From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 13:28:12 MDT
Good philosophy is like an onion.
But the layers are still Boolean in nature.
Yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, no.
Unknowable = no.
;-'
Walter
Hermit wrote:
> The following is a reordered and edited transcript of a discussion held on July 25, 2002 on the #virus channel (irc.Lucifer.com:6667) which may be helpful to those attempting to follow this discussion. Perhaps the best comment of the discussion may be Kharin’s “I was about to a reply suggesting that the debate was putting the philosophical cart before the horse; we need an absolute morality therefore there must be one.” Personally, I would suggest that, as shown in the articles (particularly in the Philosophical section) on our BBS ( http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php), any hope of an absolute morality which is divorced from happiness is unlikely to be fulfilled.
> [hr]
> <Kharin> Currently waiting for pomo discussion to have the decency to end its life as soon as possible.
> [Hermit] I was hoping that not responding to it would be a hint for it to commit suicide.
>
> <Kharin> The worst irony is that the original article was less than accurate in many respects.
> <Kharin> Fish's theoretical biases are very far from being the more full-blooded variant of the likes of Lyotard.
> * Hermit nods vigorously
> [Hermit] In any case, as Russell proved, all self-referential sentences, which also apply to other concept classes, need to be viewed with extreme prejudice.
> [Hermit] And Fish was presented with an Hobson’s choice of such. I can understand why he attempted to reply in the terms offered, although I suspect that my response might have been more along the lines of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
> <Kharin> Reading Twilight of the Idols recently it occurred to me that in some of the terms being offered Nietzsche would be counted as a postmodernist; the category under discussion proving to be alarmingly elastic. The Nietzche passage if I recall correctly referred to the absence of a universal interpretation of phenomena in the absence of a transcendental quality.
> [Hermit] Personally, I have no problem with dealing with "elastic" concepts, anchored in uncommon sense. Which Nietzsche had in abundance. Uncommon sense being, naturally, that sense which should be common, but is not. I speak as somebody with very limited patience with for fuzzy articulation. It seems to me that to discount all the thinking which has been invested into a field, simply because it permits conclusions you may not much like, is not only flawed but invalid.
> <Kharin> I like the description of uncommon sense.
> [Hermit] Thanks.
> <Kharin> Yes; I was about to a reply suggesting that the debate was putting the philosophical cart before the horse; we need an absolute morality therefore there must be one. Then I thought better of it :-)
> [Hermit] It would have been a good reply, but I think, would not have the desired effect.
> <Kharin> More generally, there seems a confusion between debates concerning the univocality of language and the broader issues of truth and ethics. Related but far from identical.
> <Kharin> Though one also loses patience with the assumptions made regarding the disjunction of sign/signifier; many of the implications drawn out from that by are frequently on the tenuous side; one is tempted to consider a plague on both houses.
> * Hermit nods.
> [Hermit] A plague on both houses is right
> [Hermit] The argument ignores the fact that Goedel applies to such statements.
> [Hermit] Here is my take
> [Hermit] We should already know that no non-trivial system can be proved both complete and correct (Goedel).
> [Hermit] The use of the term "everything" is being understood to establish a reference that includes all systems, including the complex, and including itself.
> [Hermit] Thus, neither "Everything is subjective", nor "Everything is objective" can be absolutely true.
> [Hermit] The statement, "Everything is some thing", is part of a formal system (of definitional statements) which is self-referring and purportedly complete - no matter what the "some thing" referred to may be.
> [Hermit] Thus, already being complete, it cannot be proved correct - irrespective of the thing, which everything is asserted to be.
> <Kharin> Agree: re Godel.
> <Lucifer> I disagree with your statement about formal systems above
> [Hermit] Ah.
> [Hermit] Do explain.
> [Hermit] explain too
> <Lucifer> All non-trivial formal systems are necessarily incomplete
> [Hermit] Or incorrect
> * Hermit nods
> <Lucifer> Or inconsistent
> <Lucifer> Formal system builders always choose incompleteness rather than inconsistency
> [Hermit] Agreed. Same meaning, different formulation.
> [Hermit] Agreed again
> <Lucifer> Did you say they were complete?
> [Hermit] They are self-asserting completeness
> [Hermit] "Everything" includes itself.
> [Hermit] And by self-asserting completeness, they leave only one other option....
> <Lucifer> hmmm
> <Lucifer> Doesn't predicate calculus have an operator "for all"?
> * Hermit nods. Upside down "A"
> [Hermit] It is not self-referential. It relates to members of a defined set.
> <Lucifer> ok
> <Lucifer> Understanding is slowly sinking in
>
> <Kharin> The other problem is that many of the hardliners (DeMan) tend to regard language as a monolithic system that exists independently of the fleshy things that instantiate it. Or that they are determined by it.
> * Hermit laughs, putting the chicken before the egg
> <Kharin> This was my comment to Walpurgis on the bbs, regarding the use of altering gender biases in language in order to correct gender biases within society.
> [Hermit] Only one word is required, "Crap"
> <Kharin> What I should have replied was what Pinker observed, namely that those pronouns are a closed set and decidedly resistant to introducing new forms.
> [Hermit] Very true. In any case, language follows usage, which reflects attitude. T'was ever so.
> <Kharin> Exactly: and the sociolinguistic evidence verifies that position.
> * Hermit nods. NLP proponents notwithstanding.
>
> * Lucifer is still working his way through the postmodernism thread
> * Hermit notes that it is (largely) a waste of time.
> [Hermit] Joe is being dishonest (probably with himself, probably for the reason articulated by Kharin).
> <Lucifer> How is Joe being dishonest?
> [Hermit] Joe is citing one side of a story that he knows is multifaceted, to people whom he knows cannot follow the articulations which he is choosing, and relying on authority rather than persuasion to obtain their consent to his assertions.
> <Lucifer> So statements about the nature of truth are necessarily self-referential (referring to the so-called metaconstruct)?
> [Hermit] Only when they include "Everything" or "All" or other words of that nature.
> [Hermit] A statement about the nature of truth falls into one of four categories.
> [Hermit] One which is relative to a formal system, where the formal system defines the thing, the truth value of which is being described.
> [Hermit] One which is relative to a perspective
> [Hermit] One which combines aspects of both.
> [Hermit] Those which are invalid.
> * Lucifer nods
> [Hermit] Only the first is "absolute," and only applies to "real objects" when the definition is sufficiently clear to ensure that all observers will perceive it similarly.
> [Hermit] So formally:
> [Hermit] The truth value of things in a formal system can only be determined in relation to that formal system (but need not be subjective as an absolute value for the comparisons may exist, the formal system itself establishing that absolute value).
> [Hermit] Here we establish a class of thing which is indeed self-referentially absolute, a trivial formal system. Indeed, where the formal system is sufficiently well defined, and an external subject simple enough for all observers to perceive the things subject to the the system from a sufficiently well defined perspective as being congruent within the limits of the formal system, then the formal system may serve as an absolute value for the evaluation of things perceived by those observers using that formal value as a referent.
> [Hermit] Even so, that imposed absolute value remains relative only to that formal system and so long as the observers perceive it as such.
>
> <Lucifer> What did you think of the original article?
> [Hermit] I thought that Fish came across as completely unfamiliar with formal logic.
> [Hermit] And Thomas Nagel came across as a Jesuit.
> <Lucifer> lol, how so a Jesuit?
> [Hermit] Defining the terms of reference in such a way that Fish could not make a valid response within the framework asserted. Fish should not have accepted the framework itself.
> * Hermit despises Fish even more
> [Hermit citing original article] <<Consider the statement "Everything is subjective." This idea is nonsensical, anti-postmodernist Thomas Nagel has written, "for it would itself have to be either subjective or objective. But it can't be objective, since in that case it would be false if true. And it can't be subjective, because then it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false.">>
> [Hermit] "Everything is subjective" is an invalid articulation, not subject to the derivation of a truth value.
> [Hermit] So to tear it apart is to construct a strawman. It is neither false, nor true, it is invalid.
>
> ----
> This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS.
> <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25796>
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!"
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