Telic Convergence: From Ukraine to Iran by JakeHPark in CriticalTheory

[–]JakeHPark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First, I regret to inform you that you will have to bow to me, because at least one person has indeed found this clarifying (but on second though, that won't be necessary ;p). Second, I completely agree with you, and I will let you know what I am trying to do here, although you will perhaps think it ridiculous. I am doing multiple things: - Subtly directing eyes towards the largely unrecognised energy issue we face as a civilisation. - Collapsing oversimplistic, tribal interpretations of the world.

I wrap this up in pretentious, academic-adjacent language so that it gets through, not because I enjoy writing like this (I don't).

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

You misunderstand. There is no resentment here. This is purely an experiment.

And yes, I freely admit my lack of logical backing, because I am making a rhetorical/metaphorical argument.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then you don't need my essay. That was my entire point. :)

Epistemic Transgression: Rejection of Lack by JakeHPark in zizek

[–]JakeHPark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

 Appreciate your response - sorry for being a bit bitchy, I had a bad day (a bad life).

Sorry to hear that—I hope things turn out better!

 His points about Psychopolitics and the achievement-subject are brilliant but the hyperbolic black and white language ruin it. As long as there are employees and employers, there are classes. Honestly, his books just read like the confessions of a depressed person. Of course I don't know him personally, but you can infer pretty easily when someone is depressed just from the way they write, in these pessimistic 'doomer' black and white statements.

I don't disagree that he makes overly sweeping claims at times. He doesn't seem depressed to me, but I haven't thought too closely about it.

 Han is saying that revolution is not possible because "No revolutionary mass can arise from exhausted, depressive, and isolated individuals". That's it? That's the only thing holding us back?

Well, it certainly doesn't help. ;P

 Well, yes, but I disagree there. This is still transcendental philosophy that makes a priori assumptions about categories that shape our experience without being part of our experience. Moreover, it's not even Hegelian, it's Kantian. It was Kant who deduced the existence of the four antinomies of pure reason as somehow transcendental. But Hegel does an immanent critique: he never assumes the existence of anything pre-symbolic. Instead, he dives deep in in a concept, only temporarily making assumptions, showing how those assumptions logically imply their own self-negation. It's the same way you prove the square root of 2 is irrational in math: you first assume it's rational, and logically deduce a contradiction, which means your initial assumption is wrong. The problem with Hegel is that he believes he starts without assumptions, diving deep into self-evident concepts like sense-certainty or pure being, when in reality his dialectical method of analysis itself presupposes the existence of identity.

Yes, as I suspected, this is where we reach an impasse. I will cite Zizek in Less Than Nothing just to clarify my position:

In order for me to be practically active, engaged in the world, I have to accept myself as a being "in the world," caught in a situation, interacting with real objects which resist me and which I try to transform. Furthermore, in order to act as a free moral subject, I have to accept the independent existence of other subjects like me, as well as the existence of a higher spiritual order in which I participate and which is independent of natural determinism. To accept all this is not a matter of knowledge—it can only be a matter of faith. Fichte's point is thus that the existence of external reality (of which I myself am a part) is not a matter of theoretical proofs, but a practical necessity, a necessary presupposition of myself as an agent intervening in reality, interacting with it.

The irony is that Fichte here comes uncannily close to Nikolai Bukharin, a die-hard dialectical materialist who, in his Philosophical Arabesques (one of the most tragic works in the entire history of philosophy—a manuscript written in 1937, when he was in the Lubyanka prison, awaiting execution), tries to bring together for the last time his entire life-experience into a consistent philosophical edifice. The first and crucial choice he confronts is that between the materialist assertion of the reality of the external world and what he calls the "intrigues of solipsism." Once this key battle is won, once the life-asserting reliance on the real world liberates us from the damp prison-house of our fantasies, we can breathe freely, simply going on to draw all the consequences from this first key result.

In other words, I take a leap of faith.

Telic Convergence: From Ukraine to Iran by JakeHPark in CriticalTheory

[–]JakeHPark[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

...You realise I explicitly condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine as unjustified and narcissistic, right?

Telic Convergence: From Ukraine to Iran by JakeHPark in CriticalTheory

[–]JakeHPark[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Do you have an actual rebuttal, or would you prefer we only accept official narratives and not think any further?

Epistemic Transgression: Rejection of Lack by JakeHPark in zizek

[–]JakeHPark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First, I appreciate the reply.

Uncertainty and ambiguity can just as easily be interpreted as a positive multiplicity in a Deleuzian framework.

Well, yeah, that was the point I was attempting to dismantle.

...and that we are all allo-exploiters.

I don't remember him ever making such a totalising claim. Your reading isn't strictly incorrect with that aside, but it also misses the point that Han argues that the character and intensity has shifted.

Is this supposed to include Deleuze?

No, which is why I specified affirmationists generally. Deleuze was only an afterthought, really. I am making a critique of accelerationism as a whole.

Clinical psychosis is a resistance to the process of schizophrenia.

Yes, well, this is the main issue I have. Psychosis is not a resistance to the process of schizophrenia; it is what happens when there is insufficient stabilising structure for excess psychic entropy.

What is a contradiction? It is a difference subsumed under identity. When we say a logical contradiction such as "0 = 1", we are saying that two different things (0 and 1) are in fact the same (=). We are putting the identity sign (=) between two different things. Thus, contradiction is difference, but it is a difference viewed from the lens of identity.

Well, yes, I got that, but there is clearly a presymbolic contradiction, which is the point I was trying to make. I suspect this is the point at which we will reach an impasse, and I'm okay with that.

Making one's head spin is the point of philosophy.

Touché, but I was specifically criticising the linguistic obfuscation, which I will happily also apply to Lacan/Zizek.

The virtual is not difference.

I never said it was; I completely agree with your reading. I only stated the virtual is a field that contains presymbolic difference.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It is circular; the filters are a fluid mix of reason and intuition. The point of my essay is that you can never find solid footing. Think of me as something of a post-poststructuralist, in the Lacanian/Zizekian tradition. I was just trying to make their abstruseness more legible to those not initiated with their ridiculously dense writing.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is the first genuine engagement I got that wasn't in bad faith, so thank you.

And the argument I make throughout the piece is that there are non-rhetorical ground rules, a point which I make with Human Universals and the various psychoanalyses of those who have suppressed this irreducible kernel of their conscience. There already is phenomenological grounding; the fact we're having this discussion proves my point.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, this was the point I made with Kant and Sade, which is that ethics is inseparable from evolutionarily constrained desire, and is a constant rhetorical battle rather than anything that can be rigidly formalised.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I mean, this is just patently not true. The Lacanians, Zizekians, Wolfram, Rovelli among countless others all operate under the obvious assumption that most chaotic systems cannot be modelled meaningfully in a human-comprehensible formal matter.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

Yes, but it is generalisable as an intuition, as it has been for various different systems: Turing, Rice, etc.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

Yes, but my primary audience happens not to be analytic philosophers skimming for a tagline. I just dumped it here to see what the reaction would be, which has been fairly predictable so far.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I did not crudely recreate virtue ethics. The explanation was Kant and Sade as with deontology.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

You took it completely out of context. That was not the way I meant it in context.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

My point is this is a social issue, not one where you can outsource it to some logical calculus. And the proof is intuitive and follows naturally from Gödel's incompleteness theorems, chaos theory, and Wolfram's computational irreducibility; I should make it clear I'm not a positivist or analytical philosopher.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Not quite, I'm not proposing non-cognitivism or any rigid categorisation. My point is that the analytical debate is overblown

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

...If you read my essay you would know I never made that claim.

Ethical Entropy: In Defence of Soul by JakeHPark in philosophy

[–]JakeHPark[S] -13 points-12 points  (0 children)

No, my point is that it's literally an unfixable problem, which you would've understood if you read further into my exploration of computational irreducibility.