Serious Philosophy Discussion

[Bullitt68]

@Caveat @Rimbaud82 @Spoken @French Canadian @Luminosity @faustian @Devout Pessimist @TheGreatA @Pupi

Hello, Mayberry. Credit for this thread idea goes to Caveat. And I @'ed above the small handful of posters I could think of between Mayberry and The War Room who have shown an interest in philosophical discussions on here.

Recently, in a thread about academia, myself and a few other posters took the opportunity to dig deeper and deeper into various intellectual issues. Eventually, Caveat had the idea of creating a thread where we could talk about such intellectual issues at whatever depth we wanted without worrying about testing the patience of posters who don't care about such issues. So, here we are.

To give posters a sense of what kind of conversations they can expect to find in a thread titled "serious philosophy discussion," I'm going to use the first few posts in this thread as an "archive" of the discussion that led to the creation of this thread.

PART 1:

This is an accurate description of postmodernism in general

I don't actually think that's true. There are good reasons to consider that values might have no objective fundamental grounding, that capitalism is a corrosive ideology destined to fail via its own contradications, and that aesthetic preferences are arbitrary.

They might not be immediately convincing, but they're serious ideas. All the more reason they need to be written about coherently.

The post-modern bogeyman strikes again

Sadly I'm not convinced it's a specter. Rather it's a systemic failure of publishing systems and academia in general.

Too many writers ensconced in such language feel no obligation to tie their ideas back to empirical reality, to assess the worthiness of the frameworks they're working within, or even to engage with each other in productive ways.

It's achievement simply for the sake of achievement; the little of value that does come out of it is what's surprising.

Kant was a pretty piss poor example though. Kant is one of the last in that line really worth putting the work in to understand.

This is a snippet from Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction: @Bullitt68 @Rimbaud82

The second reason the existing critiques do not go far enough is that they do not account satisfactorily for the dynamic interplay between the different theoretical frameworks he uses and his rapid movement between these frameworks. An all-too tempting way of accounting for the rush we get when we are whirled along in a Zizek text is to imagine the speed of the journey is simply an expression of the speed of writing, to say he just writes too much too fast and that perhaps that is why it does not always make sense. One of the keys to unlocking this image of Zizek the author — who writes too fast and skims through different theories so that we end up with as little idea of where he is going as he does — lies in the form of his own writing. The point he makes about the illusory consistency of the subject and the work of the unconscious, in disrupting as well as reproducing the symbolic networks in which a subject speaks, leads us to some different ways to think about what we imagine him to be as the author of the texts that bear his name.

We need to take Zizek at his word again here when he tells us that in his work nothing is as it seems. There is indeed a performance for different kinds of audience that introduces an element of motivated inconsistency, and so we need to take seriously the rapid transitions from one theoretical frame to another in Zizek's writing, and the sometimes jerky movement from theory to its exemplification in culture or politics and back again, as well as Zizek's own scornful refusal to be pinned down. So, to take him at his word we also need to treat every explanation he gives as untrustworthy as a guide to his work. And we need to do this in a way that grasps something of the movement of his work over time rather than treating the shifts as yet more evidence that there are flaws in the theoretical architecture of his work that are being repaired as it undergoes renovation.57 So, the second question. There is an impression of chaotic movement in his writing which belies the lucid elaboration of a theoretical argument. How do we account for that?

These two questions — how we account for the illusion that there is an underlying rationale, and how not to get fixated on the image of Zizek the magpie for whom it seems that it does not really matter that none of it really hangs together — lead us to one little grid for making sense of where Zizek is going. But you should treat this as only one grid, and as riddled by exceptions. The grid includes the supposition that there is a theoretical system and the supposition that there is an erratic author. Treat those suppositions as stepping stones, not as sedimented 'truths', as if they could really be seen lying underneath the surface of the text or as somehow embodied in the figure of Slavoj Zizek (within whom we could diagnose a certain pathological condition which would explain our confusion).

The critique in itself is difficult, though comprehensible. The real issues are embedded in the criticism.

When you have a "dynamic interplay between theoretical frameworks that doesn't always make sense" and "illusionary consistency," and when "we have to take him at his word that nothing is what it seems," because "it does not really matter that none of it hangs together," then what the fuck are we doing, really?

Too much of this writing that seems to have the self-perception of theoretical progress is, in reality, knocking out the substance of its own value from underneath. That's not to say you can't find entertainment in the text (I've sunk hours into Enjoy Your Symptom! despite the fact that I probably could not explain a single chapter), or you can't appreciate the author's more accessible writing (I especially like this analysis of The Dark Knight Returns - Zizek's ability to soak up and articulate cultural varieties is undoubtedly incredible), but you have to be able to recognize the difference between productive philosophical writing and play writing.

And then not complain when no one takes the political consequences of the play writing seriously.

There are good reasons to consider that values might have no objective fundamental grounding, that capitalism is a corrosive ideology destined to fail via its own contradications, and that aesthetic preferences are arbitrary.

Learn yourself something here about objectivity, you postmodern heathen

Sadly I'm not convinced it's a specter. Rather it's a systemic failure of publishing systems and academia in general.

Too many writers ensconced in such language feel no obligation to tie their ideas back to empirical reality, to assess the worthiness of the frameworks they're working within, or even to engage with each other in productive ways.

Now we're talking

Too much of this writing that seems to have the self-perception of theoretical progress is, in reality, knocking out the substance of its own value from underneath. That's not to say you can't find entertainment in the text (I've sunk hours into Enjoy Your Symptom! despite the fact that I probably could not explain a single chapter), or you can't appreciate the author's more accessible writing (I especially like this analysis of The Dark Knight Returns - Zizek's ability to soak up and articulate cultural varieties is undoubtedly incredible), but you have to be able to recognize the difference between productive philosophical writing and play writing.

I've never gotten the hate for Žižek's writing. I get hating Žižek's shtick, his public persona, but the writing itself - particularly Looking Awry, The Parallax View, and Less than Nothing - is top-notch. What's difficult about reading Žižek is that he's read everyone and everything, so he'll string together references and allusions and quotes to 14 things in a single paragraph - or a single sentence! - and that can seem overwhelming. But it's not an indictment of academic writing and it's not even a stylistic problem. He's just dropping Lacan and Hegel and Kierkegaard and Schiller and Wittgenstein and Hitchcock and then he's off to another point to discuss Descartes and Kant and Benjamin and Weininger and film noir and then he's off to another point and on and on like that.

It does feel like intellectual sprints, and if you don't know what he's referencing then of course you're not going to know what he's talking about. But I don't think he's a good example of the general line of critique of this thread regarding the ills of academic writing.

And then not complain when no one takes the political consequences of the play writing seriously.

The political Žižek is the only Žižek that I don't read. I mean, the dude loves Marx, Lenin, and Mao. I'd certainly hope that no one takes his political shit seriously

Anyone who thinks of an entire school if philosophy is dumb is, frankly, worthy of being totally ignored

Some shit needs to be called out as shit. Poststructuralism is retarded. Period. It's retards writing retarded shit that only retards think isn't retarded. There's serious danger in writing blank intellectual checks like this to all schools of thought, in thinking that "Since people read it there must be something of merit in there." There might be, but there also might not be, and when there isn't, that needs to be communicated so people can spend their time reading shit that isn't retarded.

@Caveat

I forgot to mention Tarrying with the Negative, which is right up there with Less than Nothing as my favorite of Žižek's books. Here's a passage where he's explaining Lacan's twist on Descartes vis-à-vis skepticism:

"Lacan as it were supplements Descartes’ I doubt, therefore I am … with another turn of the screw, reversing its logic: I am only insofar as I doubt. This way, we obtain the elementary formula of the [skeptic’s] attitude: the [skeptic] clings to his doubt, to his indeterminate status, as the only firm support of his being, and is extremely apprehensive of the prospect of being compelled to make a decision which would cut short his oscillation, his neither-nor status … It is this inherent dialectical inversion that characterizes the [skeptic]: “officially”, he strives desperately for certainty, for an unambiguous answer that would provide the remedy against the worm of doubt that is consuming him; actually, the true catastrophe he is trying to evade at any price is this very solution, the emergence of a final, unambiguous answer, which is why he endlessly sticks to his uncertain, indeterminate, oscillating status … What he truly fears to lose is doubt as such."

That's clear as fuck. Of course, if you haven't read Descartes or Lacan, if you're not familiar with philosophical skepticism, and if you don't know anything about dialectics, then it might take some work to understand the nuances of what's being communicated...but if you have, if you are, and if you do, then it's bang-on brilliant.

Bad philosophy needs to be answered, and while I'm not fan of French poststructuralism, Foucault and Derrida are immensly important figures. It's not stupid or silly or anything of the sort...they're just wrong on a lot of things. They're worthy of engagement. And most of the folks I know who are big deals in the field and quite literally stand on the opposite side from Derrida and the like would tell you the same. Good philosophy is done in charity, imo.

By its very nature, postmodernism can be subjectively interpreted to be anything the writer/reader decides it to be. So immediately there's a rejection of objective reason and empirical evidence in favor of subjective rationalization and, ultimately, total rejection of objective knowledge/truth. That's fine when applied to the inherently subjective arenas of art, culture, philosophy, etc but it's not an appropriate mode of analysis for science or mathematics or logic (or any of their derivative disciplines i.e. econometrics, accounting, law, etc)

The serious ideas you refer to regarding critique of objective value and capitalism are indeed serious, but these ideas have already been coherently identified and explored as philosophical concepts by existentialists and nihilists, among others. And whereas existential and nihilist thought eventually produced branching belief systems such as absurdism and dialectical materialsim which address value and capitalism on a philosophical level, postmodernism often devolves into employing obscurantism in the application of subjective abstractions to concrete subjects

I really just don't see the necessity for or usefulness of postmodernism today

This is true of some hermeneutical approaches in postmodernism, but not all or most of it. Lit theory in America has radicalized Derrida in ways that accent relativism more than most schools. But most postmodern hermeneutics do not accentuate relativism. Subjectivity, yes, but that's totally different

But why does good philosophy owe so much charity to bad philosophy? Good science doesn't owe charity to flat earthers. Why do I have to extend charity to knuckleheads who can't write two sentences without one contradicting the other? Why do I have to read and know Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault even though I think they're morons while people who love Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault don't have to read and know Austin, Searle, and Cavell? The traffic in academia - certainly in the humanities - only goes one way and we're supposed to pretend that the streets aren't congested and full of idiot drivers.

You mentioned that you teach philosophy courses. I only recently got my PhD and haven't started teaching yet, so you're further along in the game than I am, but I remember when I was doing my MA and the PhD student who led our MA seminars told me something that's stuck with me. In our seminar group, we did a week on Althusser. My PhD group leader told his dissertation supervisor about what he was doing with the MA students and mentioned that this week was Althusser week. The professor was shocked and asked, "Kids are still reading that? That's what I was reading when I was in graduate school."

When the PhD student relayed that to me, I got to thinking: Why are we still reading Althusser on interpellation and Saussure on signifiers and Barthes on the death of the author? Why aren't we at least reading Žižek or Rancière on ideology or Chomsky on linguistics or Carroll on authorship? Why does philosophy get frozen and historicized like literature, like they're Great Pieces written by Great Authors and we have to "study the classics"? Shit's taught as if nothing new has been written in the last century, as if thinkers never reconsidered the things they wrote, as if other thinkers never utterly obliterated the mummified shit that students are reading as if it's "cutting edge" brilliance.

Barthes was a raving lunatic and Derrida was a wacky prestidigitator. They don't deserve the same level of respect and they shouldn't be treated as if they're on the same level as people like Aristotle and Wittgenstein. It's an insult to philosophy and to people who have actually contributed valuable insights to inquiring minds and it pollutes the waters for future generations of inquiring minds.

Now, that's not to say that bad philosophy doesn't need to be answered. It absolutely does. But why aren't the answers ever taught? How many times do you think Althusser has been read alongside a critique of his nonsensical theory of ideology? How many times has Derrida been read alongside Searle or Cavell? Why does every freshman in the humanities have to read Laura Mulvey but not Mary Ann Doane or Linda Williams or Teresa de Lauretis or Elizabeth Cowie or Miriam Hansen? It's lazy at best and irresponsible at worst.

Philosophers aren't deities. They're people some of whom are smarter and some of whom are stupider than others and have written stuff some of which is better and some of which is worse than other stuff. The pedestaling is intolerable and, worst of all, counterproductive and straight-up anathema to actual thinking.

I know this isn't exactly the topic of the thread, but I like to take every opportunity I have on Sherdog of all places to rant and rave about academia

Wait. You're doing a philosophy PhD? I'm teaching, but I've still got some bits of a dissertation to write. I'm not done yet. My wife also has a PhD though and I snagged a position at the same place she did.

I guess I have a hard time calling Derrida or Foucault ridiculous because I see credibility in some of their claims, and I see the internal reasoning here or there as to why folks would follow them (and maybe even make them more radical than they already are).

I've about zero interest in Cavell and late or early Wittgenstein, but I see your point about reading people together to better flesh out which ideas are worth following or aren't. Lots of departments leans heavily to a continental or analytic side (even if it's an arbitrary divide). The bibliographies of the faculty make up the conversation and attract the students. So if ordinary language philosophy isn't being tackled alongside Derrida and Searle, that's a department issue.

I will defend the notion of reading a camp more than another though: your coursework takes you into prelims, and your prelims set you up with a copiousness to tackle teaching. Generally, the dominant camp is going to decide the course work and testing, which means your own research will follow suit. Young scholars can't be expected to know it all. So getting PhD students to read deep and wide is sort impossible. The balance is hard to find, but students tend to follow the camps they've been given.

Further, those departments decide what the Canon is. My Canon was a mix of postmodern and analytic, but leaned heavy towards german postmoderns (who I find quite digestible and compelling). But you're right that the Canon needs to be rethought more often than it is. Though undergrads now get a wider range of ideas than I was given 10-12 years ago.

I also teach my intro to philosophy course by making people read 50/50 ancient and modern. We do as much platonic, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas as we do Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc. And I teach a deviation in genealogies from German idealism and Nietzsche.

Wait. You're doing a philosophy PhD?

Technically, I'm a film scholar (fancy way of saying movie nerd). I did my PhD in a department of media and cultural studies. And the disciplinary corner of film studies that I work in is called "film-philosophy," which just means using philosophy to analyze movies or using movies to analyze philosophy. I'm not a real philosopher in the sense that I didn't do my PhD on philosophy in a philosophy department but rather did a PhD with philosophy. In short, I'm philosophy adjacent

But yeah, I got my PhD over the summer on philosophy-related stuff.

I'm teaching, but I've still got some bits of a dissertation to write. I'm not done yet. My wife also has a PhD though and I snagged a position at the same place she did.

Nice. I'm just an unemployed bum who happens to have a PhD. Doing the job hunt now and just wishing I was still doing my PhD

I guess I have a hard time calling Derrida or Foucault ridiculous because I see credibility in some of their claims

Their philosophical projects, their fundamental claims and their overall arguments, are nonsense. That's not the same thing as saying that they never in their entire lives put anything that wasn't ridiculous on paper - and that's not what I'm saying. Derrida's essay on Aristotle, Heidegger, and time is pretty sharp and his early essay "Force and Signification" has some good stuff in it. But his différance shtick is nonsense and his critique of "Western metaphysics" is riddled with self-refuting garbage that ties him up into so many knots that I can't spend more than 10 or 15 minutes reading him without feeling sorry for him and wanting to give him a hug.

I won't go too deep into the specifics of their stuff on here because we could probably count the number of people who'll give a shit on one hand, but, if you want to know where I'm coming from and on what I'm basing my thoroughgoing rejection of the "Unholy Trinity" of Barthes-Derrida-Foucault, then feel free to check out this and this.

I see the internal reasoning here or there as to why folks would follow them (and maybe even make them more radical than they already are).

This is something completely different. I see nothing in anything of theirs to indicate why a reasonable person would follow them, but I absolutely understand what could appeal to certain types of people for very specific reasons. Not only was my PhD supervisor a hardcore, 20+ year poststructuralist, I also dated a girl in my PhD program for just shy of a year who was a hardcore poststructuralist. I totally "get it," I get what's appealing, I get what seems like it's "progressive" or "transgressive" or whatever. But it's incoherent, illogical, self-refuting nonsense, yet, to a certain type of person, that's inconsequential. I'm not that type of person, so, even though I get what someone might find appealing, that doesn't change the fact that it's nonsense that shouldn't appeal to anyone actually using their brain.

I've about zero interest in Cavell and late or early Wittgenstein

What's your bag, then? Who are your people?

I will defend the notion of reading a camp more than another though: your coursework takes you into prelims, and your prelims set you up with a copiousness to tackle teaching. Generally, the dominant camp is going to decide the course work and testing, which means your own research will follow suit. Young scholars can't be expected to know it all. So getting PhD students to read deep and wide is sort impossible. The balance is hard to find, but students tend to follow the camps they've been given.

Exactly. That's the problem. So much education in universities these days isn't education, it more closely resembles indoctrination. There's no discussion, there's no debate, there's no context; it's just "Marx said this, Althusser said this, Barthes said this, Foucault said this," with the implication for the students being that, because smart professor person chose them to talk about, they're obviously the people we should be reading and listening to who know their shit and who represent intelligence and sound scholarship. It drives me absolutely bananas.

I also teach my intro to philosophy course by making people read 50/50 ancient and modern. We do as much platonic, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas as we do Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc. And I teach a deviation in genealogies from German idealism and Nietzsche.

Well it sounds like you're doing your shit the right way.

You're officially my favorite person on sherdog.
I think your rhetoric this post clarifies things for me. You're less dismissive than I had originally considered. Sorry if I misread early on.
Funny enough, my supervisor did her PhD with Mulhall, a OLP and postmodern philosophy scholar. And my wife's PhD program did a lot with Cavell.

I probably don't care about OLP because I'm not super interested in philosophy of language. And I've hung out with too many people who beat you over the head with OLP, lol. I have read some Cavell, and I've read his stuff on film. Can't say I enjoyed it but I found it interesting.

My philosophy guys are Heidegger, Husserl, Gadamar, and Marion, which means I'm fairly well read with German idealism as a whole, especially Kant and Schelling.
My theological stuff is rooted in Aquinas, Plotinus, Przywara, Balthasar, and a few contemporary people.

As it were, Malick is a bit of a hero of mine. We still use his translation of Heidegger's Essence of Reason.

But as you can imagine, because people like Heidegger and Husserl get the treatment of "unnecessarily dense," so I'm always concrrned with the charge. I

You're officially my favorite person on sherdog.

I knew the movie stuff would get you. I don't think you were ever a regular in the Serious Movie Discussion thread but way back in the day you were the one who'd post movie reviews, right? I'm pretty sure it was you and then you posting your own movie reviews is what gave me the kick in the ass to start posting my old Classic Film 101 threads.

I think your rhetoric this post clarifies things for me. You're less dismissive than I had originally considered. Sorry if I misread early on.

No apologies necessary. I come on very strong and then I become more reasonable the longer I talk

Funny enough, my supervisor did her PhD with Mulhall, a OLP and postmodern philosophy scholar.

What most people would feel if someone told them that they went to high school with a Kardashian or something, that's what I feel right now when I think about someone doing their PhD with Stephen Mulhall. Yeah, that dude's written some damn good Wittgensteinian/Cavellian stuff, including two cool things between Wittgenstein and Derrida in The Legacy of Wittgenstein and Arguing with Derrida. I'm jealous of your supervisor now and I'm jealous of you for having her as your supervisor

I probably don't care about OLP because I'm not super interested in philosophy of language.

I'm not interested in the philosophy of language generally speaking. I sure as shit hate what people like Derrida do with language. But Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell hit that sweet spot for me. Between Wittgenstein and Austin, I think Wittgenstein had the more profound insights but I prefer Austin's "orientation," for lack of a better term. And I just fucking love Cavell. It's a weird marriage, but for me, my #1 and #2 are Ayn Rand and Stanley Cavell. As far as "pure philosophy" goes, there's nothing that I've gone back to more or read cover-to-cover more times than The Claim of Reason. I love just about everything that dude ever wrote.

I have read some Cavell, and I've read his stuff on film. Can't say I enjoyed it but I found it interesting.

The nerd in me is curious what you've read of his. If you've read his stuff on film, then I'm assuming that means The World Viewed. You didn't dig that one? That's probably the piece of his writing that's most clearly and most heavily indebted to his Heideggerianism.

My philosophy guys are Heidegger, Husserl, Gadamar, and Marion, which means I'm fairly well read with German idealism as a whole, especially Kant and Schelling.

I'm not the biggest Kant guy (as evidenced by Exhibit A). And I've yet to work up the intellectual energy to truly read Heidegger; I've just gone through bits and pieces of his stuff (and fear that I'll hate him). From what I've read, I feel much the same about Heidegger as I do about Derrida in that I prefer them when they're reading other philosophers as opposed to philosophizing on their own. I've tried like six times to work up the energy to read through Being and Time and it's just death to me, I've tapped out inside of 50 pages every time, but I've read bits and pieces of his books on Aristotle and Kant and I have no problems with those.

Husserl, though, he's near the top of my priority list in terms of philosophers who I really want to properly study. In order to write about Derrida, I had to choose between the "Husserl track" and the "Heidegger track," as pretty much everything with him can be traced back to those two. I chose the Husserl track based on the facts that (a) I was going to be referring a lot to Derrida's introduction to his translation of Husserl's The Origin of Geometry and (b) I'd enjoyed reading Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. I stuck to what Derrida was most often referring to, but I read a good bit of Husserl and I like the cut of that guy's jib. I've never enjoyed reading, and have thus avoided and plan on continuing to avoid, Merleau-Ponty, but I've dug what I've read from Husserl.

Not familiar with the other people you listed. I know of Gadamar and Schelling but I haven't read them. And I had to look up Marion. According to Google, he's a former student of Derrida's

My theological stuff is rooted in Aquinas, Plotinus, Przywara, Balthasar, and a few contemporary people.

I'm a dirty rotten atheist, so I've got nothing for you on this front.

As it were, Malick is a bit of a hero of mine. We still use his translation of Heidegger's Essence of Reason.

Beyond Badlands and Days of Heaven, I can't deal with Malick. But I couldn't possibly count the number of Malick/Heidegger essays that are churned out by film scholars annually. Ever since film-philosophy became a legit thing in film studies, which I'd put at a little over a decade ago at this point, essays on Malick's films in relation to various existential/phenomenological themes/thinkers have fucking exploded. It's gotten to the point where last year a film scholar was actually able to write a metacritical essay exploring not Malick and his films but exploring other scholars' explorations of Malick and his films.

 

[Bullitt68]

PART 2:

I did my PhD on the ideas of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. It was very dense reading but once I got my head around it it was very rewarding. Some folks are very specific in their language to convey very specific ideas. It depends completely on the context in which it is written. Like someone said earlier "there are different levels to this shit". Also, as a second year you are suppose to be confused, don't sweat it. As teachers it is a lot like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks. You might hate Foucalt or Derrida but you might love someone else and follow the line of thought down that path to create and express your own particular view and expression of the world. The I hate this, I hate that approach is problematic unless you create something worthy of its replacement, regardless of the language used.

Levinas is interesting stuff. Are you teaching anywhere? I know philosophy jobs are rough (better than religion), but still....
Levinas, though difficult, is far easier than Derrida and the like, imo. Some of it might be that his construal of ethics isnt super complex from 5,000 feet up and that it's the gritty details that are tough? He also just might be more lucid. Havent read him in some time.

Yeah, teaching in Australia. Won't go into too much detail as it will reveal my identity but I actually come from the Visual Arts field which led me into philosophy. My specialisation is in Post Colonial art which led me to investigate notions of the Other in philosophy. Levinas was a very interesting learning curve for me as I didn't have a background in philosophy apart from a few general classes as an undergrad doing general ed. Levinas was hard for me at the beginning but he approaches an idea through repetition and different approaches in an almost poetic sense so if you don't get it at first you get a chance to pick it up from a different angle. I find his ideas fascinating in that the Other for him is irreducible to comprehension, which has great implications on colonial representations of the Other through fields like Anthropology and such, as well as reductive notions like stereotypes. For Levinas the Other is always more than what one can ascribe to them, which is very interesting from the perspective of representation.

I haven't read Buber but will check it out.

I definitely think you'd find it interesting. Like Levinas, Buber's philosophy is rooted in Jewish religious language/concepts. His core philosophical investigation is that of the encounter between the self (I) and the Other, the kind of encounters which make up existence as a whole (the I is basically defined by these encounters with the Other)...in most cases this takes the form of what he calls an I-It relationship, where the Other is objectified. In the best case scenario however, Buber thinks this should take the form of the I-Thou relationship, a pure encounter where the Other is experienced directly in itself.

It's a bit more literary/religiously inspired than more conventional philosophy, but worth a read definitely. It sounds like mysticism, but it's not quite that either, Buber had dabbled with that when he was younger but by the time he wrote I and Thou he had moved away from it. He still advocated dualism and didn't like philosophies which he seen as advocating the annihilation/subsummation of the self into a universal (as mystics would). I am no expert of course, have just read it once, but I found it fascinating.

Learn yourself something here about objectivity, you postmodern heathen

Haha, I'm not saying they're the conclusions you should ultimately land on, but if you approached some naive person and explained them with some supporting evidence, they'd be forced to at least consider them.

I've never gotten the hate for Žižek's writing. I get hating Žižek's shtick, his public persona, but the writing itself - particularly Looking Awry, The Parallax View, and Less than Nothing - is top-notch. What's difficult about reading Žižek is that he's read everyone and everything, so he'll string together references and allusions and quotes to 14 things in a single paragraph - or a single sentence! - and that can seem overwhelming. But it's not an indictment of academic writing and it's not even a stylistic problem. He's just dropping Lacan and Hegel and Kierkegaard and Schiller and Wittgenstein and Hitchcock and then he's off to another point to discuss Descartes and Kant and Benjamin and Weininger and film noir and then he's off to another point and on and on like that.

It does feel like intellectual sprints, and if you don't know what he's referencing then of course you're not going to know what he's talking about. But I don't think he's a good example of the general line of critique of this thread regarding the ills of academic writing.

The political Žižek is the only Žižek that I don't read. I mean, the dude loves Marx, Lenin, and Mao. I'd certainly hope that no one takes his political shit seriously

Yea I only used Zizek as an example because I've had some recent exposure to his writing and then encountered that criticism that seemed to back up my impressions of it. I believe I have my ex's old copy of The Sublime Object of Ideology stuffed into the back of a bookshelf somewhere, never opened.

Zizek is free to use all the references he wants, but like I mentioned earlier, it's one thing if the purpose of his writing is to string ideas together for fun and another if he's trying to make a meaningful philosophical, psychological, or political contribution. There also seems to be a significant amount of resistance from specialists in the frameworks he attempts to employ, leading me to believe he's taking some creative liberties in piecing them all together.

It's a distinction that reminds me of why psychoanalysis is popular is literary criticism yet shunned by scientific psychology. Powerful explanatory frameworks are seductive, but they're next to useless when can't do the work of proving themselves in the real world.

That said, I was never going to get along with a Marxist psychoanalyst for predictable reasons . I just really like (I think) his film stuff.

By its very nature, postmodernism can be subjectively interpreted to be anything the writer/reader decides it to be.

I sympathize with the direction of this criticism, but it's not 100% true. Postmodernism can't be interpreted as premodernism, or modernism, for example. As often as its proponents speak in self-undermining nonsense language, that's a distinction they're forced to maintain.

So immediately there's a rejection of objective reason and empirical evidence in favor of subjective rationalization and, ultimately, total rejection of objective knowledge/truth. That's fine when applied to the inherently subjective arenas of art, culture, philosophy, etc but it's not an appropriate mode of analysis for science or mathematics or logic (or any of their derivative disciplines i.e. econometrics, accounting, law, etc)

Right, and here's where the undermining does become a serious issue. That said - and you hear this critique of relativism all the time - it could be the case that the only definitely true thing is that nothing else is definitely true.

It reeks of special pleading, but you can't know if science is really just another arbitrary "way of knowing" until you've pushed that idea to the limit, which is part of the postmodern endeavor imo.

The serious ideas you refer to regarding critique of objective value and capitalism are indeed serious, but these ideas have already been coherently identified and explored as philosophical concepts by existentialists and nihilists, among others. And whereas existential and nihilist thought eventually produced branching belief systems such as absurdism and dialectical materialsim which address value and capitalism on a philosophical level, postmodernism often devolves into employing obscurantism in the application of subjective abstractions to concrete subjects

I really just don't see the necessity for or usefulness of postmodernism today

Similarly useful ideas have emerged from postmodernism, though I agree that its inability to construct a genuine framework (a result of the inherent rejection of frameworks) is a weakness. That said, ideology is a useful concept. Social-conditioning is useful to know about in principle, even if it's often over-stretched. Deconstruction is useful.

I kind of think of postmoderism like guerilla philosophy. It's really good at taking pot shots at central modernist concepts and then retreating back into the dark, but it would threaten its own existence by transforming into a true state militia.

How useful that is to you depends on your circumstances.

That's basically how I view post-modernism as well. There are useful insights and techniques to be gleaned from post-modernist thinkers, but taking it too far brings you to an unsettling kind of relativism. Equally though, the term has become little more than a buzz-word (closely linked to cultural marxism, which is obviously utter nonsense) for those who want to denounce any kind of ideas or concepts they don't agree with on the "The Left".

Yea I only used Zizek as an example because I've had some recent exposure to his writing and then encountered that criticism that seemed to back up my impressions of it. I believe I have my ex's old copy of The Sublime Object of Ideology stuffed into the back of a bookshelf somewhere, never opened.

The Sublime Object of Ideology isn't bad by any stretch - in fact, it's probably his best predominantly political text.

Zizek is free to use all the references he wants, but like I mentioned earlier, it's one thing if the purpose of his writing is to string ideas together for fun and another if he's trying to make a meaningful philosophical, psychological, or political contribution.

I think the "I'm just fucking around" shit is shtick, I think it's a persona that he didn't shrug off and a criticism that he can't be bothered to refute.

There also seems to be a significant amount of resistance from specialists in the frameworks he attempts to employ, leading me to believe he's taking some creative liberties in piecing them all together.

A big part of that is jealousy/ego-based resentment. That's not to say that critiques leveled by specialists are always spurious - for example, David Bordwell's critical response to Žižek's book The Fright of Real Tears is fucking ruthless - but I often find that critical responses to Žižek amount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

(And I swear I'm not just saying this because I'm a biased tool who's published an essay in The International Journal of Žižek Studies )

It's a distinction that reminds me of why psychoanalysis is popular is literary criticism yet shunned by scientific psychology. Powerful explanatory frameworks are seductive, but they're next to useless when can't do the work of proving themselves in the real world.

This is my position on poststructuralism: That it's philosophically invalid but hermeneutically valid. And, in a recent essay of mine, in order to make this point about poststructuralism, I cite the film scholar Malcolm Turvey, who once made the exact point that you're making about psychoanalysis:

"The way psychoanalysis is used [is] for the most part … as a theory that generates interpretations. People will look at a Hitchcock film or a David Lynch film and say, 'You can interpret this film through psychoanalytic theory.' You can, for example, interpret the behavior of a character as being motivated by unconscious desires or impulses. I see no problem with this because there are certain films and works of art that lend themselves very easily to psychoanalytic interpretation. And that's no surprise, because the psychoanalytical view of human nature, broadly speaking, is one shared by many artists, and therefore they will design works in which characters have unconscious desires … It's more problematic to me to say that psychoanalysis is true as a theory of mind and mentality … That seems to be a much more problematic enterprise."

That said, I was never going to get along with a Marxist psychoanalyst for predictable reasons . I just really like (I think) his film stuff.

I sympathize with the direction of this criticism, but it's not 100% true. Postmodernism can't be interpreted as premodernism, or modernism, for example. As often as its proponents speak in self-undermining nonsense language, that's a distinction they're forced to maintain.

Because of that "self-undermining nonsense language," though, it would be more accurate to say that postmodernists can't refute interpretations of postmodernism as premodernism or modernism. To refute someone's characterization of something presupposes knowledge on the part of the refuter as to what that something is...but to talk of what things are is to talk using "metaphysical" language, and Derrida destroyed "Western metaphysics," so true/false, right/wrong, good/bad, that shit doesn't fly anymore. We've "deconstructed" such "metaphysical" notions and we've decided that they're undecidable.

It's such a fucking con job. But boy oh boy is it something to behold if you get a postmodernist/poststructuralist to go on and on about how true/false, right/wrong, good/bad, etc. are "undecidable" and then say something to them that makes their skin crawl (like "Barthes is bad" or "Marx was wrong") and that they immediately lash out at you for saying because it's so obviously - so decidably - false/wrong/bad.

If I felt that someone I was talking to was genuinely ignorant but also genuinely curious, then I'd take the time to explain why that bullshit is bullshit, but in my dealings with "true believers," I'd sometimes treat them the way that Peter treated his company suck-up and just twist them up in contradictions until their heads exploded

Deconstruction is useful.

Philosophy of history is interesting, it intersects with a lot of postmodernist stuff. I had to engage with that for my MA dissertation; the nature of historical representations of the past and the way in which historical accounts are constructed.

Have you read much Hayden White?

I haven't. I live in the French world so my references might be different from yours. I also study in Philosophy and Classical Studies, so I read Historians talking about the process of making historical knowledge. I've mostly studied Henri-Iréné Marrou and his "de la connaissance historique" (on historical knowledge). A good part is anti-marxism because they were influential in his time in France. I also liked Paul Vayne's "comment écrit-on l'histoire ?" (How do we write history ?). He is very much influenced by Foucault. His main purpose is showing that history is radically different from science.

I guess postmoderns would be great for digging deeper in the subject. Despite tthir bad reputation (which I think is due to lazy readings), they are very well-read and I've always had an inclination towards Foucault. I like that they intersect philosophy with other branch of knowledge, because I think "pure" philosophy is a thing of the past. What was your MA about ?

Have you read much Hayden White?

I've already posted this in conversation with you, but I've got to keep spamming the good stuff

It's outside the scope of history (it's in the context of the philosophy of art), but in his book Beyond Aesthetics, Noël Carroll has a brilliant critique of Hayden White in an essay titled "Interpretation, History, and Narrative." It might be interesting for/relevant to you. It was originally published in The Monist in 1990 if that helps you to track it down.

On another note, I'm currently reading a novel called John Woman and you'd probably get a kick out of it: The main character is a history professor and he's pretty much Hayden White

I guess postmoderns would be great for digging deeper in the subject. Despite tthir bad reputation (which I think is due to lazy readings), they are very well-read and I've always had an inclination towards Foucault.

More spam and still more spam. I'd apologize for the relentless spamming, but I just can't abide nonsense. That postmodernists aren't viewed as the humanities equivalent of flat earthers in science is a major failing of the humanities, but make no mistake: Their bad reputation has been earned and then some.

Also, on Foucault in particular, you know that that dude was a creepy pedo wackadoodle, right?

I have noticed he quotes Foucault in one of his gibberish filled papers. That is hardly surprising. Foucault is incredibly influential with postmodern scumbags

I think Foucalt himself admitted that most of his intellectual "quests" were motivated by the desire to get closer to young boys.

Atleast he was more brutally honest than many of his followers.

Quick story. So I've been doing the PhD thing in my department for three years now. On two separate occasions, in two completely different seminars, I've brought up the same example to challenge people (mainly my professor, who I like and respect and get along with very well but who is regrettably a hardcore poststructuralist and who loves Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault) and have been met with silence both times. The first seminar was devoted to Volume 1 of Foucault's The History of Sexuality and the second one was just a general seminar. In both instances, I was trying to demonstrate the dangerous consequences of doing away with the concept of objectivity in favor of ideas of "social constructs" and all that.

The example that I brought up was Foucault's position on pedophilia. He addresses pedophilia in The History of Sexuality and gives it the standard twist with the poor and oppressed pedophile who just wants to be free to express his honest-to-goodness sexuality. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. It's pages 31-32:

"One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was somewhat simple-minded, employed here then there depending on the season, living hand-to-mouth from a little charity or in exchange for the worst sort of labor, sleeping in barns and stables, was turned in to the authorities. At the border of a field, he had obtained a few caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the familiar game called 'curdled milk.' So he was pointed out by the girl's parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not only wrote their report but also had it published. What is the significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all; the fact that this everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, these inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become, from a certain time, the object not only of a collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire theoretical elaboration [...] This was undoubtedly one of the conditions enabling the institutions of knowledge and power to overlay this everyday bit of theater with their solemn discourse. So it was that our society - and it was doubtless the first in history to take such measures - assembled around these timeless gestures, these barely furtive pleasures between simple-minded adults and alert children, a whole machinery for speechifying, analyzing, and investigating."

This story never ceases to turn my stomach. You can see the equivocation, going from ignorant children playing a "game" to "alert children" who know exactly what's going on. But, putting that shit aside and focusing on the philosophical issue: If there is no such thing as objectivity, then you can't say that pedophilia is objectively wrong and that people shouldn't be free to engage in sex with children.

First off, pedophilia is just a social construct, and the concepts of "right" and "wrong" don't apply to mere constructs. But even if I were to be granted use of the concepts of right and wrong, if objectivity is out the window, then my thinking pedophilia is wrong is just an arbitrary, subjective opinion no better or worse than Foucault's arbitrary, subjective opinion that it's right. Who am I to say, and on what grounds can I possibly prove, that any sexual desire - or, really, who am I to say, and on what grounds can I possibly prove, that anything - is wrong? Since it's all just a power game, my position that pedophilia is wrong is really just my desire to arbitrarily oppress the righteous pedophiles (ignore the fact that, in the absence of concepts of right and wrong, Foucault still thinks he's right), and if I were a halfway decent person, then I'd make the "institution of knowledge and power" that is "solemnly" trying to stop, just for the sake of "pettiness," the "inconsequential bucolic pleasures" of kids jerking off hobos stop oppressing those poor upstanding citizens and let them be free.



My professor has two small children, so I'd like to think that he finds Foucault's pedophilia shit suitably horrifying - though I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't even aware that Foucault, along with a number of other members of the French intellectual "elite" of the era like Sartre and Althusser, signed a petition in 1977 to get rid of consent and statutory rape laws - but nobody knows how to respond to simple shit like this. It's easy to talk the postmodernist/poststructuralist talk, but when confronted with the kind of world they'd actually be living in/are helping to bring into existence, there's always silence as the gears of denial start to go into overdrive the second it comes time for them to walk the walk.

When people like Peterson talk about how this shit isn't just "academic" in the sense of being trivial and having no bearing outside of pretentious classrooms, this is what he's talking about. Ideas can have practical effects and consequences that FAR exceed what the ideologically possessed have ever fathomed/are capable of fathoming, and it's so often the case that, if anybody was even half paying attention to what their ideological leaders were saying - and, even more importantly, why they were saying it - then they'd run for the fucking hills.

I think "pure" philosophy is a thing of the past.

Out of curiosity, what do you have in mind when invoking the notion of "'pure' philosophy"? Because it seems like a straw man. If what it's meant to convey is something on the "theory" side of the "theory/practice" dichotomy - a false dichotomy, but we'll leave that to the side for the moment - then I'd still be curious to know which philosophers and/or which philosophical schools you think qualify, because, even on the basis of this conception of philosophical "purity," Confucius, Aristotle, Descartes...it doesn't appear that any of them would qualify.

(Incidentally, this is yet another one of the many ironies of postmodernism: Despite ostensibly being against "grand narratives," they're the best at concocting the grandest narratives ever conceived, from Lyotard's shtick on science to Derrida's shtick on Western metaphysics, for the purpose of showing how super enlightened and transgressive they are )

I've already posted this in conversation with you, but I've got to keep spamming the good stuff

Ah yes I had completely forgot about this, I will have to track it down. I do like White though as I said before, of course he's not spot on either (and as with a lot of these postmodernists seems to push the argument to breaking point, which I suppose is a feature of the postmodern project in general) but his account of historical Narratives as 'verbal fictions' which are constructed in much the same way as literature definitely has some useful insights. It was useful at the time for questioning the traditional view of history (as propounded by Leopold Van Ranke in the 19th century) as a science, revealing the past 'as it really was'. Pointing to the ways in which historical narratives were, on some level, constructions with their own degree of interpretation was useful. If nothing else, it also forced other theorists to come to the defense of history. I don't think I returned the favour, but I will now, some good critiques of White I have used in the past are:

Andrew P. Norman, ‘Telling It Like It Was: Historical Narratives on Their Own Terms’, History and Theory, vol. 30, no. 2 (May, 1991).

Chris Lorenz, ‘Can Histories Be True? Narrativism, Positivism, and the “Metaphorical Turn”’, History and Theory, vol. 37, no. 3, (Oct., 1998).

But I find White's theories particularly useful for the period I am looking at, because history writing then was less developed and extremely partisan cmpared to the modern discipline so the constructed aspect is placed in the foreground. So I actually cited him a lot in my diss.

On another note, I'm currently reading a novel called John Woman and you'd probably get a kick out of it: The main character is a history professor and he's pretty much Hayden White

Sounds promising, I might have to check it out

 

[Bullitt68]

PART 3:

I haven't. I live in the French world so my references might be different from yours. I also study in Philosophy and Classical Studies, so I read Historians talking about the process of making historical knowledge. I've mostly studied Henri-Iréné Marrou and his "de la connaissance historique" (on historical knowledge). A good part is anti-marxism because they were influential in his time in France. I also liked Paul Vayne's "comment écrit-on l'histoire ?" (How do we write history ?). He is very much influenced by Foucault. His main purpose is showing that history is radically different from science.

I guess postmoderns would be great for digging deeper in the subject. Despite tthir bad reputation (which I think is due to lazy readings), they are very well-read and I've always had an inclination towards Foucault. I like that they intersect philosophy with other branch of knowledge, because I think "pure" philosophy is a thing of the past. What was your MA about ?

Ah I see, yeah that's true me might have different references. I mentioned earlier I don't much like Paul Ricœur , but he is French, have you read his work Memory, History, Forgetting (not sure the original French title)? There are a few interesting points, but that is something I did find quite tough to read (and it was only a few sections). Of course I read it in translation but I don't much like the style.

My MA was just straight-up history, but there was a lot of theory compared to undergrad and I had some classes on concepts in history, some of which was all about the nature of historical knowledge and historical narratives, whether it's a science (as people inherited from the Van Ranke-ian view, as I mentioned above) or more related to literature. Then for my MA dissertation I wrote about a particular work of polemical history written in the 1640s to show the ways in which its narrative structure attempted to justify the English position in Ireland and fed into processes of 'New English' (the colonial class who arrived in Ireland from the 16th century century) identity formation. So Hayden White's theories were useful there, sounds like Vayne might be getting at something similar.

I am not interested in ad hominems against Foucault. I am no expert on postmodernism and I certainly am not too interested in them. However, I have read Les mots et les choses (The Things and the words ?) By foucault and his Archeology. I don't find anything appalling in what he is saying. He looks at the episteme of one period and sees how it shapes the knowledge of that time period.
Another thing I find interesting in him is how he thinks new episteme can create new knowledge, but invariably erases some. Reading Gadamer, this becomes obvious: our scientific way of conceiving knowledge makes us incapable of seeing knowledge in the way humanists did. This results in losses in human sciences and in art. Human sciences try to imitate science and lose sight of their roots, humanism (death of man by Foucault) and art is not a credible source of knowledge anymore : it is entertainment and novels are mere fictions (though novels are not fiction in my opinion, good novels have a lot of truth in them and always refer back to reality).

By pure philosophy, I mean the grand system building. I think that is over. Now, philosophy is more "mixed". Kant created a completed philosophical system, Hegel did too, Spinoza did as well, etc.
Of course, this grand system can encompass practice, if it fits in the system.

Aristotle did not. Plato did not.
Nowadays, I see philosophy as being a good tool for people in other fields. Like the other poster who consulted philosophy for history, like another who had to to interpret some movies, etc.

Edit: btw, some people (including the leading historian of medieval philosophy, Alain de Libera, famous historian of antiquity Paul Vayne) still use the archeology of knowledge as a tool for history making. And their work is acclaimed by lots of scholars, it's not just circle jerking.

I am not interested in ad hominems against Foucault.

It's not like I'm saying that people shouldn't read Foucault because he was a shoplifter or refused to pay parking tickets. You don't think that one's being a pedo would inform one's work when one's work is, say, writing a multi-volume history of sexuality? Seems kind of relevant...

I am no expert on postmodernism and I certainly am not too interested in them.

Fair enough.

I have read Les mots et les choses (The Things and the words ?)

The English translation is The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.

I don't find anything appalling in what he is saying. He looks at the episteme of one period and sees how it shapes the knowledge of that time period.

The same thing can be said about Derrida. He just looks at language and sees how its usage shapes knowledge. Very rarely do people start from terrible places. More often they take terrible routes and end up in terrible places. This is one of the harder things to communicate to people. It's easy to reduce things, even crazy things, down to the most basic and rational level, but all that has to be excluded in order to do that results in a dangerously misleading picture.

By pure philosophy, I mean the grand system building.

Gotcha. I'd call that "systematic philosophy." "Pure philosophy" is too vague.

Nowadays, I see philosophy as being a good tool for people in other fields. Like the other poster who consulted philosophy for history, like another who had to to interpret some movies, etc.

That's me. And I'm a fan of Ayn Rand's systematic philosophy of Objectivism

That's me. And I'm a fan of Ayn Rand's systematic philosophy of Objectivism

I haven't read her, but she has an even worst reputation then postmoderns, that's a lot. Apparently her understanding of Kant and of metaphysics is completely off. And there is something smug in calling your philosophy "objectivism", as if it you don't adhere to my philosophy, than you are not objective. She also apparently does not know the is/ought distinction. But I haven't read her, everyone says she sucks and I have a huge list of readings so no time to verify if they are right. she is not trained in philosophy so it's no wonder she ignores basic things and misreads kant.

I haven't read her, but she has an even worst reputation then postmoderns, that's a lot.

Oh, she has one of the worst reputations in academia. And the responses that academics have to the very mention of her name...well, let's just say that my joke Nosferatu gif does have one real-life application

In my book, though, that's just one more indication of how pathetically partisan, doctrinaire, and cultish academia is.

Apparently her understanding of Kant and of metaphysics is completely off.

It isn't. It's just that, because she's Ayn Rand, everything that she ever said must be deemed wrong and evil. She's actually devastatingly accurate and eerily prescient when critiquing the history of philosophy and (then and still) dominant philosophical trends.

As for Objectivism and Kant: For some context and info, here's Chris Matthew Sciabarra (the founding editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies) from his book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical:

"Rand's anti-Kantianism was an outgrowth of her exposure to Russian thought [...] Most Russian philosophers rejected Kant because they believed that he had detached the mind from reality. As I suggest, such thinkers as Solovyov, Chicherin, and Lossky were aiming for an integration of the traditional dichotomies perpetuated by Kant's metaphysics. Chicherin, for instance, argued that in Kant's system, pure concepts of reason are empty, and experience is blind. Kant's view makes 'metaphysics without experience . . . empty, and experience without metaphysics blind: in the first case we have the form without content, and in the second case, the content without understanding' [quoted by Lossky in his History of Russian Philosophy].

Interestingly, Rand's own view of the rationalist-empiricist distinction, and of Kant's critical philosophy, is deeply reminiscent of Chicherin's parody. For Rand, rationalists had embraced concepts divorced from reality, whereas empiricists had 'clung to reality, by abandoning their mind' (New Intellectual, 30). Kant's attempt to transcend this dichotomy failed miserably because his philosophy formalized the conflict. Rand writes: 'His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and not others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes---deaf, because he has ears---deluded, because he has a mind---and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them' (39).

Rand's teacher, Lossky, was the chief Russian translator of Kant's works. He too had criticized Kant's contention that true being (things-in-themselves) transcends consciousness and remains forever unknowable. Lossky sought to defend the realist proposition that people could know true reality through an epistemological coordination of subject and object. In this process, the real existents and objects of the world are subjected to a cognitive activity that is metaphysically passive and noncreative. Lossky rejected Kant's belief that the mind imposes structures on reality. Such Kantian subjectivism subordinates reality to knowledge, or existence to consciousness. It resolves phenomena in subjective processes that are detached from the real world and distortive of objective reality [from Lossky's book, The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge].

Furthermore, Lossky criticized Kant for invalidating metaphysics as a science. Since Kant held that the mind perceives things not as they are but 'as they seem to me,' he institutionalized a war not only on metaphysics, but on the very ability of the mind to grasp the nature of reality. Though there is no evidence that Rand studied Kant formally while at the university, it is conceivable that her earliest exposure to Kant's ideas occurred in her encounters with the celebrated Lossky. Her distinguished teacher was among the foremost Russian scholars of German philosophy [and] Lossky's rejection of Kantianism was essential to his ideal-realist project."

I'd also recommend Leonard Peikoff's cogent critique of the analytic-synthetic/necessary-contingent dichotomy as a good example of the grounds of Objectivism's rejection of Kantian philosophy. You can also check out Stephen R.C. Hicks' eminently readable Explaining Postmodernism for a lucid take on Kant in a similar vein.

And there is something smug in calling your philosophy "objectivism", as if it you don't adhere to my philosophy, than you are not objective.

Well the point is that objectivity is the watchword, so, just as Positivism is all about positive knowledge, hence its name, Rand was all about objectivity, hence the name Objectivism.

She also apparently does not know the is/ought distinction.

She knows it. She just thinks it's hooey. From her 1964 book The Virtue of Selfishness:

"In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value, which, for any given living entity, is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between 'is' and 'ought.'"

But I haven't read her, everyone says she sucks and I have a huge list of readings so no time to verify if they are right. she is not trained in philosophy so it's no wonder she ignores basic things and misreads kant.

So you haven't read her, you have no intention of ever reading her, and you're totally cool with taking on faith the claims of others that everything that she ever said was wrong?

Mind you, I'm not here to "convert" you or to persuade you to drop what you're doing and start reading Atlas Shrugged. Do what you want. I'm just pointing out shit that seems problematic.

You lost me at mentioning Stephen Hicks book. That book is a pile of nonsense, with 0 credibility. In the very first page he says Catherine MacKinnon is a postmodernist. That girl has an article called "points against postmodernism". His table of medieval philosophy is complete horseshit. He categorizes Kant as anti-reason.
There's a reason why it's not a Cambridge Universiry press book : it is full of errors. I thought you were a good person to talk with, but you should really read other things. I understand why your take on postmodernism is so pejorative now. Hicks interpreted the death of man by Foucault to mean he wanted to kill mankin, how can you be so bad at understanding?

As for your last point: indeed, I don't have time to read every philosopher, I don't see how it is a knock against me. Professionally, I have to read all of Plato and Aristotle in Greek, then plow through Arabic Philosophy in Arabic, than read tons of Latin scholastic. On the side i have some time for top tier philosophers.

You lost me at mentioning Stephen Hicks book. That book is a pile of nonsense, with 0 credibility. In the very first page he says Catherine MacKinnon is a postmodernist. That girl has an article called "points against postmodernism". His table of medieval philosophy is complete horseshit. He categorizes Kant as anti-reason.
There's a reason why it's not a Cambridge Universiry press book : it is full of errors.

1) MacKinnon wrote an essay explicitly coming out against postmodernism in 2000. Hicks critiques a book that she wrote in 1993, alleging that her "logic" regarding her crusade to make porn illegal was symptomatic of postmodernist "logic." If you've read Hicks' book and the book of MacKinnon's that he's critiquing, then you wouldn't consider what he has to say to be in error. You don't have to be a proud, flag-waving postmodernist for your thinking to be infused with/infected by postmodernism.

2) Why is his table of medieval philosophy "complete horseshit"? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. Thus far, slurs, invectives, and appeals to authority have been pinch-hitting for critical arguments in your posts. I'm at least articulating the grounds for my positions and posting the thousands of words that I've written in different essays backing my shit up. I'd be curious to see you actually make a case for something rather than just pointing out that Hicks' book wasn't published by Cambridge University Press

3) When a guy comes right out and says that he wants to "deny knowledge in order to make room for faith" and uses the Biblical story of Babel as the reason why we should all be good religious zealots and side with faith, how is categorizing him as anti-reason an error? Hell, even Nietzsche saw through Kant's bullshit and denounced his philosophical project as part of a "cunning theology" and considered the "success" of his philosophical work "merely a theologian's success."

I thought her wanting porn to be illegal was based on the experiences of actresses such as the one from deep throat. That is explicitly why she doesn't like postmodernism. It seems not enough reality based for her.

I won't go through all the table, but for example his account of medieval epistemology being faith / mysticism is laughable. Truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus is from Aquinas. The best scholastic were not mere apologists : they questioned the Bible and interpreted it : lots of them were put to court, the Vatican declared lots of their thesis to be unholy. Some books were chained because they were heretical. For example, the Artians thought that in matters of philosophy, or natural philosophy theology did not matter. A physicist, as a physicist could not hold that the world was created. The principles of physics are in contradiction with theology. Lots of scholastic after 1200 were influenced by Averroes, who in his fasl al-maqal said that reason needs to interpret the Holy Scriptures, not vice versa.
Mostly, medieval philosophers thought philosophy could rationnaly explain theology, they did not try to hide the tensions : they pointed them out and used very advanced logic (Enlightenment's logic is less developed, Frege rediscovered (independently) some things from the medieval era) to resolve them.

You would have to explain the full context of the quote your using. If I am not mistaking, it has to do with the fact that there is no objective proof of the existence, nor of the non-existence of God. True Faith or belief, is subjective because there is no objective ground to stand on. This objective ground does not exist : reason has its limits.
I also find it weird to catapult Kant as anti-enlightment and anti-reason for the very fact that he wrote fondly of both. The critique of pure reason was the end of humanism. It erected science as the only way forward. Metaphysics had to be scientific.

Edit: if anything, kant is too rational which leads him to an unrealistic account of morality.

I thought her wanting porn to be illegal was based on the experiences of actresses such as the one from deep throat.

To be fair, Hicks' main target is another feminist scholar, Andrea Dworkin. But MacKinnon is arguing from a similar perspective. From Hicks' book:

"Dworkin and her colleague, Catharine MacKinnon, then call for the censorship of pornography on postmodern grounds. Our social reality is constructed by the language we use, and pornography is a form of language, one that constructs a violent and domineering reality for women to submit to. Pornography, therefore, is not free speech but political oppression."

Regardless of how MacKinnon feels about postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, etc., Hicks' claim is that the logic of her argument against pornography is made, as he says, "on postmodern grounds." That's all. It's a modest - and I think accurate - claim. The portion of her 1993 text, Only Words, to which Hicks refers is the following:

"Andrea Dworkin and I have proposed a law against pornography that defines it as graphic sexually explicit materials that subordinate women through pictures or words [...] This definition includes the harm of what pornography says - its function as defamation or hate speech - but defines it and it alone in terms of what it does - its role as subordination, as sex discrimination, including what it does through what it says."

It's a bizarre game of linguistic gymnastics "anchored" by a long and weird opening that's reminiscent of the kind of metaphorical/storytelling mode of Foucault's historicism.

I won't go through all the table, but for example his account of medieval epistemology being faith / mysticism is laughable. Truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus is from Aquinas. The best scholastic were not mere apologists : they questioned the Bible and interpreted it : lots of them were put to court, the Vatican declared lots of their thesis to be unholy. Some books were chained because they were heretical. For example, the Artians thought that in matters of philosophy, or natural philosophy theology did not matter. A physicist, as a physicist could not hold that the world was created. The principles of physics are in contradiction with theology. Lots of scholastic after 1200 were influenced by Averroes, who in his fasl al-maqal said that reason needs to interpret the Holy Scriptures, not vice versa.
Mostly, medieval philosophers thought philosophy could rationnaly explain theology, they did not try to hide the tensions : they pointed them out and used very advanced logic (Enlightenment's logic is less developed, Frege rediscovered (independently) some things from the medieval era) to resolve them.

How does this constitute a refutation of anything said by Hicks? It seems like you build to the same picture. You just don't like that he takes a "glass half empty" approach and emphasizes that Medieval philosophy was predominantly faith-based and mystical. Or would you even deny that?

To quote Hicks directly, he explains that he is operating from the following position:

"Augustinian Christianity was [Medieval philosophy's] intellectual center of gravity. In the later medieval era, Thomism was an attempt to marry Christianity with a naturalistic Aristotelian philosophy. Accordingly, Thomistic philosophy undermined [earlier faith-based philosophy] and helped open the door to the Renaissance and modernity."

I'm not clear on how the above picture is different from your picture.

You would have to explain the full context of the quote your using.

Ok. It's from the Preface to the Second Edition of his Critique of Pure Reason. He kicks off his Preface lampooning the pretensions of everything that purports to be "scientific." He tries to take things back a step to "logic," which he conceives of as propaedeutic to the scientific. He then goes through the false theory/practice dichotomy and explains his reasoning regarding "a priori cognition." He then uses the following story about the man who invented the isosceles triangle as exemplary of the logical, the reasonable, the scientific, etc.:

"A new light broke upon the first person who demonstrated the isosceles triangle (whether he was called 'Thales' or had some other name). For he found that what he had to do was not to trace what he saw in this figure, or even trace its mere concept, and read off, as it were, from the properties of the figure; but rather that he had to produce the latter from what he himself thought into the object and presented (through construction) according to a priori concepts, and that in order to know something securely a priori he had to ascribe to the thing nothing except what followed necessarily from what he himself had put into it in accordance with its concept [...] [Such exemplars of the logical, the reasonable, and the scientific] comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must take the lead with principles for its judgments according to constant laws and compel nature to answer its questions, rather than letting nature guide its movements."

(Incidentally, this is what is known in Objectivism as the primacy of consciousness [as opposed to the primacy of existence]. Kant's "Copernican Revolution" - according to which, rather than our cognition having to conform to external objects [which is to say, rather than consciousness being the means by which we identify the objective reality independent of our minds], we're somehow able to make external objects conform to our cognition [which is to say that there's no such thing as an objective reality independent of our minds - there's only what we create in our own minds] - is exemplary.)

Having established his ideal of logical, reasonable, scientific activity - which resembles nothing if not fantasy - he then undertakes a lambasting of metaphysics that anticipates Derrida. He claims that, in the metaphysical realm (which he doesn't actually define, nor does he cite any exemplars so as to give a sense of who he has in mind with his lambasting), "we have to retrace our path countless times," the Sisyphean futility leading him to wonder if the inability to progress steadily on a metaphysical path is an indication of a fault in reason itself. As he writes:

"Is it perhaps impossible? Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us!"

(Note the religious rhetoric, the "My God, why have you forsaken me?" slant given to his Christ-like lamentation regarding the alleged impotence of reason).

He then explicitly sets out the terms of his nonsensical Copernican Revolution, explaining that "the concern of this critique [...] consists in that attempt to transform the accepted procedure of metaphysics, undertaking an entire revolution," after which he's led to an explanation of his also nonsensical distinction between things as they appear and things in themselves. This goofy discussion leads him to a weird discussion of freedom and morality - basically a tremendously confused working out of the free will versus determinism dilemma - over the course of which he constructs yet another bizarre dichotomy, that of practical reason versus speculative reason. Speculative reason, according to Kant, is, given its "pretension to extravagant insights," hubristic; it is an affront to God: "Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."

^ I was actually pretty surprised by Hicks' positioning of Kant in that book as well.

But I haven't read the latter's Critique of Judgement.

You're just asking for more spam, dude. I discuss the Critique of Judgment explicitly and extensively in the first bit of spam that I linked to. It's actually my favorite thing of Kant's because it's his most genuine attempt to work through the problems that he'd caused for himself with his nonsensical system and it's the place where the solutions to many of those problems are discernible in spite of Kant's own failure to discern them himself.

Your first claim that pornography is a language so its postmodern is not good. For them, it is reality and postmodernism doesn't emphasizes this enough.

Second, augustinism is way more complex then that. A good deal is about believing so you can understand. He would say that everyone does that, regardless of knowledge. For example, in historical knowledge we have to believe, because we cannot see. In religion, we have to believe to first cleanse ourselves morally through the ascetic lifestyle demanded by christianity, and then we me understand some of its mystery. Augustine's understanding is based on Plotinus. He is the one that first came up with the cogito argument and then a proof of God based on similar ground then Descarte's (one of the two Descartes proposes, the other he stole to saint anselme, the ontological proof which Kant refuted). Now your going to shower me with quotes od Augustine talking about faith. I know he liked it, but it was a way towards understanding and in some cases we can never hope for anything more than faith (historical knowledge). Plus, for him it is reasonable to put faith in God because humans long for eternal happiness. I won't go into the details and I don't believe anyone can boasts that he understands Augustine completely, the amount he wrote is ridiculous.

And Renaissance was less logic based then scholasticism. They entered theological debate that were already solved earlier and killed themselves over them. If that is being less faith based....

Lastly I don't see how your last point undermines anything about Kant. It is accurate in some cases, but overall shows that you haven't taken courses on him and don't understand the concepts behind the words.

I do not wish to usurp this thread any further. I would however recommend reading s peer-reviewed book on postmodernism and Kant, instead of taking your account from an independent publisher.

 

[Bullitt68]

And that takes us to this thread. Picking up from where we left off...

Your first claim that pornography is a language so its postmodern is not good.

It's not my claim. It's Hicks' characterization of MacKinnon's claim.

For them, it is reality and postmodernism doesn't emphasizes this enough.

As I said: Just because MacKinnon is against postmodernism as a school of thought doesn't mean that it's impossible for her own thinking to have traces of/rely on (even if implicitly) postmodernist logic. Her basic position matches up perfectly with the Derridean critique of "phallogocentrism." She may not be "on their side," but she certainly seems to be going the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" route at the very least.

Second, augustinism is way more complex then that.

That wasn't the issue. Hicks' book isn't - and never purports to be - a nuanced history of Medieval philosophy which burrows into all the nooks and crannies of ten centuries of thinking. He looks merely to set up a general context that hits the major points. I'm not asking if you think that he thoroughly articulated all the nuances of this or that philosopher/philosophy to your satisfaction. My question is much simpler: Do you wish to deny even that the general context that he sets up is accurate and maintain that it is, as you said, "complete horseshit"?

Now your going to shower me with quotes od Augustine talking about faith. I know he liked it, but it was a way towards understanding and in some cases we can never hope for anything more than faith (historical knowledge). Plus, for him it is reasonable to put faith in God because humans long for eternal happiness.

Once again, it seems like your issue isn't with Hicks' characterization - that Medieval philosophy is rooted in faith-based thinking, which you're basically affirming here - but rather with his "glass half empty" take on what he characterizes - that "faith-based philosophy" is a contradiction in terms and far from an ideal philosophical mode.

Lastly I don't see how your last point undermines anything about Kant. It is accurate in some cases, but overall shows that you haven't taken courses on him and don't understand the concepts behind the words.

In which cases (and how/why) is it accurate and in which cases (and how/why) is it evident that I "don't understand the concepts behind the words"? Since I require evidence before I make conclusions, you'll understand why I'll need to consider evidence of my wrongness before I conclude that I'm wrong and why I won't be taking your allegation of my wrongness on faith

I would however recommend reading s peer-reviewed book on postmodernism and Kant, instead of taking your account from an independent publisher.

Dude, I have a PhD and have published essays - two in a peer-reviewed journal run out of a university press - on this shit. I didn't just read one book and then start vomiting it up on this MMA forum. Fear not, Mr. Establishment: Not only have I read more about postmodernism and poststructuralism than everyone on this forum combined times two (if not three), but, since the main topic of conversation here has become Kant: Not only have I read Kant, and not only have I read commentaries on Kant, I've even read The Cambridge Companion to Kant and The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

FYI: Allen W. Wood's chapter "Rational Theology, Moral Faith, and Religion" in the former is basically a more charitable version of what I've been arguing (and which, by extension, corroborates Hicks' take on Kant). He clearly runs through Kant's religious arguments and presuppositions and astutely points out the problematic rationales for a lot of them. He also wrote a book in 1978 titled Kant's Rational Theology (published by Cornell University Press, which I hope has enough credibility for you) which he opens with the following:

"Kant is not usually thought of as a theologian. He is, in fact, remembered principally as a critic of the tradition of natural theology, on account of his influential attacks on the received proofs for God's existence. The common conception of his relationship to tradition was perhaps articulated most forcefully by Heinrich Heine, who portrayed Kant as a kind of theological Robespierre, a soulless, ruthless, and incorruptible executioner of the Deity [...] Heine's fantasy does contain an important element of truth [...] Kant does not hesitate to express his mistrust of clericalism and traditional ecclesiastical institutions [...] In the area of natural theology, too, Kant is a profound critic of the tradition of scholastic-rationalism and its claims to natural knowledge about God [...] At the same time, however, Heine's account entirely overlooks Kant's profound sympathy with the tradition he criticized. Kant does reject its arguments for God's existence and turns something of a skeptical eye on its claims to speculative knowledge of the divine nature. But in the end Kant is fundamentally unable to conceive of the human situation except theistically and unable to conceive of God in any terms except those of the scholastic-rationalist tradition. Kant's criticism of the tradition is not intended by the philosopher himself to crush its intellectual world or to destroy its kingdom of thoughts [...] His philosophy, viewed integrally and as a whole, actually leaves the traditional kingdom pretty much intact."

I hate to break it to you, Mr. Establishment, but, when it comes to Kant, the Establishment is selling wolf tickets.

 

[Bullitt68]

And, with that, the floor is open. Tell us: Who/what have you read, who/what do you like, who/what do you dislike, and, the most important question, the question that makes this thread serious: Why?

 

[EyeOfNewt]

Unless you can sum up in one small paragraph the subject of debate, I wouldn't call it serious discussion! Leave the verbosity at the door step please and state your point clearly and succinctly!

Related:

 

[Bullitt68]

Unless you can sum up in one small paragraph the subject of debate, I wouldn't call it serious discussion!

Unless you can contribute more than one small paragraph, I wouldn't call you serious about philosophical discussion. What have you got for us, Newt?

 

[syct23]

Just came in to say hi to that Dirty Commy...

Good thread,

I'll see myself out now...

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Unless you can sum up in one small paragraph the subject of debate, I wouldn't call it serious discussion! Leave the verbosity at the door step please and state your point clearly and succinctly!

Related:

This ain't a meme thread, homie.

Also @Bullitt68 - I ♡ you.

I have Kant and Hicks on my beside table if that's where we really want to start, but I'm excited about the other places this could go.

FYI I tried to start a reading group on here (over a year ago, probably) but it didn't work out. Hopefully this is better go.

Plus we can coax @Ricky13 back.

 

[EyeOfNewt]

Unless you can contribute more than one small paragraph, I wouldn't call you serious about philosophical discussion. What have you got for us, Newt?

A quip from John Archibald Wheeler:

"Philosophy is too important to be left to philosophers"

*shots fired*

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

@Not A Theist
@Kafir-kun
@franklinstower

 

[Bullitt68]

@Bullitt68 - I ♡ you.

I have Kant and Hicks on my beside table if that's where we really want to start

I've got no agenda. I'm just picking up where we left off and that happens to be where we left off. But I also just wrote an essay on Bruce Lee, Aristotle, and Confucius, so that shit's swirling around in my head (the Analects was cool as hell to read for the first time - I learned that Confucianism>Taoism ). You also never answered my question about what your problems are with the psychoanalytic stuff that you've been reading and hating, so we could go down that path, too.

FYI I tried to start a reading group on here (over a year ago, probably) but it didn't work out. Hopefully this is better go.

By making this thread, I've already decided to allow you and the Sherdog Nerd Brigade to steal hours of my time, so let's do it Schaub style and go hard in the paint

Plus we can coax @Ricky13 back.

Yeah, @Ricky13, where you at? How's your PhD living these days?

A quip from John Archibald Wheeler:

"Philosophy is too important to be left to philosophers"

*shots fired*

I hope you're not just trolling, because I'm up for talking about math and science and their relation to philosophy if that's another direction people want to go. I've quoted Leonhard Euler bashing skepticism before and Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures is a glorious send-up of the worst kind of philosophical pretentiousness.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Unless you can sum up in one small paragraph the subject of debate, I wouldn't call it serious discussion! Leave the verbosity at the door step please and state your point clearly and succinctly!

Related:

1) Not everything can be summed up in "one small paragraph"
2) As is clear from the opening post, the point of this thread is to talk seriously about any kind of philosophy you're interested in, that could be a continuation of a discussion (like between Bullitt and French Canadian), or else a post about anything you've been reading. There isn't a single "subject of debate".

Perhaps you might like to contribute something instead of posting stupid memes?

 

[Rimbaud82]

I've got no agenda. I'm just picking up where we left off and that happens to be where we left off. But I also just wrote an essay on Bruce Lee, Aristotle, and Confucius, so that shit's swirling around in my head (the Analects was cool as hell to read for the first time - I learned that Confucianism>Taoism ).

Daoism is my kind of stuff, I am very interested in Daoist philosophy. Link to your essay? (especially since you were trying to get me to read Bruce Lee stuff before). We can go down this path

ps. Taoism? Taoism? It's Daoism say it right!

(seriously though, taoism is based on the old Romanisation system (like Peking rather than Beijing), daoism with a d is the way it's usually romanised now).

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Talking philosophy is like playing chess and only using other players' established moves. Too many terms, references to schools of thought, and relying on someone else's words and arguments. At some point it's just regurgitation.

 

[jabba the punk]

Consciousness is a fundamental law of nature. Panpsychism for the win. Change my mind.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Consciousness is a fundamental law of nature. Panpsychism for the win. Change my mind.

What's the smallest unit of consciousness? Do trees have consciousness? Chairs? Protons?

 

[Bullitt68]

Daoism is my kind of stuff, I am very interested in Daoist philosophy.

Why? What started you down that road? Personally - and this is manifest in my rejection of postmodernism/poststructuralism - I find that it too often falls back on paradox-speak and esoteric mumbo-jumbo passed off as insight. I like that, as opposed to Confucianism, it's individual-focused (though it's a misconception to think of Confucianism as a collectivist philosophy), but Confucianism is more my speed because it's very pragmatic and no-nonsense.

Link to your essay? (especially since you were trying to get me to read Bruce Lee stuff before). We can go down this path

Link? Shit, this is academia, Rimbaud. That essay won't see the light of publication for a year!

Over the summer, my PhD supervisor and I put together a conference on Bruce Lee. Now we're putting together two special issues for two different journals based on shit from the conference. The first will be a special issue of the Martial Arts Studies journal. That's the journal that he and another guy created and on which I've worked as the editorial assistant from day one. We're going to do an issue likely called "Bruce Lee's Martial Legacies" next summer in which I'll have an essay that works through the philosophical underpinnings of Jeet Kune Do and that establishes Bruce as a "perfectionist," with that term connected up with Aristotle, Emerson, and Rand. We're also going to do an issue likely called "Bruce Lee's Media Legacies" in a SAGE journal called Global Media and China next September in which I'll have an essay continuing the Bruce and perfectionism stuff by bringing Aristotle and Confucius together and analyzing Bruce's perfectionist mode of teaching by way of his famous appearance on the TV show Longstreet.

Long story short: You're going to have to wait a while to read that shit. Academia moves like molasses

ps. Taoism? Taoism? It's Daoism say it right!

(seriously though, taoism is based on the old Romanisation system (like Peking rather than Beijing), daoism with a d is the way it's usually romanised now).

Ha, the first thing that I did when I finished the first draft of my essay was send it to a Chinese colleague of mine to make sure that my spellings, my grammar, and my Chinese symbols didn't make me sound like an ignorant Western rube

Talking philosophy is like playing chess and only using other players' established moves. Too many terms, references to schools of thought, and relying on someone else's words and arguments. At some point it's just regurgitation.

What are you doing in here, pleb? This thread is for learned folk who talk good and stuff.

Consciousness is a fundamental law of nature. Panpsychism for the win. Change my mind.

First you've got to make a case that's longer than one sentence. Speaking for myself, I had to look that panpsychism shit up, and, frankly, I'm going to need a hell of a lot more than one sentence to think that rocks and electrons having consciousness/mental experiences/what have you is more than science fiction.

'Splain it to us, jabba.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

What are you doing in here, pleb? This thread is for learned folk who talk good and stuff.

Reminds me of the other problem with the field. Valuing the appearance of intellect over clear and concise communication.

Does critiquing the discipline fall under the heading of "serious discussion". I say that it does.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

has there been a serious counterpt to either the Argument of Motion (First Mover) or Ex Nihilo (from nothing comes nothing) from Aquinas's Summa Theologica?

I've read Kant and Hume's critique of the Cosmological Arguments, haven't read Dawkins critique tho.