ti oedstn’ tametr tahw odrre het tterles rae ni...

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1

ti oedstn’ tametr tahw odrre het tterles rae ni, het orwsd itsll kame nesse.

People imagine that if a particular fact came up, which suddenly proved disjointed to their world view, their world view would change, when in fact there is little internal that needs really to change in order to keep seeing things the way that makes one feel comfortable. Truthfully, all kinds of information subversive to our world view impinge upon us daily, and we simply translate it all back into “sense”, explaining away or marginalizing “errors” or indiscernibles, emphasizing confirmations in a continual process of reinforcement of that which really is only a construction. In fact, it takes prolonged and relentless exposure to “nonsense” -a first hand experience of war perhaps?- in order provoke real change it seems, and even then we are resistant. I believe we underestimate the translating powers of our own cultural assumptions, the radical reformation of “reality” on a daily level to make it seem to cohere to expectation - and render what people like to call “objective reality”. Rather it seems that only “real” power, that is the bodily experience of being able “to do” or “not do” convinces. Argumentation occurs within the body.

Dunamis

2

As an aside I would say that ‘if a particular fact came up’ is already a world view.

A better insight would be; some people are more aware of this than others. Does this kind of self-consciousness grant us any greater degree of understanding or perspicacity? To consider;

  1. whether there can be any meaningful distinction between the fundamentalist, for instance, and you or I.
    1(a) which means, whether there is something available to us, some kind of ‘standard’, which allows us to evaluate world views. In the field of science, you might adopt a combination of physicalism and empiricism, for instance - which I submit is what is implicit to some extent whenever you talk about ‘facts coming up’. However for those who are not this way inclined, the notion of ‘fact’ is perhaps not available. Hence we need a standard to chastise these people with, lest there should be no important distinction between them and us.
  2. remember Quine’s discussion of how a theory confronts the world, in Two Dogmas. He describes it in similar terms to how you have done; specifically by saying that our theories have upper and lower levels, corresponding respectively to those statements which are most putatively vunerable to experience, and those which are not. In behaviouristic terms, the latter are the ones which we are less inclined to change, because Quine thinks we operate on the principle of minimising the damage to our theory from experience. However he thinks this is a virtue, and he is allowed to so long as he posits simultaneously some form of measure or standard to ground his theory, as in 1(a) above. If you do not, perhaps, then I can see how you might be more skeptical, as the amount of theoretical manoeuvres you are entitled to is in this respect restricted.
  3. There is no way of discerning between two theories on grounds of truth. With any theory, such as Newtonian gravity, we can continue to explain ‘errors’ and indiscernables. It is only on grounds of simplicity or whathaveyou that we choose to adopt a new theory. Think of dark energy in astrophysics, for instance. The reason for this is we cannot properly evaluate one theory relative to another, as we have what might be called the ‘insiders perspective’. This is not to say that our choice is wholly pragmatic (as Carnap wanted it), but rather that we cannot properly distinguish between practicality and truth.
  4. Now I submit that, given the need to have a standard as in 1(a), that we can distinguish philosophers by their stance on whether a standard is available. I would, for instance, distinguish between Rorty and Quine here, or even Rorty and Davidson.

One of the advantages or reading several authors simultaneously is that you tend to gain an appreciation of how they might relate, with less effort than you might otherwise have to exert. So as another incidental aside, perhaps you would consider how Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the body fits into your thought here, as regards this;

and also, as I hinted at earlier, here;

Also, finally;

There is a limit to the extent that this is true.

Regards,

James

3

Dunamis, I am currently tackling this subject myself. I believe you are talking about something that could (potentially) dislodge correspondence theory of truth and replace it with epistemic theory of meaning. Epistemic because whatever sense, and (hopefully) truth, we come upon in our observation of the world, they are such and thus because of our statements/propositions construction and our conceptual framework. This view proposes that there is really no word-to-world correspondence, but rather the reference we make is really within our own construct or representation of the world (objects). Similar to your “Argumentation occurs within the body.” Now, if this is the case, and you agree with what I just said, then perhaps we could agree that this is ultimately an anti-Realist argument. No?

4

James,

I did have Quine in mind here, particularly his:

“But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.”

The Verification Theory and Reductionism

So the question arises, given our immense power to translate back into our terms, what does it mean to convince.

As Warren Montag writes of his attempt to convince his reader, that he is caught between two arational alternatives:

“either one disarms oneself by exciting the passions of one’s audience to the extent that their reason is overcome, or, more simply, one remains unintelligible by failing to take into account the manifold prejudices that must first be neutralized for the understanding of one’s readers to operate freely.”

Bodies, Masses, Power

The question remains the degree to which “reason” and other methods of confirmation are not also dependent upon the bodily experience of stasis that the degree to which argumentation is anything other than the ritualistic attempt to “excite” awareness through genre’d and rule-ridden uses of language. I am of the view, as opposed to Quine and in sympathy to Rorty, that all descriptions are bodily dependent, and none of them can be qualified outside their fields of meaning - which ostensibly are bodily regimentations. The power of particular positions can only be assessed by the values that gave rise to those meaning-fields. Just as the morphology of biological anatomies may be thought to reflect the environments of their multi-generational “adaptation”, no morphology proves “true” in a non-self-referential sense. No “knowing”, though it reflects its genealogical development is more “true” than any other knowing. So to “convince” by argumentation would seem rather only the encouragement to transform bodily the efficiency of knowing under the Cultural auspices of “truth”. To mutate. The resistence to mutation of course produces stability in the form, but in philosophy we must consider this resistance not as epistemologically true, but as conservation of order, as it is experienced as order. The “meta-bolic” is the “turn about”, the “re-volution”, the “kata-strophe”, the “re-pentance”.

“There is a limit to the extent that this is true.”

I am unsure of this. Given time and behavior, any combination of elements would prove meaningful, given the organism’s ability to predict its own states.

Dunamis

5

Arendt,

Epistemic because whatever sense, and (hopefully) truth, we come upon in our observation of the world, they are such and thus because of our statements/propositions construction and our conceptual framework. This view proposes that there is really no word-to-world correspondence, but rather the reference we make is really within our own construct or representation of the world (objects).

I agree with your assessment here, but am unsure if this is epistemic because epistemology seems to invite word-to-world understanding, does it not (to “stand upon”)? I prefer to imagine a diasomatic “knowing”, or perhaps instead of an epistemology, or as Antonio Negri refers to it, a gnosology. I am unsure where this will fall in the Realism/Idealism divide, for my defintion of “real” is simply to have an effect. Both the ideation and its thought-to-be correspondent phenomena have effects. Please do share the any insights you are having here.

Dunamis

6

Assuming that ‘prove meaningful’ is not taking intensionally, I would say that whilst any marks on a page can take on symbolic meaning as referencing in a particular way within a particular system, this does not mean that the way these marks are configured can be changed without limit whilst retaining whatever meaning they may be said to have.

Regards,

James

7

Well now you do very much sound like Merleau-Ponty. I would say that your position has as its consequence a dissolution of the divide, which seems to be what you are hinting at anyway. Especially this notion of ‘diasomatic knowing’ falls nicely into phenomenological discourses on the embodied subject; the kind of thing also that some theologians jumped on to breath new life into their discipline…

Regards,

James

8

arendt,

With that statment have you not just summed up post-modernism? It sounds very similar to what I heard about Jean Baudrillard’s thought.

Dunamis,

I was recently reading through a few contemporary philosophy essays, and I came across a philosophy professor who mentioned that he play’s culturally foriegn music to his students; some of which is secular music, and some of which is religious. He then asks his students to try to determine which music is secular and which is religious–they cannot determine the difference. Yet, when played Euro-western music they are able to dicern the difference between a piece of religious melody and secular; thanks only to the cultural inffluence and understanding through which we function, as you notedly pointed out.

9

James,

“this does not mean that the way these marks are configured can be changed without limit whilst retaining whatever meaning they may be said to have.”

The jostled letters really was a visual trope by which to show the expandablity of our order seeking minds, and not really an argument per se. The presentation of marks within a social configuration, the expectation of communication really cannot substitute for meaning in the world, or can it? It is only upon the regularity of events that intension is projected as a fill-in for our own states. Was it not Hume that suggested the “cause” was the projection of will onto the inanimate (forgive me Imp, if I miss attribute). There is a certain extent wherein reportedly pure “perception” actually still relies upon beliefs which condition that perception, i.e. Davidson gives the fine example of the “seeing” the rising of the Moon. Further it seems that philosophy still has not delineated how much of causality is explanation and therefore belief dependent, and how much of causality is simple modeling. I suspect that our beliefs condition even the most apparent of experiences, that we “read” the universe, that we project intention into all things, if only subliminally. As I mentioned in another thread, the cathexis involved with word utterance and therefore external body positing, invites a physical apperception of the world, even on the most abstract, or most literal of levels. Every word and thing echoes through our bodies. While the private conditions of language exchange bias the reader to certain expectation of sense, it may very well be that no matter the configuration, no matter the chaos of events or marks, the organism will find/invent their “sense” or die.

Dunamis

10

Oh, Dunamis, you’ve actually identified my problem at the moment. I am having trouble understanding why epistemic seems to automatically indicate word-to-world----I needed to put more quarters in the parking meter, so to speak, as I have been stuck in this idea for about three days now, and still cannot articulate it very well (though, I must say it seems epistemic is the right concept.) Now, a quick look on your diasomatic and gnosology gives me some idea that we really not that too far apart or different in the view we each want to propose. I would think you are leaning towards rational psychology, which epistemic admits. Anything that uses any of our methods or processes of “knowing”—which necessarily employs the mind----would fall under epistemic. Rationalists (with psychological leaning) are considered some mild form of anti-Realist.

The Underground Man,

Astute! In a way you are right, and I didn’t think of it that way. (Though, I haven’t read Baudrillard in particular). But yeah, I believe we could take it to that school of thought as well.

11

James,

“Well now you do very much sound like Merleau-Ponty. I would say that your position has as its consequence a dissolution of the divide, which seems to be what you are hinting at anyway.”

The “divide” certainly is of interest here, but I am coming at it from a Spinozan direction, particularly his qualification of inadequate knowledge being that which con-fuses the idea of the “external” cause with the bodily “internal” affect. Keeping in mind his definition of a body as parts that move in concert, then the interior and exterior limits of body, our body for instance, is simply a manner of movable border. When our body moves as a part in concert with an external body, then they form one body, and one mind, and would seem to leave behind the problem of the inadequate idea confusion of the outside with the inside. There is a degree to which the mind engages –I believe in large part by cultural pre-disposition- in what Plotinus calls “parakolouthesis”, the “following along side” which disrupts “knowing”, or rather creates representational epistemology. I suppose it is not so much to “dissolve” the divide as to subsume it, to reconnect the body to all mental states, and therefore to make a physicality of knowing, even in its most abstract ambitions.

Dunamis

12

Underground Man,

“He then asks his students to try to determine which music is secular and which is religious–they cannot determine the difference.”

Interesting example. I think there are a great many such understandings of the world, not only in terms of aethetics, but even in terms of “objective” states.

Dunamis

13

yes, hume suggested that, and it was honed by nietzsche…

-Imp

14

Yes but it seems incorrect to say that you can reconstruct, purely through seeking order in this fashion, a particular configuration when it is not given to you beforehand, and that when it is, it still remains that your ability to discern the original configuration can only be stretched so far, beyond which it becomes true that your reconstruction proceeds in wholly arbitrary fashion. Perhaps it is one objection to say that there is always an arbitary element in any reconstruction, but I for one would not like to throw the baby out with the bath water - at least not yet… :smiley: Which is not to say that there is a reconstruction which is wholly without some random element, but only that there is sufficient degree in difference between the most arbitrary and least arbitrary to allow us to draw a distinction which is of some importance.

Yes I agree this is an important distinction to clarify.

Will they though, find ‘no matter the configuration’ the public sense?

Regards,

James

15

Arendt,

Anything that uses any of our methods or processes of “knowing”—which necessarily employs the mind----would fall under epistemic.

If you would allow bodily grounds for rational explanation, then I could follow you there, but then of course “rationality” would loose much of its cultural baggage, for it is very often placed in a dualism against “the flesh”. If the body determines what is rational, then rationality, i.e. the giving of reasons, may very well be a social convention of language and the socialization of the human animal, and not the ultimate grounds of anything external to those. Rorty goes to great lengths to say that epistemology is put in contrast with ontology, only under the representational model of knowing – that truths are discovered and therefore represented in growing accuracy. Without this representational model, he suggests that epistemology atrophies, and we are simply left with ontology, and I would be inclined to agree with him. What “is”, the relation between affects becomes the only plane of meaning. There is no “standing upon” (epi-istemi) “the true”, no building of edifices on objectively known ground. There just is what “is”, that is what has effect, a set of physical relations.

Dunamis

16

James,

Yes but it seems incorrect to say that you can reconstruct, purely through seeking order in this fashion,

But is this not what “science” does when it “discovers”, “invents” “laws of nature”? Is this not reading a text that was not written, but only jumbled as per its own qualities?

Will they though, find ‘no matter the configuration’ the public sense?

Yes, I believe so. For as much as we glorify the individual “consciousness”, I believe we are much more like an ant colony then we would like to believe, exponents of a larger sense producing operation, as language gives evidence. No matter the configuration, the public sense will come because we are only sub-parts in a larger machine of understanding. The individual is a phantom construction of this machine.

Dunamis

17

Dunamis

I am thinking more of putatively second order re-configurations. One question might be, is the fully arbitrary always a configuration? Can it ever be a re-configuration? Or, alternatively, are we always re-configuring? What and where is the tension between these two accounts? I am inclined to say we only have re-configuration, and that this is a determined re-configuration, otherwise we risk positing the creative act, which I am inclined against.

Well I must assume we are on different levels here; it seems my point was more trivial. If, however, you can find my sense in an ordering of letters which has potentially thousands of configurations, then I will perhaps cede the point. At the time of utterance, I maintain there is some rough finitude in the meanings available to me; whether this is an epistemic fact or a fact of another nature, I am not sure. However due to this limitation, I maintain that there is indeed a limit to your ability to reconstruct jumbled symbols, ‘tropes’, if you will, in a way which would capture the single use to which I had originally put them to.

Or else one might offer the following argument; ‘you never are able to inject your meaning into the public projection of the marks on a piece of paper. And even if you could, there is no such thing as ‘your’ meaning anyway.’

I don’t know about this, though. It is hard to escape the intuition that I do desire to say something, and that whether this meaning belongs to me or not, there is still a determinate relationship between the internal and external representations of a thought, such that there is room to say that we can use certain marks to express ourselves, and that, therefore, others can be wrong about the meaning we have injected thus, without having recourse to the rebuke that, in fact, there was no actual meaning in the marks at all.

Regards,

James

18

James,

If, however, you can find my sense in an ordering of letters which has potentially thousands of configurations, then I will perhaps cede the point.

I think I can find “your” sense of the ordering of the letters if they become incorporated into your life, and that meaning becomes exemplified through your behaviors, just as in the case with Quine’s “gavagai”. The “content” of meaning is not detached from the behavioral. All you have to do is explain them, either through your use of language or by other means. It is the same with hard to understand text even with letters that are in order.

‘you never are able to inject your meaning into the public projection of the marks on a piece of paper. And even if you could, there is no such thing as ‘your’ meaning anyway.’

I do believe that there is no such thing as “your meaning” any way. There are only the experiences of an agent conducting behaviors. The observations of the agent, as an observer, on the meaning of those behaviors is not definitive of those experiences, nor of the meaning of those behaviors. That is determined by history.

Dunamis

19

Dunamis

I have indeed remembered the indeterminacy of translation, however I am not sure that it is wholly and without qualification valid. Hence I often equivocate as to the validity of intensional notions, as is perhaps evident in my responses so far.

And yet it seems that one cannot, at least not straighforwardly or simply, mean anything by anything. What I have in the back of my mind is often something like this passage from a book review I read a while back;

Not withstanding the objection that Blackburn isn’t the most subtle of Rorty’s critics (nothing though compared to his reading of Heidegger :laughing: ), this kind of sentiment does indicate that other direction which philosophy has taken since Quine.

Hmm, incidentally, have you read any Kripke? He’s pretty interesting also…

Regards,

James

20

James,

Hence I often equivocate as to the validity of intensional notions, as is perhaps evident in my responses so far.

I have found the notion of the referential opacity of intention to be extremely useful in marrying a few disparate ideas of mine. It appears to nearly bridge Spinoza’s theory of knowledge to Plotinus’ concept of Being, a combination that is rather compelling to me. Curiously, such investigating has drawn me into personal introspection, a measuring of the amount of time I actual spend in what I would term an “intentional state”. Surprisingly it is a very, very, very small amount of time, something that almost always seems reconstructed after events, rather than a prelude to them.

Hmm, incidentally, have you read any Kripke? He’s pretty interesting also…

No. I haven’t gone down that street yet. I find analytic philosophy and philosophy of language for the most part mis-oriented. Propositional reality just isn’t where reality is at. For a long time though I resisted Davidson for the very same reasons, and only came to him through the back door, that is through Spinozan study. Now I find Davidson worth wading through, even if couched in non-amenable terms. :slight_smile:

Dunamis