Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I think your primary problem is that you think emergence is newer than it really is. It dates back to the nineteenth century and accompanies historical changes in which scientists and philosophers began to look harder at material relations between large-scale systems. I'll say more about this below.

Sounds like anthropomorphizing.

It isn't though. You can think about the jam as a perceptive human (anthropomorphic) or you can understand that as a material process, one does not need to perceive emergence in order for it to function.

Just because something isn't necessary doesn't mean it is arbitrary. Contingent is usually used in contrast to necessary. Arbitrary indicates random/not based on anything. Privileging consciousness in describing human action (or subconscious even) is not arbitrary.

Privileging it might not be arbitrary, but you said "consciousness is not arbitrary." Be specific.

Furthermore, when speaking of the material world, privileging consciousness is arbitrary. We're talking about traffic, but we could just as easily be talking about thunderstorms, or thermodynamics.

Of course, I wouldn't deny that various things interact in ways that to produce complex phenomena that have higher level effects, but I don't see how this requires accepting emergence - or if it does it doesn't change anything.

You're accepting emergence. You're just rejecting the word because you believe there to be some other scientific model that preexisted it. It is part and parcel of the scientific theories and models that appeared in the nineteenth century, such as thermodynamics and evolution.

How does emergence have more/better explanatory power for, say, the pollution caused by the traffic jam, compared to prior to the emergent model? This is what I want clarified before emergence appears non-redundant.

A prior model? Emergence is the model for taking effects at different scales into consideration.

The controversial aspect of emergence is downward causation (which I don't happen to find controversial), but the practice of studying complexity in itself invites the emergentist perspective. They just go hand in hand.

The examples were intentionally juvenile to prove that complexity can confuse the basics. Traffic jams occur in the very general sense due to the same reason that containers overflow. Too much in too little space. What is the difference between too many M&Ms and too many cars?

That too many cars has quantifiable and verifiable impact on large-scale effects beyond what can be reduced to smaller quantities of vehicles. That's emergence. You're already accepting it. It is the explanatory force.

Let's say we are interested in reducing pollution. So then we target traffic jams as a significant producer of pollution. Can we just treat "traffic jams"? Maybe we just see the cars in the jam as the "nodes" as it were. How do we deal with the nodes? Eventually you run down into consciousness - and don't have to go further (down). We don't need to address the atp conversion process to understand traffic jams.

The point with emergence is that we don't need to reduce pollution if we want to assess its broader effects. We reduce it when trying to discern its origin or cause, but this isn't what emergence observes. Emergence looks at the expansion of systems into broader interaction on a higher scale, and observes those effects.

Emergence isn't some new model. Again, it was coined by G.H. Lewes in the nineteenth century. It accompanied historical shifts that saw scientists and philosophers beginning to understand the material relations of systems on a vast scale.

I think you're misidentifying emergence as some novel theory that came about in the last twenty years.

EDIT: this is interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html?_r=0

How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. The machinery is computing an elaborate story about a magical-seeming property. And there is no way for the brain to determine through introspection that the story is wrong, because introspection always accesses the same incorrect information.

You might object that this is a paradox. If awareness is an erroneous impression, isn’t it still an impression? And isn’t an impression a form of awareness?

But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience.

 

[Einherjar86]

Sorry to post before wrapping things up, but too many topics are bouncing around in my head lately.

In recent news, Scott Bakker makes an abbreviated intervention into the current status of academic scholarship and theory. He sounds very close to Land at times but, as with all writers I admire to varying degrees (Land included), I think their ideas are worth considering seriously. I wonder if this meshes with Land's own ideas of exit, or if Bakker envisions a more inclusive political system somewhere down the road...

Either way, at least he expresses himself clearly.

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/the-theory-industry/

So I’ve been struggling with politics the way I always struggle with politics.

Here’s what I think is very likely a waste of intellectual resources:

1) Philosophical redefinitions of ‘freedom.’ So you’ve added to the sum of what there is to disagree about, induced more educated souls to opine as opposed to act, and contributed to the cultural alienation that makes anti-intellectualism cool. Who do you work for again?

2) Conceptual delimitations of what David Roden calls ‘Posthuman Possibility Space.’ Humans are not exempt from the order of nature. Science has had no redemptive tales to tell so far, so why should we think it will in the future?

3) The fetishization of art. A classic example of the ‘man with a hammer’ disease. Transgressing outgroup aesthetic expectations for ingroup consumption amounts to nothing more than confirming outgroup social expectations regarding your ingroup. Unless the ‘art’ in question genuinely reaches out, then it is simply part of the problem. Of course, this amounts to abandoning art and embracing dreck, where, as the right has always known, the true transformative power of art has always lain.

4) Critiques and defenses of subjectivity. Even if there is such a thing, I think it’s safe to say that discoursing about it amounts to little more than an ingroup philosophical parlour game.

Here’s what I think is not as likely to be a waste of intellectual resources (but very well could be):

1) Cultural triage. WE NO LONGER HAVE TIME TO FUCK AROUND. The Theory Industry (and yes I smell the reek of hypocrisy) is a self-regarding institutional enterprise, bent not so much on genuine transformation as breath mints and citations–which is to say, the accumulation of ingroup prestige. The only lines worth pursuing are lines leading out, away from the Theory Industry, and toward all those people who keep our lazy asses alive. If content is your thing, then invade the commons, recognize that writing for the likeminded amounts to not writing at all.

2) Theoretical honesty. NO ONE HAS ANY DEFINITIVE THEORETICAL ANSWERS. This is an enormous problem because moral certainty is generally required to motivate meaningful, collective political action. Such moral certainty in the modern age is either the product of ignorance and/or stupidity. The challenge facing us now, let alone in the future, is one of picking guesses worth dying for without the luxury of delusion. Pick them. Run with them.

3) The naturalization of morality and meaning. EMBRACE THOSE DEFINITIVE ANSWERS WE DO HAVE. Science tells us what things are, how they function, and how they can be manipulated. Science is power, which is why all the most powerful institutions invest so heavily in science. The degree to which science and scientific methodologies are eschewed is the degree to which power is eschewed. Only discourses possessing a vested interest in their own impotence would view ‘scientism’ as a problem admitting a speculative or attitudinal solution, rather than the expression of their own crisis of theoretical legitimacy. The thinking that characterizes the Theory Industry is almost certainly magical, in this respect, insofar as it believes that words and moral sentiment can determine what science can and cannot cognize.

Any others anyone can think of?

 

[Dak]

Can't really reply to all the other as it deserves but: Bakker looks like NRx (in some form) in the making. I would describe myself as NRx sympathetic in a relative sense, that is, compared to all the systems currently in operation in the world, it is rather obviously superior (at the most fundamental points). Maybe I just see it that way because privilege, but the opposite tack is to bow to the lowest common denominator, and that hasn't worked out well for anyone but the elitest of elite. If that is a paradox then so be it, but it's true.

 

[Einherjar86]

"Obviously" is rather strong, in my opinion; but he sounds NRx at times, for sure.

Lots of his statements are unqualified, which is what I have an issue with; for example, that theory is a hermetically sealed institution, and that science can give us definitive answers. To paraphrase Peter Watts, objectivity went out the window once the human brain began interfacing with the "external" world.

 

[Dak]

Well I agree with that to a point. The very nature of science makes it subject to a degree of subjectivity. Regarding the "obviously" part, Land is has quoted Hoppe on more than one occasion (which is where at least some amount of Austrianish theory intersects with NRx).

I would assume that what he means is that while philosophers write papers for journals which no one but other philosophers will ever see, Silicon Valley gives us smartphones and guys like Land are providing content straight to that smartphone.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think science always needs to be interrogated the same way literature does, although I think their "findings" have different effects. Basically, science (as a field) toggles a divide between materialism and representation and it can never be divorced from this oscillation. When Bakker says that science gives us definitive answers, he places too much faith in the material conditions of that which science is targeting.

Also, I think the "inbred" notion of philosophy departments is a false stereotype. We can watch philosophers on YouTube, read their pieces on "The Stone" (NYT), The Guardian, The Independent, etc. I think that theory is more available than popularly believed, I just think people don't perceive the immediacy of its impact. It may not be as tactile as a smartphone, but it is still available.

Ultimately I agree that the products of Silicon Valley and the machinations of Wall Street are more influential than critical theory, which is why I identify myself as a "capitalist" (with all the negative implications that go along with this); but I think that if people go on believing theory is unavailable to them, then they will never recognize it when they see it and won't have any idea how to process it.

 

[Dak]

I think science always needs to be interrogated the same way literature does, although I think their "findings" have different effects. Basically, science (as a field) toggles a divide between materialism and representation and it can never be divorced from this oscillation. When Bakker says that science gives us definitive answers, he places too much faith in the material conditions of that which science is targeting.

Well I don't think you have to get that abstract to object. I like to point to the "what is healthy/unhealthy" oscillations over the last hundred years. All "current science" at some point. That doesn't even need to get into the issue of conflicted interests based on who funds the research - which is a real thing. IE, studies commissioned by the "Institute for Sugar" will find sugar has no damaging health effects, etc. Scientists have bills too.

Also, I think the "inbred" notion of philosophy departments is a false stereotype. We can watch philosophers on YouTube, read their pieces on "The Stone" (NYT), The Guardian, The Independent, etc. I think that theory is more available than popularly believed, I just think people don't perceive the immediacy of its impact. It may not be as tactile as a smartphone, but it is still available.

Ultimately I agree that the products of Silicon Valley and the machinations of Wall Street are more influential than critical theory, which is why I identify myself as a "capitalist" (with all the negative implications that go along with this); but I think that if people go on believing theory is unavailable to them, then they will never recognize it when they see it and won't have any idea how to process it.

Im not sure about the first paragraph, but the latter is certainly true - what you can hold is going to almost always win out. Time preference! Bird in the hand.

There are competing analogies for time. Is it linear, as our narrative constructions of history perceive? Is it merely cyclical, as some eastern and other ancient cultures perceived? I have thought of perhaps another option. Conservative thought argues vehemently that history does not support a "progressivist" notion - that we are not "progressing" through history in really anything more than a strictly technological sense. I agree with this. However, history does appear to "move", but also reveals cycles, yet the "seasons" of the cycles are never completely identical.

What if time is like spinning top, weaving and dipping all over the place? As this is a new idea, I haven't had time to flesh anything out about it, but it has a certain appeal.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well I don't think you have to get that abstract to object. I like to point to the "what is healthy/unhealthy" oscillations over the last hundred years. All "current science" at some point. That doesn't even need to get into the issue of conflicted interests based on who funds the research - which is a real thing. IE, studies commissioned by the "Institute for Sugar" will find sugar has no damaging health effects, etc. Scientists have bills too.

Sure. Science is still subject to financial incentives.

Im not sure about the first paragraph, but the latter is certainly true - what you can hold is going to almost always win out. Time preference! Bird in the hand.

Of course, I wasn't speaking in psychological terms, but merely in terms of material influence. I think theory has an impact but it is far more wide-reaching and expansive (and therefore less easily identified); technology and other material products have a far more immediate influence, which is both constant and consistent, as well as identifiable.

There are competing analogies for time. Is it linear, as our narrative constructions of history perceive? Is it merely cyclical, as some eastern and other ancient cultures perceived? I have thought of perhaps another option. Conservative thought argues vehemently that history does not support a "progressivist" notion - that we are not "progressing" through history in really anything more than a strictly technological sense. I agree with this. However, history does appear to "move", but also reveals cycles, yet the "seasons" of the cycles are never completely identical.

What if time is like spinning top, weaving and dipping all over the place? As this is a new idea, I haven't had time to flesh anything out about it, but it has a certain appeal.

Not to be pretentious, but you're preaching to the choir. This is something I have focused on quite a bit. Stephen J. Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle is a great start; but also Baudrillard's The Illusion of the End; Lukács's The Historical Novel; Foucault's The Order of Things and essays like "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"; history as a boomerang in African American scholarship; history as rupture in Deleuze...

Also, the "conservative" notion of history as non-teleological and progressive only in a technological sense is in traceable to Marxist critic Walter Benjamin's influential essay, "Theses on the Philosophy of History."

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

 

[Dak]

Certainly someone outside of the Continental contingent has to have addressed the topic. I find it ironic that a "Marxist" critic would reject a teleological explication of time. "Rupture" just sounds Schumpeterish rather than Deleuzian, and in either case I don't know if it works any better than a "boomerang" theory (which is to say not at all).

 

[Einherjar86]

Is it any better than a cyclical theory? All philosophies of history are representations of history. The idea of history as a boomerang applies specifically to African Americans - a demographic that has been ideologically excluded from history. The image of the boomerang is meant to convey a temporal logic that standard histories can't account for. None of these images perfectly captures any entirety of history because a history will always exclude certain subjects whose history will, inevitably, appear different to those subjects.

 

[Dak]

I think the cycle absolutely works better than a boomerang. The spinning top in the portion of its spinning where the dips and erratic wanderings happen certainly has more explanatory or representative power. I specifically found that representation appealing because I don't see it leaving anyone/thing out, and that of course doesn't mean that leaving someone out is predicated upon their recognizing the representation.

 

[Einherjar86]

Part of the reason why African American writers have assumed the image of the boomerang is because the spiral has been insisted upon by white historians. Sometimes the source of the representation itself is reason enough to seek an alternative representation.

There's absolutely no justification for privileging one purely representational image over another. History isn't cyclical, and it isn't a boomerang; the image says more about the paradigm than it does about the abstraction of history itself.

 

[Dak]

Part of the reason why African American writers have assumed the image of the boomerang is because the spiral has been insisted upon by white historians. Sometimes the source of the representation itself is reason enough to seek an alternative representation.

There's absolutely no justification for privileging one purely representational image over another. History isn't cyclical, and it isn't a boomerang; the image says more about the paradigm than it does about the abstraction of history itself.

Well a set cycle isn't accurate obviously, but that doesn't somehow mean the boomerang is equally viable, or unviable as it were.

There is certainly something loosely appearing as a cycle within the pattern, but it isn't exact. This is why they erratic nature of a whipping and dipping spinning top appeals. The spin is the cycle, bu the whip and dip accounts for the difference.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think the top metaphor is good, actually; but even the proposal of a metaphor immediately and automatically implies alternative metaphors. It always already occupies a perspective within history and thus cannot but propose a representation formed by the conditions of history.

History, if there's any such thing, may look entirely different one hundred years from now. Just like the hard problem of consciousness, there's a hard problem of history.

EDIT: just for good measure, here's a quote from a scholarly article titled "Octavia Butler's Parable Novels and the Boomerang of African American History":

In the Prologue to Invisible Man the Invisible Man remarks, “Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy” (5). Ellison, thus, uses the scientific principle of the boomerang as a metaphor for the destructive nature of the spiraling of history. In his conception, the cyclical nature of history has devastating consequences for African Americans, and therefore one must always be prepared to experience its effects.

 

[Dak]

Matt probably doesn't look in here, but anyway:

It seems like you're one of those people who live in a bubble - if something doesn't directly affect you/help you, it doesn't exist or doesn't matter. Without the ACA I wouldn't have healthcare and the student loan changes that were made have been extremely beneficial to me also. Elections are extremely important. They directly impact the health and economic well being of anyone who isn't extremely wealthy. The Republican party is also directly undermining the democratic process every chance they get in order to win elections. There's a reason why voter turnout is so low and it can be at least somewhat attributed to all of the gerrmandering and voting restrictions created at the local levels of government.

Krig is one of those people that Faux News has brainwashed into voting Republican year after year. From what I've gathered over the years of reading his posts on here, he's in the lower-middle class tax bracket and Republicans have made it clear that they want to destroy that demographic completely, under a guise of patriotism, religion, and family values. Most people like that are either stupid or willfully ignorant.

This whole thing is so chock full of irony I don't even know where to start.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Foucault and social media: life in a virtual panopticon
http://philosophyforchange.wordpres...nd-social-media-life-in-a-virtual-panopticon/

 

[Einherjar86]

I just recently taught Foucault's panopticon model to my students. Lots of them dug the idea that power doesn't derive from any particular person, but rather is an effect of various social systems.

Also, that piece is helpful in understanding how a subject isn't inherent to a body, but is an artificially constructed institution.

 

[Dak]

While Foucault's idea here may or may not be correct, I suspect that the ease of acceptance has a lot to do with the usefulness for justifying apathy.

 

[Einherjar86]

That could be, but it just isn't the author's concern. He/she wants to demonstrate that social media function as a kind of decentered, interpersonal network that both allows for preexisting subjects to enter into discourse, and contributes to the discursive construction of those subjects. This is true with brute language as well, but with something as mediated as online discourse social construction becomes far more layered. Apathy figures into this as a material component of alienation itself; but the driving force of this author's argument is that social media is a means of constructing subjectivity.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Jimmy "likes" this