zabu of nΩd
Free Insultation
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The Whining and Bitching Thread
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Einherjar86
Active Member
Grant makes some really good points. I cannot help but make a lengthy and (hopefully) philosophically coordinated reply.
I've been thinking more about this lately, and while I still believe that in the ultimate course of history, different paradigms, epistemes, etc. will have different conceptions of reality or "being-in-the-world", I think that individuals living within those periods will be hardpressed to see their relation to the world as being conditioned or mediated by things like language and culture. We see this all the time today.
That said, it doesn't mean that people should just ignore the effects of our limited apperception of the world; however, if a sizable group, taking these limitations into account, were to somehow participate in an event of true philosophical rigor, I believe the common understanding drawn from its conclusion might suffice as a kind of "grand conclusion about the nature of reality."
This leads me into your next comment:
This attitude could be said to fit within a branch of 20th-century analytic philosophy known as pragmatism. Pragmatism draws a lot of influence from Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, even occasionally Foucault, and puts extraordinary emphasis on conceptual relativity, empiricism, and the idea that all discourses/arguments/discussions essentially boil down to language games. Our best practical approach, therefore, is to try and understand the language games, the instruments we use, the concepts, so as to better understand and facilitate our communicative faculties.
Coincidentally, I just read an essay by Alain Badiou that challenges this approach. Badiou accuses it of sophistry and claims that the current situation of analytic (and even much of continental) philosophy relies too much on the historical conditioning of philosophy up unto this point in time. He writes:
"For Nietzsche, as for Heidegger, all thought that claims to be philosophical must first of all be evaluated in a historical assemblage (montage); the mainspring of this historical assemblage is to be found with the Greeks; and the game is played, the consignment is sent, in what happens between the Presocratics and Plato."
Badiou calls for a radical breaking of philosophy from what he calls "historicism." This is difficult for me to accept, since I see history (or at least the contingency of historical moments) as the primary conditioner of any cultural milieu. However, I also see where Badiou is coming from: he wants to salvage philosophy as a genuine and legitimate search for the Absolute, for Truth, and his theoretical system is an attempt to provide the method for doing that.
On the surface, this might seem like a pseudo-totalitarian attempt at securing Truth based on whatever fallacious appeal might be at hand; but Badiou really does a job in this essay to distance himself from previous philosophies of the Absolute. Philosophy, Badiou claims, has often fallen into error where it attempts to posit itself as a legitimate truth procedure, and in this way becomes like an art, or science, or politics, etc; but philosophy is none of these things. Rather, philosophy is the supra-procedural apparatus by which we should carry out truth procedures in art, science, politics, etc. Philosophy's primary goal, Badiou seems to suggest, is to fix the place of Truth as a void. This void is not ontological, however (i.e. not a void of being); it is operational. Badiou claims that wherever philosophy has tried to address this void as ontological, it has hence posited itself as a truth procedure, and has thus fallen into error, or disaster:
"Nietzsche's poet-philosopher; Husserl's vow to make philosophy a rigorous science; Pascal and Kierkegaard's wish to see philosophy as intense existence; and Plato's naming of the philosopher-king: all are as many intra-philosophical schemes of the permanent possibility of disaster. These schemas are all governed by the filling-in of the void that sustains the exercise of the pincers of Truth.
"A disaster, in philosophical thought, is in the making whenever philosophy presents itself as being not a seizing of truths but a situation of truth."
So, to get back to Grant's comment: Badiou would disregard such an approach because it hinges on the possibility of a multiplicity of truths, and all of them negative truths at that, i.e. meanings/values generated differentially through the play of language games. Philosophy does have the power, Badiou claims, to penetrate "beyond" language and meaning, to arrive at a logically sound Truth about the Real. It errs when it posits itself as a situation of this Truth, which he charges most philosophy of the past several centuries as having done. What philosophy should strive to do instead is create an operational apparatus (in Badiou's whole complex theory this can be achieved through mathematics) by which truth procedures such as art, science, politics, and even love can be effective.
tl;dr Badiou disagrees with Grant, and I don't know where I stand. As usual.
zabu of nΩd;10378630 said:
I've been thinking more about this lately, and while I still believe that in the ultimate course of history, different paradigms, epistemes, etc. will have different conceptions of reality or "being-in-the-world", I think that individuals living within those periods will be hardpressed to see their relation to the world as being conditioned or mediated by things like language and culture. We see this all the time today.
That said, it doesn't mean that people should just ignore the effects of our limited apperception of the world; however, if a sizable group, taking these limitations into account, were to somehow participate in an event of true philosophical rigor, I believe the common understanding drawn from its conclusion might suffice as a kind of "grand conclusion about the nature of reality."
This leads me into your next comment:
zabu of nΩd;10378630 said:
This attitude could be said to fit within a branch of 20th-century analytic philosophy known as pragmatism. Pragmatism draws a lot of influence from Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, even occasionally Foucault, and puts extraordinary emphasis on conceptual relativity, empiricism, and the idea that all discourses/arguments/discussions essentially boil down to language games. Our best practical approach, therefore, is to try and understand the language games, the instruments we use, the concepts, so as to better understand and facilitate our communicative faculties.
Coincidentally, I just read an essay by Alain Badiou that challenges this approach. Badiou accuses it of sophistry and claims that the current situation of analytic (and even much of continental) philosophy relies too much on the historical conditioning of philosophy up unto this point in time. He writes:
"For Nietzsche, as for Heidegger, all thought that claims to be philosophical must first of all be evaluated in a historical assemblage (montage); the mainspring of this historical assemblage is to be found with the Greeks; and the game is played, the consignment is sent, in what happens between the Presocratics and Plato."
Badiou calls for a radical breaking of philosophy from what he calls "historicism." This is difficult for me to accept, since I see history (or at least the contingency of historical moments) as the primary conditioner of any cultural milieu. However, I also see where Badiou is coming from: he wants to salvage philosophy as a genuine and legitimate search for the Absolute, for Truth, and his theoretical system is an attempt to provide the method for doing that.
On the surface, this might seem like a pseudo-totalitarian attempt at securing Truth based on whatever fallacious appeal might be at hand; but Badiou really does a job in this essay to distance himself from previous philosophies of the Absolute. Philosophy, Badiou claims, has often fallen into error where it attempts to posit itself as a legitimate truth procedure, and in this way becomes like an art, or science, or politics, etc; but philosophy is none of these things. Rather, philosophy is the supra-procedural apparatus by which we should carry out truth procedures in art, science, politics, etc. Philosophy's primary goal, Badiou seems to suggest, is to fix the place of Truth as a void. This void is not ontological, however (i.e. not a void of being); it is operational. Badiou claims that wherever philosophy has tried to address this void as ontological, it has hence posited itself as a truth procedure, and has thus fallen into error, or disaster:
"Nietzsche's poet-philosopher; Husserl's vow to make philosophy a rigorous science; Pascal and Kierkegaard's wish to see philosophy as intense existence; and Plato's naming of the philosopher-king: all are as many intra-philosophical schemes of the permanent possibility of disaster. These schemas are all governed by the filling-in of the void that sustains the exercise of the pincers of Truth.
"A disaster, in philosophical thought, is in the making whenever philosophy presents itself as being not a seizing of truths but a situation of truth."
So, to get back to Grant's comment: Badiou would disregard such an approach because it hinges on the possibility of a multiplicity of truths, and all of them negative truths at that, i.e. meanings/values generated differentially through the play of language games. Philosophy does have the power, Badiou claims, to penetrate "beyond" language and meaning, to arrive at a logically sound Truth about the Real. It errs when it posits itself as a situation of this Truth, which he charges most philosophy of the past several centuries as having done. What philosophy should strive to do instead is create an operational apparatus (in Badiou's whole complex theory this can be achieved through mathematics) by which truth procedures such as art, science, politics, and even love can be effective.
tl;dr Badiou disagrees with Grant, and I don't know where I stand. As usual.
damnromulans
Klingons do not faint
I had horrific incest nightmares and slept like shit and PP choked me out in his sleep and I had to punch him to get him to lessen up his chokehold.
Dak
mentat
Einherjar86
Active Member
The essay's titled "The (Re)Turn of Philosophy Itself," and mine's in a collection of his essays I own called Conditions. I found it marked down in a Boston bookstore for $9, but it looks like it's more expensive online. If I can find the essay on a database somewhere I'll email it to you.
SomeGuyDude
My name is sorrow.
- Apr 26, 2011
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zabu of nΩd;10378667 said:
I'm a contractor for oil companies. My job is researching parcels of land before the companies lease them out for drilling.
zabu of nΩd
Free Insultation
- Feb 9, 2007
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See the mysticism thread for my reply (it's more on-topic there).
Cool! So what kind of new responsibilities are you getting with the transfer?
damnromulans
Klingons do not faint
Spilled wet coffee grinds all over the boss's office carpet today. At least he's not here today!
divine_torture
leVel
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
- Jul 30, 2008
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the people posting in "the good telivision thread" are obsessed with shows i don't like
seriously
what's up with the sitting through comedies that aren't funny
nobody watches Tosh.0 or southpark any more?
and you're obsessed with drama shows that i've never seen, isn't anyone here watching supernatural or the mentalist???
seriously
what's up with the sitting through comedies that aren't funny
nobody watches Tosh.0 or southpark any more?
and you're obsessed with drama shows that i've never seen, isn't anyone here watching supernatural or the mentalist???
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
- Jul 30, 2008
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seriously asking here
do you mean that the mentalist is more terrible than other crime dramas??
or are you saying that it's terrible because it's a crime drama and you don't like any crime dramas??
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
- Jul 30, 2008
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my incest dreams aren't really nightmares, i just have a wtf? moment when i wake up
I like watching crime dramas like CSI. But The Mentalist is really terrible.
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
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CSI and The Mentalist are 2 completely different shows
CSI is a wildly inaccurate show focused on futuristic/impossible forensics
The Mentalist is about a civilian who does Law Enforcement's job for them
arg
Active Member
- Jun 4, 2008
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i fucking hate the american "valley girl accent". every time i hear it, i wanna shove my cock down their mouth just to shut them the fuck up.
it seems the vast majority of americans (even men), and foreigners who immigrate there have this accent. there are other more respectable american accents like those of Barack Obama or Tom Cruise or CNN newscasters, why can't more people have those?
it seems the vast majority of americans (even men), and foreigners who immigrate there have this accent. there are other more respectable american accents like those of Barack Obama or Tom Cruise or CNN newscasters, why can't more people have those?
SentinelSlain
Suck my joined date.
- Nov 21, 2007
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I have the rural northern English accent and foreigners often find it bemusing or offensive to their sensibilities. It isn't particularly strong though, some locals find me posh/ pretentious sounding.
Yeah but CSI (or at least, Miami) is entertaining and has good characters.
arg
Active Member
- Jun 4, 2008
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haha i'll have to hear that sometime, most english accents i've heard are really cool.
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
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miami is the one that just got canceled, the other 2 just got re-newed for more episodes
