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[Einherjar86]

Mine as well. It is literally the most well-executed and constructed, passionate and volatile text I've ever read. And it has so much to say in a mere 330 pages.

EDIT: @ Unknown

And yeah Zeph, you'd dig Foucault. I need to read more Nietzsche. All I've read are excerpts from On the Genealogy of Morals.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Blood Meridian? I wouldn't call it deterministic. I'd call it anti-humanist, to an extent. And are we really volitional beings who are conscious of our identity?

Anything anti-human is anti-life if ya ask me.

I think so. We have the ability to choose unlike a cow etc or a chair etc., and we know existence exist (what is, is.). We are aware of our existence and identify it.

Now I want to suggest Foucault's The Order of Things. It sounds exactly like what you're talking about, as far epistemological revolutions in the human sciences.

thx. B & N here I come.

Žižek claims that nature is nothing more than a pointless series of catastrophes. What I think he's intends by this is that the belief that nature is working toward some kind of ultimate, teleological resting state is misleading. We should think of nature not as something progressing through time, but as something that just is in flux; that's its "nature" (no pun intended). In that sense, I don't know if I would call it orderly.

Zizek is a mystic in the sense that he leaves to much of his interpretation in the hands of nihilism. I really like Zizek and find him extremely entertaining but I also think he fails to identify his claims. I agree that everything is always in flux but I also know that it's interconnected with an order.

 

[Einherjar86]

Anything anti-human is anti-life if ya ask me.

Sorry, I should clarify. Not anti-humanist in the sense that people should die, or people are bad, or something along those lines. Rather, anti-humanist in the sense that we need to abandon an anthropocentric view of the world, and that there's no reason to assume that we're some kind of teleological omega point in the course of evolution or of nature.

I think so. We have the ability to choose unlike a cow etc or a chair etc., and we know existence exist (what is, is.). We are aware of our existence and identify it.

I tend to agree (in some respects; I also think there is a lot about our existence that we do not apprehend), although there are some interesting developments in the field of neuroscience that have revealed some startling evidence otherwise.



An interesting video, although I don't agree about the harmonious unity of the human mind.

Zizek is a mystic in the sense that he leaves to much of his interpretation in the hands of nihilism. I really like Zizek and find him extremely entertaining but I also think he fails to identify his claims. I agree that everything is always in flux but I also know that it's interconnected with an order.

That's fair, but let me ask: isn't "knowing" that everything is interconnected with some kind of inherent order a mystical position to take?

Žižek's claim is that we should try to look beyond nature as a kind of unified, orderly whole. Instead, we should see it as random; and human beings, as a part of nature, simply figure into that disorder.

 

[Zephyrus]

How do you type in those Czech accents? Or do you paste it in from Wikipedia.

 

[Einherjar86]

I just paste it from whatever pops up on Google. But I think you can also do it with the symbols on Microsoft Word.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Sorry, I should clarify. Not anti-humanist in the sense that people should die, or people are bad, or something along those lines. Rather, anti-humanist in the sense that we need to abandon an anthropocentric view of the world, and that there's no reason to assume that we're some kind of teleological omega point in the course of evolution or of nature.

Yeah I see the point, although it seems more poetic than philosophical.

That's fair, but let me ask: isn't "knowing" that everything is interconnected with some kind of inherent order a mystical position to take?

I don't think so because we perceive reality and form conceptions that interconnect. Reality is our basis not the abstraction itself.

Žižek's claim is that we should try to look beyond nature as a kind of unified, orderly whole. Instead, we should see it as random; and human beings, as a part of nature, simply figure into that disorder.

What I don't understand is how we can look beyond nature? That would be looking beyond reality.

Why should we see it as random? I would need significant evidence of this disorder?

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't think so because we perceive reality and form conceptions that interconnect. Reality is our basis not the abstraction itself.

Ah. Well, I disagree.

I'm of the opinion that our perceptions and our propensity to form conceptions that interconnect (historicization, narrativization, etc.) are purely the results of our constitution as signifying beings who view the world anthropocentrically. I believe that perceiving the world in that way implies that there is a reason why we as human beings developed and became, and that our existence was somehow written into the fabric of the universe since the beginning of time (as though that could exist as well). It's actually more mystical, in my opinion, to believe that the way in which we perceive the world is the way the world actually is.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Ah. Well, I disagree.

I'm of the opinion that our perceptions and our propensity to form conceptions that interconnect (historicization, narrativization, etc.) are purely the results of our constitution as signifying beings who view the world anthropocentrically. I believe that perceiving the world in that way implies that there is a reason why we as human beings developed and became, and that our existence was somehow written into the fabric of the universe since the beginning of time (as though that could exist as well). It's actually more mystical, in my opinion, to believe that the way in which we perceive the world is the way the world actually is.

I'm not saying forms are absolute, shit we could see things completely different, but there is a something and therefore there is something to know, to identify, and anything with an identity has an action and an order. Objects are absolute. There can be no contradictions here.

Are human beings the center of the universe? Of course not, but it is essential to my survival that I am the center of mine looking out.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not saying forms are absolute, shit we could see things completely different, but there is a something and therefore there is something to know, to identify, and anything with an identity has an action and an order. Objects are absolute. There can be no contradictions here.

Well, I think that's a pretty big assumption to make. The way in which we "know" anything is conditioned by hundreds of years of scientific reasoning, and that in turn is conditioned by tens of thousands of years of philosophical debating and simple linguistic development. It seems erroneous to assume that the properties we attribute to a given object are its inherent properties. Any "order" we perceive in a rock is an order that we, in a sense, have put there.

EDIT: I don't want this to be misconstrued as I don't think there's anything we can know. I think science, philosophy, history, etc. are all important and necessary paths to pursue, and I think it's true that we can know (to some extent) something about the objects we encounter. We know that something called vitamin C is in citrus, and in certain amounts it is good for us to ingest. That is something worth knowing.

All I mean by my above statement is that the entire process of scientific reasoning (epistemes, paradigms, what have you) is analogous to a kind of Hegelian dialectical process that implies some kind of absolute knowledge, an eventual omega point wherein all previous knowledge will come together in a harmonious way and explain all the secrets of the universe. I think this process, which posits some eventual absolute, is erroneous.

 

[Cronopio]

I have drunk beer and your discussion makes my head ache.

 

[cookiecutter]

scroll scroll scroll

 

[Cronopio]

My thought exactly!

 

[Einherjar86]

I have drunk beer and your discussion makes my head ache.

I have made thinking and your input lacks any.

 

[Cronopio]

Dat ownage.

 

[Zephyrus]

I actually have been following Pat and whatshisname's discussion carefully, but was hesitant to say anything because I'm not grounded well enough in my (working) convictions on these matters. I'm with Pat on having faith (haha) in science, because it is a working definition of the dynamics and constitution of our universe. The laws of physics/nature are contingent only to this universe (we cannot yet prove that this is the only universe) and those laws formed randomly and evolved from primordial cosmic conditions, as did life on earth a few billion years ago.

My epistemology is that we never 'get' anything, rather we 'are getting' it. We are always beneath Plato's divided line, in the realm of becoming, and our knowledge of reality is just as subject to temporality as the subjects of that knowledge. Any attempt to impose any element of absolutes or permanence is delusional, whether that be to posit the existence of God or to describe anything in language, which just like any theology is an attempt to impose order on chaos. Language evolves and so do the concepts it attempts to isolate outside of temporality.

 

[rms]

peace duders, gotta go to the afghey tomorrow

 

[skeptik]

Einherjar is right about this shit because I agree with him and his continual referencing of this Zizek guy keeps making me want to check him out.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

I actually have been following Pat and whatshisname's discussion carefully, but was hesitant to say anything because I'm not grounded well enough in my (working) convictions on these matters. I'm with Pat on having faith (haha) in science, because it is a working definition of the dynamics and constitution of our universe. The laws of physics/nature are contingent only to this universe (we cannot yet prove that this is the only universe) and those laws formed randomly and evolved from primordial cosmic conditions, as did life on earth a few billion years ago.

Sure as an agnostic you can't prove there is or isn't another universe, but in logic you are never called upon to prove a negative. Zero does not exist. You do not need faith/belief (not knowing what is true) in reality because reality holds no contradictions. I'm not saying we know all there is to know but I am saying I'm conscious of what I do know (the self evident) and what I am continuing to learn. There is no room for hypotheticals inside the realm of reality, there either is ot there isnt and we work from that principle. I take that stand against any form of mysticism and the agnostic who takes no stand at all.

My epistemology is that we never 'get' anything, rather we 'are getting' it. We are always beneath Plato's divided line, in the realm of becoming, and our knowledge of reality is just as subject to temporality as the subjects of that knowledge. Any attempt to impose any element of absolutes or permanence is delusional, whether that be to posit the existence of God or to describe anything in language, which just like any theology is an attempt to impose order on chaos. Language evolves and so do the concepts it attempts to isolate outside of temporality.

Absolutes and permanence are two completely different things. Is gravity an absolute? Yes. is it permanent? No. There is no delusion there. To say we impose order onto chaos is completely subjective and false. The truth is reality imposes order onto us and we adapt to our condition.

 

[Vimana]

I might try shrooms soon.

 

[mutantllama]

In before someone says something related to Grant pissing everywhere.