Another word she rejects, without first defining and clarifying what she is rejecting.
What is this ‘morality’ she is nullifying.
What does the ‘a’ negate in a-morality?
THE GREAT AMPUTATION: LANGUAGE IN THE POSTMODERN ERA
October 23, 2018 By Ewa Thompson
Of course, given the way language works in our postmodern age, these very words themselves will be reacted to differently from the various conflicting perspectives of people for whom the author’s experiences may either be deeply felt in turn or seem utterly unintelligible.
The crucial question then being that in the age before language was “deconstructed” was it possible to create a language that would come closest to encompassing how reasonable people ought to react to the fact that the New York Times Best Seller list is now invariably a literary wasteland?
Is it really television and movies [and now] the internet that is largely responsible for that? Or, instead, is it truer that what we take out of language will revolve first and foremost around what we put into it…ourselves. And the postmodern “self” will tend to revolve less around great literature and more around pop culture, consumerism and celebrity?
In other words, over time historically and across the globe culturally, things – memes/values/institutions – change. People change along with them. But each new generation, by and large, is able to obviate this by thinking that their own generation really does “get” the way the world works.
And that the language they use to encompass it gets it too.
All of this explains the proliferation of both God and No God objectivists around the globe. The more language splinters us, the more the objectivists need to convince themselves that their own language actually does, in fact, reflect the One True Path to rationality and virtue.
THE GREAT AMPUTATION: LANGUAGE IN THE POSTMODERN ERA
October 23, 2018 By Ewa Thompson
The persona syndrome. We all probably employ one to one degree or another. There’s who we think we are. And then there’s calculating the reaction of others if we interact with them without pretending to be someone else. The games we play, the masks we wear when we shift from one set of circumstances to another. Or when we are around different people. Indeed, if you watch enough true crime docs the bottom line seems rather bleak: how…over and over again…those that we think we know best, we do not really know at all. Sometimes with deadly consequences. Over and again someone will insist that their friend or brother or father or cousin could “never do something like that”. They’ll tell the detective, “I know them.”
Politicians are just more notorious in this regard because they have to be. With constituents voting them into office all up and down the political spectrum, it’s important to shape-shift in order to please as many or displease as few of them as possible.
Here, however, each of us will react to others in different ways. For some, adopting a persona is like breathing, while for others it might be unimaginable. It’s just that in our postmodern age there are simply more contexts in which acting out a persona may be the only option. Molding and manipulating our language to the “occasion”. It’s the difference between living in a modern metropolis and living in, say, an Amish community. Although even there one suspects the more the modern world seeps in, the more likely a persona may seem “reasonable”.
And then, of course, those like me. I don’t have this “real me” to fall back on even in “the privacy of my own home”. At least not in regard to “how I really feel” about human interactions in the is/ought world.
for someone who thinks he doesn’t have a “real me” there sure is a pattern to you
More Than Words: How Language Affects The Way We Think
by Marielle Zagada
That’s where the confusion can set in. Because there are so many words that do in fact describe many things objectively, it is easy enough for some to forget that there are, as well, any number of complex human interactions that cannot be encompassed without at least some measure of uncertainty, ambiguity, confusion and the like. In other words, human relationships that are basically encompassed only in a “world of words”.
Of course, of far greater importance, in my view, is the fact that even among those who speak the very same language there are endless conflicts regarding the meaning, the significance, the correctness, etc., of the words chosen to convey and to encompass the very same things. You’d think that after a while it might begin to dawn on us all that there are clearly language limitations in regard to particular kinds of human communication. But, instead, many simply insist that there is always only one truth to be had. Their own. They make no distinction at all between the either/or world and the is/ought world. Most through God, though others through one or another secular “ism”.
What kind of a question is that? Of course the language we come to acquire influences how we think. After all, we first come to acquire a language as children. And, again, while some words are used by everyone to convey the meaning both of things and the relationships between things clearly and with little or no contention, other communication breaks down time after time after time.
And that is either because there is an objective truth to be had once we do learn how to communicate it or because there are in fact limitations beyond which language itself simply cannot convey an objective truth.
And here much to the dismay of any number of “serious philosophers”, I request a context.
More Than Words: How Language Affects The Way We Think
by Marielle Zagada
Right, but that’s where philosophy comes in, isn’t it? Philosophy is interested in examining all of the same sets of circumstances that those from different cultures react to in [at times] very different ways. Taking that [and the historical evolution of human behaviors] into account in order [for some[ to arrive at the actual deontological obligation of all who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous men and women.
On the other hand, “in reality” how’s that going for us?
Back to language applicable in all cultures and language that, depending on the culture you were born and raised in, may or may not be in sync.
Thus…
And, in my view, what your values and beliefs are is embedded in the words that you are taught as a child to connect to the particular world you grow up in. Then those like Plato and Aristotle and Descartes and Kant and others who make an attempt to transcend the existential muddle of all the vast and varied lives we live and propose what they construe to be the embodiment of “wisdom”. Though, in their case, that involves one or another rendition of God.
Yes, and that worked particular well when the language used to convey this was contained and sustained in a village or a hamlet or a small community where everyone had a place and everyone was expected to stay in their place.
But: how about the role that language plays today given…the Internet? Language in the modern world where many, many different cultures come into contact using words to convey many, many conflicting value judgments.
Then the points that I raise about the use of language given the language I use in this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529
And, of course, on and on and on and on. Culture by culture by culture. Why their culture and not ours? Is there one culture who comes closest to “wisdom” than others?
Given a particular context?
More Than Words: How Language Affects The Way We Think
by Marielle Zagada
Okay, but here again it depends on the context. There are some words that describe the world around us with such unerring accuracy we not not likely to see things any differently at all. Who is going to change their mind about the meaning of the word “execution” as defined in the dictionary pertaining to capital punishment: “the carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person.”
But there are any number of words in any number of discussions regarding the morality of capital punishment in which given new experiences one might change their mind. Otherwise why would those who once supported it come out against it. And the other way around.
Okay, go around the globe. All the different nations and all the different cultures and all the different communities. And in which one will the meaning of the words “state execution” generate heated conflicts? In regard to what it actually encompasses phenomenologically, materially, empirically? There may be places where there are no state executions and places where there are many of them. But everyone will agree on what the words themselves means.
So, even in the relative objectivity of the either/or world, different languages come up with different sounds to encompass the same things. Where’s the controversy here? We’re still back to how in both English speaking countries and Russian speaking countries the words “state executions” mean exactly the same thing…while the conflagrations revolve around coming up with a language able to pin down whether state executions are good or evil.
The part where dasein comes in.
A Review of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks
Matt McManus
Matt McManus
Sure, to the extent that postmodernists go off the deep end in attributing practically everything to intellectual contraptions such as deconstruction and semiotics, I agree. Clearly, as we go about the task of living our lives from day to day, we almost never get into heated arguments with others over what this thing or that thing [and the demonstrably objective relationships between them] means. What, a postmodernist mathematics? a postmodernist assessment of the immutable laws of matter? a postmodern assessment of nature? a postmodernist assessment of the objective facts embedded in the world around us empirically? a postmodernist assessment of logic?
Nope, from my frame of mind, the either/or world only comes into play [in exchanging “language games”] when we go all the way out to the end of the metaphysical limb and exchange speculations and conjectures regarding the really big questions themselves.
Instead, where conflicts revolving around the Left and the Right come into play is generally in regard to moral and political and religious values…when intertwined in “rules of behavior” that yield either rewards or punishments.
And, for me, that would pertain to his own assessment of liberal and conservative values pertaining in turn to particular sets of circumstances.
Of course, defenders of Hicks will no doubt attribute conclusions like this to the fact that the author is himself providing us with but another example of a left/liberal postmodern assessment. Whereas [again] for me when anyone focuses in on “Hume, Kant, Hegel, Popper, Wittgenstein” in terms of the language they employ to assign meaning to the lives that we actually live, my main interest always revolves around this:
“How ought one to live morally/rationally in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change.”
Given a particular set of events, conditions and occurrences. Factors that all sides can agree on.
A Review of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks
Matt McManus
Actually, the problem begins with the title of the book itself. It assumes that postmodernism itself can be explained such that it does not just involve the author’s own accumulated collection of moral and political and philosophical prejudices. All rooted existentially in dasein given the manner in which the trajectory of his life predisposed him to one set of prejudices rather than another.
That’s why I ask those like Satyr who embrace much of Hick’s own political bigotries to explore an assessment of postmodernism in regard to a particular set of circumstances. Race, gender, sexual preferences, abortion, guns, the role of government. How are they encompassed in a postmodern frame of mind?
Or how about this:
Indeed, how does one go about examining American foreign policy in the Middle East as a postmodernist? As opposed to, say, a Marxist? Where from the Marxist frame of mind, the American government [Democratic or Republican] has always been utterly preoccupied with the oil there. Political economy in a nutshell.
To wit:
“The irony was that Saddam had been a close American ally ever since Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in Iran removed the Shah in 1979 and all through during the 1980s. Iraq was seen as an essential bulwark against the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The Americans had poured money and aid into Iraq to help it fight the Iranians during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988.” WORLD
And, of course, the only reason that Iran became an enemy to the American government [Democratic and Republican] revolves around this:
npr.org/2019/01/31/69036340 … -four-days
“On Aug. 19, 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.”
We installed the autocratic Shah. Which eventually led to the Ayatollah Khomeini and this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
Thus…
Exactly. It’s not postmodern thinking that is explained so much as why the right wing/conservative objectivists are clearly deemed more rational and virtuous than the left wing/liberal objectivists.
By Hicks. By Satyr.
The more you post…the more your essence becomes evident, even to a dullard.
Karen is a mouthpiece of this.
What Is Postmodernism?
In the same way she became a parrot for Abrahamism, then for Marxism, she is now entirely surrendering to Postmodernity.
It is, in fact, part of the same continuum of ideologies/dogmas.
What Is Postmodernism?
The method is meant to undermine, so as to then promote a compromising Utopian uniformity.
Diversity in appearance; uniformity in essence.
Hive-Mind.
A mental dis-ease traced back to the Frankfurt School…the decade 60’s when this infection took hold of babyboomers rebelling against their father’s - paternalism.
E. Michael Jones offers a Christian perspective on this ‘revolutionary spirit’ and its origins - absolving Catholicism.
His insights are both useful and deceptive, given his own Abrahamic infection and addiction to logos’ - first came the word.
Wokism is directly linked to Abrahamism…following the same ‘logic’ to its end.
If we define terms like ‘value’, ‘beauty’, ‘morality/ethics’, ‘truth’, ‘soul/spirit’, ‘god’ to refer to perceptible actions, we can remain immune to this psychological word-game.
Nihilism is the school of thought - this linguistic defensive sophistry.
It exploits human ignorance concerning what language is and how it is applied, and on the human mind’s use of binaries/dualities to refer to dynamic, fluctuating processes.
In my view nihilism developed as a reaction to man’s emerging self-consciuosness - his increasing ability to perceive himself and other, in the third-person, exposing him to a new source of anxiety and suffering.
Nihilism evolved a linguistic method of protecting the ego - lucid self - from this new source of anxiety gradually evolving a variety of spiritual dogmas, and then into secular forms.
Its motive to use words to dismiss or detach from experienced reality offered it the leeway to creatively explore a multitude of variations, since the real world could impose limits on what could be created.
It’s only challenge was to become seductive and plausible to as many minds as possible - minds seeking relief from reality.
Such minds were multiplying as manmade systems became increasingly sophisticated , protecting unfit mutations to replicate and compound over time.
Wars and disease would partially compensate but this increasingly became less and less effective - with technological improvements in medicine and the invention of warfare that could not be survived by the victor.
Every game’s limit that multiplies sustainability:
Stephen Hicks: From the Falsification of Marxism to Post-Modernism
A sweeping adjustment - progress - that took Karen and her ilk, along with it.
The method is to subvert, and then replace.
Its weapons are linguistic.
This connects us back to Abrahamism and the use of logos to seduce, coerce and bribe the masses.
Corrupting words is the method…the objective is loss of confidence.
One man’s creation-towards-the-eternal is another man’s destruction-for-the-fire?
One of ‘em’s wrong-o.
A Review of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks
Matt McManus
Of course, this takes us back to the mysteries of mind itself. The human mind in particular. And here there are any number of theologians and philosophers and scientists able to propose all manner of “explanations” regarding a reality independent of the human mind. Here I accept both “the gap” and “Rummy’s rule” as the starting point. There are just some things we don’t now know – can’t ever know? – about the existence of existence itself and where and how and why mere mortals here on planet Earth fit into it.
So, given that, what’s left? Well, to the best of our ability, to make that crucial distinction between what we believe [about anything] in our head and what we are able to demonstrate that other rational people are obligated to believe as well.
Here, Hicks then takes his own rooted existentially in dasein leap to the political prejudices embedded in the right, in capitalism, in objectivism. While insisting that those who do not are “one of them”…the fools!
Again, here it all revolves around how far out on the epistemological/metaphysical limb you go. All the way to solipsism? to determinism? to sim worlds? to dream worlds? to the Matrix? to God?
Well, if you are a Marxist you note the evolution of human communities as revolving around the need to sustain a particular means of production…nomadic communities, slash and burn communities, hunter and gatherer communities, agricultural communities, feudal communities, mercantile communities, capitalist communities, socialist communities. It’s not that these communities, down through the ages, using the tools of philosophy, decided that collectivism or individualism was more rational, more virtuous. It’s that “we” or “I” simply made more sense historically given the nature of the community itself going about the task of subsisting.
Whereas, if you are an Ayn Randroid objectivist none that matters. No, instead, superior minds simply “thought up” capitalism as not only the best of all possible worlds but as the only possible world if you wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous. Hicks “the philosopher” embodies just another rendition of this mentality. As do those like Satyr here. They all simply start with a different set of political prejudices rooted existentially in the lives they lived. And then manage to convince themselves that dasein has nothing to do with it at all. No, their convictions are superior because as philosopher kings themselves, they are able to “think up” the wisest deontological/ideological moral narratives and political agendas.
Here of course what they do is to start with the assumption that there are no victims. Everyone has an equal opportunity to rise to the top. Racism? Sexism? Heterosexism? Classism? Nope. The only reason anyone comes to think of themselves and others as victims is because they refuse to accept the fact that it is always their own damn fault for not rising to the top.
Or, of course, those here who argue that if one is to be thought of as a victim it all comes back to genes. Yes, the white race is naturally superior to all other races. Men are naturally superior to women. Some men are naturally gifted with a superior intellect.
Nature’s way let’s call it.
A Review of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks
Matt McManus
What did the Enlightenment revolve around first and foremost if not the historical advent of capitalism? And the need to create a superstructure – social and political institutions – much more in sync with these entirely new components of economic exchange. It’s not as though a bunch of philosophers sat around during the Feudal era and “thought up” this new way of doing things. “Let’s scrape the ‘other worldly’ Divine right of Kings running their feudal fiefdoms and, instead, create a market economy that would be sustained by a new kind of government that focused more on individuals competing with other individuals for market share.”
This really is how those like Ayn Rand imagined the world unfolding. Great Men thinking it all into existence.
Instead, a burgeoning mercantile economy along with crafts guilds created and then sustained an equally bustling world trade that over time evolved organically into capitalism itself. And then right in line came the Reformation…a “spiritual”/“religious” frame of mind that reconfigured from thinking solely about saving one’s soul on the other side of the grave to a “this side” frame of mind. The more you prospered here and now the more God actually favored you.
Come on. Kant may have thought this but only given his own rendition of a Divine theistic foundation. A transcendent font – God – commanding deontological moral prescriptions such that ultimately good and evil rested on the assumption that God Himself would be around and, on Judgment Day, save your soul for all the rest of eternity.
Take God out of the picture and what on Earth would motivate anyone to “do the right thing” categorically regardless of the consequences?
From my frame of mind, this is the sort of intellectual bullshit that all too many “serious philosophers” exchange here on a daily basis. What does any of it mean out in the world of actual human interactions.
Again, I challenge the “serious philosophers” here – the Harry Bairds and the Alexis Jacobis – to translate this world of words above into an assessment of a moral/political conflict that is of particular importance to them.
Empirical realism/reason in regard to what potent issue that has rent the species now for centuries?
How about you translate the world of words for yourself.
I didn’t create them.
Though if anyone thinks that they grasp the point being made here as it pertains to a context familiar to most of us, I’d appreciate their own translation.
Given a particular set of circumstances, is it reasonable or unreasonable to argue that “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a skeptical epistemological attack on empirical realism and the possibility of true knowledge of the real world…”
How about you, Dan?
Especially given a context in which there is likely to be disagreement regarding either enlightened or unenlightened behavior.
The laws of physics seem to usually be the same,
no matter where you are.
Me saying that, means I trust my language.
I’m saying something because I think it can be true.
If our thoughts are unreal, they can’t be true.
Thoughts are just a piece of the puzzle.
But it is a valid puzzle, according to many.
Do you believe in chaos and novelty?
It explains why some things happen often,
and why some things happen not so often.
The chances of us being who we are today,
are very low. Especially before birth.
So many possible genetic variations.
Then we now have a mass media.
So that expands things i think.
I’m not sure what to tell you,
other than don’t give up on truth.