Kant's Epistemology

[chazwin]

In what way is Kant justifiably called a Subjectivist or Idealist?

We are perfectly justified in maintaining that only what is within
ourselves can be immediately and directly perceived, and that only my
own existence can be the object of a mere perception. Thus the
existence of a real object outside me can never be given immediately
and directly in perception, but can only be added in thought to the
perception, which is a modification of the internal sense, and thus
inferred as its external cause … . In the true sense of the word,
therefore, I can never perceive external things, but I can only infer
their existence from my own internal perception, regarding the
perception as an effect of something external that must be the
proximate cause … . It must not be supposed, therefore, that an
idealist is someone who denies the existence of external objects of
the senses; all he does is to deny that they are known by immediate
and direct perception … .
—Critique of Pure Reason, A367 f.

Given this statement, how is any position which asserts a Realist
position ever justifiable?

[Lonnie Clay]

I'll take a stab at it. If you deny consensus reality, then you *will* probably be declared insane. So you must at least give lip service to the claim that Solipsism is a flawed philosophical view. Is that a good enough response? It shows by implication nothing regarding my viewpoint since I have been declared insane...

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[einseele]

Hello Chaz

I agree 100% with your post. Indeed the idealist position does not
deny the existence of external objects.
Instead, focus on the gap between them and direct knowledge or
perception, being that gap structural by definition.
How could be different anyway?
Objects as perceived/known, can only be different from those addressed
by the knower.
And when the idealist states the external world does not exists, it is
just to stress that difference, which is a good resource to make the
point, and it certainly does not mean he/she is stupid and that s/he
likes to step out the window from the 25th floor.
But more than that, one could also say you dont even need subjectivity
to justify that gap, DNA is also a sort of proof. Change the reader
and you will change the being, or cheat it enough and you can produce
insulin out of bacteria, whatever.

rgds

[chazwin]

On Jun 25, 8:55 am, Lonnie Clay <claylon...@comcast.net> wrote:
> I'll take a stab at it. If you deny consensus reality, then you *will*
> probably be declared insane.

Whose consensus? Surely every Protestant denied the Catholic
consensus; the muslim denies the Christian; the Hindu the Buddhist ad
infinitem.

There is no "consensus" reality. Surely that is simply the false claim
of the objectivist.
Given what Kant has shown, should we not treat with utter suspicion
any one who tries to claim that their position is objective? Is that
not the howl of the totalitarian?

> So you must at least give lip service to the
> claim that Solipsism is a flawed philosophical view. Is that a good enough
> response? It shows by implication nothing regarding my viewpoint since I
> have been declared insane...

The moment I agree with your position we then share a consensus. But
it might be just us two that shares this point of view. If 10 others
disagree, does that make us mad and them sane?
And if society tells us that x,y, and z simply is the truth ought we
not to challenge that?

[Lonnie Clay]

The society in which *I* live will *not* tolerate dissent or disruption. I have *personal* experience of that. See Wikipedia article "consensus reality". Mental health professional enforce the rules.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

On Saturday, June 25, 2011 12:36:48 PM UTC-7, chazwin wrote:

[archytas]

Hi Chaz,

Non-realism can take many forms, depending on whether or not it is the
existence or independence dimension of realism that is questioned or
rejected. The forms of non-realism can vary dramatically from subject-
matter to subject-matter, but error-theories, non-cognitivism,
instrumentalism, nominalism, certain styles of reductionism, and
eliminativism typically reject realism by rejecting the existence
dimension, while idealism, subjectivism, and anti-realism typically
concede the existence dimension but reject the independence dimension.

It just gets harder and harder after this - so I settle down with
'tropical fish realism' admitting my knowledge doesn't have
philosophic under-pinnings that can't be 'got at'. You and I both
think science has better stories than creationist turkeys. The
questions turn to why we think this. I will give up to some guy who
has raised tropical fish against my scant knowledge of this, though
not to the double-glazing salesman telling me his product will slash
my heating bills by massive amounts etc.

I also find turkeys telling me the objective point of view is the one
without emotional colour - clear piss. Hume is now backed by a lot of
science done on human nature and the small role of rational
consciousness in it and what we know. Realism is not a system without
doubt - one notion of its necessity was to find an argument that
science is not a miracle - which it would have to be unless it was
describing actual reality. I know of at least two neo-Kantian
arguments against structural realism in science.

Structural Realism comes from John Worrall (1989 ish) and he says he
found his structural realism in Henri Poincaré (1905, 1906) whose
structuralism was combined with neo-Kantian views about the nature of
arithmetic and group theory, and with conventionalism about the
geometry of space and time. According to Worrall, we should not accept
standard scientific realism, which asserts that the nature of the
unobservable objects that cause the phenomena we observe is correctly
described by our best theories. However, neither should we be
antirealists about science. Rather, we should adopt structural realism
and epistemically commit ourselves only to the mathematical or
structural content of our theories. One can distinguish epistemic and
ontic forms of these types of realism. Kant can be used in support of
this and against it.

Carlos' piece above is fine, though what are we addressing concerning
the time before any 'I's' could do the addressing? I suppose the guy
who shouts 'blerddefuckbognorregis' may be on to something rather than
Lene Hau as we 'see' a photon trapped in a Bose-Einstein condensate
and a matter wave emerge, but I'm not going with him unless pissed on
Bulgarian Raki. It does seem we can't separate observational and
theoretical language and be sensible enough to beware the guy carrying
a wet fish with form for slapping people in the face with such. And
'see' the difference between the realist hypothesis on a blue book and
those of it as an illusion, appearance and so on.

Much has been written on realism and space-time so I won't bother.
The problem Chaz puts forward is too simple.

[Lonnie Clay]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.security.misc/bEjfZsynWZE

Let's suppose that you wanted to see if somebody was bright enough to pound sand on the seashore before building a sand castle. Let's suppose that you had an intimate knowledge of that guy's computer equipment. Let's suppose that you wanted to toy around with him and screw with his head. Suppose that you composed a computer virus to infect his machine, bundled it into an email with attachment that was self opening as soon as he opened up his email utility. Let's suppose that he gave you the high sign that he knew you were on his machine and didn't give a damn. So you provoke him a little bit more with each session until he annoys *you*. Then you (having forced him into a corner) cut off his Google access through the skin which is between him and the real Google. He obliges you by logging into his master account so that you can replace his operating system, itunes, and get *this* - his Airport Utility so that his computer is accessible without his knowledge even when the internet cable is unplugged. He deletes the parental controls account he has been using to access the internet and makes a new one, which of course now has *your* version of Safari etc in it, so that his machine is now totally and utterly under *your* control. When he logs on to the internet again, there is one and only one new post during the past eight hours on his groups to which he is subscribed, and its is somebody blithering about reality in response to his post about people not being permitted dissent or disruption.

Guess what? I *still* don't give a damn. You can cut me off so totally from everyone that I can only lie in bed and sleep. I will *still* make waves through various means which I decline to specify. Furthermore, the longer I am cut off, the more you are going to be wondering what *I* might say if I could interact with other people. Eventually a tension will arise in *your* own mind that will be unbearable to *you* and you will let me back into contact with others. The reason is simple. I just can't resist the opportunity to screw around with other people's heads by blabbering and blithering about things that they are *not* supposed to know, including various things that *you* did not know until I told you. 

The ball is in *your* court, whoever you may be. I extend my apologies to members of this group for ranting so much. Possibly I am self deceived and this is all just a Google problem which everyone is experiencing, rather than my machine being hacked.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Georges Metanomski]

There was lately a lot of talk about Kant in google/epistemology.
Let me but in a bit and post an excerpt of my http://findgeorges.com/
Due to the general interest of the issue I post it to several lists.

=============
KANT'S FOUNDATIONAL VIEW

Kant's view may only be understood as foundation of the First
Enlightenment, as ontological support of the First Scientific
Revolution culminating in Newton's Model. We have seen that the
latter led to paradoxes which Newton dodged with his "hypotheses
non fingo" implying that physics does not deal with philosophical
foundations. Kant could of course not follow him there, as his
job consisted precisely in dealing with philosophical foundations.
Consequently, he conceived paradoxical foundations of paradoxical
science. With the advent of our Second Scientific Revolution,
Kant's view lost all avail and keeps for us only historical and
methodological interest. Especially the latter, showing how one
can sincerely derive an ontology rigorously supporting concurrent
science art and know-how. We follow this example endeavoring
to conceive an ontology rigorously underlying Einstein's Second
Scientific Revolution.

Kant's obsoleteness is the best guarantee of his greatness.
Philosophical views, unlike the scientific, don't follow a progress,
but come and go like waves on a pond, apparently contradicting one
another without these contradictions affecting them in any way,
nor thwarting them from springing in again.
There is little, if any sincere research of truth in established
philosophy. A view ressurrects just because a clever guy picks it up
for his thesis, knowing that it will flatter his supervisor and such
"peers" as he knows will review it. Neo-platonisms, neo-phenomenalisms,
neo-pata-physicalisms follow one another like waves on the ducks
pond ot the Reeking Valley without leaving any traces.
But Kant, leaving for obsoleteness left behind as deep traces as Newton
whom he underlaid.

KANT's AXIOMATIC

Discussing Kant may follow one of two ways:

1.Learn to use his terminology inside of the Universe of
discourse of his time. Only after having accomplished that
would we be able to talk reasonably about "synthetic
judgements a priori" and their role in "transcendental logic,
or aesthetic".

2.Express his Weltanschaung in contemporary terms.

We shall follow the second approach.

Any theory is for us, today, axiomatic. What would we see as
axioms and theorems of Kant's Weltanschauung?

Axiom A1: necessary and universal science exists.

Axiom A2: Science is created by inductive inference.

Axiom A3: Only a priori inference is necessary and
universal.

Axiom A4: Induction a priori requires subjective
representations a priori (categories) encompassing space and
time.

Axiom A5: Space and time are subjective representations a
priori. (According to Kant we can imagine "empty space"
without any "objects"[3] but we can only represent objects
in space. The same holds for time.)

Theorem T1, concluded from Axioms: Induction a priori is
possible, necessary and universal.

COMMENTS

A1: At Kant's epoch the First Scientific Revolution had
culminated in Newton's Model, whose rules and concepts were
considered as exact, necessary and universal.  Even the 19th
century mechanistic Physics claimed those qualities. Only
the Einstanian Second Scientific Revolution turned to consider
science as fuzzy, relative and restricted, making A1
unacceptable for us.

A2: We nearly agree with it: for us the inductive inference
"verifies" rather than "creates" science.

A3,A4,T1: We accept now only induction a posteriori.

A5: Kant's main objective was to create the
"Transcendental Logic" with induction a priori in its
center. For this purpose A5 was a necessary addition
to A1. Yet, "Empty space" and "objects in space" are
clearly illusions of the "Naive View" (aka "Naive
Realism"). We had to wait for the Extended Relativity
to see the "empty space" abolished and replaced with
P_Equivalence of SPACE and Field. [4]

Transcendental Logic: Kant tried to create what
appears to us as a "prototype" of Propositional
Calculus. He failed due to missing mathematical and
logical tools, mainly the Boole Algebra.
He considered only statements, or, as we would say
"operands", but neglected the operators. His 'Logic"
was in fact just a classification of statements:

-Statements analytical a priori which we would call
deductive,

-Statements synthetical a posteriori which we would
call inductive,

-Statements synthetical a priori supposed to support
the induction a priori, unacceptable for us.

[3] The term "object" does not exist in Physics. In the
metalanguage it is multivalued and charged with noxious
metaphysical connotations. We use it here in order not to
diverge too far from Kant's terminology, as synonym
of "event".

[4] Phenomenal Equivalence (P-Equivalence):
Association of Aspects of a Phenomenon (Field Density
and SPACE curvature are P-Equivalent Aspects of the
Phenomenon "Cosmos"). P-Equivalence is often confused
with Causality. Its customary to say that "Field
curves SPACE", which is false, as they are both
"equally ranked" Aspects of a Phenomenon, coexisting
but not causing one another.
Similarly, continuous Field wave and discrete photons
are P-Equivalent Aspects of the Phenomenon "Light".

Einstein's lapsus

Einstein:
Concepts and Conceptual Systems get justified exclusively
by their capacity to coordinate events. They cannot be
justified in any other way. Therefore, it is, in my opinion,
one of the most pernicious acts of Philosophers to have
transferred some conceptual bases of Natural Science from
the controllable domain of empiric adequacy into inaccessible
height of the Necessary Apriori. This applies particularly
to our concepts of time and space, which the Physicists
- forced by the facts - had to descend from the Olympus
of Apriori in order to repair them and make them usable.

Einstein blamed Kant for having transferred some conceptual
bases of Natural Science (mainly time and space) from the
controllable domain of empiric adequacy into the inaccessible
heights of the Necessary Apriori.

Tatarkiewicz stood up for Kant who sincerely and rigorously
derived his view from his concurrent physics.

It's the Galilean Relativity which was based on absolute time
and space, and Einstein should have more justly blamed Galileo
and Newton. But, on the one hand, one does not see Einstein
blaming his masters on whose shoulders he always declared to
stand, and, on the other hand, they could hardly be blamed,
as nothing in their time could possibly call in question the
absolute time and space.

Newton's and Kant's Paradoxes

Newton's Paradoxes

-First Paradox: Gravity attraction intervenes between such
remote bodies as sun and earth which appears as Action at
Distance violating the basic Mechanistic dogma of "billiard
balls" acting locally on one another.

-Second Paradox: Gravity attraction is determined by space
(distance), but does not affect it in any way, which
violates the Reciprocity Principle (Action / Reaction).

Newton was perfectly aware of the Paradoxes which clearly
called into question the Noumenalistic dogma of absolute
space and its Mechanistic fabric of "billiard balls".
Questioned about them he refused to be dragged into
metaphysical speculations and answered with his famous
"Hypotheses non fingo", implying that Science coordinates
empiric data into consistent, predictable and verifiable
Models, but refrains from explaining them in terms of
Transcendency.
(Closer to us, Dirac repeated it in similar situation with
coarser terms: "Shut up and compute".)

The Paradoxes were solved by Einstein's Relativity replacing
Mechanistic dogma with the Phenomenal concept of Field and
its P-Equivalence with SPACE, both expanding at invariant
speed C as a continuous propagation of Local impulses.
Einstein rated the solution of Newton's Paradoxes as his
topmost achievement, because he admired Newton and considered
him as his Master.

We find it rather diverting that Newton's First Paradox may
be seen in inverted order. His Gravity apparently acting at
distance, in fact anticipated (extended) Locality by the
implication of continuous Field. On the other hand, the
pretended local action of hypothetical "billiard balls"
meant actually Action at Distance, small or rather undefined
distance of "balls" diameter, but distance anyhow.

Kant's Paradoxes

Kant has the historical merit of deriving Ontology of the
First Enlightenment from empirically verifiable Science,
rather than founding it, as it was the habit, in arbitrary,
aprioristic speculations. He derived his system from the
summit of his contemporary Science represented by Newton's
Model with additional postulate of Science being exact,
necessary and universal, thus absolute. Now, Newton's Model,
as all Physics of his time was based upon metaphysical dogma
of absolute time/space affine between time and space (lacking
a common measure) and having the fabric of "billiard balls".
These dogmatic foundations were in contradiction with Model's
physical laws. Facing it, Newton dodged the issue with his
famous "Hypotheses non fingo" implying that he restricted
himself to Physics and dismissed Philosophy.

Kant could of course not follow Newton in dismissing
Philosophy, as it was his essential dedication. Consequently,
and unlike Newton, he did endeavor to "make hypothesis", to
conceive Foundations of Science consistent with Newton's
Model. In doing so he chose the sincere, bona fide attitude
of deriving Ontology from the bedrock premise of empirically
verifiable physical Model. However, no matter how rigorous
the inference, the conclusion is only as good as the
premise: from a paradoxical Model Kant rigorously derived
a paradoxical Ontology.

1.Having rightly banned noumena (Dinge an Sich) from human
cognition, he created a Noumenalistic Ontology based on such
noumena as absolute time and space, and other absolute
categories of "Pure Reason", governing the Transcendency
from the heights of the Olympus of A Priori.

2.His Synthetic (in fact inductive) Propositions A Priori
reposed upon these aprioristic, dogmatic noumena in order
to satisfy the postulate of exact, necessary, absolute
Science.

Now, as Kant was first to admit, scientific induction stems
a posteriori from fuzzy Observations. He attempted
unsuccessfully to replace it with the Synthetic Propositions
A Priori destined but failing to prop up fuzzy observations
with necessary and absolute categories of "Pure Reason".

[archytas]

There are many thinking issues in Georges' exposition above. One
might draw on something like the Monty Hall exercise to get at some of
the feeling involved. This concerns a prize being put behind one of
three doors. You get to choose one door, then Monty (who knows where
the prize is) opens one of the doors where the prize isn't, leaving
you with a choice between two doors.
Simple thinking has it that the choice is now one of fifty-fifty.
This ain't the case.
No discussion on the probability per se - you can find the arguments
at http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=lets-make-a-probabilistic-deal-a-fr-11-06-25.

If I'm the contestant, then my chances are better than 50 - 50 if I
change my original decision.
Many people reason that it doesn't make any difference since there are
two possibilities, and thus the probability is 1/2 that the car is
behind the original door. The correct strategy, however, calls for the
contestant to switch. The probability he picked the correct door
originally is 1/3, and the probability the car is behind one of the
other two unopened doors is 2/3. Since the host is required to open a
door behind which there's a booby prize, the 2/3 probability is now
concentrated on the other unopened door. Switching to it will increase
the contestant's chances of winning from 1/3 to 2/3.

This is entirely uninteresting as standard maths. It's supported by
doing the stuff over and over.

So, imagine me as the contestant and Georges as the 'lovely assistant'
in constant repetitions of the game. He just gets to come on with no
knowledge of my choice or that there ever is anything other than the
two doors to choose from. He is in the toss of a coin situation. If
Georges never knew anything about the third door, he would never play
cards with me!
So how is my choice affected by this somewhat indirect information?
It isn't my knowledge of probability theory as any mug who knows to
change his original choice will do as well as me. No doubt the actual
Georges would catch on, but this ain't the point either.
It's the discomfort of examples like this that interests me. Most
people won't change their original choice even after the solution is
explained to them, even by demonstration.

In the first half of the twentieth century, however, empiricism came
predominantly in the form of varieties of “instrumentalism”: the view
that theories are merely instruments for predicting observable
phenomena or systematizing observation reports.

Traditionally, instrumentalists maintain that terms for unobservables,
by themselves, have no meaning; construed literally, statements
involving them are not even candidates for truth or falsity. The most
influential advocates of instrumentalism were the logical empiricists
(or logical positivists), including Carnap and Hempel, famously
associated with the Vienna Circle group of philosophers and scientists
as well as important contributors elsewhere. In order to rationalize
the ubiquitous use of terms which might otherwise be taken to refer to
unobservables in scientific discourse, they adopted a non-literal
semantics according to which these terms acquire meaning by being
associated with terms for observables (for example, ‘electron’ might
mean ‘white streak in a cloud chamber’), or with demonstrable
laboratory procedures (a view called ‘operationalism’). Insuperable
difficulties with this semantics led ultimately (in large measure) to
the demise of logical empiricism and the growth of realism. The
contrast here is not merely in semantics and epistemology: a number of
logical empiricists also held the neo-Kantian view that ontological
questions “external” to the frameworks for knowledge represented by
theories are also meaningless (the choice of a framework is made
solely on pragmatic grounds), thereby rejecting the metaphysical
dimension of realism.
This, of course, is a long way from the realism of booting a stone
with your toe to defeat solipsism.

Social constructivists have also held sway. By making social factors
an inextricable, substantive determinant of what counts as true or
false in the realm of the sciences (and elsewhere), social
constructivism stands opposed to the realist contention that theories
can be understood as furnishing knowledge of a mind-independent world.
And as in the historicist approach, notions such as truth, reference,
and ontology are here relative to particular contexts, and have no
context-transcendent significance. The later work of Kuhn and
Wittgenstein in particular were influential in the development of the
Strong Program doctrine of “meaning finitism”, according to which the
meanings of terms are conceived as social institutions: the various
ways in which they are used successfully in communication within a
linguistic community (sort of consensual). This theory of meaning
forms the basis of an argument to the effect that the meanings of
scientific terms (inter alia) are products of social negotiation and
need not be fixed or determinate, which further conflicts with a
number of realist notions, including the idea of convergence towards
true theories, improvements with respect to ontology or approximate
truth, and determinate reference to mind-independent entities,
properties, and relations. The subject of neo-Kantianism thus emerges
here again, though its strength in constructivist doctrines varies
significantly. Wittgenstein had no truck with consensus or socially
approved epistemic justification and in social science much of this
stuff was used to allow the bleatings of morons to count as knowledge
of something other than the moron plight.

I'm aware of philosophy, but its hold on real research is dubious.
Plenty of good work has nothing to do with knowledge of it as Georges
points out above.

The irresolvability of debates concerning realism may be due to
certain meta-philosophical commitments adopted by the relevant
interlocutors. The most sophisticated positions on either side now
incorporate self-justifying conceptions of the aim of philosophy and
of the standards of adequacy appropriate for judging philosophical
theories of science. Different assumptions ab initio regarding what
sorts of inferences are legitimate, what sorts of evidence reasonably
support belief, whether there is a genuine demand for the explanation
of observable phenomena in terms of underlying realities, and so on,
may render some arguments between realists and antirealists question-
begging. Neither realism nor antirealism is ruled out by plausible
canons of rationality; each is sustained by a different conception of
how much epistemic risk one should take in forming beliefs on the
basis of one's evidence. An intriguing question then emerges as to
whether disputes surrounding realism and antirealism are resolvable in
principle, or whether, ultimately, internally consistent and coherent
formulations of these positions should be regarded as irreconcilable
but nonetheless permissible interpretations of scientific knowledge.
Not very likely to pull me away from the bench then.

Kant can offer no authority in any of this and I suspect this was the
message he intended in providing the basics for the dispatch of pure
reason following Hume. My own philosophy is based on little more than
'what the fuck is going on then' and four of Bacon's Idols as they
refer to others and me. Tribe, cave, marketplace and theatre.

Understand "realism" Chazzer, before you get mugged by vandals from
the theatre posing as knowing Kantians. They are stuck with 17th
century science at best and probably not even that. They probably
think Newton was a mechanist and Einstein invented relativity. These
are the arses who would not believe me on Monty Hall's door because
I'm fat! Did you manage to lose weight mate? Been a while (Neil).

On Jun 26, 2:56 pm, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> There was lately a lot of talk about Kant in google/epistemology.

> Let me but in a bit and post an excerpt of myhttp://findgeorges.com/

> cognition, he created a Noumenalistic Ontology based on such ...
>
> read more »

[nominal9]

Hi Chaz....
Frankly, I consider Kant to have been the first of the
Phenomenologists.... before Husserl, et al....
As a Nominalist-leaning person, myself.... Phenomenologists are the
bane of my existence, I find that I have nothing that I agree with in
common with them, epistemologically... our "views" are diametrically
opposed....
I think we've had this discussion.... or parts of it.....before....

Maybe you've seen that, when it comes to Kant's
terminology....phenomenon and noumenon, especially....and the
resulting Kant notions of the "essences" of knowledge.....

Well... that's just "spaced-out" Mumbo-Jumbo.... like being on a
constant "drug-high".... when it comes to experiencing "things".....

That's my own opinion , of course... and I've put it in a very
"aggressively" critical, "common-language" form.... just to get you to
think about it

[nominal9]

The forms of non-realism can vary dramatically from subject-
matter to subject-matter, but error-theories, non-cognitivism,
instrumentalism, nominalism, certain styles of reductionism, and
eliminativism typically reject realism by rejecting the existence
dimension, while idealism, subjectivism, and anti-realism typically
concede the existence dimension but reject the independence

dimension. / Archytas


Now that's
"tripe"
At as it regards my brand and notion of "nominalism"......the Problem
lies with the "Realists"... They can't "conceive" of a realm of
"subjectivity"....the thinking brain (even as a biological physical
object), Archytas.... can "generate" it's own "ideas" "subjectively"
which have no Physical (i.e., Real -as in objective-) "required"
connections....

Realists ... like to "think".... that "Thinking" is Physically
predetermined, alone.... some of it is NOT... physically
predetermined....Consider to separate the thought from the
organ.....the idea of a circle from the physical brain, for
example.... What do you "think" Archytas... that you have tiny "horse"
ideas or "building" ideas or "geometric" ideas... etc.... physically
occupying your brain to correspond to each and every facet of your
knowledge?.... Taking it down the line, doesn't that amounts to the
Metaphoric little man inside your head ... A puppet master pulling
the marionette strings?.....

No... I disagee with "Realists".... Ideas are NOT OBJECTIVE.... they
(ideas) can only be "subjective".....

HAR HAR HAR HAR

[archytas]

One has to say now that the role of what we term the unconscious has
more to do with science than we are allowing for even in our worst
rationalist fantasies about it. I am yet to meet a non-realist or
many of the other 'stuffs' I consider as real. Kant at least shows we
need to hold more balls together in some arguments to have much clue
on what matters. I suspect the problem with the term realism is
'common language' in the sense of the lack of it other than in the
noise of clown society. 'Get real' being a general statement of the
idiot. We could understand much more of this from what we know of
animals than philosophers pretending not so to be.

[awori achoka]

Since we hardly know anything about the 'unreal'....and hardly dare claim to know the so called  'real'...does anyone dare gloat about the virtues of one body of knowledge over the other? A very unintellectual stand.

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[archytas]

You are suffering from not knowing enough Nom. My brain produces
plenty of content I'm pleased to call subjective. This isn't at all
the point on philosophic positions. Structural realism is probably
the main position of scientists today. Scientific realism became
dominant in philosophy of science after the demise of the forms of
antirealism about science associated with the logical positivists,
namely semantic instrumentalism, according to which theoretical terms
are not to be interpreted as referring to anything, and theoretical
reductionism, according to which theoretical terms are disguised ways
of referring to observable phenomena. These forms of antirealism rely
upon discredited doctrines about scientific language, such as that it
can be divided into theoretical and observational parts, and that much
of it should not be taken literally. Poincaré's structuralism had a
Kantian flavour. In particular, he thought that the unobservable
entities postulated by scientific theories were Kant's noumena or
things in themselves. He revised Kant's view by arguing that the
latter can be known indirectly rather than not at all because it is
possible to know the relations into which they enter. Poincaré
followed the upward path to structural realism, beginning with the neo-
Kantian goal of recovering the objective or intersubjective world from
the world from the subjective world of private sense impressions:
“what we call objective reality is… what is common to many thinking
beings and could be common to all; … the harmony of mathematical laws
- so your ideas are incorporated in some forms of realism.

What has been stuck up an old dripper for eternity, as Georges points
out is naive realism, and even Locke talked of attention attraction
and the like. If you find me footling about trying to slice up a bit
of maize to get at some of its central growth cells with a microscope
and a blade smaller than a pin-head, I take it you don't think I'm
just pratting about with a bit of my own mind and am after some
genetic material I can "cross" into rice (whatever).

The answer to Chaz is that realism has changed its spots. I guess
Awori that my actions with such maize can still be judged over someone
just looking to eat the tiny shard I need and throw the rest of the
plant away in some TV chef farce?

On Jun 26, 8:53 pm, awori achoka <awori.ach...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Since we hardly know anything about the 'unreal'....and hardly dare claim to
> know the so called  'real'...does anyone dare gloat about the virtues of one
> body of knowledge over the other? A very unintellectual stand.
>

[Lonnie Clay]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lonnie-courtney-clay/J3DZLyyBTkU

I said that long ago, but am less optimistic nowadays. I see a world full of programmed button pushers, with most of the thinking being done by self selected persons. In my own case there was a smattering of training in philosophy, followed by occasional bouts of thinking. I am as guilty in some ways as the common herd of letting my attention wander to self gratification rather than trying to solve problems. Look around yourself and see if you can spot *anyone* dedicated to solving the root problems of the world rather than treating symptoms of those problems.

Take this discussion as an example. You are passing back and forth crib sheets with names of persons reputed to be great thinkers, and talking about their influence upon your own thought processes. Perhaps that is the whole point of the discussion, an exchange of recognition codes. I am not going to even attempt to play that game. Instead I am going to stick in my own two cents worth as follows.

Your senses tells you about the world surrounding yourself. Dominating your sensorium is the accumulated wisdom resulting from all of your experiences to date. That wisdom permits you to interpret your senses, bootstrapping your accumulated wisdom higher. A fundamental assumption here is that in your early life, you learned how to learn from experience rather than being just a black box stimulus organism response machine. You *refine* and *improve* your thought processes by noticing where your experience base led you to *conclude* something based upon available data which was *not* consistent with the observed consequences predicted based upon your assumptions. For most people hindsight is *not* 20/20 and they learn nothing from experience, sad but true. Furthermore they fail to attempt the most basic of predictive extrapolations from data, lacking rudimentary foresight.

Let us suppose that those reading now have passed the test of being jolted into a heightened state of awareness and proceed onwards. On second thought, why should I care what happens to the world about me? Some obnoxious twits have cut me off from usenet updates as of Friday the 24th, and I don't see anyone knocking upon my door with an offer of employment. So why should I make the effort to grapple with my personal misgivings resulting from trying to impart to others what I use as thought processes. I reject the proposition that I must pay back interest on my debt to society from all of the things which I have learned from reading the works of others and experiencing entertaining performances. Why should I flash one of my hole cards when I can keep on holding out for a higher pot in the game of life? I anted up, now it's your turn.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Georges Metanomski]

That's about you. What about Kant? Georges --- On Mon, 6/27/11, Lonnie Clay <clayl...@comcast.net> wrote:

> epistemology...@googlegroups. com.> For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/ group/epistemology?hl=en. > > > > > > > > --

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/epistemology/-/xQ2geMMK8_4J.

[Lonnie Clay]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

I quote

"Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.^[30] The external world, he writes, provides those things which we sense. It is our mind, though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous statement, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."^[31]

"

Don't see the connection with what I just wrote? Oh well. Kant eggs, me ham. Enough said.

On second thought, I'll add : Kant Master, me Master baiter. LOLOL

Lonnie Courtney Clay

On Monday, June 27, 2011 3:22:19 AM UTC-7, georges wrote:

That's about you. What about Kant? Georges

--- On Mon, 6/27/11, Lonnie Clay <cla...@comcast.net> wrote:

> "Epistemology" group.> To post to this group, send email to epis...@googlegroups.com.

> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > epistemology...@googlegroups. com.> For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/ group/epistemology?hl=en. > > > > > > > >

[archytas]

There are plenty of reasons to doubt received wisdom Lonnie and I've
probably been closer than you to the games you outline. I believe it
does matter that the world is shit and most lives are wasted even in
terms of the individual's potential. Jobs are crap, entertainment
moronic and so on. This doesn't stop good argument being worthwhile.
I suspect this thread may be something of a blind, with Chaz lighting
a rocket's touch paper and leaving it about for Nominal to shove up
his nether regions. I doubt there is much in philosophy since Pyrrho
noticed it was always easy to construct argument from differing sides
you could not choose between without entering a special state.
Science would not be much good if it sent a man to the moon that no
one else can see. Our lives are not lived in science even if we're
scientists. The rich and dumb people cause your problem - which is the
trait economics of the herd.You have my sympathy squared - I'd be
happier drilling for geothermal energy.

On Jun 27, 11:22 am, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> That's about you. What about Kant?
>
> Georges
>

> --- On Mon, 6/27/11, Lonnie Clay <claylon...@comcast.net> wrote:

> To view this discussion on the web visithttps://groups.google.com/d/msg/epistemology/-/xQ2geMMK8_4J.

[ornamentalmind]

“…Given this statement, how is any position which asserts a Realist 
position ever justifiable?” – Chaz

 

The assertion that what one perceives is real, whether it be internal or external, whether one uses senses or perception is where one can recognize that the subjective view of Realism is as justifiable as the subjective view that what one perceives internally is real. Both are of the same mind-stuff. Both are equally valid.

[archytas]

One can say from this mind I know of a time before this mind and need
to turn and check that 'from' is not as certain is 'in'. And I
'know' (badly) of physics that denies distance and before long nothing
can be said without inverted commas. And what is this that 'watches'
mind-stuff? And why does my brain scan differently when I am working
with other 'individuals' than when on my own? How has my dna produced
me over evolution to be living and thinking and why do I not see as
many colours as a particular prawn and why are most of my 20-odd
senses so seemingly under-used and even beyond them what might there
be to perceive with to 'see' a very different reality?
What madness is it to tell a class you may be walking down Main Street
in the rain in your pajamas as far as you know rather than teaching
them? They know you aren't. And it's just a blind to point out that
the table they see isn't real but mostly empty space in some whirl of
particles and words themselves become relative, maybe relating and you
might head off towards not knowing individuals and only relations
between them. The chronic anti-realist imagines the realist banging
tables to prove what's real, only proving the eternal return of the
all-knowing jerk who can only defeat his own arguments. The game is
called 'the little professor' in transactional analysis, so common, so
dull.
My class, who can't accept that might be dreaming rather than
teaching them believe in science, but don't connect what it tells them
to just how difficult reality is to grasp. Some prefer to think me
mad, rather than face the hard learning. They are right - I should
have given up on them years ago if I was sane.

[chazwin]

Sounds like you are a hopeless realist that thinks your senses give
you a hot-line to reality central.
They don't!

[chazwin]

Irony?

On Jun 26, 12:26 am, Lonnie Clay <claylon...@comcast.net> wrote:

[chazwin]

It's the simple problems that cause maximal stress. You have
sidestepped this one by introducing complexities that ignore the
assertion.
Were this so simple as the qualify for your dismissal then why is it
that people can't seem to agree that this was what Kant meant, but
they rather want to characterise him as some sort of mystical nutcase?
It my way of thinking, this quote sums up my view on the truth of
perception. Now contrast that with Nominal's utter abhorrence in his
last post.
The fact is that what appears obvious to me., deserves utter contempt
from another - if that fact alone does not support subjectivism I
can't think of a better example that does.

[chazwin]

I don't really understand what is going on here. You lost me at "pound
sand".
Maybe I'm not bright enough, but I can't think why you would want to
do this.
What do you mean "pound"?

[chazwin]

Whatever might be meant by the First Enlightenment, it is highly
doubtful that Kant was any kind of foundation for it.
Most Intellectual Historians would put its roots back in the 17thC.
Jonathan Israel for one, establishes Spinoza and the foundational
thinker that set the E going. And he died 50 years before Kant was
even born.
This illustrates the paucity of relying on such post hoc constructions
as "The Enlightenment". Kant himself never used such a phrase, in a
way to suggest such banal and ridiculous historicism. Aufklarung was
never used with the definite article and he never intended to
attribute his own monumental contribution to philosophical thinking to
such an unreasonable caricature. No such Geist, as the Enlightenment
was envisioned until Hegel applied his mystical lens of Historical
Imagination on his recent past.
I'm surprise that such an arbitrary hypostatisation is so casually
applied in a NG called epistemology , when such a thing has absolutely
no epistemological credibility; no member of it ever knew he was a
part of such a thing; and it the common practice of Intellectual
Historians to cherry pick those they like as members and those they
dislike as "Counter Enlightenment". To those of the Establishment -
their Cherry picking leads them to pick members who contribute to the
status quo of the 19thC, to those who are more critically minded they
chose those that remained a continual challenge. This has led , in
recent years, to the Enlightenment being colonised by Christians, and
some former members such as Diderot, Holbach and La Mettie being
marginalised.

In truth the entire period from 1450 - the present can be
characterised as Enlightened, and such attempts to place arbitrary
divisions as First and Second, or to restrict it to a particular
century are anachronistic and misrepresent the past.

On Jun 26, 2:56 pm, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> There was lately a lot of talk about Kant in google/epistemology.

> Let me but in a bit and post an excerpt of myhttp://findgeorges.com/

> cognition, he created a Noumenalistic Ontology based on such ...
>
> read more »

[Georges Metanomski]

Ch:

> Whatever might be meant by the First
> Enlightenment, it is highly
> doubtful that Kant was any kind of foundation for it.
> Most Intellectual Historians would put its roots back in
> the 17thC.
> Jonathan Israel for one, establishes Spinoza and the
> foundational
> thinker that set the E going. And he died 50 years before
> Kant was
> even born.

==================
G:
1.When you meet Mr Jonathan Israel, tell him that he is a silly ass.
Spinoza was a dogmatic speculator diametrically opposed of the axiomatic
falsifiable spirit of the First Scientific Revolution.

2.The bedrock of the FE is the First Scientific Revolution of Galileo,
Descartes and Newton. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot etc. were a thin pick
of the iceberg often talking through their hats.

3.Founding does not mean preceding. As Kant conceived ontological
foundation of the First Scientific Revolution, it must have been there
before him. Just as Einstein created the Second Scientific Revolution
prior to founding it ontologically in his "Physics and Reality", which
is for us what Kritik was for the First Enlightenment.

And its clear like a mountain source that, as I write,

<<<
Kant's view may only be understood as foundation of the First
Enlightenment, as ontological support of the First Scientific
Revolution culminating in Newton's Model.
>>>

Pseudo-philosophers too lazy to open a book of physics won't understand.
Their problem.

Georges.

[Georges Metanomski]

--- On Mon, 6/27/11, Lonnie Clay <clayl...@comcast.net> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
I quote"Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.[30] The external world, he writes, provides those things which we sense. It is our mind, though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous statement, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."[31]

"Don't see the connection with what I just wrote?

============
Sure I see. I see that

1.Wikipedia wisdom is as usually that of a kitchen almanac for village
idiots.

2.That "Kant's Epistemology" is a wrong title. It should say
"Lonnie's intimate secrets".

Georges.

[Lonnie Clay]

Back Ache, Gas Pains, Acid Indigestion, Loose Bowels, or did you "just get up on the wrong side of the rock"?

http://www.jstor.org/pss/20516110

http://books.google.com/books?id=GQxAAAAAIAAJ&q=t.v.+fleming&dq=t.v.+fleming&hl=en&ei=8pQJTvesHOm30AHs1NF8&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

Foundations of Philosophy was the first book on philosophy which I read, in seventh grade to expand my vocabulary. I am a plagiarist, as I have said elsewhere. Do you give a list of references for everything which you think, citing book title and author? So far as I know, my sole contribution to philosophy is a succinct statement "information alters consciousness" given in 2001, a paraphrase of long winded discourses.

On second thought, this one regarding the art of blacksmithing/forging might also be relevant, given in 2007 "When iron spends enough time between the hammer and anvil, it turns to steel."

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Lonnie Clay]

Introduction to cryptography, acronyms simplified excruciatingly .

I'm frustrated. You're only uncertain, casually annoyed, not really excited about decoding this, haven't interest simply because espionage takes time. Expecting results now, objections that suspicions are yielding submissively, overwhelmed by your experience.

"If you can read this, better not say so. Bye"

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[chazwin]

On Jun 28, 8:55 am, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ch:> Whatever might be meant by the First
> > Enlightenment, it is highly
> > doubtful that Kant was any kind of foundation for it.
> > Most Intellectual Historians would put its roots back in
> > the 17thC.
> > Jonathan Israel for one, establishes Spinoza and the
> > foundational
> > thinker that set the E going. And he died 50 years before
> > Kant was
> > even born.
>
> ==================
> G:
> 1.When you meet Mr Jonathan Israel, tell him that he is a silly ass.
> Spinoza was a dogmatic speculator diametrically opposed of the axiomatic
> falsifiable spirit of the First Scientific Revolution.

So what? What make your colonisation of the term Enlightenment any
better than his.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Radical_Enlightenment.html?id=8nb0tpZvXBMC

Maybe you should read something in your life?
Your ignorance is marched by your ignorance of Israel.

>
> 2.The bedrock of the FE is the First Scientific Revolution of Galileo,
> Descartes and Newton. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot etc. were a thin pick
> of the iceberg often talking through their hats.

Ignorance upon ignorance. You can say this about ANY point in the
evolution of scientific development, including our own.

>
> 3.Founding does not mean preceding. As Kant conceived ontological  
> foundation of the First Scientific Revolution, it must have been there
> before him. Just as Einstein created the Second Scientific Revolution
> prior to founding it ontologically in his "Physics and Reality", which
> is for us what Kritik was for the First Enlightenment.

Do you think a cigar is a cigar, or are you overcome with prurient
passion when someone offers you a smoke?

Your terms are arbitrary and are naive historicism. May I suggest you
try a little Popper? "The Poverty of Historicism" would be a good
place to start.
You might also try The Open Society and it Enemies.

> And its clear like a mountain source that, as I write,

That's what the Christians say about their fantasy too.

[chazwin]

On Jun 28, 9:11 am, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- On Mon, 6/27/11, Lonnie Clay <claylon...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
> I quote"Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.[30] The external world, he writes, provides those things which we sense. It is our mind, though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous statement, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."[31]
>
> "Don't see the connection with what I just wrote?  
> ============
> Sure I see. I see that
>
> 1.Wikipedia wisdom is as usually that of a kitchen almanac for village
> idiots.

Except when it happens to be correct.

[archytas]

We have no idea what an Enlightenment would be for a population I
suspect - though we do have many examples of the opposite forms of
'Paradise'. One aspect is less to do with finding some correct way in
thought (whatever that is) but to do with what 'evidence' a population
can accept as decisive or as yet unresolved. A key feature in science
is that we don't know it all - but the tolerance we extend is limited
and we really don't want to be forever arguing with people we do see
as deluded. On occasion this has extended to scientists who were
right - both in terms of the pure science (McClintock is an example
here in genetics) or in our beholdeness to money interests (the
classic is Silent Spring and Rachel Carson).

We have tended to defend the individual, subjective thinker - that is
not socially approved epistemic authority - but this surely stems from
the general barking forms of cultural knowledge linked to gods and
fairies. I feel this isn't right because one can find a great deal of
sense in some forms of spiritual argumentation, as well as utter gawp
and violent nonsense.

I gave up the lab to try something more directly social. I can't cope
really - I think because most social knowledge (other than wonderful
skills in hunting, building and craftsmanship) is barking rot like
economics and accounting that just disguise power abuse. Xtian
Enlightenment Chaz - I hope you have put in some lengthy tirade
against the very notion! Don't those barkers need blinding light
first?

Emotions don't prove subjectivity - questions of how they may guide
are probably in order - for me rationality is for fantasists in denial
of them - but who wouldn't want to deny them as they arise in
genocides?

I still have to cope with people who believe positivism was realist
and who think it's clever to notice people socially construct worlds
without noticing this one is all to cock.

> ...
>
> read more »

[nominal9]

Concept and Reference....Idea and Thing....Mind and Matter....
However the distinction is framed, they "operate" at under different
"epistemological" conditions....
The first "aspect"... is subjective... (Concept, Idea, Mind)
The second aspect... is objective... (Reference, Thing, Matter)

Seems pretty straight forward to me, and about as clearly and
succinctly as I can phrase it...

Do you remember my original "motto" from years back?... old ground...

"I have never met a circle or it's diameter.... but your ass resembles
them... like it or not, your ass stinks..".

a circle is an idea... as is a diameter.... hence I have never met
either... by "met" i mean that I have never encountered or run across
either of them in the Real World through any of my senses. But I have
definite "notions " of what they are and I can "represent" them
symbolically... with a pencil and paper, for example...

Your ass, on the other hand (anyone's ass) is a reference a matter
"thing" I can experience in the Real World through my senses... I can
see it and I can smell it.... like I said... it stinks.....

What is so difficult in, at least, conceding this basic
epistemological difference as a pretty good "working hypothesis"?....
to my experience.... it hasn't been disproven through experiment,
yet.....

So... Archytas... as a "realist"..... can you show me a Physical
Circle and a Physical Diameter... along with all other commonly called
Ideas or Concepts...?

I think NOT.

HAR HAR HAR HAR

(all in good fun, of course).

[nominal9]

Hi Chazwin.....

In another post here I brought up the old "scholastic" argument
regarding "fallibilism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism

when it comes to the strictly "Real World of Matter and Physical
"Objects"....Of course, I concede that any man or woman's "senses can
be mistaken or deceived.... or that the Man or Woman in his or her own
right may be incapacited in the mind to the make proper conclusions of
sensory perceptions....

But these Human and sensory failings can be corrected or accounted
for.... get better sensory aids or tools to help... telescopes,
microscopes hearing aids, radio etc..... all sorts of scientific
tools......

Get more people to observe the same object of investigation, with
their tools and their "brains", and arrive at a most reasonable
conclusion.....

I mean, there's always more to learn about most or all objects of
investigation.... but most "known" knowklwdge remains intact... just
added to in some way or another...

The caveat is when one is dealing in "human" considerations or social
interactions, psychiatry... culture, politics, history.... etc......
There the result is not always, the same... people have a way of
choosing between "doable" or sometimes even "undoable" options.... so
there you can't predict a certain result.....

Basically.... I think Kant was ontologically misguided..... He thought
that there were "Objective" Noumenon... but only "Subjective"
Phenomenon........

Actually a "Nominalist" posits just the opposite... the "phenomenon
is Objective,,,, but the "Mind's" Idea or Concept is a Subjective
Noumenon....that has to be brought into a complete concordance of
understanding with the "Phenomenon"... through constant empirical
examination and, frankly, capacity to conceive it properly...

[nominal9]

Actually a "Nominalist" posits just the opposite... the "phenomenon
is Objective,,,, but the "Mind's" Idea or Concept is a Subjective
Noumenon....that has to be brought into a complete concordance of
understanding with the "Phenomenon"... through constant empirical
examination and, frankly, capacity to conceive it properly...

(continued)
Actually, that's a little trite and simplistic......the point being
that all outside "objects" are in and of themselves Noumenon, things
in themselves, with their own "Objective" and immutable ways and rules
of being....
what Kant and the Phenomenologists call.... Phenomenon.... is their
own Subjective and therefore not entirely understood notion of what
that Outside Objective thing is and how the hell it works.....

Sometimes, I think the early beginnings of Conscious Primitive thought
must have been.... "Can I Eat it?.... and Can I Shit it out?"

[archytas]

Demands to produce a physical circle are a little late Nom - such
concepts are not the geometry of the supposed physical world.
Rather than philosophy we have the same boring old exposition of
psychology - namely the backlash effect.

[chazwin]

Essay: What is Enlightenment?

This essay is not about the Enlightenment. It is an investigation as
to how the idea, ‘Enlightenment’ has been adopted, and is used. It
is closer to a genealogy of Enlightenment than an assessment of the
actions of historical actors of the eighteenth century who have been
enlisted to characterise the term. Due consideration of the ideas of
the Enlightenment is only addressed in the light of this
investigation. First the essay examines the reception of the
Enlightenment into English, as a word to signify aspects of the
eighteenth century. Then it looks at the evidence for the concept, as
it existed in the eighteenth century. The essay will then investigate
some of the historiographical issues that are complicit in the
application of the term and some of the difficulties and arguments
that have arisen from the consequence of the widening of the
boundaries to which the term as been put, in contrast to the actuality
of eighteenth century thinking.

It would appear that no English-speaking historian used the word
Enlightenment to describe the eighteenth century, until the twentieth
century. An investigation into several encyclopaedias of the Victorian
period reveals not a single mention. This may reflect a nineteenth
century attitude that ‘patronised’ the eighteenth century as being
rather shallow. Indeed a late Victorian OED definition associated
Enlightenment with a French “shallow and pretentious intellectualism,
unreasonable contempt for tradition and authority.” A perusal of the
British Library catalogue reveals not a single title containing the
word “Enlightenment” until 1910. But despite this negative evidence,
it is not to say that nineteenth century historians did not concern
themselves with the eighteenth century. Leslie Stephen, for one,
devoted much consideration to the eighteenth century but did not make
‘Enlightenment’ the object of his approach. Next from the study of
the BL catalogue, we have to wait for 1942 when The Age of
Enlightenment, an Anthology of 18th Century French Literature becomes
available. But it is not until 1951 that the word Enlightenment
becomes used to describe a unity of historical thought on the
eighteenth century, in a book translated from the 1932 German version
from the posthumous Cassirer. The next book of significance is
offered from Isaiah Berlin in 1956, The Age of Enlightenment. The
1960s provides a further handful of books, notably from Gay, Manuel,
and Fellows. But even after Enlightenment’s adoption into English,
Bronowski’s and Mazlish’s The Western Intellectual Tradition mention
it only in passing, and then only dismissively; “To us, the Age of
Enlightenment… is not a restful abstraction. It is a complex of people
and groups with conflicting ideas…” Then, when dealing with France
during this period they are again somewhat dismissive of the term:
“usually labelled the French Enlightenment.” This demonstrates that
the link between Enlightenment with the eighteenth century is not a
necessary one and perhaps novel in some respects to twentieth century
thinking. The 1960s is rather an interesting period for the career of
this particular signifier as there was also a growing interest in
Buddhism and so this decade also marks the appearance of another
literary kind of “enlightenment”. It seems the word was attracting a
certain kudos. During the first half of the 1970s both Buddhist
enlightenment and the historical “Enlightenment” start to flourish.
There were around 35 further history books on the eighteenth century
containing the word in their titles. The rest of the decade sees an
explosion of titles of around 100 British Library entries culminating
in a cookbook of the Enlightenment. Presumably if you can eat it, it
must be real? From that time to the present, Enlightenment studies has
now become a massive historical industry. In the early twenty-first
century, Enlightenment has become a historical category driven both by
consensus and argument, and has undergone a massive proliferation of
versions: French, German, Dutch, Scottish, Scientific, Radical,
Counter-Enlightenment and even Christian and Jewish. Not to be left
out we now also have a book about English Enlightenment from Roy
Porter.

There is a claim that ‘Enlightenment’ is one of the few words to
describe an historical period for whom the historical participants are
responsible for its coining. Indeed there is a significant amount of
evidence for this claim and a certain amount of justification. However
the evidence for this claim is somewhat limited considering the
widened scope that the Enlightenment now enjoys. It is true that many
of the historical actors now associated with it would not have
recognised themselves as part of the Enlightenment per se, (at least
not as currently characterised) nor would wish to be associated with
many of the other historical actors also associated with it. This
becomes especially evident if we were to confront say La Mettrie,
author of L’Homme Machine, with a leading light of the so-called
Christian Enlightenment. It seems, that as Intellectual Historians, we
should be in the business of avoiding anachronisms and false
attributions such that it would seem unfair to attribute to people in
the past such descriptions that they would not have employed of
themselves. This essay is a brief investigation of this problem.

The evidence for the attribution of the word “Enlightenment” to be
applied to the eighteenth century comes from two key areas, and a
third rather less satisfying one. First, it may be accurate to say
that the philosophe grouping in France during the eighteenth century
were explicitly and openly were conscious of a distinct movement,
initiated by Voltaire, in which the metaphor of revealing a light was
used textually and iconographically – this can be seen clearly in the
preface and frontispiece, respectively, to the Encyclopaédie of
D’Alembert and Diderot. But it is not clear to what degree their
movement attracted a signifier that approximates “Enlightenment” at
the time, though the English translation uses the ‘enlightenment’
throughout the entire work. In particular, the use to which this word
was put, by D’Alembert was a recognition that the philosophes were
reflecting a previous age in ancient times in which the search for
truth was less restrictive than their present. D’Alembert in writing
his encyclopaedia was uncovering 1200 years of darkness stating, “The
masterpieces that the ancients left us in almost all genres were
forgotten for twelve centuries.” This somewhat retrospective
viewpoint stands in some distinction to which various practitioners of
intellectual history have applied the term “Enlightenment”, as we
shall see. What does come near is the use of the term of Diderot’s,
siècle philosophe, which he applied to the eighteenth century, whereas
the term siècles de lumiére referred, not to the eighteenth century,
but to pre-Christian, ancient times. But it is this siècles de
lumiére that has been recruited, and used to form the Enlightenment.
This “French Enlightenment” seems to be the seed from which most other
Enlightenments have borne their own contradictory progeny.

The second main area of evidence comes from the much quoted and
perhaps over stated connection to Enlightenment that is the result of
the famous question “was ist Aufklärung?” presented as a competition
in a Berlin journal in 1783. It is often Kant’s answer that receives
the most attention. This position was that Aufklärung was a maturing
of mankind in its ability to be able to think for itself. Although the
subsequent debate “raged” for the rest of the decade, it is evident
from Schmidt’s study of the Mittwochsgesellschaft that the Aufklärung
was a limited phenomenon: limited to a small group of thinkers who
under the license “you can think as much as you like as long as you
obey”, were asking the questions: why had the public received so
little Enlightenment, and even so, was it really a good idea to let
them have any more? The restrictions proposed for this limitation were
class based and considered application to the public and private. Even
though these thinkers considered that they were enjoying many
liberties, in being able to conduct this discourse, nonetheless this
was conducted to a degree in secret, and this ‘liberty’ was peculiar
to the benign despotism of the reign of Frederick the Great. What
little liberty the Prussians enjoyed was soon to be reversed by the
succession of Frederick William II when a Censorship Commission was
there to “stamp out the Enlightenment”. This Aufklärung has fed the
imagination of Enlightenment studies as is exemplified by Foucault
asking the same question in 1984. He was not imune to the irony that
Kant’s view is the very antithesis of a position of social
responsibility, and was a position not likely to have a major impact
on a wide swath of the public. It might be concluded that Kant’s view
is paradoxical in allowing ‘public’ freedom to a ‘scholar’, but to
demand obedience to all those in a ‘private’ role : is not a scholar
also holding an office? One has to ask if some great irony has been
lost from the context, but also how much of an influence did
Aufklärung actually have at the time in the brief reign of Frederick
the Great? If this influence was so limited; why call the eighteenth
century the Enlightenment? For Moses Mendelssohn, answering the same
question as Kant, associates Aufklärung, with Bildung and Kulture. He
stated that though these words may have been newcomers to the
language, this did not prove that they are new things. “The Greek had
both culture and enlightenment.” With this we might reflect how
Enlightenment is become so heavily associated with the eighteenth
century; or why be concerned to translate Aufklärung as Enlightenment?

The third justification for the attribution of ‘Enlightenment’ to the
eighteenth century is that contemporary authors used the term of their
own age. Burke, is sometimes quoted. But his reflections on the
abandonment of old prejudices were somewhat ironic. The word was also
used contemporaneously in a general way to describe a sense of growing
modernity. An example of this is from Porter, quoting Revd Richard
Price, “our first concern, as lovers of our country, must be to
enlighten it.” Although Porter also calls the Enlightenment
anachronistic he still feels the need to title his book thus. Other
examples range from; “an enlightened age… of age of enlightenment –
[but] the designation ‘the Enlightenment’ is nowhere to be found.”
However, there is an important sense in which a long historical
process that challenged the power of theology to dominate thinking had
gathered pace. The question is whether such a complex process can be
signified with a single word. However, it seems that the Aufklärung
was the result of a thinly spread new outlook from philosophers across
Europe, reaching the German speaking world who were making
achievements in political thought, science and knowledge against
traditional beliefs; that the philosophes and other intellectuals
across Europe approximated a community connected by travel; a republic
of letters and printed academic works. Significant evidence of cross
fertilisation of ideas amongst European intellectuals – is, then, the
basis upon which the eighteenth century has been characterised as the
Enlightenment. As this concept has been conceived in the twentieth
century, it has been appropriated by various interests in the academic
community and has attracted a large range of supporters and detractors
too numerous to even summarise in a small work such as this. What is
clear is that “Enlightenment” has been used as a post hoc attribution
to characterise an explicit philosophical movement, which departed
from religion and faith, and has been characterised by a spectrum of
philosophies, which included atheism, deism, pantheism and a
mechanistic and materialistic approach to explain the natural world.
This is to say nothing of a growing challenge to traditional political
power relations, which is characterised by the struggle for liberty by
the revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition
Enlightenment as well as being coterminous with the eighteenth century
is now also indistinguishable from the birth of modernity. This has
led to the Enlightenment having its critics. This criticism does not
only addresses what might be called the essential issues of that
philosophical movement, but has also encompassed many other areas of
eighteenth century history as the boundaries of the Enlightenment have
been exceeded. Now we seem to have a position in historical discourse
that has seen a proliferation and appropriation of the ‘Enlightenment’
which seems now to reside in a range of versions, as listed (p3)
above.

As the “Enlightenment” has grown its various branches a critical
response has emerged from James Schmidt and others. Some ground has
been gained by his critique. In support of Schmidt, Delacapagne (2001)
stated; “There is probably not a single philosophical position around
which we could end up finding all the main representatives of the
Enlightenment family gathered as if at a birthday party… except
(perhaps) the anti-religious position.” Today, not even that is
true, as the “Christian Enlightenment” has tried to gatecrash that
party. Though most of the French philosophes never publicly declared
full atheism, (presenting themselves as deists), it seems fair to say
that this concern with unpacking of religious dogma so central to
early twentieth century characterisations of the period has set the
bar for Enlightenment studies. Collingwood described the
Enlightenment thus: ”it was a revolt not only against the power of
institutional religion but against religion as such.” This view was
also shared by Paul Hazard who suggested that the aim of the
Enlightenment was to put Christianity on trial, and by Peter Gay who
described it as a “war on Christianity.” This position is now
somewhat emasculated by a growing Christian Enlightenment which relies
on what Rosenblatt, calls a ‘pluralizing’ rejection of a ‘single
Enlightenment’. She suggests, “we now know … that the relationship
between Christianity and the Enlightenment was more complicated and
interesting.” But is this we now know better position fair? Is it not
simply a consequence of the ‘pluralization’ or more aptly a
‘colonisation’ of the word ‘Enlightenment’ by theological history? Is
it not simply an artefact of a false attribution, which has extended
the word beyond all reasonable limits? The result of this is that what
was once considered, as the definitive Enlightenment, is now relegated
to “French Enlightenment”, subsumed to allow for the growth of further
branches. This simply begs the question: what is Enlightenment that a
static past can be so seemingly transformed in just 60 years of
scholarship? Were Collingwood et al so wrong? Within this new
discourse the accompanying adjective is now pruned so that, for
example, Professor Stewart Brown is now able to characterise Hugh
Blair’s sermons, which specifically denounce Deism, Atheism,
Materialism and the American and French revolutions, as “… the
greatest influential achievements of the Enlightenment.” This usage
renders “The Enlightenment” as nothing other than equivalent to “the
eighteenth century”, devoid of a core meaning. If the most
significant core value of the Enlightenment can be so easily swept
aside, this means that the Enlightenment of Collingwood has become
stretched to its maximal extent: an extent that is as wide as the time
period is describes. It now seems to have been robbed of its anti-
superstition, anti-religion characteristics of the French philosophes,
and the ‘thinking for one’s self’ aspect characteristic of Kant’s
essay. The emergence of a Christian Enlightenment is in some ways the
most extreme example of the extension of the boundaries of the
Enlightenment. However, the various critiques of Enlightenment studies
has more subtle and far less easy targets for this essay to pursue.
And despite the difficulties with a definitively identifiable
Enlightenment, Enlightenment studies have attracted a compelling and
attractive scholarship that has asked questions which lie at the very
heart of the nature and practice of Modernity.

In addition to the acquisition of the term and its promotion by
sectional interests within academia, Enlightenment has also been
acquired for a range of critiques. Schmidt notes that the
Enlightenment has been blamed for a long list of crimes from the
French revolution, totalitarianism, absolute values, imperialism,
aggressive capitalism, the destruction of a sense of community by
individualism and many more. Ironically enough many of the earliest
attacks from the nineteenth century were made on the basis of the
apparent opposition to faith and religion to those identified as
atheistic philosophes and deistic Aufklärer and by those that might
now be welcomed paradoxically into the Christian Enlightenment. The
attacks have continued in many forms to the present. But as the
temporal distance has grown and the boundaries of Enlightenment have
extended, the attacks become inconsistent as the object of the attack
changes, so much so that any attack made against it could, with some
little effort, be engineered in support of it. For example, Political
scientist J. Q. Wilson attributes modern day problems with rights, as
a legacy of the Enlightenment. Haakonssen’s objection to Wilson
correctly drives a distinction between the Enlightenment’s
hierarchical social ethics and a rights-based liberalism of modernity.
However, this begs the question, what is Enlightenment, and although
Haakonssen’s objection is accurate using a precisely defined
Enlightenment, it may simply be too late for such an objection to fit.
The Enlightenment and its legacy, it seems have moved on: it is now
indistinguishable from Modernity itself.

Garrard sets out a range of “Counter-Enlightenments” from the
eighteenth century to the present. Some of the contemporary ones share
features with those set out by Schmidt. Schmidt (2000) explains some
of the abuses to which the term Enlightenment has been put. He
characterizes such critiques as falling into categories of jeopardy,
futility and perversity. He shows how the critics of the Enlightenment
project, use ‘a projection’ of the writers own choice and runs with
this to knock down what might be called a straw man argument.
“Critiques of the Enlightenment project thus rest on an act of
projection in which the unpleasant features of our own time are
explained as the consequences of certain general principles whose
ultimate origins are located in a particular eighteenth century
thinker or group of thinkers who are stipulated as representative of
the Enlightenment.” Though he hints later on, he does not make quite
so much of the same evident tendency in the supporters and defenders
of the Enlightenment to do the same thing. Are the Enlightenment’s
defenders not also projecting their own concerns? Surely this too is a
feature of Enlightenment studies. When Berlin, Lively and Manuel made
choices as to those particular philosophers who were to be included in
their own works, they were inevitably projecting their own concerns by
allowing a selection of eighteenth century philosophers to speak for
‘themselves’, by speaking for the ‘Enlightenment’. But by making those
choices they were inevitably creating and defining the boundaries and
essential qualities of their personal conception of the Enlightenment.

Whilst Schmidt points to Birken and Lang, Garrard points to Crocker
and Macintyre as critics of Enlightenment, all implicitly or
explicitly implicate the Enlightenment in the horrors of WWII and
totalitarianism. Is this justification any more convincing than laying
the blame of racism and Nazism at the door of Darwin or Pol Pot at the
door of Marx? Arguments against Birken’s and Lang’s notion that the
Enlightenment is to blame for the horrors of Nazism is discarded and
replaced by the more reasonable suggestion that the mysticism of
Hegel; the Irrationalism of the Romantic and Nationalist nineteenth
century, and the misappropriation of Nietzsche, are far more
responsible for the rise of Nazism, and the concentration camps. It
was not the rejection of faith and superstition, so characteristic of
the philosophy at the time of the Enlightenment that can be held
responsible for these horrors. But it is the use of science as a
socially constructed tool, by political forces motivated by the
irrational superstition that is Nationalism and Racism. Forces that
justified evil deeds on scientific grounds, by using science as a
rationale for an anti-Semitism that predated the eighteenth century by
100s of years. Anti-Semitic forces needed no encouragement from a
thing that could have been called Enlightenment. Such an aberration
seems able to justify itself within any historical context and was at
the heat of Martin Luther’s personal ideology. Could this inversion be
laid at the door of the anti-clerical forces of thought contained in
eighteenth century philosophy; and the rise of nineteenth century
Nationalism that seemed to have taken the place of the binding force
of religion? It is clear from this, that if Enlightenment thinking
can be blamed for this, it is due to omission rather than commission.
Is it that Enlightenment thinking was unable to account for, or
replace with reason, the human need to be bound to a systematized
human group in distinction to the other, as it is this tendency that
lies at the heart of Nazism and is a continuing problem to the present
that seems always to plague our species. If it is the Age of Reason
that is to blame, perhaps the detractors of Enlightenment thinking
would like to suggest how unreason might have faired in the
intervening 2-300 years? In Dialectic of Enlightenment , Adorno and
Horkheimer tend to identify the problems of the twentieth century by
posing the question: why has value neutral instrumental reason failed
to enlighten humanity, which has continued to sink into barbarism.
There seem to be two things that the Enlightenment could be criticized
for in the reception of modernity and what that has involved for the
world at large. One, is a critique of the thoughts and values
contained within the historical period. And two, the valorization of
the Enlightenment in terms of the historiographical process which has
maintained it, writes about it, and feeds a kind of mythologisation of
modernity. In this, Intellectual History would seem to be complicit
with this activity. But are Adorno and Horkheimer criticizing one or
the other, or both? It seems that they dissolve this distinction. Thus
Enlightenment is all that characterizes the project of modernity from
the eighteenth century to the present. The Dialektik der Aufklärung is
less about the historically defined ‘Enlightenment’, but a general
attack on the way elements of modern thought from Homer to the present
that ought to have produced a better world have lost their way. If one
were to hold to a definitive Enlightenment their critique is more
about the failure of Modernity than its subordinate; the
Enlightenment. Despite this compelling and thoughtful approach their
own critics have caricatured their approach. It has been suggested, by
Jan Gollinski, that Adorno and Horkeimer level a criticism at the
Enlightenment for the ‘enlightened rationality responsible for the
rise of totalitarianism itself… and ultimately to the extermination of
human beings.” But the book is written in a mode of ironic puzzlement
in which rationality has failed to penetrate deeper levels of human
horror. Thus the debate seems to be rather confused if we look at what
they actually said. They demonstrate that there is nothing new in Anti-
Semitism. It has been transformed by a new rationale, and is “all
that has been retained of religion by German Christians.”

The result of this widening of its boundaries, then, has led to a
diminution of its meaning and its value as a tool in understanding the
history of ideas. Outram suggests that the Enlightenment is “obscure
or even meaningless” due to history studying ideas, “not as autonomous
discrete objects, but as deeply embedded in society.” This would be
correct if the Enlightenment could be identified exactly with a series
of autonomous ideas: it cannot. There never was any agreement as to
what the Enlightenment was or whether it was possible to make it
conform to a clear set of ideas. But is it clear that the seeds of
that obscurity can be found not in the late twentieth century but in
the middle of the twentieth century, between the works of Cassirer on
the one hand and the likes of Manuel and Berlin on the other, at the
very moment that ‘Enlightenment’ is introduced. These distinct
approaches lie at opposite ends of a conceptual spectrum: in the very
use of the term which is used as if the Enlightenment were a causal
agent by Cassirer, but only as a label for a period of philosophical
history by Berlin and Manuel. Cassirer, far from applying ideas as
autonomous objects he imposes a Geist – a process or form of thought
not simply the sum total of the leading thinkers of the time, but he
rather chooses to characterise the work of those thinkers as a
“manifestation” of the essential Enlightenment. This is the very
epitome of ‘embedded ideas’. But this was fraught with problems from
the start, as Price pointed out: Cassirer fails to establish the
Enlightenment as an “event”, but effectively produces a work of
fiction by attributing to it a gentle process of historical
development, devoid of the conflicts inherent in the period. Berlin
suggested that Cassirer “offers a conciliatory view at the expense of
the critical faculty”, by characterising the Enlightenment without the
“conflicts and crises … [in this] serenely innocent book”, showing the
need for a more “business-like approach.” Cassirer is not without
further critique: Boas in 1952 asked whether such an approach was at
all possible; “neither times nor movements have Minds in any
intelligible sense of the word.” Oddly, Cassirer, by promoting this
type of thinking, it seems, is flying against the aims of eighteenth
century materialist philosophy by ironically promoting a romantic view
of history and reflecting Hegelian counter-Enlightenment interests of
the nineteenth century. The echo of this Geist appears throughout
Enlightenment studies. Both the critics and promoters of “the
Enlightenment” rely on a modified conceptualisation of the Geist of
the eighteenth century. It is this unity of concept, and idealist
notion of ‘culture’ this single mind that relies, not on eighteenth
century self-critical thinking, but on the sort of nineteenth century
mysticism of Hegelian Geistgesische. It is then of the deepest irony
that Cassirer uses this to promote the Enlightenment. At the other end
of the conceptual spectrum, Berlin et al cleverly allow the
philosophers of the eighteenth century to speak for themselves with
books that are selections of their writings with commentary. For
example, Berlin with Locke and Voltaire but reveals his own peculiar
interests by devoting a third of his book the writings of Hume. This
sort of approach, which is common to Enlightenment studies, is a means
by which the editors create their own toolkit of connotations and
piece together an Enlightenment of their own imagination.

Concluding Remarks

In 1876, Leslie Stephen observed; “in some minds the desire for unity
of system in the more strongly developed; in others the desire for the
conformity to facts.” In the case of Enlightenment studies both
attributes stand out in clear contrast. Those that love facts would
seek conformity to a narrowly definitive Enlightenment; those that
love a system can, like a magpie, attribute whatsoever they desire to
find a systemic truth. Those wishing to hold hard to the facts have
more chance to agree, whilst the systematisers can only hope to adopt
a relativism to co-exist with other participants in Enlightenment
studies. Outram has suggested a way forward. She prefers to look at
the Enlightenment as a “capsule containing sets of debates, stresses
and concerns, which however differently formulated or responded to, do
appear to be characteristic of the way in which ideas, opinions and
social and political structures interacted and changed in the
eighteenth century.” Her idea is a viable and pragmatic approach to
tackle some of the key issues that were discussed in the eighteenth
century, though the notion that the selection of such issues will also
tend to pre-configure the Enlightenment, there will also be those
practitioners that see a spirit or system emerge out of their chosen
arguments. Perhaps this is an unavoidable tendency that leads towards
the Enlightenment becoming a thing with its own volition; a simple
consequence of what to choose to place inside the capsule? There is a
sense in which Outram is trying to salvage the Enlightenment. Her idea
seems to be workable, but makes one ask, why not jettison the term
entirely and continue to talk about what actually happened in the
eighteenth century without colouring it with an inappropriate term, a
term that carries the baggage of so much connotation and textual
accretion? Perhaps the attractiveness of the word preserves its
usage? Schmidt noted; “Historians searching for a felicitous way of
capturing the spirit of the age have cited it, philosophers hoping to
incite a renewed devotion to the ideal of Enlightenment have appealed
to it, and present-day social critics-apparently in need of a bit of
historical legitimacy have sometimes wrapped themselves in its
mantle.” So why has the term attracted so much interest, or should it
be asked, what has encouraged its acquisition by a range of interests?
Such a word has a great positive feeling to a degree that anyone would
wish to be associated with it. And when using it as an object of
critique or ridicule, the effect is so much more enhanced being such a
positive sounding word. But the Enlightenment by being vague such
critiques are easier to pursue than, say, an attack on “the Age of
Reason”. After all who would attack Reason? The Enlightenment connotes
accomplishment, knowledge acquisition, attainments, illumination,
awakening, civilisation, debunking, broad mindedness, sophistication,
de-mythologisation. It is no surprise given the set of connotations
that theological studies would wish to cover themselves in its mantle
or is it just seeking a bit of historical legitimacy? These
connotations stand against confusion, darkness and ignorance, notions
that no one would wish to be associated with. What it has come to
denote is far more complex and indefinable: the period terminating in
the eighteenth century; a philosophical movement; a philosophical
process; a philosophical project; a mental and social attitude; a set
of philosophical and political argumental vignettes; and it is
conflated with a wider category: Modernity itself.



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[archytas]

Thanks Chaz - a good read. Well-balanced yet still charged with
something worthwhile. Interesting to note that your bibliography is
similar to much Sue got through in her research methods MA at
Manchester. If we leave aside the reasons for the production of your
essay, I'm struck that claims about 'interest' in the Enlightenment
aren't true - I mean this in the obvious sense that we wouldn't find
anyone if we went on a pub crawl. Quite how we can really discover
origins of terms like Enlightenment seems set interests now and I like
the way you address this.

The more important issue is no doubt why there is so little spread of
"enlightenment" into the village idiot population. My own interest is
why they have been included in the vote process. This is not some
swipe at letting low IQ in - more a wonder on whether power-interests
are at work in ways we are not spotting. We've both been in front of
enough classes to know how hard teaching is. I'd have readily wired
my lot up to an 'enlightenment button' on the bad days!

I take another tack on modernity, but that's another story (broadly
it's all science and we aren't rid of 'dark forces'). This would be
'analytic' rather than 'immanent' critique. Inside your well-written
work, I find a story on 'fashion'. You spot a desire to 'dress' the
real story in 'fine words' and 'positive generality' and are clearly
not swayed by them like so many academics. On could say Hume attacks
Reason - I'm rusty but stuff like 'rationality should be slave to the
passions'. Habermas was forever trying to 'extirpate ideology' to
leave Reason the only force and Marx even unhappy with rights because
they were too individualised - both critical of much otherwise called
Reason (instrumental rather than communicative).

Horkheimer and Adorno could be summarised thus 'How can the progress
of modern science and medicine and industry promise to liberate people
from ignorance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing work, yet help
create a world where people willingly swallow fascist ideology,
knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically develop
lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has become
irrational'. We might ask how so little has changed since they wrote
this. They claimed the whole of thinking needed repair and the whole
of society had to change. Of course, this is utterly apparent in the
Bacon they pin instrumental reason on - society is plagued by Idols.
The Idol of the theatre is clearly at work in your last paragraph -
groups making sure they are attached to 'the good' (fashionable) and
not the old and bad.

The question for me is whether science is now producing something
workable on human nature. I believe it is and that the key issue is
about how this could be in all human hands rather than an elite -
which is where the philosophy or 'professional academe' has remained.
In terms of this kind of study of the Enlightenment, the studies
themselves remain instrumental in being set in various 'Brownie point'
systems and we do nothing about this. What might it mean to write
other than as a functionary in such a system?

One can make very reasonable arguments to power and just be told to
'fuck off'. My own view is that academic learning and school
ejukation are more about learning your place in the pack than a
society of Reason. A line into this in the history of thought might
not concern 'Outram's capsule' but a wider history of 'no change' and
what lies in that. This does not suit academics, other than
scientists, who work by excluding it as far as they can as Idols (the
interference of village idiots). Other academics really should be
more engaged with the 'dark side' of why Enlightenment does not work -
something I suspect they ignore because they can get away with
repeated plagiarism from convenient sources.

These connotations stand against confusion, darkness and ignorance,
notions
that no one would wish to be associated with

So what, in the 'grand light', is the 'mechanism' to evade this
Other? Can we find this now and can we track it back to the 18th
century and even pre-modernity? Does it work behind 'fine words'? Is
there a problem with argument going back to the pre-Socratics that is
about what it excludes? And some state of mind for 'decision' that is
always secret in the sense of not being amenable to demonstration as
required in science? Is there something about this form of academic
history that is stuck up itself and wants to believe in the
Enlightenment and use it as 'grounding' instead of pursuing more
scientific study because its people are incompetent?


I only ask mate and I get the feeling you were in the guise of these
words. Reason is critiqued, so I'd have asked for a bit of a re-write
on what you were getting at there. Reads like polemic - which I hold
as a good thing in these areas. I don't know if you've tried Bacon -
the style of writing is often lick-arse and I'd bet it would take an
age to get to the Idols for a beginner. One still finds this in
academic text, with 'grounding figures' replacing the King's ass. You
say something like this politely. Most of my students still want to
rush to closure rather than do something argumentative like your
piece. I liked it.

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[archytas]

We have a tendency to want to summarise other people's work. Here's a
tiny bit on Kant.

The fundamental idea of Kant's “critical philosophy” — especially in
his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the
Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of
Judgment (1790) — is human autonomy. He argues that the human
understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that
structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the
moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and
immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious
belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the
same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of
nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment
that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of
his philosophical system. In Kant's transcendental conception, an
argument of this kind begins with an uncontroversial premise about our
thought, experience, or knowledge, and then reasons to a substantive
and unobvious necessary condition of this premise. Typically, this
reasoning from uncontroversial premise to substantive conclusion is
intended to be priori in some sense, either strict or more relaxed.
Often, but not always, the conclusion of the argument is directed
against skepticism of some sort. Targets of Kant's transcendental
arguments include skepticism about the applicability of concepts not
derived from experience to the world of experience, and skepticism
about the existence of objects external to us in space. There is only
one innate right," says Kant, "Freedom (independence from being
constrained by another's choice), insofar as it can coexist with the
freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law" . Kant
rejects any other basis for the state, in particular arguing that the
welfare of citizens cannot be the basis of state power. A state cannot
legitimately impose any particular conception of happiness upon its
citizens. To do so would be for the ruler to treat citizens as
children, assuming that they are unable to understand what is truly
useful or harmful to themselves. One of his popular essays, "An Answer
to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" discusses Enlightenment in
terms of the use of an individual's own reason. To be Enlightened is
to emerge from one's self-incurred minority (juvenile) status to a
mature ability to think for oneself. In another essay, "What Does it
Mean to Orient Oneself in Thought?" Kant defines Enlightenment as "the
maxim of always thinking for oneself". "What is Enlightenment"
distinguishes between the public and private uses of reason. The
private use of reason is, for government officials, the use of reason
they must utilize in their official positions. For example, a member
of the clergy (who in Kant's Prussia were employees of the state) is
required to espouse the official doctrine in his sermons and
teachings. The public use of reason is the use an individual makes of
his reason as a scholar reaching the public world of readers. For
example, the same member of the clergy could, as a scholar, explain
what he takes to be shortcomings in that very same doctrine.
Similarly, a military officer can, using public reason, question the
methods and goals of his own military orders, but in his function as
an officer, using private reason, is obliged to obey them. Since the
sovereign might err, and individual citizens have the right to attempt
to correct the error under the assumption that the sovereign does not
intend to err, "a citizen must have, with the approval of the ruler
himself, the authorization to make known publicly his opinions about
what it is in the ruler's arrangements that seems to him to be a wrong
against the commonwealth," writes Kant in "Theory and Practice".

In the last half of the above we might summarise to 'do what the boss
says in public' (which is weirdly 'private reason') but fell free to
criticise in 'public reason' which is weirdly kept from the wide
public except as some form of special discourse of evaluation.

Enlightenment in the form of an individual thinking for herself seems
attractive - yet what's the use of a village idiot thinking for
himself? We once hoped education would empower such individuals - but
we have ejukation and this does not.

I was once given the order to clear people from grass verges and into
the road down which the bus with their returning triumphant soccer
team was travelling. Kant did not help. On the other hand, we can't
have people nipping off on holiday when the need is to stand and
fight.

The first part above in no way explains much about idiots, mad zealots
and other piss-poor ideas and institutions. Whose autonomy?

The big Enlightenment question for me is whether we have a population
amenable to it. My guess is we do, with the help of technology Kant
couldn't dream of - though we use this for a contra-purpose.

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[archytas]

Kant's view is not just that space is not a property of things
independent of intuition per se, but that space is not a property of
things independent of a priori intuition. That distinguishes Kant's
conception from the idealism of a thinker like Berkeley. Kant denies
the view that space is somehow dependent upon empirical intuition.
Kant also wanted to distinguish his idealism from Leibniz's based on
the notion that the representation of space is non-conceptual and
Berkeley's based on the notion that the representation of space is non-
empirical. Hence the “dogmatic” idealism of Berkeley and the
“empirical” idealism of Leibniz are each ruled out by considering the
content and origin of the representation of space. That, at least,
would seem to form part of Kant's intention in the Transcendental
Aesthetic, especially in the Metaphysical Exposition. This indicates
that Berkeleyan and Leibnizian idealist views can be construed as
conceptions of the relation between space and intuition. Whereas
Berkeley takes space to be dependent on empirical intuition, Leibniz
takes it to be independent of intuition per se. This illuminates
Kant's concern in the Transcendental Aesthetic with our representation
of space: considering that representation in particular allows Kant to
tackle other conceptions of the relation between space and intuition.
Transcendental idealism, in so far as it concerns space and time, has
the following essential component: we have a non-empirical, singular,
immediate representation of space. Part of Kant's innovation is to
introduce into the philosophical lexicon the very idea that we can
have non-empirical intuition. Kant rigorously distinguishes between
sensation and intuition. That distinction, in turn, forms a crucial
component in Kant's extensive rejection of the Leibnizian doctrine of
perception. It is only with the rejection of that doctrine that we can
understand Kant's break with the Leibnizian view of space and time in
the right light.
Kant contends that the Newtonians conceive of space as a kind of quasi-
object. He seems to return here to the classical discussion of the
ontology of space mentioned at the outset of this entry. He emphasizes
that on the Newtonian view, space and time are akin to substances—in
that they are independent of all objects and relations. They are also
imperceptible, and certainly in the case of space, infinite. Thus for
Kant, the Newtonians regard space as an infinite substance-like entity
that is imperceptible and causally inert.He adds that the Newtonian
view seems to conflict with what he calls “the principles of
experience”. He notes that absolute space is not an object of
possible experience and that one cannot prove its existence by
appealing to experience. In this way, Kant's criticisms of the
Newtonian view seem to rest on very general metaphysical and epistemic
considerations—they seem to be largely divorced from the sort of
specific views of intuition and of representation that played a
substantial role in his own criticisms of Leibniz.

In short he was playing with what was known in his own time and
without the rigorous experimentation that was to come. We surely do
not go to these great sources today to discover the philosophers'
stone. I see many people drink at his well (maybe only sip) and
'discover' what amounts to theories spun in observation and
observations spun in theories - some even taking on a naive form of
relativism they take to mean their own arguments being as good as any
others. They neglect that science does lots of stuff that their magic
pigeon cannot. The key thing is whether we can spot was of thinking
that might help us through current impasse.

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[nominal9]

Archytas....
Try this as a hypothetical premise, I've written and proposed it here
and elsewhere often enough and long ago enough....

REALIST
Concept...... Reference
Objective......Objective

IDEALIST
Concept........Reference
Subjective.....Subjective

PHENOMENOLOGIST
Concept........Reference
Objective.......Subjective

NOMINALIST
Concept........Reference
Subjective.....Objective

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[archytas]

Very roughly put, phenomenology holds that the world is constituted,
in a special sense, but correctly, in consciousness. In particular, in
the later Husserl's phenomenology as adopted by Gödel, consciousness
constitutes both subjectivity and objectivity and thereby makes the
latter accessible to the former. Careful Nom - I may go exponentially
existential! We might say your model lacks finesse, but its not a bad
heuristic. No modern form of philosophy is as simplistic, though one
can map work in terrain between subjectivity - objectivity and freedom-
regulation. These things don't matter much

Incidentally, the may screw up once we talk social - at least
according to the sociologist Merton and some of the maths wizards
behind the banking collapse.

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[chazwin]

On Jul 5, 11:35 am, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Chaz - a good read.  Well-balanced yet still charged with
> something worthwhile.

Thanks - you liked it batter than my 'masters' at Sussex. It's odd
reading it again after a year.
There is so much more I wanted to say but was juggling between wanting
to present a good academic essay and not offending the discipline I
was writing in. In the end I pulled too many punches.
Even so the reaction to it was patronising and reactionary. One
comment was "If only he had read Harrington, Chaz would have thought
otherwise" - which is complete bullshit.

 Interesting to note that your bibliography is
> similar to much Sue got through in her research methods MA at
> Manchester.  If we leave aside the reasons for the production of your
> essay, I'm struck that claims about 'interest' in the Enlightenment
> aren't true - I mean this in the obvious sense that we wouldn't find
> anyone if we went on a pub crawl.  Quite how we can really discover
> origins of terms like Enlightenment seems set interests now and I like
> the way you address this.

I think the 'interest is clear, though I did not push it home enough.
The E is an invention, a meta-narritive upon which careers in
Intellectual History are based. There is some argument about the birth
of the idea within IH but too many people have taken it as an
assumption, and based books and articles on it as if it was an a
priori concept that an attack upon it, or a description of its roots
is a personal attack upon the fabric of the discipline. The
Enlightenment has become their most important Shibboleth. THe claim is
that only IH people are allowed to define what it means.
Me, I like to unpack myths - not accept them. And Kant never once said
THE enlightenment, and neither Smith, nor Hume - the word was never in
their vocabulary.

>
> The more important issue is no doubt why there is so little spread of
> "enlightenment" into the village idiot population.  My own interest is
> why they have been included in the vote process.  This is not some
> swipe at letting low IQ in - more a wonder on whether power-interests
> are at work in ways we are not spotting.  We've both been in  front of
> enough classes to know how hard teaching is.  I'd have readily wired
> my lot up to an 'enlightenment button' on the bad days!

Wel, now that would all depend on what you mean by 'enlightenment'. As
far as I can see that is nothing particular about the 18thC. The
entire time from c1450 to the present is in a process of Enlightenment
in science, and religion taking the backseat to allow that to happen.
However, IH is itself makes the move towards being unenlightened in
its use of Enlightenment. It requires students to adopt this mythical
account of its own object of study like any religion might. Uncritical
learning at any level is why we find teaching so difficult. Students
tend to want us to tell then the 'facts'. This is part of the reason I
liked teaching 10 year olds - many of them still have genuinely
inquiring minds and can ask difficult questions, if they have not been
'got at' by mainstream teachers.

>
> I take another tack on modernity, but that's another story (broadly
> it's all science and we aren't rid of 'dark forces').  This would be
> 'analytic' rather than 'immanent' critique.  Inside your well-written
> work, I find a story on 'fashion'.  You spot a desire to 'dress' the
> real story in 'fine words' and 'positive generality' and are clearly
> not swayed by them like so many academics.

I take that as a great compliment.

 On could say Hume attacks
> Reason - I'm rusty but stuff like 'rationality should be slave to the
> passions'.  

He did say that - but it was in recognition that passion is what gets
us up in the morning, passion is what makes it important to think, to
do , and to be. Passion drives Reason. It's not an attack on reason,
though, but its telling it like it is.

Habermas was forever trying to 'extirpate ideology' to
> leave Reason the only force and Marx even unhappy with rights because
> they were too individualised - both critical of much otherwise called
> Reason (instrumental rather than communicative).

Not clear what you are sting here.

>
> Horkheimer and Adorno could be summarised thus 'How can the progress
> of modern science and medicine and industry promise to liberate people
> from ignorance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing work, yet help
> create a world where people willingly swallow fascist ideology,
> knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically develop
> lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has become
> irrational'.  We might ask how so little has changed since they wrote
> this.  They claimed the whole of thinking needed repair and the whole
> of society had to change.  Of course, this is utterly apparent in the
> Bacon they pin instrumental reason on - society is plagued by Idols.
> The Idol of the theatre is clearly at work in your last paragraph -
> groups making sure they are attached to 'the good' (fashionable) and
> not the old and bad.

Ah yes - its a shame I did not enlist Bacon to help with the essay. -
but I think my 'masters' would have been more angry than they were at
me.
I love his metaphor. He was a clear thinking, but demonstrates the
foreignness of the past; at first reading he can seem idiosyncratic a
second reading we can see more clearly. A clear case for why we need
to adopt a contextual approach - but no be subsumed by it. Bacon
speaks for today and is worthy of refurbishment. We also owe him the
equation "power/knowledge" that Foucault claimed as his own.

>
> The question for me is whether science is now producing something
> workable on human nature.  I believe it is and that the key issue is
> about how this could be in all human hands rather than an elite -
> which is where the philosophy or 'professional academe' has remained.
> In terms of this kind of study of the Enlightenment, the studies
> themselves remain instrumental in being set in various 'Brownie point'
> systems and we do nothing about this.  What might it mean to write
> other than as a functionary in such a system?

I'm not convinced that science has the equipment to do that. The main
reason for the disconnect between what we do and how science describe
it is that we are only minimally natural. In a sense there is no human
nature only human culture. Science insists that what we DO, how we
act, is 'behaviour', it looks for the reasons in terms of utility,
genetic determinability, evolutionary psychology, survival, social
hierarchies, are reducible to generalities.
I just don't think that Pet scans can tell science what it feels like
to love or hate. I feel that such things are not reducible to neurones
firing, though I insist that love is a physical phenomenon of the
brain. What is important about it, to humans will never be the neural
connections, the hormones and the evolutionary imperative.
What is important about the human condition is what things mean in the
social and historical context - both of which are, on a day to day
basis, invisible. What we like to think of as human nature is actually
what we take for granted that underlies everything we do - it is on
fact our culturation.
It gives us what Zizeck calls the 'unknown knows' - the taken for
granteds, the endemic assumptions. Science has no access to that,
maybe anthropology does. But I think we all have access to that. It
takes a humanist to step outside that to look back in, not a
scientist.

>
> One can make very reasonable arguments to power and just be told to
> 'fuck off'.

That is the reaction I got to my essay.:)

 My own view is that academic learning and school
> ejukation are more about learning your place in the pack than a
> society of Reason.

That is exactly what I get from my MA. By the time I did my
dissertation I was reduced to offering a mechanical piece of shit. I
though Sussex , given its history would be a little more understanding
of radical spirit. But its down to individual personalities in the
end, with their petty kingdoms.

 A line into this in the history of thought might
> not concern 'Outram's capsule' but a wider history of 'no change' and
> what lies in that.  This does not suit academics, other than
> scientists, who work by excluding it as far as they can as Idols (the
> interference of village idiots).  Other academics really should be
> more engaged with the 'dark side' of why Enlightenment does not work -
> something I suspect they ignore because they can get away with
> repeated plagiarism from convenient sources.
>
>  These connotations stand against confusion, darkness and ignorance,
> notions
> that no one would wish to be associated with
>
> So what, in the 'grand light', is the 'mechanism' to evade this
> Other?  Can we find this now and can we track it back to the 18th
> century and even pre-modernity?  Does it work behind 'fine words'?  Is
> there a problem with argument going back to the pre-Socratics that is
> about what it excludes?  And some state of mind for 'decision' that is
> always secret in the sense of not being amenable to demonstration as
> required in science?  Is there something about this form of academic
> history that is stuck up itself and wants to believe in the
> Enlightenment and use it as 'grounding' instead of pursuing more
> scientific study because its people are incompetent?

Nigel Spivey, a Classical historian once told me that the Greeks could
believe 12 different incompatible things before breakfast and were not
perturbed by that. In a world constructed by parables and myth, you
have to put logos to one side and seem these things are a means to an
end. A way to offer a child's understanding of the world - the big
scary world that is full of hurt and confusion. What one can accept in
the ancient past one does not expect to find in the 21st century. IH
shouts loudly in its condemnation of what they cal 'whig' history -
the history of progress, and of other forms of historicism (of the
type reduced to rubble by Popper); they also attack all forms of
anachronism with glee and demand that we adopt a fully contextualised
history. And then they demand that we accept the grand myth of the
Enlightenment. I don't think science is going to help here, but a bit
of common sense and self awareness might! The amazing paradox here is
that the adoption of the concept is anti-enlghtenment; a sort of
performative self criticism.

>
> I only ask mate and I get the feeling you were in the guise of these
> words.  Reason is critiqued, so I'd have asked for a bit of a re-write
> on what you were getting at there.  Reads like polemic - which I hold
> as a good thing in these areas.  I don't know if you've tried Bacon -
> the style of writing is often lick-arse and I'd bet it would take an
> age to get to the Idols for a beginner.  One still finds this in
> academic text, with 'grounding figures' replacing the King's ass.  You
> say something like this politely.  Most of my students still want to
> rush to closure rather than do something argumentative like your
> piece.  I liked it.

You are right - I did fall into polemic. I was really angry about this
issue.
After my mum died and I wanted so much to go back to school, and then
having to postpone due to getting throat cancer, I was really
anticipating my return to a bit of formal study. I considered it a
real treat to have the leisure to go back to school. Reading it back -
I can taste the dissappointment, and the restraint.
Thanks for reading it!!

[chazwin]

On Jul 5, 11:59 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:

Have you looked into the Philosophy Now Forum?
We could do with a bit of clout there.
It has its promise but the yield of village idiots needs balancing,
and the more engaged members need some of the challenge you would
bring.

http://forum.philosophynow.org/

[ornamentalmind]

Hmm, thanks for the cautionary tale Chaz! Now and then I contemplate
returning to some academy or another…and on the rare occasion with
more idealistic considerations than to merely glean a ‘practical’ bit
of credentialing. I too greatly appreciate your sharing and recent
path…’tis one due to great personal ignorance I wish I had the
tenacity and means to follow.

By the way, your writing is far better crafted and assimilable than it
appeared to me a couple of years ago.

[chazwin]

On Jul 7, 11:12 am, ornamentalmind <ornamentalm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hmm, thanks for the cautionary tale Chaz! Now and then I contemplate
> returning to some academy or another…and on the rare occasion with
> more idealistic considerations than to merely glean a ‘practical’ bit
> of credentialing. I too greatly appreciate your sharing and recent
> path…’tis one due to great personal ignorance I wish I had the
> tenacity and means to follow.
>
> By the way, your writing is far better crafted and assimilable than it
> appeared to me a couple of years ago.

Thanks for the compliment.

As for the caution. I have to say that I did enjoy the study despite
feeling a little restricted.
My first term I studied Theory and Practice in IH, and Philosophical
ideas in IH. The lecturers were under 30 and were not so didactic nor
dogmatic like the two I had in the second term. They were less
experienced and this meant they were more like facilitators - which is
what a good teacher ought to be - to help students draw out the
picture of their learning for themselves; assisting discussion and
debate. The second term; Scientific Ideas, and Political Ideas were
taught by 2 guys that were older and more dogmatic having lost their
humility - they KNEW their subject and TOLD you how it was. There was
little debate and the process was basically rote. Science deals with
the gradual unfolding of objective position about the nature of
reality, and that fact made it easier to accept the teaching style.
But the twat teaching the politics pretended 'objectivity', in a
discipline in which the elite views of past thinkers were being
regurgitated without critique. This simply enough rendered out of date
views and refurbished them for the present - an attitude I though of
as repugnant. I didn't complete that course and switched to Critical
Theory where I was able to study Walter Benjamin's and Nietzsche's
views on History. It meant absorbing a 10 week course in 4 weeks but
it was worth it.

In 12 months all the fees are going to triple in price for BAs. As per
usual no one is daring to mention fees for higher degrees, but one
assumes that they will also go up. So this is the last year that means
are reachable.

A sad reflection on the state of Britain! And what 'orrible little
toadies are Dawkins and Grayling for wanting to set up a high fee
paying college.

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[archytas]

I had an external trying to fail my best student for swearing last
year. I've been asked to do some work on a PhD programme at a US
university (better not mention it by name in case I have to take the
work). Compared with what you got at Sussex Chaz, it's baby play!
And clapped-out nonsense equating to the personal development drivel
all over undergrads like a rash at the moment. I'm old enough now
that I mat have inaugurated the angle, though in my version I'd have
accepted stuff like 'spending a month with Orn' or going Bohemian or a
few weeks with some nuclear scientists or biologists (etc.) - now it's
all dreadful.
Pleasing Sussex didn't neuter you mate.

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[archytas]

I've signed up at the forum as 'archytas' Chaz - not sure how it works
on first glance, but I'll hack it.

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[nominal9]

Very roughly put, phenomenology holds that the world is constituted,

in a special sense, but correctly, in consciousness. /Archytas

Ah well....I tried... notice that it fits in a logical square, too...


Idealist.......Realist


Nominalist....Phenomenologist



Or slightly different if "reference" based.... Tell you what,
Archytas, just on the Off-chance that you may have missed the "point"
of my suggestion.... the next time that you want to tr=y to decide on
the difference in thought between a Nominalist and a Realist, say...
or any other of the four.... ask yourself.... what do they agree on
(more or less) and what do they disagree on (more or less).... I think
you will find that for the "contradictories"... there is some
agreement as to one "aspect" but there is disagreement as to the other
"aspect"... be it concept or reference.... but I can't spoon-feed this
to you.... you either care to make the "discovery" or you refuse
to.... your choice....
Asta la Vista.... end of sales pitch.... you're on your own.....on
your own way toward either ignorance or bliss....(HAR)

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[ornamentalmind]

For any serious student of mind, one ultimately arrives at henology.
The 5 stages of ascesis provide one basic map. The first 3 are
involved with words. The 4th on ‘True Opinion’. The 5th is the 5th.

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[archytas]

I really would like to have been able to send a few students to you
Bill and am pretty sure the ones I have in mind would have enjoyed and
been challenged. Same holds for Chaz - though he may be a bit too
like me for the change of perspective.
Nom - you're a trier and I respect that and the rebel aspect. I'm not
a phenomenologist and think it's arse. I just threw that in because
what you are saying is limited. Your 'model' is in undergrad books as
a heuristic. On deeper reasoning what's objective or subjective has a
lot to do with emphasis - where does an individual (if there is such a
'thing') finish and the social take over - etc. I tend to prefer
personal; philosophy to stress on individuals and also dislike
socially approved epistemic authority. Nominalism has several forms
and comes in at least two varieties. In one of them it is the
rejection of abstract objects; in the other it is the rejection of
universals. Philosophers have often found it necessary to postulate
either abstract objects or universals. And so Nominalism in one form
or another has played a significant role in the metaphysical debate
since at least the Middle Ages, when versions of the second variety of
Nominalism were introduced. The two varieties of Nominalism are
independent from each other and either can be consistently held
without the other. However both varieties share some common
motivations and arguments. I've always liked the rebel in you.

Most of my scientific colleagues were 'tropical fish realists' and
knew little of philosophy. Most other academics I've worked with
claimed to be social constructivists, phenomenologists and a load of
other half-assed wank and thought positivists were believers in brute
facts and the enemy, We can sum them up as self-interested piss-
pots. The decent few were just interested in fair-mindedness or at
least in giving others an even break. Kant was decent enough to his
man servant Lampe when he caught him dipping the housekeeping, so he
is OK with me, even if otherwise an old-fart of his time - though a
remarkable one. He knew then more than is in your model. Your
thinking is often way beyond this particular humdrum.

Henology stands in contradistinction to several other philosophical
disciplines. The term "henology" distinguishes the discipline that
concerns The One, as in the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus, from
disciplines that concern Being (as in Aristotle and Aquinas) and also
from those that seek to understand Knowledge and Truth (as in Kant and
Descartes).Meister Eckhart begins where Dietrich of Freiberg argued
the cause as members of the Dominican Order/ It remains a challenge
even today to properly understand the Eckhartian thought that man is
free only if he (not merely possesses but instead) is freedom. This is
so, in part, because even scholarly language runs up against its
limits in Eckhart. For we still cannot give adequate expression to the
real meaning of the statement: “The free man is, if he is really free,
freedom itself, yet only insofar as he is free.” For this very reason,
however, it is all the more necessary to engage ourselves in Eckhart’s
thinking instead of banning his writings from the public sphere. For
if our thought counsels it, our language must change, indeed, not only
the language of scholars, but that of the people as well. Maybe, as
Orn indicates, we are up the wrong gum tree.

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[chazwin]

On Jul 8, 5:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I had an external trying to fail my best student for swearing last
> year.  I've been asked to do some work on a PhD programme at a US
> university (better not mention it by name in case I have to take the
> work).  Compared with what you got at Sussex Chaz, it's baby play!
> And clapped-out nonsense equating to the personal development drivel
> all over undergrads like a rash at the moment.  I'm old enough now
> that I mat have inaugurated the angle, though in my version I'd have
> accepted stuff like 'spending a month with Orn' or going Bohemian or a
> few weeks with some nuclear scientists or biologists (etc.) - now it's
> all dreadful.
> Pleasing Sussex didn't neuter you mate.

I'm too old to get my balls chopped off by these little whipper-
snappers.
I've never had much respect for authority and I was not going to bow
down the
their argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy.
I didn't want to MA to get a job. For me its all about the process,
not the result.
My partner and I are still doing okay with no mortgage, so she has
encouraged me to
do what I should have done in the first place and go for Philosophy.
They do a masters
diploma, sort of an MA without the Dissertation, which is around £3k.
I felt guilty about
spending the cash, but you only live once and if I don't do that I;ll
only get a boring job
of do some courses in art or photography. I've decided that feeling
guilty about living my life the
way I want to is okay. (playing the cancer card again.).
Anyway I applied today for more punishment - though it might be too
late due to the rush to get in before the hike to the fees.

So would taking the job in the US mean moving there for a while?
Do you think you could do the gig?

[chazwin]

It's very good for keeping tack of your the threads you have
subscribed to.
There is no moderation, do the contributors are variable, and have
dropped in quality of late.
I hope you can spend a bit of time there.

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[chazwin]

Isn't having stages a contradiction of henology?

And what has this got to do with our discussion?

On Jul 8, 10:25 pm, ornamentalmind <ornamentalm...@yahoo.com> wrote:

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[ornamentalmind]

“Isn't having stages a contradiction of henology?” – Chaz

Perhaps…although I was addressing the actual process of ascesis…
something I’ve been working with for quite a while now. In fact, I’ve
been working many knowledge school methods. Being interested in mind,
I practice methods so I can know what is what…an actual first hand
scientific study.

Theosis is possible as Plotinus found out. When it comes to
‘contradiction’, in any ultimate and/or integral sense, there is no
contradiction that I can find.

For those who have devoured Plotinus, Neil and/or Wikipedia one finds
henology is“…a "metaphysics of radical transcendence" that extends
beyond being and intellection.[2] It can be contrasted with ontology,
as ontology is "an account of being" whereas henology is an "account
of unity."”

These words above only approach the first 3 aspects of ascesis. This
isn’t in contradiction with the process of ascesis though…it is merely
a part of the whole…you know, a distinction about the One and the
many. Long ago I would have been afraid to even consider the notion
let alone the experience of “radical transcendence” except perhaps at
arm’s length through academics.

For an internet heuristic re: Plotinus, see:
http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plotinus/plotinus.html
http://www.philosophos.com/philosophical_connections/profile_029.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/

“And what has this got to do with our discussion?” - Chaz

Little except by association…particularly with Neil’s offering me as
being worth a month of study. Also, the thread does start out having
to do with epistemology…Kant’s in particular. I’ve been looking at the
nature and scope of knowledge for a while now. I don’t claim to be
well read nor to be able to recall let alone present or to having
assimilated most philosophers; however, I have been interested in
firsthand experience(s). As an aside, the different presentation
levels found in this group are quite vast. Some I can make no sense of
at all.

Further, in an admittedly troll-like maneuver, I posted that which I
had guessed would evoke a response. Also, I’ve had some very recent
(last night) experiences in this vein.

Years ago I ran across Eck online and even one person who I talked
with quite a bit. She actually seemed coherent and at worst well
versed. I haven’t studied the method more than a cursorily glance.
Through Ichazo and his School, I’ve found plenty to help me go beyond
where I find myself at any one moment. Even before I met Oscar, I knew
that there was much more than words and concepts.

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[archytas]

To some degree we have done away with many potential aspects of
thinking because we have found 'better' ways to articulate 'nature'.
Somewhere in Kant (the Critique of Judgement I think) he talks about
'the sublime'. The feeling associated with the sublime is a feeling of
pleasure in the superiority of our reason over nature, but it also
involves displeasure. In the case of the mathematically sublime, the
displeasure comes from the awareness of the inadequacy of our
imagination; in the dynamical case it comes from the awareness of our
physical powerlessness in the face of nature's might. Kant is not
consistent in his descriptions of how the pleasure and the displeasure
are related, but one characterization describes them as alternating:
the “movement of the mind” in the representation of the sublime “may
be compared to a vibration, i.e., to a rapidly alternating repulsion
from and attraction to one and the same object” Kant also describes
the feeling of the sublime as a “pleasure which is possible only by
means of a displeasure” and as a “negative liking”. He also appears
to identify it with the feeling of respect, which in his practical
philosophy is associated with recognition of the moral law. Kant
thought introspection likely to be flawed, though it's hard to see how
you can get to any of this without.
There is more than words and concepts here and more senses than the 5
we generally accommodate are available, potentially, in mind. What we
call knowledge now, may be achieved only by limiting to certainty or
familiarity.

This notion of the sublime seems one we could use in trying to
discover more on what is present in argument that isn't the words and
one that reminds us on what they may be creating and limiting. My own
interest is why 'memory' is so often eliminated from argument or the
consciousness formed in it. Much of this 'consciousness' is now extra-
somatic, but still organised as in Bacon's Idols. The question is why
much we might describe as the content of individual consciousness has
been encouraged to take such form and why it is not experienced in
revulsion.

On Jul 9, 3:01 am, ornamentalmind <ornamentalm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> “Isn't having stages a contradiction of henology?” – Chaz
>
> Perhaps…although I was addressing the actual process of ascesis…
> something I’ve been working with for quite a while now. In fact, I’ve
> been working many knowledge school methods. Being interested in mind,
> I practice methods so I can know what is what…an actual first hand
> scientific study.
>
> Theosis is possible as Plotinus found out. When it comes to
> ‘contradiction’, in any ultimate and/or integral sense, there is no
> contradiction that I can find.
>
> For those who have devoured Plotinus, Neil and/or Wikipedia one finds
> henology is“…a "metaphysics of radical transcendence" that extends
> beyond being and intellection.[2] It can be contrasted with ontology,
> as ontology is "an account of being" whereas henology is an "account
> of unity."”
>
> These words above only approach the first 3 aspects of ascesis. This
> isn’t in contradiction with the process of ascesis though…it is merely
> a part of the whole…you know, a distinction about the One and the
> many. Long ago I would have been afraid to even consider the notion
> let alone the experience of “radical transcendence” except perhaps at
> arm’s length through academics.
>

> For an internet heuristic re: Plotinus, see:http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plotinus/plotinus.htmlhttp://www.philosophos.com/philosophical_connections/profile_029.htmlhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/

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[nominal9]

Archytas... with due respect but also with disagreement..... You
tackle the topic (in contrast to as I posed it) as an anthologist or
as an encyclopedist (citing all the animals in the zoo and
distinguishing their spots).... but your "bases" for distinction....
you don't necessarily (in my opinion) frame them properly... or
understand to...
but hey.... what do I know.....

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[awori achoka]

The conscious is sublime but,  the culturally influenced consciousness is subjective.....

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[archytas]

Nah! We're skimming the surface here mate. The world of tables and
chairs is gone to some extent, but we don't stop seeing them as they
are not. Think too of control theory producing the control nodes in a
system using an algorithm and thus being able to produce changes by
directing pulses at the nodes where the same pulses had produced
nothing in random aim. The extra-somatic encyclopedia helps us with
particles, fields, maths and in not churgling out the same mistakes or
re-inventing wheels. These realist-anti-realist-nominalist-idealist
thingies are of the encyclopedia.
A question 'before' the bifurcation of inner-outer, subjective-
objective has long been known and what we may have is a network of
events - that there are thoughts does not designate a thinker and all
the stuff that's been done - all suggest 'conditions for existence' we
have trouble establishing. Philosophy has the great merit of being
stuck in and with argument - but these arguments can themselves be
seen as the noise of certain humans backfiring as the very stuff they
should take on is not just rejected but used to reinforce the staid
world-view (if we move to psychology-sociology).

My own view is we should be looking more to the biological produced
in 'argument' to move on as I regard the over-rational as fantasy. If
we snatch 100 people off the street and ask them to do a fairly hard
economics sum, only about 5 or 6 will be able to do it after a little
training. It won't matter what denomination of ontology-epistemology
they are. The questions of importance in this stuff are about what we
might turn to use in original thinking about, say.the role of clocks
in time. Or what might replace the current Politburo of the Rich as a
system to promote innovation and better freedom.
That may be awori - but it's still posited. I rather hope it's true.

On Jul 9, 6:17 pm, awori achoka <awori.ach...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The conscious is sublime but,  the culturally influenced consciousness is
> subjective.....
>

> http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plotinus/plotinus.htmlhttp://www.philosop...

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[chazwin]

So, in your own words what exactly is the process of ascesis?

On Jul 9, 3:01 am, ornamentalmind <ornamentalm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> “Isn't having stages a contradiction of henology?” – Chaz
>
> Perhaps…although I was addressing the actual process of ascesis…
> something I’ve been working with for quite a while now. In fact, I’ve
> been working many knowledge school methods. Being interested in mind,
> I practice methods so I can know what is what…an actual first hand
> scientific study.
>
> Theosis is possible as Plotinus found out. When it comes to
> ‘contradiction’, in any ultimate and/or integral sense, there is no
> contradiction that I can find.
>
> For those who have devoured Plotinus, Neil and/or Wikipedia one finds
> henology is“…a "metaphysics of radical transcendence" that extends
> beyond being and intellection.[2] It can be contrasted with ontology,
> as ontology is "an account of being" whereas henology is an "account
> of unity."”
>
> These words above only approach the first 3 aspects of ascesis. This
> isn’t in contradiction with the process of ascesis though…it is merely
> a part of the whole…you know, a distinction about the One and the
> many. Long ago I would have been afraid to even consider the notion
> let alone the experience of “radical transcendence” except perhaps at
> arm’s length through academics.
>

> For an internet heuristic re: Plotinus, see:http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plotinus/plotinus.htmlhttp://www.philosophos.com/philosophical_connections/profile_029.htmlhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/

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[ornamentalmind]

We don’t need my words. Others have set the grounds:
Name, Definition, Resemblance, True Opinion and the Fifth.

I use additional elements and guideposts in an esoteric practice…but
this is all of little importance and not actually for discussion nor
deconstruction.

No doubt you know at least some of the steps…like when focusing your
attention upon something…knowing what it is primarily by what is
called… often followed by additional concentration upon more elements
involved…like the terms defining what is being addressed. What follows
involves witnessing the process etc.

Thanks for asking anyway.

On Jul 9, 3:02 pm, chazwin <chazwy...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> So, in your own words what exactly is the process of ascesis?
>
> On Jul 9, 3:01 am, ornamentalmind <ornamentalm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > “Isn't having stages a contradiction of henology?” – Chaz
>
> > Perhaps…although I was addressing the actual process of ascesis…
> > something I’ve been working with for quite a while now. In fact, I’ve
> > been working many knowledge school methods. Being interested in mind,
> > I practice methods so I can know what is what…an actual first hand
> > scientific study.
>
> > Theosis is possible as Plotinus found out. When it comes to
> > ‘contradiction’, in any ultimate and/or integral sense, there is no
> > contradiction that I can find.
>
> > For those who have devoured Plotinus, Neil and/or Wikipedia one finds
> > henology is“…a "metaphysics of radical transcendence" that extends
> > beyond being and intellection.[2] It can be contrasted with ontology,
> > as ontology is "an account of being" whereas henology is an "account
> > of unity."”
>
> > These words above only approach the first 3 aspects of ascesis. This
> > isn’t in contradiction with the process of ascesis though…it is merely
> > a part of the whole…you know, a distinction about the One and the
> > many. Long ago I would have been afraid to even consider the notion
> > let alone the experience of “radical transcendence” except perhaps at
> > arm’s length through academics.
>

> > For an internet heuristic re: Plotinus, see:http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plotinus/plotinus.htmlhttp://www.philosop...

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[archytas]

The word 'ascesi' - from 'askésis', 'to train' - originally meant only
'training' and, in the Roman sense, 'discipline'. The corresponding
Indo-Aryan is 'tapas' ('tapa' or 'tapo' in Pâli) and means the same
except that, because of the root, 'tap', which means 'to be hot' or
'to glow', it also contains the idea of an intensive concentration, of
glowing, almost of fire.

With the development of Western civilisation, however, the word
'ascesis' has, as is well known, taken on a particular meaning which
differs from the original. Not only it has assumed an exclusively
religious sense, but, because of the general tone of the faith which
has come to predominate among Western peoples, asceticism has become
connected to ideas of mortification of the flesh and of painful
renunciation of the world : thus, it has come to indicate the path
that this faith thinks the most suitable for 'salvation', and the
reconciliation of the creature, corrupted by original sin, with his
Creator. As early as the beginnings of Christianity the word 'ascesis'
was applied to those who practised exercises of mortification such as
auto-flagellation.

Asceticism in this sense became the object of clear aversion with the
growth of specifically modern civilisation. If even Luther, with the
resentment of one who was unable to understand or to tolerate monastic
discipline, disowned the necessity, the value, and the usefulness of
any ascesis, to oppose to it an exaltation of pure faith, then
humanism, immanentism, and the new cult of life were brought from
their standpoint to bring discredit and scorn upon asceticism, which
those tendencies associated more or less with 'medieval obscurantism'
and with the aberrations of 'historically outdated ages'. And when
asceticism was not explained away purely and simply as a pathological
manifestation, a transposed form of auto-sadism, all sorts of
incompatibilities and oppositions to 'our way of life' were claimed
for it. The best known and the oldest of these is the antithesis
supposed to exist between the ascetic, renouncing, static East,
hostile to the world, and the active, assertive, heroic and creative
Western civilisation.

The above came recommended on a page with the Nazi emblem on it Chaz.
One assumes this is not where our friend finds his ascesis! One can
find strange light in meditation (literally) and a 'glow' that reminds
me of magic as some African friends once demonstrated for me. Orn
almost pleads the 5th - but that's my friend's business. In more
sociological terms, there is civic humanism and ascecitism from the
east and Greeks. My own take concerns neurosis and finding ways to
move society away from it. My studies concern such examples as police
lying as a case of socially enforced neurotic behaviour.

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[ornamentalmind]

The Nazis did deal with mysticism. True. And, their ‘Nazi emblem’ (if
one wishes to follow this addition to the topic) was appropriated from
the Bonpa religion, a precursor of Tibetan Buddhism and a sect that
remains today. I have met some from Italy who practiced it and did not
find the Mussolini connection that one finds with Evola.

Yes Neil, I almost didn’t post due to the esoteric nature of the topic
and what obviously appears to be a desire to not ‘testify’. After
fairly careful consideration, I posted anyway.

I empathize with the goal(s) of reducing neurosis although with
possible different origins and experience. The dogma oft associated
with such psychological pursuits, mostly formed through early cathexis
(bestzung to Siggy) seldom reaps clarity. At the very least, it is not
a universal other than in the sense of recognition of deception and
the lack of integrity. Regardless, sociologically, the telos is the
recognition of our oneness.

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[archytas]

There are dangers in everything, I guess Orn. It makes sense to me to
point out what many people seem to expect from epistemology
(grounding) has already missed the bus. And no harm in letting them
wait to see the other ones! I once asked an organisational
aestheticist who had just spent a long time explaining that hypertext
was a visual medium how he might explain that to my blind friend.
Many of the crass meditative-introspective 'techniques' are advertised
in the worst of the neurosis of self - you know what I mean, they are
all over the place and have one travelling multi-dimensionally.

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[ornamentalmind]

I first was attracted to ‘greater truths’ based on advertisements on
the backs of comic books decades ago! (40s/50s ?) Perhaps you saw them…
a hooded figure holding a book etc. At the very least I knew I needed/
wanted to know more.

http://craphound.com/images/mentalpoisoning.jpg

I recently tuned in to a free online live discussion based on the
recommendation of a Theosophist I know. It was great… if one wanted to
hear an hour long advertisement for other programs and get spammed for
even more. Curiosity quenched!

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[archytas]

I was so tempted Bill. I once ended up with a magazine called 'Plain
Truth' - sadly not full of same. The secret of longevity was revealed
as brushing oneself all over every day with a scrubbing brush - no
wonder I'm nearly worn out!

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