First (Non-Self) Citation.

Extract from Sardamov's (2015: 92) "Out of Touch: The Analytic Misconstrual of Social Knowledge."

Rather than my first non-self citation coming from one of my academic publications it was actually a post on this blog that managed to attract some attention.  I don't mind that the sentence is embedded in a sequence of text that I don't think is a reasonable approximation of something I have argued.  But you can judge that for yourself. I'm just miffed that someone cited something I wrote. 

Mere Atheism; Or, You Can’t Justify Your Teapot.

There is a scene in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 where the Chaplin is being interrogated about the theft of Major Major’s correspondence and is asked by a C.I.D. officer about his religious persuasion.  The Chaplin declares himself an Anabaptist, which the officer finds a little suspicious: “Chaplin, I once studied Latin.  I think it’s only fair to warn you of that before I ask my next question. Doesn’t the word Anabaptist simply mean that you’re not a Baptist?”

The Chaplin protests, but the officer pushes the point “are you a Baptist?”, “no sir”, “than you are not a Baptist, aren’t you?” Defined by an absence of belief, the C.I.D. officer credits the Chaplin with certain malicious actions against the war effort.  Atheists often find themselves in a similar situation to the Chaplin, defined by an absence of belief. Theists and religious apologists infer ex nihlo that atheists hold a series of positive beliefs that have no necessary connection to the position of atheism, often the notion that “something came from nothing” or that in the absence of god “anything is permissible”. 

The Night of the World.

The other day I watched Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Žižek's  The Pervert's Guide to Cinema and one moment that caught my attention was when Žižek discussed the Hegelian notion of "the nigh of the world".   I had never heard of this before so I when online and tracked it down, here is the crucial passage:
 

"The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity – a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This [is] the Night, the interior of [human] nature, existing here – pure Self – [and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns terrifying. [For from his eyes] the night of the world hangs out toward us". -  Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6).

This passage is often interpreted as a statement of the 'radical negativity' of the human psyche.  I can see a kind of poetic appeal, if not anti-poetic appeal in this idea.

Post-Positivism and Social Science.

 In the social sciences, the selection of research design and its constituent elements is an important phase of the research process.  The choice of research design is subject to a number of theoretical and methodological considerations.  Within the discipline of sociology, there exists a high level of theoretical and methodological pluralism with competing approaches to the study of society being pursued simultaneously which often gives rise to contention and contestation over the relative value of approaches. While quantitative research has relatively well-established principles of evaluation, appraisal of qualitative research is highly contentious. Carter and Little (2007) have suggested that consistency of research design is an important criterion via which to evaluate qualitative research:  epistemology, methodology and methods have to be internally consistent in order to form a solid research design. Adoption of a particular epistemological stance can affect researcher’s methodological choices, as some forms of epistemology are inconsistent with certain methodologies.  In view of this problem and to demonstrate the logic of research design, the constituent parts of epistemology, theory, methodology and methods will be given further exposition and organized via the principles of post-positivist epistemology into a consistent model of research design.  

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate.

See also:

- Seduction and Panopticism
-Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu.

Marco Polo’s Unicorn.

Towards the end of high-school, a close friend of the family suffered from a stroke that left him without the ability to read with any sustained proficiency. As such, M---- D---- gave me his collection of books that he had acquired over the years. He had majored in literature and the collection contained a good cross-section of the Western cannon – great books – from the inception of the Spanish novel through Dickens and Dostoevsky to the authors of the Latin American boom. There was much poetry, 18^th century English and French verse and anthologies of Bronze Age Greeks.

I can remember sitting with M---- D---- in hospital and talking of Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus and his smile of recognition and happiness that I was taking pleasure in reading and literature. That the books were going to good use. Whilst perpetually curious and striving for understanding, up to this point I had allowed my schooling to get in the way of my education. The collection was fuel to the fire. Among my favourites, the philosophical essays of Sartre and the novels of Camus helped to forge my own sense of self and my own set of principles without appeal to the eternal which I instinctively rejected. The eternal distinct of course, from eternity captured in the works of William Blake:

“ He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.”

To understand the concept of eternity, which I discovered in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, it took years, the last stanza of Several Questions Answers and an acid trip to resolve that paradox of the ephemeral and yet ever present instant. The tab of acid which induced this epiphany, taken without thought during a rather drunken New Year’s Eve party, had produced a state of timelessness in which minutes seemed to last forever. In this state, conscious of my condition, I contemplated Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell and one particular line:

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite"

The key phrase “doors of perception” was later borrowed by Aldus Huxley, for the title of a book reflecting on his experience with mescaline. Not that I would indulge Huxley’s views on the educative use of mescaline or that the drug can cleanse the doors of perception by undermining the supposed “eliminative function” of the brain allowing one to perceive pure reality without mediation; but the effect of time elongation produced by the acid trip did exemplify the notion, each moment stretched out into an eternity of excruciating self-referential dialogue on books, character and destiny. Of course, perception is not a function of elimination but rather an act of construction. The solipsist Bishop Berkeley, not Blake or Huxley, was closer to the mark. Dual perceptive optical illusions demonstrate how perception is a function of ‘noticing an aspect’ which the brain constructs in conjunction with our previous experience into our picture of reality – only until we shift focus and recreate the picture yet again. Acid does not expand consciousness, in the sense suggested by Huxley's imitators; it merely interferes with how the brain interprets perceptual data allowing for the illusion of insight. The epiphany on eternity, less the result of true insight into the nature of reality was more likely the outcome of previously acquired mental furnishings: the accumulation of books and memories of casual café conversations.

The Venetian traveller Marco Polo, while journeying through Asia found rhinoceroses and saw unicorns. The point here is that books and myths, previously accumulated mental furnishings, inform our understanding and perception of the world (this should be taken as a simple statement of fact: there is no sociological or literary substitute for epistemology). Marco Polo saw unicorns, because European folklore had led him to believe that is what he was seeing.

Written by Mathew Toll.

“No Maps for These Territories”

Traversing through cyberspace today, I came across a little gem “No Maps for These Territories” featuring the man who coined the term cyberspace, cyberpunk novelist William Gibson. It’s a meditation on our nature as ‘mediated’ human-beings, the extent of technological saturation in our quotidian lives and our desire to produce extended networks of prosthetics. Not to mention, he delves into the process of writing and the nature of fiction, of the relationship between our conscious self and the unconsciousness. Well worth the watch, enjoy.

EDIT: The youtube user who had hosted this removed it. However, here is the trailer:

Marx on Religion.

" The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."

From "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right" by Karl Marx.

Piero Sraffa’s Gesticulation.

The following quote relays an anecdote with regards to Piero Sraffa and his influence upon Ludwig Wittgenstein. I’ve hear of a similar story in which Wittgenstein was supposedly sent into a tailspin over a cyclist’s contemptuous gesture that he felt belied his work in the “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”. Anyways, here it is:

“Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'” -Norman Malcolm. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. pp. 58–59.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but Sraffa’s gesture to Wittgenstein is not a proposition. By definition, a proposition is a statement that functions as a truth-claim. Sraffa’s gesture is more akin to a negation and therefore a classic Wittgensteinian logical constant. No?

"Albert Camus et le Nihilisme"

I don’t speak French; I have no idea what he is saying. Presumably something to do with nihilism and absurdity, but I find it interesting to see Camus’s mannerisms and hear his voice. It’s odd, having seen photos of him and imagined from that (and his work) what kind of man he was, to see him move.

Herodotus: As Seen On the Train.

Croesus remembers Solon's point: Call no man happy until he is dead.

Plato on Love.

Aristophanes, the Athenian comedic playwright is famous for lambasting politicians during the Peloponnesian war. But also according to Plato’s “Symposium” he put forth a theory of love, in a short mythopoeic narrative. Expressing the idea that human-beings are inherently incomplete, wanting for another individual who represents their other half. This theory was counterpoised with several other conceptualizations of what constituted love. Socrates in the “symposium’’ also postulated a conception of love advocating that love constituted the “desire for perpetual possession of the good”. The purpose of this paper will be to render an account of both Aristophanes and Socrates account of love in more detail. Furthermore discussing the contention between the two theories and critically evaluating which if at all these theories adequately elucidate the nature of love.

The story delivered by Aristophanes started with the idea that originally human-beings had three genders (Plato, 2005, p 26). There were males born of the sun, women born of the earth and the androgynous a mix of the two born of the moon. These early human-being were quite different from their current incarnation, having two of everything, two faces, two pairs of legs (Plato, 2005, p. 27). These human-beings were according to the myth stronger and more ambition and tried to assault the Olympian gods. Zeus desiring the continued worship of the gods refrained from destroying the human race for their insolence. Deciding upon another form of punishment, that of cutting the humans in half. Creating individuals who are merely half of a whole Zeus designed these individuals with more weakness, deficient in their isolation and incompleteness.

To overcome this isolation and deficiency individuals sort the company of another. Sex was invented for the reproduction and propagation of the human-race but also to overcome the sense of alienation. Aristophanes claimed sex had this second function not only in heterosexual relations but also homoerotic liaisons. Homosexuality comes about from those who were split from either male or female wholes. Heterosexual individuals were split from the androgynous whole. Each individual therefore searches to find their perfect match, their other half to gain completeness. Aristophanes claims this desire as a human universality of condition, everyone wishes for a perfect union with their own natural counterpart. Love is therefore according to Aristophanes, the volition to become whole.

When Socrates gives his account of love, he reiterates the position of Diotima whom taught him “the ways of love” (45). Diotima communicated the dimensions of love through a narrative about its creation. According to this story, Poverty wishing to alleviate her condition decided to sleep with Resource. The prodigy of this union was love; love gained its nature from the dual characteristics of its parents. From Poverty love inherited that quality of always being in need and from resource love schemes after that which is beautiful (Plato, 2005, p 49). The short story elucidates the nature of lack and desire within loves dynamic as expressed by Diotima’s theory. Love is not itself an object of desire but a desire for an object. The object of loves desire is that which is good. Diotima counters the theory which Aristophanes represented by arguing that we love another not because they constitute our other half but rather because they have the quality of being good (Plato, 2005, p.52).

The possession of the good and the beautiful is taken by Diotima as the definition of happiness (Plato, 2005, p. 47). Pushing this idea further in their didactic dialogue, Diotima proposes that individuals should wish to posses the good forever (53). As consequence of this, particular actions must be taken in order to perpetuate the possession of the good. Love as a result of this logic gains a function, giving birth to beauty both of mind and body (53). Sexual intercourse is therefore a manifestation of this love; procreation is how human-beings attain immortality and therefore perpetuate their possession of the good (54). This procreation functions not only through somatic means but also through mental procreation.

Mental procreation is therefore another way to attain immortality. Lycurgus and Solon creators of the Spartan and Athenian constitution respectively have gained “fame immortal” by the proliferation of virtue, a mental quality (Plato, 2005, p. 59). Diotima went as far to postulate that there is a hierarchy of goods. The lowest form of good is the beauty of the body; one should then turn towards higher goods in the mental realm if one is capable (Plato, 2005, p. 60). The highest form of beauty put forth by this theory put it beyond the realm of “human flesh” and “moral rubbish’’ (Plato, 2005, p.62). Platonic love at its highest manifestation turns away from the world, towards an abstract idea. This idea is only known to “god” the source of our polluted copy, we cannot grasp the original (Plato, 1987, p. 260). Camus argued against this conception of love inverting its hierarchy claiming “those who love truth should seek for love in marriage” further denoting the later as “love without illusions”(1979, P. 271). This partial criticism of platonic love demonstrates its inadequacy when attaching to the natural phenomena of love a religious dimension and hierarchy of forms.

The two theories of love have been elucidated; the theory held by Socrates is implicitly a critique of the theory put forward by Aristophanes. Aristophanes held that we love another for the unique singularity that they are, as they constitute our other half. Love is the desire to attain a connection with that other half and gain completeness. This theory renders the nature of isolation and feelings of alienation which is not captured in Socrates theory. But Aristophanes is severely critiqued by Socrates, when Diotmia argued that we do not love another for their unique singularity but rather the qualities which made them beautiful. This theory at first seems more practical and therefore adequate in explaining the nature of love and attraction, the desire for the good. But it’s hierarchy of forms is lacking. Because it preferences an abstract ideal above all worldly things. It is furthermore an abstraction which cannot be known, which renders this component of the theory superfluous even dangerous if we follow Camus reasoning that it constitutes illusion.

Bibliography

Camus, A. (1979), “Notebook iv”, Selected Essays & Notebooks, Ed & Trans Thody, P. Penguin, Ringwood

Plato, (2005), Symposium, Trans Gill, C. & Desmond, L. Penguin, St Ives plc.

Plato, (1987), The Republic, Trans Lee, D. (2nd ED), Penguin, St Ives plc.

---
(written early 2007)

Liberalism and Colonialism.

The first major wave of European colonization was initiated after the discovery of the Americas by Columbus in the late 15th century. The Colonization of these new lands was at first justified by the catholic nations as their duty to proselytize Christianity. Therefore their domination of the indigenous population was alleged to be of a great service to them, saving their souls from eternal damnation. This ‘Civilizing’ project was also used in an adapted form by British liberal political philosophers to justify their nation’s own colonization and empire building. Liberalism is a political philosophy that developed during the age of Enlightenment, noted for its ideals of individual freedom and rights. Two of Liberalism’s most prominent advocates; John Locke and John Stuart Mill supported the practice of colonialism. The rationalization of colonialism by Locke has been argued to represent the bankruptcy of western liberalism and its purported universal respect for human rights. To ascertain whether colonialism does demonstrate the bankruptcy of liberalism it first has to be established what colonialism constitutes and it’s development. Furthermore, liberalism needs to be more thoroughly elucidated with special attention paid to how Liberals justified colonial expansion.

Colonial expansion has a long history within European society. The Hellenic city states occupied a small territorial region. When population pressures increased, a segment of the populous established themselves in another area (Smith, 1991, p.493). The settlers were autonomous from their city of origin, declaring war independently and conducting its own administration. The Roman Republic implemented a modified form of colonial expansion, sending poor freeman to settle colonies with restricted autonomy (Smith, 1991, p. 495). The establishment of colonies gave poor Roman citizens economic opportunity. But they also functioned as garrisons in conquered localities, further expanding the Roman Republic’s sphere of influence. Colonialism came to denote an expansion of one nation’s territorial domination, through settling and displacing natives or directly administering the newly incorporated territory.

European Colonization was justified via ethnocentric conceptions of what is a human-being and how individuals and societies should function. Originally the Spaniard’s conceptualized the Native Americans as non-human; they had human form according to the Catholics but had the nature of beasts and consequently were “savages” (Parekh, 1997, p. 174). This distinction between Europeans and Native Americans, as human and non-human established a racist underpinnings of colonialism. Therefore under this racist ideological belief system the natives had no rights to life or property (Parekh, 1997, 175). During the initial period after European discovery of the Americas, the Spaniards technique for the expropriation of gold was to pillage it from the natives, a process which was totally completed within a decade (Smith, 1991, p. 499). Later Christians started to re-conceptualize the nature of the native population, observing that they had religious inclination and therefore had a human-essence however misguided and imperfect (Parekh, 1997, p. 175-6). The savage’s misguided and imperfect ways were cryptic-Christian. According to this logic, their conversion to Christianity in the proper sense would be an accomplishment of their “deepest aspirations” (Parekh, 1997, p. 177). This European enforcement of what constituted, the proper lifestyle on the natives marked the beginnings of the civilizing project, which was later adopted by liberalism.

A fundamental proposition of classic liberal philosophy is that human-beings are above all individuals, defined by this quality of individuality above collective identities (Heywood, 2002, p. 43). Liberals therefore insist upon the notion of individual rights and freedom to pursue their own ends as far as their action doesn’t impede another individual from doing the same. Governments which employ the tenets of liberalism must base their authority on “the consent of the governed” maintaining “equality before the law” (Heywood, 2002, p.44). When Good Government is instituted, each individual is therefore in accordance with their nature free to pursue their own development and self-actualization. This conceptualization of the optimal form of government is based upon a theory of the individual; Locke considered human-beings to be endowed with certain essential features (Parekh, 1997, p. 181).

The highest quality of human-beings, as postulated by Locke was their inheritance of reason, which differentiated them from animals (Parekh, 1995, p. 83). This hierarchy of beings, between those who have reason and beasts that don’t, was the basis of human dignity. As such human-beings have a duty to utilize their reason, to approach their interaction with nature and other individuals on a rational basis. To be rational according to Locke was to be productive and take advantage of natural resources to there full capacity. The application of this rationality was evaluated by Locke according to ethnocentric conceptualizations of society its notion of; private property, production optimization and political organization (Parekh, 1997, p.182).

For individuals to fulfil their rational duty they needed private property which leads, in the liberal view, towards individual freedom and industry. The Native Americans lacked private property, their land was left vacant and unenclosed, therefore it could be expropriated by civilized nations (Parekh, 1997, 183).The nature of enclosures were defined in a European sense with the use of fences and barriers that clearly marked the demarcation between properties. The Native Americans delineated between territories, but not in a way recognizable to Europeans (Parekh, 1995, p.85). Even in localities where properties were clearly defined with symbols recognizable to the European gaze, it was not adequate enough for Native American ownership to be respected. If they did not utilize their enclosed lands to maximum efficiency, they were guilty of not fulfilling their duty of rationality. The practice of letting crops decompose every three years, to enrich the soil was considered by Locke to be a waste of resources and consequently a violation of their duty (Parekh, 1995, p.85).

This same argument, of not utilizing land to its optimal efficiency, was used to justify the British colonization of Australia and displacement of the indigenous populations (Yarwood, Knowling, 1982, p. 15). Though even in Europe there were vast geographical regions left empty and vacant, which were not utilised to their maximum efficiency. Locke did not consider these areas as open for colonisation by other nations (Parekh, 1995, p. 86). The key distinction between an uncivilised and civilised nation’s vacant territory was the issue of political organisation and sovereignty. The Native Americans lacked a centralised form of authority in a European sense of a nation-state (Parekh, 1997, p. 183). The liberal argument that the Native Americans “state of nature” allowed for European intervention was couched in moralistic terms. The civilising project, would bring to the uncivilised population great benefits, and Locke thought in that the future the Native Americans would “Think themselves beholden” to the colonizers (quoted in Parekh, 1995, p 88). These notions of European superiority were often rooted in racism and the civilizing project was not always accepted as viable because of the postulated deficiency of non-European races (Jose, 1998, p. 42).

Concurrent with the claim of racism, colonialism and liberalism’s notion of a ‘civilizing’ project often neglects the harsh realities of European colonization. European intervention and colonization was not based on a moral duty, rather it resulted from unequal power-dynamics which enabled European states to appropriate the territories of political societies incapable of holding them. This is an extension of the European state-system, functioning around a “balance of power”, where the sovereignty of a nation was respected in so far as the central authority could maintain control over their territory, quelling internal strife or the incursion of another state (Jones, 1985, p.108).

The Native Americans and other populations displaced by European colonization did not have sufficient ability to resist the aggression and territorial incursion. In Locke’s evaluation British colonialism was in contradistinction to the earlier Spanish colonialism humane. The British respected the indigenous population’s natural rights, as Locke had conceived them. If indigenous people resisted the expropriation of their lands though, it automatically rendered their individual rights invalid (Parekh, 1997, p. 88). Liberalism’s dichotomy between individual and collective rights, of ‘respecting’ the former but not the later, in practice renders both defunct. Consequently the costs in human-lives incurred by non-European populations as a result of colonization were colossal. The Dutch controlled Banjuwangi in Java, which had a population larger then 80,000 in 1750 but by 1811 the area had been depopulated to such an extent that only 18,000 remained (Marx, 1986, p. 704). In India the British between the years of 1769 and 1770 “manufactured a famine” by buying the rice supplies in total, selling it again for exaggerated prices (Marx, 1986, p.705). This Tragedy arises from a system of thought, which tests forms of governance through economic experience (Foucault, 1997, p. 76). Locke’s notion of rationality, especially the optimization of production is symptomatic of this test.

Locke’s defence of Colonialism offers ample opportunity to evaluate Western Liberalism. Modern Colonialism was defined as having the key characteristics of one nation’s territorial domination of another locality through the displacement or rule of the indigenous population with the concurrent settling of the territory. European colonization of the new world and other territories was justified by ideological systems. Christianity and Liberalism, both holding in common the belief in European Superiority were used to rationalize colonialism. This ethnocentric belief in European superiority and the dichotomy between the civilized world and the savages has often been characterized as racist. The original Christians to inhabit the new world did not consider the natives human. This later belief was later abandoned but the belief in their inferiority continued. Liberalism sought to give an explanation and justification of colonialism. Locke, as a representative of this school considered human-beings as endowed with essential characteristics. The most important of which was reason. This separated humans from animals; and as such individuals have a duty to utilize reason which should inform their interaction with nature and other human-beings. A rational society according to Locke supported the rights of individuals above all, supporting private property as a means of self-actualization, the realization of humanity’s inherent nature. Non-European societies which did not conform to European notions of private property, production optimization and furthermore political organization forfeited their collective rights. Individuals retained their rights in so far as they did not defend their collective rights of ownership over land appropriated during colonization. Therefore though liberalism in theory supported native individual rights, in practice they had no rights. But Locke supposed that colonization, even if it undermined collective rights held benefits for the non-European populace through introducing rationality. This idyllic picture of colonization as a progressive force was merely a rationalization of European dominance and exploitation. Consequently Liberalism’s historical record in relation to colonialism has rendered it severely compromised, when it justified the authority of governments over basic human rights.

Written by Mathew Toll.

Bibliography.

Parekh, B. (1995), “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke & Mill”, Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, Edited Pieterse, J.N. & Parekh, B. London, Zed Books, pp. 81-98.

Parekh, B. (1997), “The West and its Others”, Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edward Said and the Gravity of History, Edited Parry, B. & Squires, London, Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 173-193.

Foucault, M. (1997), “The Birth of Biopolitics”, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Edited Rabinow, P. St Ives, Penguin Books.

Heywood, A. (2002), Politics, (2ed), China, Palgrave Macmillan.

Jones, E.L. (1985), The European Miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia, USA, Cambridge University Press.

Jose, J. (1998), "Imperial Rule and the Ordering of Intellectual Space: The Formation of the Straits Philosophical Society.” Crossroads:An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 12(2) pp. 23-54.

Marx, K. (1986), Capital: A critique of political economy, Vol 1, Edited Engels, F. Trans Moore, S. & Aveling, E. Moscow, Progress Publishers.

Smith, A. (1991), The Wealth of Nations, London, Everyman's Library.

Yarwood, A. T. Knowling, M. J. (1982), Race Relations in Australia: A history, Singapore, Methuen Australia.

(Writte mid-2007).

"After The Orgy"

"The orgy in question is the moment when modernity
exploded on us, the moment of liberation in every
sphere. Political liberation, sexual liberation, liberation
of the forces of production, liberation of the forces of
destruction, women’s liberation, children’s liberation,
liberation of unconscious drives, liberation of art. . . .
This was a total orgy—an orgy of the real, the rational,
the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development
as a crisis of development. . . . Now everything has
been liberated, the chips are down, and we find ourselves
faced collectively with the big question: WHAT
DO WE DO NOW THAT THE ORGY IS OVER? Now all
we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation."

- Jean Baudrillard, in "The Transparency of evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena".

It has to be said, Baudrillard is terribly flippant.

"Seeing is Believing"

The first University essay I ever wrote, for open foundation at the University of Newcastle midway through 2006. Enjoy:

On the Absurd.

Here Robert C. Solomon discusses Albert Camus and the Absurd.

The Logic of Existential Meaning

“When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.”

- Charles Darwin (1).

Darwin of course was unjustified in his belief; fear seems to be the most universal of emotions both for human beings and the greater animal kingdom. This emotion though is not simply reserved in human life in the struggle for existence; we feel fear and anxiety when we make choices about the direction of our lives. This is our struggle for meaning. The current piece will focus on discourses of and relevant to that struggle and concepts surrounding it. Linking discourses diverse as logic and the Abrahamic religions to find the structure of this struggle.

In ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ Wittgenstein argued that: “Propositions cannot represent the logical form: this mirrors itself in the propositions” (2).Thus the logic of a symbolism be it language or mathematics cannot be found outside of that symbolism. Because the logic of that symbolism is its very structure, its schema. The “propositional sign cannot be contained in itself” (3) but a “sign determines a logical form only together with its logical syntactic application” (4).

Language is according to Wittgenstein a series of atomic propositions about the world; its symbolism is a picture of the world, of reality and everything that is the case. The truth-argument which a proposition makes is its picture of the world; the truth-value is determined by the ability to provide proofs for the validity of the picture.

Further argument put forward in the Tractatus, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (5), therefore in following this argument so far Wittgenstein conceives a linguistic limit in our understanding of the world. But he further stipulates that “For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist.”(6) I.e. if you have a question there is an answer, “most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language…And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems” (7).

During the second part of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein turns his attention from logical symbolism and the rules by which philosophy must separate sense from senselessness to questions about the meaning of life, ethics and religious mysticism.

“The world and life are one” (8), we would be mistaken if we thought Wittgenstein felt the sense of the world and therefore life was found inside the world and life. That the Schema of the world would be found in the totality of its particulars, this logic would correlate with the rules set out for a logical symbolism. But we cannot gain from Wittgenstein such consistency of logic.

“The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value - and if there were, it would be of no value.” (9)

It is in this sense that Wittgenstein dissolves the question of meaning in life, opting out by two common techniques used in inadequate philosophical systems. Firstly to look for life’s meaning outside of life and in conjunction with or separately neglects the internal logic of the philosophical system to render meaning meaningless. It is with this respect that Wittgenstein has similarities with both the theologian and the absurdist, in strake contrast to his grammatical theory of meaning.

The impulse of the theologian or mystic is to seek otherworldly explanations for worldly questions. Karl Marx famously summarised this impulse as such during the introduction of his “Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right”:

“Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless condition. It is the opium of the people” (10).

Marx goes further to assert that “abolition of religion as people’s illusory happiness is the demand for their real happiness” (11). According to this view of religion it functions as a mere placebo-worldview, where one finds substitutive satisfaction in sacrificing this world for the sake of the after-world. Sigmund Freud went as far to characterise religion as a mass delusion or social neurosis. “Neurotics” he wrote “create substitutive satisfaction for themselves in their symptoms, but these either create suffering in themselves or become sources of suffering by causing the subjects difficulties in their relations with their surroundings and society” (12). From the angle of aesthetics, whether an individual chooses to engage in such delusion is completely their own choice as western secularisation has largely removed the state’s powers of coercion in such affairs. Recently, with the growth of Pentecostalism though, and other fundamentalist Christian sects, there have been renewed pushes to reclaim those powers for religious application. With the aim of correctly understanding Human life the religious view is a misdirection of analytical focus and thus damaging in our pursuit of answers to our riddles.

In response to this Agnosticism or Atheism is the application of Occam's razor, “if a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless” (13). The existence or non-existence of god is irrelevant from the standpoint of human life. If we engaged in the entertainment of such abstractions we place ourselves on a metaphysical treadmill, ‘what comes before alpha?’ only to redefine alpha and ask the question yet again.

Therefore religious faith offers up no answers for the inquisitive mind. Søren Kierkegaard, a Christian himself, defined faith as absolute belief in the absence of reason on the basis of the absurd. “For he who loves god without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves god in faith reflects on god” (14). Abraham believed in the absence of all evidence that god would spare his Isaac upon the mount of Moriah. He first sacrificed his critical capacity along with his ethic duty to Isaac and his own emotional bond as father to son. Choosing to follow his duty to god, thus we have the archetype of the religious man. One surely recognises this condition in the modern suicide bomber.

On all grounds the religious impulse is a condition of poverty offering no answers, just resignation to an unseen father figure and a supposedly loving relationship founded upon silence. Leaving behind the road to Damascus we come upon the second failing of Wittgenstein and that of inadequate philosophical systems. This is to deny the logic of a system to render meaning as meaningless. Philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and the absurdists are guilty of this failing.

According to early work of Sartre consciousness is immaterial thus the rules of cause and effect that govern in the material world have its causation chain broken when an individual’s volition is in play. Man is the embodiment of freedom, man chooses his path with a free will and therefore determinism is just an incoherent philosophic attitude of self-deceivers.

The anti-determinism of the existentialist leads to their advocacy of subjectivism. Individuals with their immaterial consciousness interpret objects of the intersujective world and then act upon them. Because human action is subjective there is no objective human nature and no objective meaning thus life is intrinsically meaningless. Subjective meaning is affirmed on life by the action of the individual. Thus man’s existence precedes his essence:

“If indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s actions by reference to a given and specific human nature: in other words, there is no determinism- man is free, man is freedom” (15). With this in mind the Existentialist declares “I am thus responsible for myself and for all man, and I am creating a certain image of man I would have to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man”.

The existentialist states that because man is responsible for himself (and humanity) he is in anguish. He is in anguish because as soon as he commits to any act he feels the responsibility for himself and humanity. The existentialist does not claim to have moral authority over humanity his subjectivism doesn’t allow objective virtue; he declares “if I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad” (16). There is nothing for the existentialist to reference in the process of choosing right or wrong; the choice falls to what he can live with by being responsible for its results on him and humanity.

Humanity during the reign of terror sent alleged royalists to climb the scaffolds. Jean-Paul Marat felt his actions were that of a philanthropist, cutting off five or six hundred heads for the benefit of humanity. In the philosophical system of the Existentialist the moral merits of this action are neither objective nor universal. What Sartre does judge though is whether or not the action is authentic or in bad faith. If one blames others for their own action and denies responsibility that action is inauthentic or done in bad faith.

The Existentialist sees that human condition is that of free commitment. God doesn’t exist therefore humanity is in a state of abandonment with no transcending beings or priori’s to guide us. Sartre commits to the notion of individual freedom as the only human priori but denies that there is any human nature as a priori because there is only a “human universality of condition” (17). This is a sceptical argument like ‘the sun rises every morning but how will we know if it will rise tomorrow’ or in our case ‘Man acts in certain pattens but how do we know he will tomorrow? ” Thus because of the uncertainty of our condition human-beings live not only in anguish but in despair, ‘if I take action in support of a goal, how do I know others will act in support?” This means that despair is the emotion that man feels because he acts without hope. To summarise, the point of Sartre’s existentialism is to give humanity its divinity as its own creator and along with this divinity its responsibility.

There is a certain contradiction in this thought, that of a false objective subjective dichotomy. The actions and experiences of every particular individual never seem to add up to the totality of what is the human experience. If each individual is tied to the concept of existence precedes essence it becomes an objective fact of human experience, not simply a subjective phenomena. The Existentialists are right in saying that man lives in anguish, because we have choices and responsibility for those choices. For whom he is in relation to the external forces. But they are wrong to preclude the idea of an objective meaning of life. If each particular individual’s life is made up of a series of choices about the values to which they affirm and live for then the root purpose of humanity in the objective sense is the struggle for purpose - for our meaning.

Part of this failure by the Sartrean existentialists is that their ontological inquiries were carried out under a kind of bad faith, under the illusion of a particular semi-moralistic theory of authenticity and bad faith. Their conceptualisation of causality in relation to the individual could not touch upon the notion of conditioning or the zone of proximal development because any such thing would negate individual responsibility as part of our nature of being. Individual agency is a component of the human condition but not to the extent envisioned by the French existentialists, death for one is normally a decisive decision but not one we make.

The inevitability of death futures highly in discourses surrounding the notions of human life and it’s meaning. In “At the Gravesite” Kierkegaard likened the nature of death's influence on life to scarcity in economics. If a merchant dumps a shipment of products at sea because the market is already saturated with a high supply it creates an artificial scarcity which increases the price of the remaining product. If we did not die and life was infinite, then life according to Kierkegaard would be of little value. This adds an extra dimension to our anguish because our ability to affirm life and what we consider worthy values is finite and scarce. Camus believed that this was not our first concern; firstly we must concern ourselves with whether or not the value in life is valuable at all.

The first question of a rational person in Camus’s mind was to be or not to be, the question of suicide. He very tactfully at the start of ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ stated his belief that life should be lived and that suicide is absurd in itself, lest some unlucky soul become connived of the correctness of his arguments before fully completing the text. To understand Camus's ideas we must understand he detested being called a “philosopher of the absurd”. Expressing his motivation and in ‘The Enigma’ Camus wrote “Thus one becomes a prophet of the absurd. Yet what did I do expect reason about an idea with I found in the streets of my time?”(18). As one understands now Camus’s work function more as a meditation and open debate then a complete system of thought. He linked ‘absurd reasoning’ with that of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in that it “declines to explain the world, it wants to be merely a description of actual experience” (19). The Absurd is best characterised as a mood of a nihilistic nature marred by the disunity of universal and particular. This disunity is the same objective (universal)-subjective (particular) dichotomy which rendered life’s meaning in the existentialist systems meaningless.

It was an idea that captivated a generation, but unlike Kierkegaard they found faith deficient, not accepting it as an answer to the question of absurdity. Like Nietzsche who found god dead upon his throne, behind the stone walls of heaven, Camus sought a way beyond the crisis of “our darkness nihilism” (20). If an individual finds absolutely no meaning in life then from some perspectives they should kill themselves. But suicide would be an absurd answer, to choose death is to affirm a value in absolute nihilism and thus commit a self-contradicting act. There is no absolute nihilism as such a thing is non-existent. Equally there is no eternal absolute meaning like that of the Hegelian dialectic in the nature of life which unifies and dictates both objective and subjective meaning - there is no ‘objective’ standard of subjective values such a thing is absurd. Camus true to his inconsistent logic of the absurd chose to ‘rebel’ against the meaninglessness by asserting his own relative value, all of course equally absurd. If we are to judge Camus’s conclusions I’m not sure that we could fault him. His premise was not to explain our nature of being in the objective sense but rather actual experience, though he almost achieves it all the same. From the stand point of understanding our ontological condition as human beings, he shows the absurdity of nihilism while also the inconsistency of eternal abstractions. But Absurdism misses the simple addition of the subjective conditions into its universal commonality of condition, or its mega-structure.

To miss this mega-structure, to find the notion of life’s meaning incomprehensible is to do so upon the notion of its inventible incomprehensibility. In actuality we have a great body of empirical data, the annals of history and our own personal experience with which to answer the question, what is the meaning of life? Its answer is situated within the structure of empirical data; the meaning of life is imbued in the very structure of life. It is the very struggle for purpose and the affirmation of values, whether or not one individual agrees with another’s subjective affirmations is irrelevant from our perspective of ontological investigation, from objective meaning. For our nihilistic mood we shall turn to psychoanalysis for some elucidation. According to the theory of Jacques Lacan during clinical practice the patient supposes a secret knowledge on the analyst. During the processes of analysis the subject starts to ‘de-suppose’ the analyst, realising they have no secret knowledge. Losing faith in their dependency on the analyst they are forced to realise their own unconscious desire to remain dependent on the neurosis. The patient is therefore forced to recognise the place of personal agency in pursuit of mental health. Whatever reservation one has in regards to Lacanian psychoanalysis, the concept helps to illustrate the nature of our question, that there is no secret knowledge, we already know but merely have to assert our agency to resolve the existential crisis and the mood of absurdity. If, of course, that is what we want at all.

Written by Mathew Toll.

Notes.

1)“The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, (Penguin, London 1985), page 129.
2)“Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” by Ludwig Wittgenstein, (Dover, Mineola 1999), proposition 4.121, page 53.
3)Ibid, proposition 3.332, page 42.
4)Ibid, proposition 3.327, page 42.
5)Ibid, proposition 5.6, page 88.
6)Ibid, proposition 6.5, page 107.
7)Ibid, proposition 4.003, page 45.
8)Ibid, proposition 5.621, page 89.
9)Ibid, proposition 6.41, page 105.
10)“Writings of the young Marx on Philosophy and Society” (Anchor Books, Garden City 1969), page 250.
11) Ibid.
12)“Civilization and its Discontents” by Sigmund Freud, (Penguin, Suffolk 2004), page 56.
13)“Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” by Ludwig Wittgenstein, (Dover, Mineola 1999), proposition 3.328, page 42.
14)“Fear and Trembling” by Søren Kierkegaard, (Penguin, St Ives 2003), page 66.
15)“Existentialism is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm.
16)Ibid.
17)Ibid.
18)“Selected Essays & Notebooks” By Albert Camus, (penguin Aylesbury 1979), page 144.
19) “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus, (penguin Aylesbury 1983), page 44.
20) “Selected Essays & Notebooks” By Albert Camus, (penguin Aylesbury 1979), page 145.

(written mid 2006).

The Conservative Praxis of Postmodernism.

“That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.” — Jean Baudrillard (1)

In the post-May 68 intellectual climate postmodernism ascended from an emergent philosophy to a mainstay in university humanities faculties. These stars of the French intellectual scene set out to critique and deconstruct the enlightenment tradition. But as Foucault informed us we should not ‘blackmail’ a thinker into being either for or against the enlightenment. Therefore following this line it is not as simply to say that because a postmodernist critiques the enlightenment that the theorist represents a revolt of unreason against rationality in social life. Jacques-Benigne Bossuet and Thomas Hobbes both advocated political absolutism, but the philosophical system backed by Hobbes shifted the justification of government from divinity of the sovereign to practicality and utility for its constituents. Enlightenment philosophers took Hobbes’ naturalistic approach and built onto it while removing other elements, concluding in favour of democratic and republican ideals which Hobbes had hoped to fight. The political and philosophical systems put forward by Enlightenment philosophers though were not monolithic, having contained within their ambiguous definitions many differences of opinion. But one can assured they favoured relatively progressive forms of political activity with their naturalistic methods and notions of progress, truth and justice.

Postmodernists have sought to challenge all notion of universality, hierarchy of values, binary opposition and grand-narratives. Through challenging traditional notions of the subject and society, post-modernists have been associated with left-wing politics. However, their philosophical systems do nothing but create a problematic foundation for the engagement in critique.

The concept of practical criticism or critique implies two parts, negative and positive. Critical negativity finds the object of criticism deficient in some form. The negativity leads to the positive which is the affirmation of a value or attribute found deficient in the object criticised. In Praxis, negativity manifests itself in negation and the positive manifests itself in the product of transformation. Transformative politics necessarily implies criticism of current political establishment, both in its theoretical foundation and its institutions and theoretical foundations and hypothetical institutions to replace the negated. Post-modern criticism is Deconstructionist in that it seeks to critique forms of hegemony, but unlike practical criticism does not seek an alternative hegemony. Derrida defined this though not as a nihilism but rather openness to an unknown ‘other’. The absence of a signified transformative goal undermines the ability to produce practical critique in the pursuit of progressive change, a quintessential quality of left-wing politics.

To take a literary example, Graham Greene’s short story “The Destructors” features a gang of youths who systematically deconstruct a house, at first superficially, until they remove the very foundations which hold the structure together; the day after, the house falls over. The gang’s act of deconstruction renders the house a pile of rubble; they have destroyed and created anew with new possibilities of creation. Our lead on the gang’s story breaks off at that point. Deconstructionist criticism echoes this story of an East London gang in that they are anti-‘what is’ but have no ‘to be,’ and thus their deconstruction doesn’t necessarily follow to progressive developments.

In all probability, deconstruction could lead to reactionary, even fascist developments in that, for example, human rights are a Universalist ideal system, and therefore a hegemonic construct. If we approach human rights from a radical subjectivist position we undermine the hegemonic concept and thus render it useless.

The nomothetic discourses which construct the notions of human rights and justice stand between postmodernists and the further degradation of human dignity. For as we know human rights are not universally respected by all, particularly Western governments who claim positive universal values as they push forward their own national and corporate interests under the guise of a false cosmopolitanism. To infer from this situation that ‘Western Civilization’ and philosophy are oppressive at a fundamental level, i.e. it’s championing of rationality and hierarchy of values is a misapprehension of modernity’s challenges.

The crisis in Western Civilization is not caused by the application of rationality but the misuse of rationality. It’s the creation of ‘Rational-choice theories’ whose logic is based on a series of assumptions eventually divorcing itself from actuality when it fails to adapt. A prime example of this process is the discipline of economics, an underlying principle of which is the presumption of scarcity and thus the necessity of a market. Scarcity in resources has marred human society since time immemorial, till recent times when technological developments have increased the production levels of essential commodities to the point that scarcity is now artificially created. Sustaining an illogical price system serves not the ‘unlimited wants’ of the people but rather the sectional interest of power elites and corporations. This construct of principles breaks with the idea of a rational-choice theory which should be aimed at satisfying human needs on a Utilitarian basis.

This failure of the Western establishment and global economy should not be combated by undercutting our ability to make rational-choices and values in the pursuit of progressive enlightenment ideals. Postmodernist have pushed in the face of such challenges theories of cultural relativism, that values are cultural constructions and therefore to say that one value superior to another is foolhardy and even racist when involving inter-cultural discourse. Therefore we cannot declare the universality of the right to life because that creates a hierarchy of values; one which is in contradiction to other cultures i.e. death penalties in the USA or public beheadings in Saudi Arabia.

This denial of ones ability to choose one value over another serve only to sustain the value currently entrenched. Therefore by virtue of logical necessity postmodernism’s ultra-radical break with ‘convention’ becomes rather conservative. Left-wing politics and affirmation of value are firmly based on the enlightenment/modernist worldview, in the words of Marshall Berman:

“I have been arguing that those of us who are most critical of modern life need modernism most, to show us where we are and where we can begin to change our circumstances and ourselves. In search of a place to begin, I have gone back to one of the first and greatest of modernists, Karl Marx. I have gone to him not so much for his answers as for his questions. The great gift he can give us today, it seems to me, is not a way out of the contradictions of modern life but a surer and deeper way into these contradictions. He knew that the way beyond the contradictions would have to lead through modernity, not out of it.”(2)

We cannot go to ‘post-modernity’, we can only engage in the modernist project of shaping our world, of ‘taking our epoch on our shoulders paying for it today and forever’.

Written by Mathew Toll.

Notes.

1) "Continental Drift: Questions for Jean Baudrillard," Deborah Salomon, New York Times Magazine, November 2005.
2) All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Marshall Berman (Verso, London 1997) pp. 128–9.

(Written late 2005 or early 2006)

Justified True Belief and Critical Rationalism.

During his trial Socrates argued that human wisdom came from the acknowledgment of human ignorance (Plato, 1969, P. 52), a position arrived at via the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief. Because of such conclusions this account, which leaves us without a useful “knowledge”, is not without its detractors. Therefore the traditional theory of knowledge as justified true belief will be outlined. Its success, strengths and weakness as an account of knowledge will be assessed in relation to competing theories such as “critical rationalism”, where knowledge is not infallible but merely the best available theory (Popper, 1984, p. 26-7).

The question of demarcation between belief and knowledge has been a central debate in epistemology. The traditional account of knowledge considered belief to be an essential component of knowledge. For the purpose of argument, the proposition ‘time is a dimension in relation to other dimensions’ is true. But if the individual does not believe it to be so then they don’t know it. This is the first condition of the traditional theory of knowledge, the belief condition. A belief may be true or false, but knowledge must be true. The second condition of knowledge is the Truth condition.

A proposition that meets the first two conditions of the traditional epistemological theory is not necessarily considered knowledge, as it still has to satisfy the evidence condition. According to this position, a propositions status as knowledge is not based on belief or accidental truth, but must be justified to the point of infallibility in order to be considered knowledge.

The infallibility of knowledge has been a controversial point for epistemologists. The truth condition, according to the traditional theory has to be satisfied in order for a proposition to be considered knowledge. But the truth or falsity of a proposition is determined by the justification. A proposition can be considered true and justified on the basis of all available evidence, but a contrary observation can disprove a long held piece of knowledge, this is the “problem of induction” (Popper, 1984, p. 42). This is not the only problem with the evidence condition. The infinite regress of reasons that one proposition is justified with another, is a problem for the traditional account of knowledge. If one proposition is supported by another and so forth until there is a whole system of propositions, it becomes self-referring without finding a foundation that justifies the totality of propositions.

Foundational and fallibility issues have been central weakness of the traditional account of knowledge. There have been varied attempts to solve the problem of knowledge, either in proposing foundations in an attempt to solve the infinite regress of reasons, or by weakening the idea of infallibility of knowledge. Theses philosophers opt to define knowledge as the best available theory on the basis of all current evidence to avoid scepticism, the position that we have no knowledge.

Epistemological foundationalism, in both its empiricist and rationalist variants has attempted to ground knowledge and thus save the justified true belief account of knowledge from both the infinite regress of reasons and scepticism. These problems left unsolved would invalidate any synthetic propositions claim to knowledge. Empiricist conceived that all knowledge was grounded in the senses. John Locke expressed the idea in his phrase “Tabula Rasa” that the human mind is like a blank canvas getting filled in by experience (Teichman, Evens, 1991 p.246). This foundational theory, which does not weaken the evidence condition, is still subject to the infinite regress of reasons, the problem of induction, the fallibility of sense-observations and thus all the problems associated with the traditional account of knowledge.

Perceptual information can lead to false propositions; Descartes recognising this fact chose to doubt his ability to know the external world (Descartes, 1984, p.96). Retaining the evidence condition as proposed by the traditional account of knowledge Descartes looked for foundational propositions that are self-evident and therefore indubitable. Synthetic propositions, which are contingent upon empirical verification, are fallible, but analytical propositions, which are true by necessity of meaning, are candidates for epistemological foundations. The distinction between analytical and synthetic propositions can be illustrated with two examples of the different types of propositions. The proposition ‘all triangles have three sides’ is an analytical proposition. Its truth-value is not determined by empirical evidence but by the meaning of the word triangle, a shape with three sides. Synthetic propositions make claims about the world; ‘all rabbits are white’ is an example. Its truth-value is contingent upon the state of the world, whether or not all rabbits are white. Descartes in his argument from dreaming held that true analytical propositions are knowledge by the standard of justified true belief (Descartes, 1984, p. 98). The usefulness of analytical propositions, and hence knowledge found within the paradigm of the traditional account is considered a major of weakness of the theory.

Competing theories of epistemology have contested the conditions under which knowledge is traditionally defined. The critical rationalism of Karl Popper has contested the infallibility clause in the evidence condition and thus paradoxically the truth condition of knowledge. The truth-value of a proposition is therefore not the determining factor of its value as knowledge but rather its truth-argument being able to account for all available evidence better than all other propositions. For Popper knowledge was not static, but a developing project, “the advance of knowledge consists, mainly, in the modification of earlier knowledge” (Popper, 1984, p. 28). Accordingly by this theory the replacement of one set of ideas by another that constituted a better explanation of all available evidence, is not an occasion to morn our inability to gain knowledge, but rather a moment of increasing knowledge. This theory also provides a demarcation between knowledge and belief, which preferences knowledge over belief in a workable manner. If according to the traditional account, knowledge were infallible it would not be useful because only analytical propositions can meet such criteria. Belief then would be more useful then knowledge, invalidating any attempt by traditional account epistemologists to give us practical reasons to preference knowledge over belief

For the critical rationalist knowledge is a process of development based around a method of trial and error (Popper, 1984, p. 56). Therefore along with the truth and evidence condition, the belief condition is challenged. Because we do not have to believe our current theories to be true, they might be true, while falsified theories are believed to be untrue (Popper, 1984, p.56). The weakness of this theory is that it overturns all the three conditions that make knowledge definite and solid. It finds strength in circumventing the problems (infinite regress of reasons, foundations and infallibility issues) associated with the traditional account of knowledge. Hence synthetic propositions, both useful and informative are considered knowledge according to critical rationalism. This constitutes a functional rather than dysfunctional system of knowledge, because it makes allowances for adaptability that the traditional account does not.

The traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, aims to make knowledge a concrete concept, giving us a clear cut method for discerning between what we know and don’t know. But the conclusion of this method leads to a situation where knowledge is either non-existent (scepticism) or useless (rationalist) Socrates himself concluded the former (Plato, 1969, P. 52). The critical rationalists and best available theory epistemologists allow for a working concept of knowledge by weakening the criterion for something to be known. The traditional theory of knowledge is ultimately unsuccessful because while it considers knowledge more justified than belief, it gives no practical reason to preference knowledge over forms of information such as a mere belief, which while not being certainly true can be informative and useful. Hence the traditional account does not provide a functional theory of knowledge.

Written by Mathew Toll.

Bibliography.

Descartes, R. (1984), Discourse on Method and The Meditations, Penguin, Bungay.

Plato, (1969), The Last Days of Socrates, Trans Tredennick, H. Penguin, London.

Popper, K. R. (1984), Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

(Written mid 2006).

Consciousness of Consciousness

Time is a dimension in relation to other dimensions - if a non-physical consciousness existed within a void would there be time? Would metal events in succession count as distinct objects? Hegel said that consciousness is always consciousness of an object - therefore consciousness is a verb and not a noun. If it's not a noun and only exists in relation to an object, how can there be consciousness of consciousness? The nature of our linier existence means that the ever present instant is forever upon us and that which is has passed, our essence is invariablely undefinable and defined in the nothingness of its existence. In our void how would the first thought accrue? If there are no external objects at which to grasp an awareness of and consciousness itself, being nothing but an active response to objects there can be no consciousness within a void (1).

Notes

1)If there can be no consciousness within a void, can there be a god before the big bang? Maybe there was never nothing and always something even the existence of a void at least semantically implies an inner and an outer - a barrier and something which contains the nothingness.