From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 14:11:37 MDT
On 25 Jul 2002 at 12:18, 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.
Any morality that has a chance of working must be relative to, that is
grounded in, our existential situation, as embodied and
spatiotemporally finite self-and-other-conscious awarenesses sharing a
common lived world with similar but not identical others, whom we know
(or don't) in varying degrees and with (some of) whom we share a
common symbol system..
> [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.
In his theory of the eternal recurrence of the same, Nietszche
postulates just such an absolute (theoretical) referent.
> [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.
The same might be said of Lamarckianism, or Sheldrake's
morphogenetic fields, or even Hallian pseudophysics (shudder!).
> <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 :-)
I consider the discussion to be primarily epistemological and
ontological, not ethical. In fact, the Heisenbergian epistemological
limits of how far one can theoretically go to use matter/energy to
investigate itself both permit a number of possible ontological
alternatives and provides the possibility of eliminating others; thus
epistemology determines the range and scope of possible ontologies.
> [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.
There are three semiotic terms here; sign, signifier and signified. the
relations between signs and that which they signify and the sign/sign
relations within a sign system impose mutual constraints.
> * Hermit nods.
> [Hermit] A plague on both houses is right
> [Hermit] The argument ignores the fact that Goedel applies to such
statements.
Actually I was invoking Godel without mentioning his name.
> [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.
But the statement "every thing is some thing" is not only true, but
tautologous. One does not have to consider statements to be identical
with things; in fact, their very 'aboutness' vis-a-vis their objects, that is,
their referential/representational relation to their objects, prohibits such
an alternative. things are not related to themselves, they ARE
themselves; thus identicality is a real limit of relation (whereas
nonrelationality is an oppositional ideal limit, not to be realized in an
interconnected universe).
> <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....
Inconsistency, and of the self-referential variety; this is known as self-
contradiction, which is Nagel's point.
> <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.
It is not my fault if I have extensively studied the fields in question and
some others have perhaps not done so as much. I do not cite
contrafactual positions because I have found them to be flawed, for
exactly the reasons I have been presenting.
> <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.
Popperian Falsifiability forbids such statements (positive universal
truth-claims) if they have empirically testable referents; however, it does
not forbid their negations, such as "it is not the case that all swans are
white; here is a black-swan counterexample".
>
> [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.
Such as "the earth and the sun revolve around each other (and they do
- the sun just moves far less, being much larger) once for every
approximately 365 1/4 times that the earth rotates 360 degrees on its
spin axis." Truth may indeed be about things-in-the-world, and fathfully
correspond to them, that is, fairly depict actual processes or states of
affairs.
> [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.
>
But not all truth-statements are self-referential; the lion's share refer to
other-than-themselves (chiefly facticities), and thus do not suffer such
Godelian quandries (for instance, my rotation/revolution statement
above, or definitional statements, such as sixteen ounces equals a
pound).
>
> <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.
Actually, untrue is another meaning of invalid, but not the logical one.
Logically, statements can not be invalid; this flaw apply to syllogisms
constructed of them. Invalid syllogisms are logically inconsequent, that
is, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Unsound
syllogisms, however, are those which contain false or specious
statements as premises, rendering their conclusions suspect.
Statements may be true, false or meaningless.
>
> ----
> 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>
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