Arendt argued the use of use in the human condition.
Strauss and many others questioned the rationality behind being rational.
What about structure?
I must make clear that I talk not of structure as in the the structure involved or used in making arguments or buildings. I am talking of the VALUE that is structure.
The time and effort people put into creating things or shaping things in a way that is organized and sensical, not for communication purposes but for personal satisfaction/ understanding of the world.
I am trying to say here that structure might be useful to communicate ideas but that it would not be fair to say that the reason we communicate is to add structure to the universe, or at least that it does not have to be. Can there be an acceptance by man, not unintelligible by him, that the universe does not make sense, that their is no rational behind it, that structure can be used but is an imperfect tool leading to imperfect ideas and the only reason thought has value is because it was decided so, in a non rational manner.
The point I imagine would have to be: Wittgenstein has the value of structure and concludes from this that all things have structure, that this is not true, that things possibly exist beyond my understanding simply because I am aware that I am 1. Subjective 2.Flawed and that because things may exist in such a way the structure I impose is both limited and short sighted. Would it not be plausible for an individual to have no use structure, while accepting its absence of a “true” raison d’être and embrace chaos, engaging in thought but for the act of thinking.
You can value whatever you want. Please elaborate on why you think thought has value only because of irrationality. Also, why would you ask a question or communicate your thoughts and in turn read these thoughts if thought had no value to you? Are you acting irrationally by your own standards?
That’s not what he said: “the only reason thought has value is because it was decided so, in a non rational manner” …meaning thought has value because we value it, and we don’t value thought for any rational reason.
His thoughts do have value to him: “the only reason thought has value…” …he thinks thought has value, so no he is not a hypocrite about that. …and I suspect he values irrationality itself to a degree.
Yes fuse, I do imagine this fits a post-structuralist point of view.
However I was looking maybe for an elaboration, a sort of rationale to support the point and demonstrate significantly that not holding structure as a value is somehow more valid ie: logical. Or the contrary, a demonstration that it is not the case.
I’m afraid I couldn’t really parse your first post.
I don’t think that holding fundamental values has anything to do with logic. You can logically work out which subsequent values you should hold in order to be consistent with your fundamental desires, but really, your desires are your desires. I might say they’re wrong, or noble, or inconstant… but they’re yours, regardless of logic.
Good point.
What I meant was a sort of “reduction to absurdity” type of line of thought.
Point
If point true then A and B are true by definition
But A cannot be True while B is true
Therefore point cannot be true
Amendment:
I realize that I cannot demonstrate the absurdity of one thing by using it, but it seems valid to say that if logic is concluded to be irrelevant then. although the argument against structure (or logic) also becomes irrelevant, this does not atone logic or structure either.
Furthermore, I am not arguing Structure or its use in argument, I am arguing as per the title, structure as a value
Only Humean, you fail to understand what I mean by value.
I do not mean that we put importance on it
As I explained in the first I mean that structure can possibly be seen as an epitome, a goal in itself, that one would strive to create (by dialogue and action other action) to increase structure.
Structure as A value, not the value of structure.
I made this very clear in the first post; the language is also very clear because to value something and to hold something as a value are two very separate things even in everyday English.
I do not wish to argue with you on this point because regardless of the real meaning of the phrase structure as A value, I am defining it as such and elaborating on a concept which is the one I defined. The concept exists regardless of how it is spelled out and so a semantics debate will only demonstrate that one has failed to understand the big picture, or the portent of the argument.
Cheers,
Humean, the question was: is it possible to intellectualize and write out why one should (in the sense of validity pertaining to logic) NOT do this.
Cheers,
True creativity to me is different than mere creativity. Trying to be peerless, singular or unique while utilizing thought to do so is like taking something (that has already been somewhat structured out and defined) and simply making modifications on it. Yet somehow, I suppose, true individual uniqueness could express itself with an abandonment of thought’s tendency to use structured knowledge. It would be self abandonment in the sense of a ‘self’ that is maintained by constant use of thought. It would probably require a sincere look into how much of what is thought on comes from what has been put in there from an outside agency that is not at all your medium of expression. That’s the difficulty: trying to express oneself without using the common communicative language system as the medium. It would be a situation where you would have to use someone else as the medium because there is no ‘self’ there that wants to use or depends on anything that does not belong to it.
Given that philosophy is a human endeavor, and that the human body is described by its integrity as an organism as well as by this organisms situation in a larger cosmos/order/structure, I think it follows that
The only structure that really matters is the human body
Incidentally, this is also the only value that really matters.
The Greek word for order is kosmos, a noun that is closely connected with a verb, kosmein, for which an entry is:
“dispose, prepare,” but especially “to order and arrange (troops for battle), to set (an army) in array;” also “to establish (a government or regime);” “to deck, adorn, equip, dress” (especially of women). Thus kosmos had an important secondary sense of “ornaments of a woman’s dress, decoration” (cf. kosmokomes “dressing the hair”) as well as “the universe, the world.”
The value is embedded on the structure of the world, value to the conquerers gain has to be asserted.
First conquering, then decorating. This is the way of the mind, and nihilism is only a lack of taste for what is going on in the mind. It will be washed away when exotic scents reawaken the body to different kinds of stimuli and a new world of reflections.
The case against structure as a value is a case against the value system altogether. The inability to fit the vastness of human consciousness into any system will win over in favor of individuality by virtue of freedom from that which closes in on you, on all of us.
Structured teaching implies method or a system, a technique or a new organized way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. There is something outside that field; it is just a description of the natural state of man — it is the way we, stripped of the machinations of thought, are all functioning.
You can stop it in you if you want. Free yourself from that social structure that is operating in you without becoming anti-social, without becoming a reformer, without becoming anti-this, anti-that or chaotic. You can throw the whole thing out of your system and free yourself from the burden of society, for yourself and by yourself. Whether it has any usefulness for society or not is not a concern. If there is one individual who walks free, you don’t have any more the choking feeling of what culture has done to you. It’s neither East nor West, it’s all the same. Human nature is exactly the same – there’s no difference.
We are only interested in what to do … and then organize it into a system.
Intellectualising is structuring. Grammar is structure. I’m sure you could intellectualise and communicate why one shouldn’t, but it would be very hard to make a convincing argument that resisted charges of hypocrisy.
You could possibly take a Dadaist approach, but getting the message across would be hard.
Intellectualising is structuring. Grammar is structure. I’m sure you could intellectualise and communicate why one shouldn’t, but it would be very hard to make a convincing argument that resisted charges of hypocrisy.
We will always value structure to some extent, but (and I think this is longjohn’s point) there is a case, too, for valuing chaos (non-structure). However, I think any argument for chaos will have to be an enactment of chaos and not of reason.
And aren’t we just dealing with an aspect the Dionysian/Apollonian dichotomy that Nietzsche discusses in Birth of Tragedy? I don’t think the case really needs to be made that chaos is valuable - if you think about it it’s easy to see that we already do value chaos - and anyway you shouldn’t really expect to persuade people by force of reason what is/is not valuable. Values are pre-rational, right? All you can do with reason is persuade people that they value ‘x’ but didn’t know it, or persuade them that they if they value ‘x’ then they should care about ‘y’ because ‘x’ is dependent on ‘y’. Hopefully that last bit makes sense.
Language is structure. We think in language. All of sentience is bedded in structure. Structure as a value is a given. It is the human condition. To perform chaos is silence and isolation.