Pragmatic Studies:

I totally agree with the above, glad You did get around to it. The problem with Sartre has always been one of sufficient ground, of a universally applicability. Areas of applicability will not really solve the dilemma, which the positivists tried to do, and in my view,Mohave succumbed to the fate that becomes of apologists. Apology for what?

The starting point by those looking for a logical way out, seems futile, they are surmounted by the predicament of the objective/subjective bar to universal understanding of the ‘thing-ness’ of the Nothing Sartre talks about. That argument gives an opening to the positivist interpretation of language
based on the resembling features of it, whereby thingness is inherent even in a no-thingness, the ultimate simple yet most complex question reduced to the formal logical level of either of two scenarios.
Either a nothingness is part of a being which is encapsulated by it (Being), Or, it is not, thereby nihiliting it. Sartre tried to lay a credible logical foundation, trying to identify a system whereby the identifiers can be held in suspense and re-applied.
This having failed, the differance was introduced, to salvage identification by a process of exclusion by dis identification a a logical process. Excess value, as the base of the Captial of meaning, remains, and thus is the modus operand of territorialization/de territorialization. In this view, the problem of being and nothingness resolves by the idea that there are no absolutes, hence there is no ultimate idea as a logical necessity. As per evolutionary principle. The idea HAS BEEN reduced, and what was left? The differential function of a quantifiable process.
This is where the mathematization of psychology has failed, according to critics of both, philosophical and psychological end games. Freud’s economy of the ID, Levin’s quantumization of the patent periphery of the personality failed in this level, critics point out.

However is this really so? I think critics will always be just that. Their reduced position to VO, which can not differentiate between either positions, are demonstrateable only on common sense principles, such as those which were laid down by the positivists.

What is a hundred years in the history of human endeavor? A lot, as can be deminstrated by the exuberance of scientific attainment, which unfortunately was inversely proportional to the depth to which nihilization of basic , by now, non identifiable connection.

So You are warranted in using presence/absence in your own mind, here to fore, You may have been accused of total misuse of concepts. Nothingness and Being have become disengaged to the point, where their meaninglessness can not be thought in terms other then so called common sense ones, totally phenomenologically de-territorialized.

The Freud idea resurfaces here again, and the phenomenologically reduced ideas, have primarily an effect of attempts to salvage or restructure confidence in a badly shaken system.

The surplus value is the result of this salvage, of trans valuing, in order to effect the semblance of shifting the meaning, whereby the choice between either/or becomes anathema.

The last century was a battle ground primarily between values of meaning against the defensive moves of an apology, for losses which such battles sustained. The reduction was sustained at the logical
level by those who her to the idea that no-thingness was a differance, a product of disenfranchisement, of de-territorialization. Critics did not attack this, they simply stated that there can not be held such a difference, in fact to say that nothing was simply the same as no-thing. The differance in being, is, that they are different, predicated and fought on different fields. As such, no universalized ion is possible without qualification, mathematization of quantificatiable , logical language. seems so simple, but it is by virtue of those semantic subtleties, that a hundred million plus lives were lost on the grand chess board of Europe and the world in the last century, the last millennium.

The most simple, is the most complex, and to affirm an identifiable field of reference, is simply akin to a denial of accepting basic logical relationships, in favor of trumpeting popular yet so misleading and apologetical conundrums, to attain an effect of utility.

Down the line, this may result in many apologists in singing a new song, a new revision, of ‘well, I told you so.’ Unfortunately, this is the way the world works, as it always worked. Regret always comes
last.

The uncertainty is so utterly convincing, that like in the art of pointillism , we may loose the picture at the point of getting lost in it , as we move beyond the aesthetic limit of distance.

But there is something entirely deep here, which may trump this argument, and that is, beyond the scope of this, and harbors on the idea of magic and the mystical, and begs credence itself in faith in ultimate principles. When Sztalin was god, he was known to have said,that it is easy to kill millions, but entirely difficult to kill one man. Perhaps, the prevailing uncertainty has changed the equation, totally so, the moment Adam accepted the apple. And maybe redemption is hiding in this betrayal after all, as Christ was hiding in the wise serpent, as Faust was able to trick Him.

Orb, I always enjoy your input in the same way (and I do not mean this as an insult: Guattarri does something similar in his Anti-Oedipus papers (that I’ve always thought the rants of schizophrenics were cool. There is always a kind of obscure poetic about them. And while I attempt to do a similar thing, my weird and d.constructive use of punctuation seems almost superficial compared to how similar your style is to actual schizophrenic discourse. At the same time, I trust (and have seen evidence (that you’re not just randomly stringing words together. You mean to mean something. And I always go into it in the hope of getting a glimpse of that meaning so I’ll have something to respond to. So if I don’t respond as much as I would like to, or you would like me to, just know that I’m am reading it and am always looking for that opportunity.

I do want to respond to this, Artful. But I have another rhizome I have to address today. Sorry I missed it. Will get to it tomorrow.

[quote=“d63”]
Orb, I always enjoy your input in the same way (and I do not mean this as an insult: Guattarri does something similar in his Anti-Oedipus papers (that I’ve always thought the rants of schizophrenics were cool. There is always a kind of
obscure poetic about them. And while I attempt to do a similar thing, my weird and d.constructive use of punctuation seems almost superficial compared to
how similar your style is to actual schizophrenic
discourse. At the same time, I trust (and have seen evidence (that you’re not just randomly stringing words together. You mean to mean something. And I
always go into it in the hope of getting a glimpse of
that meaning so I’ll have something to respond to. So if I don’t respond as much as I would like to, or you would like me to, just know that I’m am reading it
and am always looking for that opportunity.[/

Thats exactly right! We are all victims to the sort of divided soul, and as to the literacy of philosophical movements, what better way, then to fill it up with a substantial figurative representation. if this was true,
I would be especially privileged to gain insight. Alas, it is not. I am not mimicking the French stream of consciousness, and neither am trying to play up the psychological angle, kniwing full well Attari’s qualification as a psychiatrist. perhaps that pertains to his qualifications and depth perception as to the relevance of psychology to the study of philosophy.

That I did not make quiete the sense to You as I wished to have, is perhaps due to my lacks of tuning in to Your particular mind set, and heretofore, will,me when occasion should arise, communicate to You via standard philosophical jargon.

later

“That I did not make quiete the sense to You as I wished to have, is perhaps due to my lacks of tuning in to Your particular mind set, and heretofore, will,me when occasion should arise, communicate to You via standard philosophical jargon.”

The following, Orb, is from a discourse I was engaged in with someone who wrote an article for Philosophy Now. I think it is relevant here:

“Again I hope it is clear and if not I am sorry. I was trying to be as direct and to the point as possible.”

Unfortunately, my friend, you may be engaging in a noble but, ultimately, futile project. I’m thinking here of Lacan’s point that language is like an attorney that represents us to the attorney (the language (of the other. Even though, as I would still argue, language is an agreement, it is not an homogeneous one. It is rather heterogeneous in the way a language can arrive at slight variations of agreements in the various circumstances it can find itself being practiced in (ex. Ebonics. And this can go down to the individual themselves in their own individual context. This is how two individuals can actually be in agreement yet can still find themselves in a debate –sometimes to the point of hostility.

As Voltaire put it: if you want to talk to me, you’ll have to define your terms.

And this aspect of it seems to get amplified when it comes to philosophy since every philosophical process involves an individual accumulation of terms and meanings and associations (via di̕fferrance (that aren’t always translatable to another process. For instance, I have read through your article about 5 times now, and there are still parts of it that seem impenetrable to me. And I do not blame this on you as much as I attribute it to my symbolic filter (as Hofstadter put it (as well as the terms (and their associative networks –once again: di̕fferrance (we have picked up along the way. And you are in good company. I find myself, for instance, experiencing the same thing with Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. And that is secondary text.

And all this makes sense in the context of my recent excursion into Deleuze’s Logic of Sense in that communication is not so much a matter of the direct exchange of information as the rather oblique manner of working from the sense of what the other is communicating: the performance. This is why I should also preemptively apologize if I’m not directly addressing your points or if I seem to be going off on my own trajectory. If I seem to be doing so, it is only because your suspicion is likely true. But that would only be because I am often working from a sense of what you are saying. It’s the only process by which (through repetition and difference –that of playing what I’m doing and saying against what you are doing and saying (I can hope to get a clearer understanding of what you are doing.

On the uptake, though, your article has participated in a revision in my approach to my process. Up until now, I had thought the best approach to a difficult philosophy (once again: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway! (was to familiarize myself with the secondary text until I had enough information to delve into the actual text: to use it as a ladder until I was ready to climb into the thought of the actual philosopher. But my five readings of Joe Hughes’ book as well as the very short introduction to Derrida I’m reading now is starting to suggest how ineffective that approach is. Now I’m starting to see the secondary text as secondary to the “performance” of the actual text. I’m starting to see secondary text as supplemental to just diving into the original text and working from the sense I get from it.

I agree with You in that basic tenets are as important in any philosophy, as do confirming voices which may or may not correspondingly validate, whether a cynical performance, or, a truly driven attempt at understanding.

That, Sartre was the take off point is obvious and the point of a psychological backdrop is unavoidable. Scherzo analysis was long in coming, and there is some neat things about it, which Deleuze has said about it, he did not share the enthusiasm given to anti Oedipus,in fact he felt strange among disturbed people. It became dated, to the point in time when
Anti psychiatry was starting to feel obsolete, as a consequence of the fading of the 60’s. Attari did much better with a Thousand Platos, in seeking a
Non philosophical way to understand communication.
the thing is, Voltaire is dated, the structure of language not yet prone to the kind of entropy post modernity has excercised upon meaning. So kind in kind, with only one absolute on my part, and that is an absence of even a hint of hostility or suspicion.

later

The point I would like to mention, is, that the very basic ideas are the ones which are pretty determinative. Attari went around negating the concept of reductionism, vis, reducing complex ideas into their elementary forms, instead, his starting point was the problem, the situation, and worked himself up into more and more complex derivatives.
In fact he was a structuralist. In this scheme of things, derivations lost their footing, and developed into meanings within themselves. The analysis was anti Freudian Oedipal, and meaning could only be gathered through the schizoanalysis, of finding meaning within these trunkated ideas.

In the spirit of Facebook, Orb: 2 likes.

“I don’t want to derail your thread, but I will just add one thing since it is relevant to what has gone before. You (and others interested) might consider checking out the works of Heidegger generally collected under the title Basic Works. In them you will find a Heidegger much more generous in his presentation than in his other works. Also, a little bird told me that if you find out their names and search for them you should be able to find them.

I will add though, to understand Heidegger’s focus on poïesis you have to understand his stance on modern technology and the problem he felt arises from a hegemony of instrumental reasoning. Poetry, you might admit, does bring humanity closer to its connection with nature, the world, existence, or what have you, than for example creating machines. — I might say that creating machines is something essentially human, but it doesn’t really improve out spiritual connection with Being. Heidegger’s position was that thinking of Being brought us closest but poetry has the ability to absorb us and make us feel closer to existence even as an audience if not as performers or creators.

Has our modern world of ubiquitous technology brought us closer to eudaimonia (roughly, ‘the good life’) or have we perhaps even lost something that older civilizations had by living closer to nature? Is it desirable for humanity to change its trajectory? Is it possible any longer or have we entered an era where we are determined by our technology to pursue conquest at all costs?” –The Artful Pauper….

“I don’t want to derail your thread, but I will just add one thing since it is relevant to what has gone before.”

I think that too often we encounter people on these boards who take what they’re doing way too seriously –or may be posing as people who do when all they’re really looking for is an opportunity to heckle: this constant bitching about “serious philosophy” and staying on topic. This comes from a failure to see message boards for their real value: that as a workshop or jam in which we engage in a kind of play in order to find material for our more serious philosophical pursuits. I, personally, see any string I start as a catalyst to a rhizomatic series of associations (experimentation (that must go where it will to produce. And if anyone is responsible for bringing it back to topic, it is the person that started the string.

“You (and others interested) might consider checking out the works of Heidegger generally collected under the title Basic Works. In them you will find a Heidegger much more generous in his presentation than in his other works. Also, a little bird told me that if you find out their names and search for them you should be able to find them.”

This works with my sense of it. Clearly Being and Time is not the best place to start. Along with your suggestion, I have Walter Kaufman’s Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre which I need to get back to if I can ever get out of the mire I find myself in with these other GODDAMN Frenchmen. I mean it: Damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway!!!

But one way or the other, I do hope to get back to Heidegger –if through nothing else, at least secondary text. I have found things in him I can use, not just what I will describe below, but his concept of Anguish which, as Mary Warnock describes it, is about being tapped into the underlying nothingness of things. Or as I got from a documentary on him (topdocumentaryfilms.com/heidegge … g-the-unth…/ : the ungroundedness of things. This closely parallels my concept of the nihilistic perspective –which I would need another rhizome to articulate on.

“I will add though, to understand Heidegger’s focus on poïesis you have to understand his stance on modern technology and the problem he felt arises from a hegemony of instrumental reasoning. Poetry, you might admit, does bring humanity closer to its connection with nature, the world, existence, or what have you, than for example creating machines. — I might say that creating machines is something essentially human, but it doesn’t really improve out spiritual connection with Being. Heidegger’s position was that thinking of Being brought us closest but poetry has the ability to absorb us and make us feel closer to existence even as an audience if not as performers or creators.

Has our modern world of ubiquitous technology brought us closer to eudaimonia (roughly, ‘the good life’) or have we perhaps even lost something that older civilizations had by living closer to nature? Is it desirable for humanity to change its trajectory? Is it possible any longer or have we entered an era where we are determined by our technology to pursue conquest at all costs?”

As Keats said: poetry is the pick-axe by which we penetrate the frozen sea of knowledge. Art is a direct confrontation with being that passes into the evanescence of abstraction into nothingness. Philosophy, on the other hand, works in abstraction and struggles away from the evanescence and the pull of nothingness back to that confrontation with Being and existence.

And Heidegger’s anti-technological stance is a little hard to deny given that we face our own self destruction through our arrogance and man-made climate change. And while our current approach (modern technology (hasn’t so much given us the “good life”, it has given us the comfortable life very similar to junkies with a full stash of heroin or the narrators in Tennyson’s Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Capitalism and technology has turned us into the Land of the Lotus Eaters. Heidegger has relevance, despite his flaws.

Roger and Sydney’s Posts:

“ I’ve seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.

Given that “most” people probably think wrongly that words are defined to have meaning which is immutable, they are easy prey to this strategy. Therefore it’s legitimate to explore the mutability of the meanings of symbology. I’m not sure that Derrida and the Continentals have a clear enough grasp of the simplicity of this idea and so there’s a lot of empire-building going on, which only really serves to make clarity of language more easily evaded.

When “philosophers” discuss complex ideas in terms of other people’s ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism. These aren’t real philosophers. They are academics whose job it is to show people a range of ideas. To be worthwhile, we have to be very clear.”
*
“When “philosophers” discuss complex ideas in terms of other people’s ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism"

And hermeneutics!

I think that the tradition of engaging in philosophical dialectics has had a profound impact on the history of western thinking.

Its almost like Jazz; you have to somehow start off in a key, and maybe play a melody as an indicator to your audience that this is the musical universe you are in, and from there its your opportunity to make your own unique expression/contribution to alter the expression of the whole.

The ‘other people’s ideas’ is the head.

The ‘none of which may be clearly connected’ is what we would call ‘soloing over the changes.’

The outcome of Jazz is often movement, hopefully in the form of dancing.

The outcome of dialects is profound shifts in public attitude and a sense of progress in history.

Analytics has its place, but its not all there is to thought.”

I have, in my process, developed and held onto a sound bite (that which for the intellectually and creatively curious is what Frost called: a momentary stay against confusion (that pretty much describes my process:

I am drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition.

And because of this, I find myself sympathetic with both Roger and Sydney –that is with the qualification that while I agree with Roger on a lot of particulars, I am also in disagreement with his general conclusions (him being neo-classicist to some extent (while being more allied with Sydney.

And Sydney, I had decided yesterday to commit today’s limited window to Roger’s rather impressive post. I’m hoping, given time, to get to yours which I’m full in agreement with. I’m even hoping to slip some of yours into this. But enough with the preliminaries:

“I’ve seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.”

Nothing, Roger, could be more frustrating than trying to have a discourse with someone who is talking in etherspeak and offering up an interpretation of and response to what they’re saying, only to have them smugly reply:

“No, you don’t quite get it.”

I’ve actually been considering a satirical piece for Philosophy Now that describes just such a discourse and the intellectual arrogance involved. This, to me, shines on a point Rorty made in Philosophy and Social Hope concerning Heidegger who started out with his heart in the right place with poessis (etherspeak (then turned it all right back to the platonic hierarchy that modernism and postmodernism was working to undermine with his turn to a kind of esoteric priesthood with their exclusive semiotic system.

This is why I was with Mary Warnock when she, in an interview with Nigel Warburton, expressed regret at Heidegger’s desire to create a new language for philosophy. Still, Heidegger has, via secondary sources (including Warnock, given me things I can use. I’m equally split on Searle. On one hand I’m put off by his smug dismissal of continental approaches. On the other, I can also see the compassion in it in that it feels like an old pro taking taking someone under their wing and saying:

“Listen: you don’t need to go through that kind of alienation and degradation to have knowledge.”

And I do admire the step by step process he takes in his writings. Still, it is all fuel for the fire as Sydney points out:

“Analytics has its place, but it’s not all there is to thought.”

None of us can claim to have the all-purpose answer that will make everything work like a fine tuned machine. And that can only set us up for the risk for something authoritarian and possibly fascist in nature –for example: Heidegger.

As I see it, our situation is too complex to not think it’s going to take a lot of different people using a lot of different methods to fix it. This is why while any talk of a “Real Philosophy” concerns me, I am not going to sit here and try to convert you to the continental approach to philosophy. That would be futile given that you are clearly not wired to be open to it: to treat it (as compared to a direct exchange of information( like a poem or meditation you just keep reading until something happens. Nor do you need to be. I mean we all gotta find our flow.

But to offer you an example that might help you understand why I get into it: I have found, lately, that after reading a lot of and about Deleuze, it is often hard for me to go back to Rorty who works in the Anglo-American style of exposition. The guy is an important influence on my process. And I must always pay tribute to that. Still, it’s just not as challenging. It’s a little like going back to Ginsberg’s poem Howl (an easily accessible one for any reader of poetry just starting out (after experiencing the subtlety of someone like Levine.

An instance of being rhythmically coordinated without any indication of pitch.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux66A1sjC4[/youtube]

The narrative is like this in the sense that it is recognized by its similarity and proximity to some basic theme; ‘root’ notes, or the ordering master concepts of the process (what you like to call it) around which the narrative is constructed, and is analogous to soloing in a way. Many philosophical exchanges work this way, and the better the virtuosity of the philosopher (like musician), the more he/she can do within and around the rhythm that works and is not unrecognizable (like rambling) as part of an overall theme.

As long as one’s listener has knowledge of the master concept (the key), and as long as one’s notes are not out of time, it will be a recognizable part in an overall melody. Juxtaposing two antithetical concepts in philosophy is like playing an out of key minor diminished over a major in music. It can be done, but takes a skilled technician. Making something like that work would be taking philosophy and music ‘beyond good and evil’.

Now it would be a more consonant experience if both music and philosophy were always in key and without contradiction, but in doing so certain tensions are missing… and it is out of these that major changes can occur in the directions of both philosophical and musical discourse.

“The creation and destruction of harmonic and ‘statistical’ tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and ‘regular’ throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only ‘good guys’ in it, or eating cottage cheese.”- FZ

Just edited: the first video was missing a part. The above video is the complete version of the song.

“Our opponents say [the Kantians and Neo-Platonists –me] that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it. We say that this theory is barely intelligible, and of no particular importance –that it is not so much a theory as a slogan which we have been mindlessly chanting for centuries. We pragmatists think that we might stop chanting it without any harmful consequences.” –from page XVII of Rorty’s intro to Philosophy and Social Hope.

I would first point out that while I always have some reservations about going back to Rorty (especially after a less accessible philosopher like Deleuze(mainly because it feels less challenging and too familiar a territory, I’m still impressed by Rorty as a writer who can find some really cool ways of expressing what I already have thought.

That said, while I am in full agreement with Rorty here, I can’t help but feel he is overlooking what is implicit in his very point. He points out that:

“Our opponents say that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it.”

:then focuses on the unintelligibility of it. True enough. But what gets marginalized is how superfluous and redundant the theory is since the very reason it is so “obvious” and “self evident” is because people tend to naturally use correspondence (as well as coherence (in dealing with their environment. In fact, these tools can be said to be evolutionary adaptations and, therefore, wired in. And I think the same can be said for such terms (or slogans (as “objectivity” or “rationality”. This can even be said of the “scientific method” since everyone uses it in the way they go into their own little mental labs, form ideas, and test them against reality.

At the same time, this brings me up against another hesitation I always feel coming back to Rorty. His main attraction to me, from the beginning, was as an antidote to the trolls I encountered on these boards who threw the terms described above around like badges of authority, who acted as if because they said words like “objectivity” or “facts”, they had every right to treat you like some kind of intellectual inferior that they, through “tough love”, were tasked with shaping. I mean I’m naturally thrilled when Rorty later says:

“We must repudiate this vocabulary our opponents use [the trolls –me], and not let them impose it upon us.”

But I can’t help but feel like the cliché of an old Japanese soldier stranded on an Asian island who thinks World War 2 is still going on. The problem is that trolls really haven’t been that much of a problem lately on the boards –not that I’ve seen. I can’t help but feel, when I turn to Rorty, that I’m riding on the momentum of some past battle.

Still, there is a big difference between a battle and the war it is part of. And given the complexity of the war I find myself confronted with, the pragmatic approach of taking things on a case by case basis (as compared to a grand narrative (cannot help but feel like the only way to go.

When I suggested PMN, I was actually thinking of a twist on a popular question about philosophy in general: if you were stuck on a desert what island, what Rorty book would you choose to have with you? Therefore, I chose the more difficult one because it seemed the one most likely to keep yielding results. However, if the question were framed in terms of what book I would recommend to someone who only had time to read one book by Rorty, I would recommend Philosophy and Social Hope which was put together for a general audience.

At the same time (and in terms of the subject of philosophy as writing, and even though the book reveals itself a little too readily, I still see some value in going back to Philosophy and Social Hope (along with those study points I do at the “library” (in that I see the possibility of being able to get to know (to focus more on (Rorty as a writer. I mean he does have an attractive style (that kind of provincial/bourgeoisie generosity similar to that of Jaspers: the kindly professor (I hope to absorb into my own.
*
“Living with this kind of cognitive dissonance is simply part of being alive in this jarring moment in history, when a crisis we have been studiously ignoring is hitting us in the face— and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place” -Klein, Naomi (2014-09-16). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (p. 3). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

As I go further into Klein’s book, I am starting to recognize the very real and topical applications of the pragmatic agenda as described by Rorty in Philosophy and Social Hope -among others I’m sure. I’m starting to see the folly involved in the Cartesian subject/object dichotomy in that it is what props up our ability to act as if we are this ethereal substance distinct from the objects that occupy our space and allows us to think that we are perfectly able to overcome any problem those objects might present to us. It’s why, for instance, the religious right can act like we’re perfectly free to keep exploiting our environment since “God will save us”, while the secular right can act as if the new god, the invisible hand of the market (and the technology it has used to addict us (will step in. As Klein writes:

“Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come up with a technological miracle that will safely suck the carbon out of the skies or magically turn down the heat of the sun. Which, I was to discover while researching this book, is yet another way of looking away.”

What both come down to is our ability to think of ourselves as somehow distinct from the world of objects that surrounds us: as some ethereal substance that cannot be touched. And it is one thing, as Rorty describes, for such a state to result in a stunted philosophical process. But I have to wonder if Rorty realized that his point, in terms of man-made climate change, may well be a matter of life and death for our species (all species (as a whole.
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We can also see the import of Rorty’s insistence on philosophy as literature (or writing (as well. As Klein points out, climate change denial is that point at which reason fails. We simply cannot expect to reason with what is basically the equivalent of addicts. On top of that, we have the analytic snobs that are too busy slobbering all over themselves and looking for a place to hide and jack off at the latest technology to actually address the issue of manmade climate change. Now I haven’t read that much of them; but when have Searle, Dennett, or Pinker ever addressed the issue of our possible self destruction? I mean: thank you corporate sponsorship for saving our universities as state funding was depleted because our politicians didn’t want to raise taxes on their country-club buddies.

And doesn’t it put a kind of shine (an aura even (on Rorty’s pragmatic/continental/literary approach in that we have come up against a wall in which reason fails. And when reason fails, all that is left is force. And what force could be more gentle than good writing: that which resonates and seduces?
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I don’t want to pat myself on the back here, but much to my surprise, I find my approach to understanding as a writer (I do not consider myself a philosopher (tends to be confirmed by writers like Klein who are capable of a lot more research than I am. Nothing I have seen in Klein’s book surprises me. And this is because I have always worked to try to understand the other side in terms of how their logic must work -for instance: the logic of Capitalism. And I mainly bring this up not to brag, but to point to the potential effectiveness of Rorty’s pragmatic/continental/literary approach in the face of our present crisis.

First of all, Alexander, watching young guys like you (as well as Steven (work is a thing of beauty: like walking down memory lane: the same sensibility as well as a lot of the same places I have been. But don’t get me wrong here. What I see happening is analogous to when I first started my present job around the same time that 2 other young men did and quickly realized that as I was fumbling around on my own on night shift (being self taught (those guys would be well ahead of me a couple of years down the way (they having the brain pool of the day shift to follow around and find out what they needed to know. And I think the same applies here: me being pretty much self taught while you guys are right in the middle of the system following around the brain pool. Therefore, I have to get in what I can to help you before you are well ahead of me. Hopefully, you’ll have time to read it and it helps you with your paper.

I start with what I am most confident about:

“For that reason I want to try to give a short “story” on what happened (and went wrong) from Descartes to Locke to Kant to nowaday’s philosophy of language (actually just paraphrasing Rorty here, but with a critical look at the “joints” of his arguments, meaning: do I find his perspective plausible or not). I have a limitation of around 6000 words, I think, so I can’t really tell the whole story en detail, but I have the intuition that one can only define Philosophy as a literary genre, as a kind of writing, when one drops the whole epistemology then, philosophy of language now-business.”

Bertrand Russell described philosophy as lying in that no-man’s land between science and religion. And as accurate as this sounds (religion having the faint scent of metaphysics about it (we do live in a more secular age. Therefore, I would humbly (with all due respect (revise this to: philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and literature.

And this involves a spectrum throughout which various philosophers choose to work. You say:

“What I hopefully will be able to show, is, that a division between Philosophy and Literature only occurs, when one associates the task of Philosophy with the Kantian project in its (now) analytic philosophy-form (analysis of language instead of epistemology but with the same aim, namely to bring Philosophy “on the secure path of a science.”)”

I say it is all fuel for the fire. I say that, ultimately, there are lots of different people out there using lots of different methods to come to understanding and that we should use whatever tool seems to work in a given instance –even those of the analytics. Your point, however, seems to come from the same conflict I have had with the analytics: the smugness they often display when referring to the more literary approach to philosophy such as Searle’s dismissal of Derrida as a philosopher for those who know nothing about philosophy or Hawkin’s declaration that physics and science would make philosophy obsolete which, BTW, is the result of a rather half-assed understanding of philosophy: that which leans towards the scientific side of the spectrum.

That said, I want to address another point before I run out my daily 500 words:

“Thinking of Robert Frost now actually, but instead of mending the wall, I ask myself: Why is there a wall, a defintion, a distinction in the first place? What’s so bad with tearing down walls, if we agree not to interfere (or come to some other kind of agreement)? “

The thing to understand about Frost is that he was a neo-classicist much like the analytics we are dealing with. As he said in an interview:

“We rise out of disorder into order. I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down”

What was cool about him is that he was a little more open to the romantic sensibility he was reacting against. This was why he would pause before a wood on a snowy evening, consider walking into it, but choose rather duty or act like it would make any big difference what path he chose when faced with the dilemma. In Mending Wall, there are 2 refrains:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall:
nature, beauty, anything that is not the system.

At the same time: Good fences make good neighbors. In other words, there are these human agreements that seem to go against our nature. Still, as opposed to the romantic sensibility, our happiness as human beings may be dependent on those artificial distinctions: the Lacanian Symbolic Order.

“Another reason science is superior - it avoids the whole debate over relative and absolute truth and sticks with what is objective - reality.”

But that’s not what you’re doing, John. Like most people running around talking about “objectivity” and the “scientific method”, you just seem to be flashing it around like a badge of authority then making assertions based on speculation: for instance, this erroneous notion that neuroscience must necessarily lead to a conclusion that must exclude the possibility of a participating self. As I wrote earlier:

“Once again you run into the self contradiction that hardcore materialism runs into. You talk about the brain creating this illusion. But how does an illusion happen in terms of just meat, blood, and guts? How do you have that without consciousness? Furthermore, you talk about empirical evidence while asking us to accept your argument based on what you argue science will EVENTUALLY be able to do, not on what it has. But what if science actually finds evidence of a participating self? Your argument reads more like an appeal to the authority of science (an informal fallacy) than an appeal to real evidence.”

But the more interesting aspect of this is the very real possibility that science is starting out with that foregone conclusion –that is given that the materialistic position seems to fit within the scientific comfort zone. And if that is the case, is there any wonder we might actually question the scientific method?

It seems to me that these issues only seem to be relevant when we’re engaged in meta-discourses about discourse, these pissing contests that tend to emerge when people are striving for power and influence as compared to real understanding. I mean, at some point or other, we have to ask why we are engaging in debates about what method is superior when we could simply use that method and prove it. We have to ask what John expects to achieve here (that is outside of some snide dismissal of any sensibility not like his (when he could actually be engaged in science and not contradicting himself at every point along the way.

And in that sense, doesn’t this all feel like more of a distraction as well as kind of petty? Does it really matter where we get our understanding from as long as it gives us enough understanding to change the understanding of others and possibly make things better? And wouldn’t “making things better” (the pragmatic criteria (in evolutionary terms, be the only real criteria by which we judge our assertions, regardless of what method we use to arrive at them.

I get it: John is working from the assumption that science, and the technology it has produced, is one of the higher achievements of man. But it is only one among others: art, philosophy, literature, etc… And to succumb to this notion that science is above them all is to succumb to Capitalistic and corporate values. And I don’t see how that contributes to our evolution as a species.

“By an antirepresentationalist account I mean one which does not view knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 1). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Here again, we see the important role that the evolutionary model is playing in the evolution of philosophy which along with culture in general, as Rorty points out in his writings, is an extension of our physical evolution. (And once again: I cannot help but see a core overlap with Deleuze’s agenda here.) To get to the depth of it, we have to look at the evolutionary feedback loop that resulted in the experience he have as conscious beings and the language we developed in order to deal with it: that between an evolving brain attached to a body and the environment it has to negotiate. These are the tools we are working with. Therefore, it makes no sense to sit around and debate about the nature of that negotiation in order to (as Rorty puts it:

“To find some epistemological system that will underwrite any statement we might make about the world.”

That can only lead to quagmires. For instance, note how science has lately gotten into the mindset that it can make philosophy obsolete. And as Hegel rightly pointed out: such arrogance can only lead to self contradictions: an overheating that can result from an ideology trying to be the simple solution in a complex world. Scientism and realism, however, are based on the notion of empiricism which is based on a trust in what we can experience and see for what it is. Then it makes statements like Free Will and consciousness doesn’t exist, that they are illusions, mainly because such statements feel like the scientific/ realist thing to say. The problem is that we actually experience consciousness and free will. So, if we can’t trust our experiences of that (that which we experience at every point in our point A to point B (how do we trust any other “empirical” experience we might have?

Plus that, the scientific/realist approach acts like it has some kind of monopoly on the method with which it works. But everyone, by our evolutionary heritage, uses it. We all retreat into our own little mental labs, form hypotheses about the reality we are dealing with, then go back out and test them and, depending on the results, retreat to our own little mental labs and either eliminate, keep, or revise those hypotheses. So why even sit around and nitpick over terms like “objectivity” or “reason” or “the scientific method” when we could be just putting it out there and letting it all come out in the wash –that is when we know perfectly well that arguments backed by empirical evidence will generally fair much better. Flashing around such words (and such debates (only constitute, as Layotard points out in The Postmodern Condition, powerplays: attempts to control the rules of the language game as compared to just letting the argument speak for itself.

Rorty, in this spirit, later goes on to connect his anti-representalist position to his liberal one:

“I read Dewey as saying that it suits such a society to have no views about truth save that it is more likely to be obtained in Milton’s “free and open encounter” of opinions than in any other way.”

Here we only need look at what props up the arrogance of scientific/realist position: the corporate funding it tends to draw. It only seems more right because it has access to cooler toys indulged in by children who happen to have more market value: the so called “greatest minds among us” whom we can also see as well trained -children, BTW, who had the resources to go to universities in the first place.

This is why I’m actually enthusiastic about increasing corporate funding (due to decreasing state funding (driving the fine arts and humanities out of universities. It just seems to me that they may be more effective at doing what they do best in workshops which most people, who can’t afford to go to universities, might actually be able to afford without an expensive bureaucracy driving up tuition. Such workshops could actually serve the Promethean purpose of bringing the fire to the people where it belongs, where it needs to be if we are to change the general sensibility.

“I read Dewey as saying that it suits such a society to have no views about truth save that it is more likely to be obtained in Milton’s “free and open encounter” of opinions than in any other way….

“I argue that an antirepresentationalist view of inquiry leaves one without a skyhook with which to escape from the ethnocentrism produced by acculturation, but that the liberal culture of recent times has found a strategy for avoiding the disadvantage of ethnocentrism. This is to be open to encounters with other actual and possible cultures, and to make this openness central to its self-image.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 2). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

While we can share the spirit of these two points, I think we have to be wary of the paradox we race towards here. While open discourse is always the goal, there are always discourses that seek to shutdown open discourses for the sake of some chosen method, discourses that cannot be tolerated in order to maintain that open discourse. This is where Deleuze (especially in his work with Guatarri (may have the upperhand on the pragmatism of Rorty in that it tends to focus on the ways in which those discourses do so: overcoding, territorialization, the paranoid/fascist center. And we can see it as well in Marcuse’s concept of operationalism as we see in extreme forms of scientism and materialism: the claim that free will and consciousness is an illusion simply because it sounds scientific to say so, that is when if we cannot trust the basic experience we have every day of free will and consciousness, then how can we trust any other experience we might have through the empirical methods of science. Through this kind of operationalism, the champion of such positions gets to cherry pick which observations get to be considered the result of empirical observation and experiences that are not the product of some kind of illusion. And as our cyber-circles have shown repeatedly, those who engage in these kinds of discourses have no problem with utilizing any tactic available to them to shut out the discourses of those who don’t agree with them. We who work the boards know all too well the very real manifestations of Foucault’s power discourses.

This leaves us no choice but to distinguish between productive and unproductive discourses, a distinction that is all over the writings of Rorty, and would expose us to accusations of hypocrisy. And perhaps this is because even pragmatism is not meant to be a grand narrative but, rather, one tool among others. And I think Rorty sees this and, as a solution, approaches the nihilistic perspective. This becomes evident in a quote from Davidson:

“Beliefs are true or false, but they represent nothing. It is good to be rid of representations, and with them the correspondence theory of truth, for it is thinking that there are representations that engenders thoughts of relativism.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 9). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

When I finally got it, this quote offered one of those little tweaks in one’s understanding that can warrant the status of epiphany: that which constitutes a step forward in one’s process. Up until this, I had generally understood Rorty’s downplaying of relativism as a defensive gesture in the face of accusations by anti-pragmatists. But this indicates that the problem is not so much that pragmatists are being accused of relativism; it is, rather, an indictment of relativism in that it doesn’t go far enough. It fails to escape the clutches of representationalism by choosing to give validity to all representations.

It is in this approach towards the nihilistic perspective that I see pragmatism’s escape from the paradox described above: that which just does what it does and lets the rest come out in the wash while denying participation to any discourse that seeks to sabotage that process.

“Would you say that a belief system is no more than an aggregate of many facts accrued over time? - Or is belief an emotional condition which then selects facts to maintain itself?” –Chris

“I would argue, Chris, that since it would be hard to see how one might derive a belief from a fact such as 1+1=2, that beliefs are more closely tied with data (formal and informal (and truth as defined by Rorty: an intellectual construct that seems sufficiently justified.” –me

“As you know we are born into many beliefs religious and political, sometimes seeming more like ideology than belief but functioning the same. Beliefs are required for everything we do. I think you’re right. They do seem to have a life of their own when tribalism and identity are entwined with beliefs.” –David

“Yes, the problem with tautolgoical facts is they tend to be trivial and lack the complex meaningfulness of belief which as David McDivitt explains is also about constructing a narrative. There’s a circularity in believing in the idea that facts make up your beliefs, if that makes sense…” –Chris

“Yes, I agree with David McDivitt’s point as well. And it does make sense. In fact, I would argue that the endgame of truth (with a lower-case “t” as defined by the pragmatic approach (is synonymous with beliefs. I would also argue (in terms of the circularity you describe (that the relationship between facts, data, and truths is not one way. Our truths (beliefs (can sometimes effect what facts we choose to focus on.

“Because of this,I stand with David McDivitt’s stand against over-zealous secular obtuseness when it comes to dismissing religious beliefs. The problem with Cervais’ point is that he confuses data with facts.” –me

And I would say the same concerning Dawkins’s, Bill Maher’s, and Sam Harris’ rather obtuse dismissal of religious belief systems that are based on informal data that leads to their individual truths. And I am not (being an agnostic myself: an atheist that hedges their bets (suggesting that we accept religious belief systems. What I am suggesting, however, is that we push the pragmatic agenda to the point of recognizing that there are religious people out there who see the same problems with Capitalism that people like me do. And for my pragmatic purposes, it really doesn’t matter what belief systems my potential allies may hold, that is as long as it gets the job done: social justice: a world in which I can enjoy what I have while knowing that the worse off among us have, at least, a minimum of comfort.

Rorty says:

“Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own - unaided by the describing activities of human beings --cannot…” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 135-137). Kindle Edition.

So by what criteria do we dismiss religious statements beyond the pragmatic criteria of working in a pragmatic way? In other words, from a pragmatic stance, if a religious perspective is useful to the extent that it furthers social justice (if it works to our ends, there is no reason we shouldn’t use it.

“The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 137-138). Kindle Edition.

I mainly throw this out to my worthy (as in useful (jam-mate, David McDivitt, who crystallized this point for me which applies to both of my main influences: Deleuze and Rorty (:I’m drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition . Unfortunately, I cannot track his actual quote and will have to paraphrase it. He basically pointed out that in the old days, the objects that occupy our space were considered to be the language of God. It therefore followed that anyone capable of interpreting that language more accurately than anyone else had to be higher up the ladder: the hierarchy. And we can see, based on this, how that dynamic has managed to evolve into the hierarchies and secular religions of today –something I hope to go into later.

That said, for today’s rhizome, I want to go into the dynamic that I have been seeing throughout Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Pragmatism in general, and has haunted our cultural history in its capacity to undermine the hierarchal belief systems that are always re-emerging: the nihilistic perspective: that which comes from the often unconscious recognition that we are (when we could easily not be (as we are as compared to infinite number of others we could be, that which recognizes, eventually, that any argument we can make about our world ultimately breaks down to assumptions that, ultimately, float on thin air. Note, for instance, Rorty’s recognition of the limits of his pragmatism:

“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”

What Rorty is up against (and pre-empting (is the very argument that the nihilistic perspective is always confronting: the skeptic’s paradox. And his approach, as I will try to demonstrate, is closer to the nihilistic perspective than that of the skeptic.

Say you walk up to a skeptic and the nihilistic perspective and say:

“You cannot say that there are no absolutes, since to do so is to try to establish an absolute.”

The skeptic will do what they usually do, scrutinize, until they come to the realization that there is a big difference between saying we live in a world in which there are no absolutes and actually living in one, and just go about the business of being skeptics. This is because they recognize in the argument a failure to make the leap from the semantic to the existential. The nihilistic perspective, on the other hand, picks this up and takes it further. They cross their arms, glare at you impatiently, and snort:

“Right! Nothing is engraved in stone…. not even that nothing is engraved in stone. So what’s your fucking point?”

Once again, Rorty:

“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”

Rorty, like the nihilistic perspective (that which he shares with Deleuze, embraces the idea of his assumptions floating on thin air, considers it an open field in which he (and we (can create.

(And I would note here a notion that has been associated with Deleuze: the idea that the primary domain of philosophy is paradox.)

That said, I want to commit tomorrow’s rhizome to noting (and quoting (some of the sociopathic implications (that is in terms of Rorty recognizing it, not practicing it (involved in the book.

“Ultimately, all arguments for beauty are arguments for freedom. “ –Camus

During my present immersion in Rorty’s Irony, Contingency, and Solidarity, I have come to realize that, while there are a lot of excellent attempts out there to explain the nature and characteristics of a totalitarian state, I would add to it a tendency to put the petty and mundane over self transcendence: self creation to put it in Rorty’s terms, terms I believe he shares with Deleuze despite their differences. And all I have to do is watch a few TV commercials or note that the workplace (not government (via smoking policies and drug testing (has become the most effective form of social control to see how far Capitalism has pushed us to that end. In this sense, philosophers like Rorty and Deleuze have become as important as they ever were. But this is not to say that this form of social control cannot take more sophisticated forms. I return to an earlier point:

“The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 137-138). Kindle Edition.

“I mainly throw this out to my worthy (as in useful (jam-mate, David, who crystallized this point for me which applies to both of my main influences: Deleuze and Rorty (:I’m drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition . Unfortunately, I cannot track his actual quote and will have to paraphrase it. He basically pointed out that in the old days, the objects that occupy our space were considered to be the language of God. It therefore followed that anyone capable of interpreting that language more accurately than anyone else had to be higher up the ladder: the hierarchy. And we can see, based on this, how that dynamic has managed to evolve into the hierarchies and secular religions of today –something I hope to go into later.”

And now’s as good a time as any. But to explain how I see that subject/object presupposition evolving into modern forms of oppression, I have to offer a quasi sy fy prediction based on an actual experience I had on the old Yahoo boards. During the Bush/Kerry campaign, being the vocal progressive I was, I came up against a libertarian economist who was clearly college educated and had a lot of time to focus on board spats. For every argument I made, he was able to come up with 10 pieces of data that made him seem impressive to the fellow goons he brought with him. And the fact that I knew perfectly well that had I of had the time he apparently did, I could likely find ten other pieces of data that put his into question mattered little under the “rules of discourse” according to the language game he was (via common doxa (controlling the rules of. Eventually, the 2008 economic meltdown proved my instincts right. But more important is what I found out via Thom Hartman: that corporate and conservative think-tanks were paying ideological hit-men (like the one I encountered (to go about the boards and undermine anti-Capitalist stances.

Now we go syfy:

Say Sanders gets the nomination. Isn’t there the very real possibility that those corporate and conservative think tanks will release the ideological hit-men again? And isn’t there every possibility that the strategy those hit men will use is to barrage you with data, thereby engaging you in a data war that most people (those that actually work (cannot win? What they will basically do is claim victory based on the very subject/object dynamic described by David McDivitt: that which gives hierarchical status to those who can read the voice of God (via the object (based on an arbitrary human construct constructed in a power discourse.