who defines the discourse?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

this question is fundamental to modern society…

who defines the discourse? and what does that mean?

let us try this… on one hand, many define homosexuality as “evil”
and dangerous… and others define homosexuality as normal and just another
means of loving someone… so, how do we define this and who defines this?

it wasn’t until 1973, in my lifetime, that homosexuality wasn’t listed as a mental illness
in the official American Psychiatric Association DSM…at that time the listing was DSM-3…

The question becomes, who defines this question of homosexuality? do Homosexuals define it,
does the “official” state define it, does the society define it? does
religion define it?

we can take another subject and put it through the same test, Abortion…
who defines the “good” and “evil” of Abortion? It seems to me that
questions like these are personal questions best defined at a personal level…

but when does a question pass from a personal level to a societal level?

If I engage in a “personal” fight with someone, the state has deemed that worthy
of intervention and subject to punishment… but why do matters like
homosexuality and Abortion become societal matters instead of personal matters?

let us look at another topic… the “I”… one’s self identity…at what point
does the personal ‘‘I’’ become a societal issue? for example, it is against the law
to kill oneself? how does that personal ''I" issue become a societal issue worthy
of society’s notice and punishment? and why do some issue’s deemed to
fall under the state’s and society preview and why are other issue’s off the table…

for example, the state even makes laws about who we can love or not love…
an example is again homosexuality…but parents love their children no problem,
but parents who have sex with their children are jailed? who decides
that discourse and why?

sexual matters are easy to see but we have many other issues that
are much harder to work out…for example, what is the actual role
of government? is the government supposed to be limited as conservatives
claim but don’t actually follow, or does government play a far bigger role in
the fortunes of its citizens? the tax rate and its distribution of those taxes
in the form of tax cuts is a societal issue but who defines and works out the
implications of those tax cuts? taxes are an example of income distribution
that can be use to aid the poor and middle class or as America has done
since Raygun, distributed to the wealthy who simple pocket the tax cuts?
and why one course of action and not the other?
why and who decides the discourse?

it has been said that all, ALL political science is just two questions…
one, who rules and two, who pays…that is the entire question of
political science… who is in charge and who is paying for it…
the conservatives have one answer, the wealthy/powerful are in charge
and the poor and middle class pay for it… the liberals say that
the mass majority of people, a democracy is a majority of people,
and they are in charge and everyone must pay their fair share including
the wealthy…who is in charge and who pays for it?

who defines that discourse and why?

Kropotkin

2

we can think about this issue in a different way/manner…

we can think of the world via a couple of different methods…
we can use the “enlightenment” theory in which we use reason, logic,
rationality to understand the world… or we can use the next period
which was the “Romantic” period in which we use personal, individual methods
of understanding the world…the modern day conservative is an excellent
way of understanding the “Romantic” vision of understanding…where
the “enlightenment” method of reason and rationality is rejected for
a subjective/personal understanding of the universe/world…

the battle over these last 200 years has been between these two viewpoints,
the rational/scientific means of understanding the world and the “Romantic”
which rejects reason/science/medicine for “what feels right”
as a guide to the universe…

or said another way, the logical/objective viewpoint or the irrational/subjective
viewpoint? and of course the question becomes, why this viewpoint and
not that viewpoint?

we can try to understand this in terms of the political and economic…where
the political means to follow the concept of freedom, as being free to make one’s
choices being Romantic… which then means democracy and especially capitalism,
as determined by our desires and wants…which is not very rational or logical…
or by a more “rational” or “logical” system of communism/socialism which suggest
that we think about something other then our own needs, wants and desires and
how to get those things that we “need, want, desire” while instead we think
and work out what is beneficial not just for me and me alone, but for
all of us…the society at large…

or said another way, we can understand the world by other means…
we can use concepts like the metaphysical, epistemology, psychological,
historical, philosophical, aesthetical or any combination of these to
understand the world…

we have an example in modern philosophy… some try to understand the
world via ‘‘analytical philosophy’’ and some try to understand the world
via the ‘‘continental philosophy’’…and who is right?

personally I hold to the ‘‘continental’’ school but others may and do
hold differently…

and we also work out what it means to be human with a concepts
like ‘‘modernism’’ and ‘‘postmodernism’’…

and with that in mind, I turn the concept of ‘‘postmodernism’’

so what is/does the concept of ‘‘postmodernism?’’

Kropotkin

3

let us rethink this…

if our sensory experiences are different because of our diverse and distinct
senses, for example I hold it is a rather quiet world because I have a severe
hearing loss… but to those who can hear, it is a rather loud world…
who is right? In fact because of our different senses, sensory experience of the
world, we are both right…

now, how do we create a transcendental/universal
theory of reality given we have different sensory experiences of the world…

if we are to base our theories on empirical theories of the universe,
we have best understand on whose sensory experiences we are judging on…

and how exactly are we suppose to create a transcendental theory of the
universe when we don’t and cannot have a universal sensory experience
on which to base our transcendental/universal theories on?

I see the universe as black and you see it as white…so who is right?

This is exactly where we are right now…we cannot move forward
and we cannot move back…so what is next?

Kropotkin

4

a couple of thoughts here…

one: if we don’t or cannot create a a format upon which we can build
a universal/transcendental understanding of the universe… a common
understanding of ‘‘reality’’ based upon mutually agree upon understanding
of what is ‘‘real’’ then we have no basis upon which we can agree on any/
ANY universal/transcendental idea…hence we cannot
hold to any concept ‘‘ill’’ gotten by historical, metaphysical, biological,
social, political or economic basis because there is no basis or foundation
for holding such a belief because we all view ‘‘reality’’ differently because of our
different sensory perceptions of ‘‘reality’’…

two; because of this, we can only hold onto our understanding of “reality”
based on faith… I cannot “know” what is real or not real because I do not
have a complete sensory perception of what is “real” or of ‘‘reality’’,
on this point lies the modern faith… we hold it on faith because
we don’t have any other place to hold a rational understanding of
‘‘reality’’…

three; on this point lies the the modern fracture within society,
the liberal vs the conservative… the conservative holds to faith…
thus they can still believe, hold faith in IQ45 having won the
2020 election despite massive evidence to the contrary…
and why? because our sensory evidence of the universe can be and is
impacted by our the ism’s, ideologies, prejudices and superstitions
we hold…in other words, our currently held ism’s of reality,
can impact our sensory perceptions…

we can see the exact same event and because of our inherited, internal
biases, prejudices, ism’s and ideologies, we may understand
the event in completely different ways…

a black man “assaults” a white man… how we see that event
is not only dictated by our senses, but by our inherited biases,
prejudice, superstitions, and ideologies…

I might see a black man who is starving and needs to eat and
thus he assaults a white man… the method is wrong, but
the concept is understandable… I am starving, why should this
white man be able to eat just because he is white and I am starving
just because I am black… whereas you might see a black man assaulting
a white man in terms of the black man being uncivilized, or a brute or
racist or clearly beneath or below the white man…

our senses see the exact same thing but because of inherited
biases, prejudices, superstitions, we see the exact same event
differently…

this is one reason for our attempt to know thyself… because much of
what we “see” and “understand”, we see through the prism of inherited
bias, superstition, prejudice and ism’s… so to see event’s more “clearly”
we must removed our inherited biases, prejudices, superstitions and ism’s…
thus we might, might be able to see events more clearly…and be closer
to “reality” if we were to engage in a reevaluation of values…in which
we examine our inherited values and beliefs and assumptions in light
of what we do know about our current understanding of ‘‘reality’’

so on what basis can we center our understanding or our perception
of ‘‘reality’’?

we can change the focus from what we know, epistemology,
to the values we hold…I hold this value because it better
corresponds to how I view what it means to be human…
going from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human…

understanding the world based on ethical values and not an
understanding of the world based on sensory or epistemology understanding…

Kropotkin

5

the enlightenment: with reason, we can understand reality…

the counter enlightenment: no matter how hard we try,
we cannot reach/understand reality with reason…
so we best hold to faith instead of reason to understand the universe…

so the first question becomes, is reason enough to understand
the universe? now one of the tactics that reason uses to avoid
becoming victim of the realization that we are limited in our senses,
which prevents us from truly understanding the universe, is we
create theories, not necessarily connected to our senses and what our
senses can detect… we can see this in Einstein’s theory of
E = Mc2… in which we can see from the math, that one of the
possibilities arising from E = Mc2 is black holes…at the time,
we had no way of knowing anything about black holes… we could
not use our senses to see if there were black holes… thus from an
empirical standpoint, if we can’t see, hear, taste, smell or touch it, it
cannot exists…a century after Einstein theory, we have pictures
of a black hole…from this theory, we can postulate that we can
“Predict” events far into the future… without the use of
our senses…we can create theories that suggest this may or may not
happen… and we are then rewarded with an theory of reality if, if the
theory is proven to be true…

or to say this another way, we can from the list of possibilities, predict
which possibilities may come to fruition…come to be true…we don’t need
to cover those possibilities with actual proof from the senses… we can
suggest those possibilities and then later, sometime much later, the possibilities
become available to the senses in which case we can confirm or deny that possibility…

we can escape the tyranny of the senses by our engagement with the possibilities
available to us… we can become beings of a higher order in which we
no longer need our bodies to transport us…we can become independent
of our bodies…that is a possibility for us…
but we cannot use our senses to show us this… this possibility lies beyond our
senses… and with an engagement with our possibilities, we can see or foresee
as the case may be, this event…now is it likely that we can become beings of
energy or of light, likely no, possible yes…can we escape the tyranny of death?
that is one possibility that may come true for human beings… but we cannot,
with the use of our senses, know if that is possible… it is just one possibility
of human existence…as of right now, our senses, our bodily experiences tell
us that we must die… we cannot escape that possibility… right now…
but we cannot dictate or understand what is possible for us in the future…

to give an example… human beings since the beginning of time, could not
fly… it was beyond the possibilities available to them…it was not possible…
simple as that… and there was no evidence of any kind available to the human
senses that made that possibility evident… but yet here we are… flying to here,
there and everywhere… including the moon and Mars…what was once impossible
to the senses, it not only possible to the senses but is done every single day…
… who is to say what is or isn’t possible for us to achieve?

Kropotkin

6

so let’s understand this…

I can choose, by whatever means I desire, by logic, rational thoughts, emotions,
feelings, or a magic 8-ball…to pursue some possibility… be it the value of love
or violence or hate or randomness…there is not need for any sort of sensory
input to make this decision… it is independent of any sensory experience…

to make sense of what happens when I put this value into action, yes, I then
need my senses to understand it… so, I can choose to hold as my value, love,
but I need my senses to see, taste, smell, touch or hear the results of my actions…
my senses are needed to understand what my value of love has done… or not done,
as the case may be…

so we can make choices independent of our senses but we need them to
understand the results…

Kropotkin

7

let us think about this…

the enlightenment required one to use reason, rationality to gain insight into
the questions of existence… but some question cannot be answered by that tool…
for reason, rationality, logic, emotions, are all tools we use to help us solve
problems…metaphysical questions about, what is being, which is a problem and what tool
should we use to answer this question? but let us recall that if the question or the problem
to be solved is love, then the tool we use isn’t going to be reason or rationality or logic…

love as a question/problem isn’t available to us as reason or logic or rationality…
the tool we use to solve the question of love is emotions and feelings… the Romantic
has a much better idea of what love is because they use the right tool to understand love…
whereas the logical, rational, reasonable person will never solve the question/problem of love
because they are using the wrong tool…that is why Heidegger question involving
being/Dasein wasn’t work out as a tool of reason or logic… being isn’t discovered
with rationality or logic or reason…being is a question of emotions and feelings…
if we use the right tool, we can solve most problems… the question arises in
what problem/question requires what tool to solve? we demand that we use the same
tool to solve all our problems when we need different tools at different problems/questions…

what is the meaning of life? I don’t see how rational, logical debate will
work out that problem/question… the meaning of life isn’t a understanding of
logic or rationality or reason…it is an emotional, feeling understanding of what it
means to be human…

we need to work out the right tool for the right questions/problems…
that is why, in part, why we have failed to answer many questions/problems,
we haven’t used the right tool to work out that answer/question…

Kropotkin

8

so given my above post, what are ism’s and ideologies?

They are solutions to problems… Marx saw the massive poverty and dehumanization
of human beings caused by the Industrial revolution… and he offered up, as his solution,
the ism we know as Marxism…defined and refined over the years as communism and
socialism and collectivism… so what is capitalism? it is another solution to the problems
as seen by Adam Smith in his “Wealth of Nations”…Smith’s problem was how does a nation
build its wealth… and his solution was what we know today as capitalism…
every single ism and ideology, be it political, social, economic, philosophical,
religious is an attempt to solve a problem…so when Edmund Husserl offer us
Phenomenology as a solution, it was to solve a problem… now those who took
up phenomenology as a philosophy, then tried to use phenomenology as a solution
to every problem and that is where they went wrong…phenomenology is
a solution to a specific problem but not a solution to ALL problems… hence
from phenomenology as one possible solution comes existentialism…
existentialism flows from phenomenology… read the history and see that
one of the founders of existentialism is Husserl… but he didn’t comment on it
because existentialism as an ism, began after he died…in 1938…and one of
the root causes of existentialism is the crisis brought about by the Second World war…
1939-1945…

so how does making philosophy “a rigorous science” in which we return
its (philosophy)attention to “to the things themselves”…apply to such questions/problems
as “what am I to do?” “what is the meaning of life?” “what values should I hold?”
“upon what should I expend my energy on?” basic questions of existence that
are Kantian questions…

so as a process, we must first understand what is the question/problem?
then after we correctly understand the question/problem, then and only
then can we offer up solutions in the forms of ism’s or ideologies or
even “ad hoc” solutions to the question at hand…

so let us work this out… my problem is this… how am I to understand my
existence? what is the meaning of my own existence? that is the question/problem
I am right now working out…

so, what tool/tools should I use to answer this question? so is math an answer to this
question/problem? I don’t see how…could even science work out some sort of
answer to my question/problem? Science deals with the how, how something works,
not to why something is… how but not why and my question/problem is
a why question/problem… not a how question…so science doesn’t seem to
be answer to my question of existence… we can use religion to answer the
why, as millions do, but I have rejected god, religions as a means to an answer
to the why because I can’t see there being a god, for a wide variety of reasons,
for I am not seeking a metaphysical answer, I don’t believe in metaphysics…
seeking that which is outside of the physical, god, jesus, heaven, enlightenment
in which I return to the nothingness that I came from… Buddhism is the best
example here…now some might say that I need to open my mind to the possibilities
of an engagement with a religion but frankly, I spent 40 plus years attempting an
engagement with the religious and as a solution to my problem, it failed… so why
keep engaging in a possible solution when it has already failed? that is blindly
hoping that some religious solution will pop us for me… my faith in religion isn’t
that great…

so my question of why… what are the best tools I have, right now, to work
out my questions/problems of why do I exist and what does it mean?

existentialism is a far better tool then other tools, say logical positivism
to explore what it means to be human or the other tool of math or perhaps,
the tool used by the Vienna Circle, which gave birth to the Analytic philosophy,
which is a great tool, but just not for the questions/problems that I have
presented to you… the questions/problems of existence

so, much of philosophy has been using the wrong tools to approach various
problems… using logic to solve the problem/question of love for example…
logic is the wrong tool to understand love… or perhaps using the tool of
Marxism to solve the question of love…we cannot use reason, logic,
rationality to solve the emotional question of love… what is love
can’t be solve by the tools of the enlightenment, but it can be approached
by the tools offered up by the Romantic era… the heart, feelings, emotions
are part of the tools offered up by the Romantic era and that has continued to
today… the modern conservative is a follower of tools of the Romantic era,
a Romantic understanding of what it means to be human… filtered by
ones blinders of the day’s prejudice, superstitions, bias, bigotry…
the conservative see’s the questions of the day through the lens of
the indoctrinations of nationalism, prejudice, superstition… (America is the
greatest country on earth) bias, and of course bigotry…

they cannot find an answer to the questions they seek because they are using
the wrong tools of prejudice and superstitions to answer questions/problems
that rightly should be address by other tools which is in this case, reason
and rationality… so the current problem being the Covid-19… and the conservative
seeks the wrong answers in emotionalism and feelings… and not where the answers
really lie, in which logic and rationality are the solutions to the question/problem of
Covid-19…use the wrong solution to answering a question/problem only makes
the question/problem worse, as it has gotten worse in America because the
conservative has been using the wrong tool in this particular question/problem…
just as using capitalism as a solution to the Covid question is the wrong answer…
because it isn’t just about profits or losses in fighting the Covid-19… it is a
societal solution that is required, a medical solution, it is not a question of economics
or politics…but of science that will solve the problem of Covid-19…and the
politics of the day must support the science to reach a solution to Covid…
but to the conservative the politics is more important then the science…

so the discourse must be about seeking the proper tool to solve any
pressing problems/questions, not about applying a specific ism or ideology
to solve every problem…

so the process beings with identifying the problems/questions
in which we can use philosophy quite successfully to work out
the problem and then we can use science/philosophy to understand
what possible tools we have to solve that particular problem…
now we run into trouble because we tend to create an “Ad hoc” solution
in which we fall to take into account the possibilities in both
the question and the answers/tools…

so an example of this is poverty… the usual answer is let those in poverty
work themselves out of poverty… raise themselves by their own “bootstraps”

well 2000 years into this answer and we still have poverty… so perhaps that solution/tool
is not the tool we need to solve the question/problem of poverty…perhaps we
need intervention from the society, state, culture to reduce or even eliminate
poverty… perhaps poverty still exists because we haven’t cared enough about our
fellow human beings to make eliminating poverty a priority… we pretend to care,
but in fact, we don’t care enough to reducing poverty… and that reflects
very badly on us as human beings…so the question becomes this…
why don’t we care enough about our fellow human beings to reduce or
eliminate poverty? it has been a question of “me first” and that is certainly
the motto of capitalism…but if capitalism has failed to reduce poverty,
then we must say it is not a solution to this particular question/problem…

so what is the solution to the question/problem of poverty?

by saying us, instead of me…by making it a priority to remove poverty…
even at the cost of making us individually poorer…
raising all ships does improve my life because we are all connected
and interconnected…

Kropotkin

9

this post and the last several post have been under the influence of
the book I am currently reading, “Explaining Postmodernism” by
Stephen R. C. Hicks…and entire paragraphs hereafter are directly influenced
by this book…

the Romantic “condition” post Kant brought about the anti-rationalism
Romantic viewpoint that has lasted to this very day… see the latest
GOP idiocy regarding mask and vaccines…in whatever format you care to use…

so Bertrand Russell in 1912, wrote a book, “The problems of Philosophy”…
he wrote that the history of philosophy as a repeating series of failures to
answer its questions. As example, he asked, Can we prove that there is an external
world?. NO… Can we prove that there is cause and effect?. NO. Can we
validate the objectivity of our inductive generalizations? NO. Can we find
an objective basis for morality? NO. So Russell concluded that philosophy
cannot, CANNOT answer its questions/problems and so came to believe that
any value philosophy might have, cannot lie in being offer truth or wisdom…

the next group that came along were the early Logical positivists including
Wittgenstein took it one step further and said that philosophy cannot
answer these questions because these questions are meaningless…

that philosophy has no content such as metaphysics, ethics, theology,
or aesthetics… they are all meaningless inquires and should be dismissed…
thus philosophy is not a content discipline but a method discipline… the function
of philosophy is analysis, elucidation, clarification… philosophy is not a subject,
but plays a role has an analytical assistant to science…
aid in the how of the universe, not the why…

one of the conclusions reached by mid-century has been that our perceptions
are theory laden which means we see and understand reality through our
isms, ideologies, biases, superstitions and prejudices…thus our attempts
to use science to understand reality will fail because we see the world
by and through our ism’s etc. etc…
there is no way we can see the universe through unbiased eyes because
we can’t escape our biases and prejudices…

thus science, history, economics, philosophy, even math and logic and
all the other tools we use to explain the world are flawed because of the
inescapable biases and prejudices we already hold, our indoctrinations
as children that we cannot escape…

thus why even bother with science or math or logic or rationality?
it is biased to the point of being worthless…

that is part of one question/problem we face in this modern
world of ours…

so what is the solution?

Kropotkin

10

here are not solutions, but more questions…

it is said that math is the basis of reality…

1 + 1 =2… ok, that may be true, but so what?

it doesn’t tell us anything about the “human condition”…

it gives us no truth that we can use to understand what it means to be
human… 1 + 1 = 2 has nothing to do with what it means to be human because
that particular formula, while in fact being true, has nothing to do with
experience… can I use 1 + 1 = 2 to explain love? or to explain what
is justice? or what is the meaning of life? nope, nope, and nope…

I could just as easily say, 1 + 1 = 5 and it still won’t change the fact that
it has no meaning in my daily existence of seeking the “human” truths…
which is understanding the why of existence, not the how, but the why…

1 + 1 = 2 tells us nothing about what it means to be human or how do we grow from
animal to animal/human to finally becoming fully human…a “truth” like
1 + 1 = 2 tells us nothing of value and may as well be and in fact is, worthless…

for I don’t care about the how of existence, I care about the why… and the “truth”
1 + 1 = 2 tells me nothing of the why…

just as the scientific fact that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun…
that is a good thing to know, but it tells me nothing about the why of
existence… it tells me the how, but not the why… and we should, at
least in philosophy, work out the why…

using the right tool to explore the question/problem at hand is what
philosophy is all about… and the answer/truth that 1+1=2 isn’t the right
tool to explain or explore what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

11

so if we remove the unessential parts that we use to explain the how
of the universe, but not the why, that means we eliminate math,
logic, textual analysis, as useless and meaningless for our search for
understanding of what it means to be human…
so parts of philosophy is meaningless and useless, but that means
only parts of, not all of…so what does have meaning and tells us
something of what it means to be human? the why of existence, not the how…

we can see how parts of philosophy does help us see the why of existence,
but we can also see other aspects of existence as being important in our understanding
the why of existence… hence the value that such things as poetry, literature,
plays, paintings, the aesthetic aspect of existence can and does bring us to
some understanding of the why of existence… we moderns have walked away
from the creative aspects of our own lives to lead us to the poverty of understanding
that we have of existence due to this disdain of the aesthetic…

we can find meaning in the creation of ART, literature, poems, novels…
we can begin to understand the why from ART… for ART isn’t just about
entertainment… as we modern think of ART, but ART can inform us as
to our possibilities as human beings…and within those possibilities lie
some of the why of existence…

I can see more of why of existence in great novels like “Crime and punishment”
and poems like ''Leaves of grass" then I can find in dozens of modern philosophy
books…it is in the why that brings out the greatness of ART…

Kropotkin