like slipstream.

Steven Shaviro, a literary critic whom I've come across a couple times, writes:

Derivatives represent a higher level of [...] the fetishism of commodities, as they reify and commodify not only the social relations of production as manifested in manufactured objects, but a far wider and more diffuse set of social relations, which are all quantified under the rubric of 'risk.'

As a result of this double abstraction, derivatives seem to flow in a space of their own, a virtual world of purely quantitative calculations. They seem to exemplify 'financial circulation as a play of decontextualized and naturally occurring market surface forms.' The autonomy of derivatives and financial markets - like the autonomy of technological development in Kurzweil's narrative - is, of course, ultimately an illiusion. But it is, you might say, an objective illusion, which is to say a fantasy. It is a fantasy that, qua fantasy, actually operates in the world, with consequences that are perfectly real and often quite horrific.

 

[Dak]

May as well say it's the "fetishism of commodities" that make people bet on horse races. I think that terminology as a blanket critique is (not to overuse the word) myopic. Humans like gambling. In the case of derivatives, it seems more "upscale" or "professional" than the bookie in the smokey room with equine names on a chalkboard, but it's really the same thing. You aren't buying a horse, you aren't investing in a team, etc. It's a side bet on the real investments others have made. Of course, you could also get the real investors doing the side betting as well, which certainly creates moral hazard.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well, the "fetishism of commodities" is a Marxist phrase that carries a ton of connotations, so it's difficult to talk about in its entirety. What I think it means, in this context, is that making hedge bets of the sort found in derivatives reconstitutes the relations between individuals as purely financial (i.e. the social relations between individuals are "concretized" in the form of "abstract" investments). Especially since people involved in such risky enterprises might never actually meet one another, this seems to characterize the situation fairly well.

Also, Jimmy; I didn't mean to drag us away from your animal discussion, but I'm reading this book for class. You might look into it:

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Oh it's no big deal. I didn't really have much more to add to the discussion anyway. I'm pretty sure you guys know all the talking points. Just read a review for that book and I'll definitely check it out.