F(r)P: “Whatever, baby. I swing both ways, you dig?”*
****
ancient rebuttal from the postmodern perspective, brought to you by an unlikely source: me.
Of course, you know me. I would never let me get away with such argument without fleshing it out a bit more.
F(r)P: “Although, that’s really just a figure of speech. I don’t do binary absolutes, as a rule.”
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box. I know what I know if you know what I mean.
I don’t see the smile on a dog ironically. And I think a walk on the slippery rocks can be a good thing.
Stop making me type. Codeine not working.
As She said on my first trip “What’s this Animate/Inanimate dichotomy bullshit you’re trying to sell me?”
As someone else said on another trip “No man can be a solipsist with dogshit on his shoe.”
Uhhh, are we talking about swinging between reality and philosophy?
I need to know da troof; in terms of, as J. McLaughlin puts it, “metaphysical certitude”.
Is that possible anymore, I mean in terms of relativism and all? Or, is it simply an argument that you build-like my D.A. wife does in court? Is it whoever possesses the greatest number of exhibits has a better handle on the truth, or is it the exhibits that are the most compelling? And what will stop some doofus judge or juror from misunderstanding or outright rejecting the arguments…
I loved philosophy in college and took several courses, but questions like these are the ones that make me glad that I was in aerospace engineering. There are proofs and logic involved in geometry, calculus, and mathematical analysis; but they are not as subjective.
Perhaps that means they are not as challenging or thought provoking; that’s a “truth” I’d rather not ponder…
I guess, “I can’t handle the truth!”
Or perhaps it’s simply above my pay grade…
An interesting exploration of discursive knowlege.
….FOR ME TO POOP ON!
You know who swung both ways, was that Evelyn Waugh.
Finally! A practical application for my literary criticism class…
Sure, you can indict post-modernism’s hedonistic relativist tendencies, but I agree with some its narrative on multi-perceptions. It seems like just yesterday, when actually it was the day before that, that cynn swooned over you and your labyrinths of artistic wonder, which I denounced by comparing you to the lowly Dan Collins, an admitted scrotal dreg. Hold that thought, the one of you as artist.
In times of cultural, political and religious moral vacuity in narratives, a.k.a. the post-modern!, its art, artistry and artists that step in and divine the messianic nature of art as an alternative to accepted socio-cultural constructs, in academic circles at least.
So, I ask you, do you yourself admit your work as art and hold forth your self as artist? As sacerdotal knotter of cultural thoughts and shadings?
Yes, my fashioned paradoxical paroxysms I try to make unique, and I prefer them described as lyrical rather than as “ghetto poetry” or “street poetry” or whatever it is you called my nuanced dithering.
But you! Are you not an artist of modern letters? Do you not offer temptations and salivations in your individualist truths? Ay or nay?
The messianic nature of art as an alternative to accepted sociocultural constructs still has to go with the living room set.
“Is Not is not Not Is.”
— Keith Laumer
Ah ha! Codiene! Lotus eater! Opium! Swigging laudanum by the pint.
He’s a poet!
“Stop making me type. Codeine not working.”
Just type in the manner of Paul Wittgenstein at Ravel’s “Piano-Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major” Jeff. Becoming expert at the gauche!
Nay. I offer individualist beliefs (which derive their subjective power from my believing them to be true; and their cultural power from others agreeing in a kind of consensus). But those are linguistic approximations — and I know my limitations.
Well just yank a knotted rope out of Collins’ ….
If you’re not a artisan of the art of rhetoric then what is Dan? Because I thought him special. And you, I thought you more than a trite illusionist of consensus.
And how are you going to break the news to cynn?
As for me, I’ll return to watching female beach volleyball on TV. No change there, really.
Nothing trite about it. It is what it is. Simply because I can’t appeal to a metaphysical referee doesn’t mean the play didn’t happen in a way that is unbothered by the number of eyes on it, or the differing, after-the-fact attempts to pin it down language by a variety of spectators whose rooting habits may color their judgment, either consciously or unconsciously.
Now stop making me type. Pace Dalton, pain DOES hurt.
Hurts even when it’s phantom pain.
OK, Ouch McInvalid. Say, unconsciously, the thing with the blender, blender as metaphor, blender as victim; I say you rename that bladed thing Amanda.
I just want things to be kind of congruent. Like when I say hey it would be more better if we drilled some oil so people had jobs and Hugo Chavez got less monies… what they shouldn’t do is say hey you know what are really cool are like windmills and besides we have all the oil we need in the strategic petroleum reserve already.
Pah. “Art” or no, Foucalt is the antithesis of Newton, and it is Newton (and his associates at the Royal Society, not that long ago as the gneiss crumbles) who defined science. Accepting relativism denies science, flatly and without equivocation, and it is science that is the basis of industrialism; and it is industrialization that throws off the wealth that enables us to maintain the vast examples of conspicuous consumption today masquerading as “Universities”.
Science is, at its root, a peasant occupation, derived ultimately from the crude pragmatism necessary for day to day survival, and even its practitioners often long for something more elegant. It isn’t, and the attempt cheapens it and makes it less valuable and useful. There are two divisions of science: Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi (“run and find out”) and Urchin in the Control Room (“try it and see what happens”). “Science” simply systematizes that, by applying the Documentation rule: If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.
The big mistake advocates of science make is to allow themselves to be led into Foucault territory by talking about “truth”. Once that concept is allowed into the discourse, the legions of bullshit artists (“philosophers”) going back several millenia take over, and nothing can go forward. Science can’t find “truth” in any absolute sense, and once that is admitted one may as well sit back and watch as the competing relativists go at one another. (Popcorn is optional, but recommended.)
What science can, and does, do is systematize peasant priorities: This is present, and that is not. This works, and this does not. Newton and the others reduced it to a competitive sport, and spread a layer of gentility over what is, in fact, schoolyard argument and mulish defiance. Every real scientific paper ends with “Go try/see it yourself and see, f*face.” It’s simply that since that challenge is always present, it isn’t necessary to waste ink (or disturb electrons unnecessarily) to repeat it.
Relativists like to pretend that the discovery of quantum effects somehow invalidates the whole idea. After all, if you can’t actually say whether Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead, your science can’t be worth much, right? Bullshit. Schrödinger’s cat, so long as it stays where it is, is philosophy, with about as much connection to “science” as San Fran Nan has. Science says, “Open the box and see, fool.” If it doesn’t have some variant of “open the box and see” it ain’t science, no matter how many white lab coats are involved.
What quantum theory does do is demolish the basis for philosophy. Philosophers tell us they’re in search of Ultimate TRVTH. Quantum theory tells us there ain’t no such animal, that the best we can do is useful approximations. Science shrugs its shoulders and builds Large Hadron Colliders to get better (and therefore more useful) approximations. Philosophy, as near as I can tell, simply reduces itself to faster and faster tail-chasing. Wittgenstein’s Couplet is the six most wasted words in any language.
Regards,
Ric
So. Zaius or Nietzsche, Ric?
Jeff: Neither. Try it and see is the sum of the Law.
Regards,
Ric
I’ll check my scroll and get back to you.
Do, or don’t do. There is no try.
“Go try/see it yourself and see, f*face.â€Â
I know that is what is on the bottom of most of my handwritten recipe cards.
That and some blood.
Or maybe that’s just chocolate fingerprints
I better go run and see.
You make good points, acceptable mostly, but then you occasionally simplify to the extreme and engage in bullshit-artist-philosophy yourself.
Philosophy is a necessity. Unless you’re a lower animal. Foucault makes many agreeable observations of society that can’t be so easily dismissed by your growling.
I found Foucault to be basically unreadable so I’ll have to defer to those who actually waded through such drivel. However, I’m fairly sure that “when the going gets weird, the weird get going!”
Foucault more of a sophist than a philosoph.
Wow. I’d love to jump on this thread and offer something pithy and wise, but my thyroid levels are down today. And the d-amphetamines aren’t doin’ it either.
Except that I’ll observe that a pendulum is not a binary thing, given that it occupies all positions between each extreme. Analog, then. So a pendulum doesn’t swing both ways, it swings all ways.
And I’ve seen a real Foucault’s pendulum. It’s hardly a relativistic construct, but rather is a “still” point in the turning world.
Though maybe between Jeff’s painkillers and my goofballs, something surreal might arise.
Or not.
Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent
Philosopher and poet, and heard great argument
About it, and about; but ever came
Out by the same door where in I went.
Regards,
Ric
Also, that when you remove the possibility of “outside” or “transcendent” standards of right and wrong, all you are left with is power: we enforce our “truth” though intimidation, and who are you to say we’re wrong?
Which is where the po-mos want to be, I guess. Their ideas don’t stand up when the rubber meets the road, so they’ll just deny both the rubber and the road and do what they want anyway.
See a lot of this you have to read and think about. I wish this were that kind of day. Hey did you know that either Foucaldian or Foucaltian is correct for the adjectival? I did not know that so I thought I would share cause this way people can learn something without reading and thinking and rereading all the hard bits.
“Foucaldian or Foucaltian” it’s all the same. Means sweet Foucault to me.
Can I play the piano anymore?
Wait, I’ve been posting here?
Oh hey, cynn. You know who’s kinda lame, cynn? That Obama fellow, that’s who. I have links.
I need to get e a job as a philosopher or somthin’. All you do is sit around all day and think in ever-tightening circles, write down some barely understandable nonsense, andpeople pay you for the priviledge of confusing them. Sounds like a sweet gig…
How’s this:
I saw Foucault’s Pendulum hit Schrodinger’s Cat, who ran in and hissed at Pavlov’s Dog. All is madness…
The real difficulty is that we use “philosophy” to mean two different things.
One of them is what thor was talking about, “philosophy” as a set of guiding principles for life. Everybody has such a set, but it’s only when we realize that they exist, think about them, and modify them as necessary to bring them into better congruence with experience, that they can properly be termed a “philosophy”. The problem is that while the unexamined life may not be worth living, the closely-examined one may be worse. For this reason most of us rarely question our principles, lest we suffer the fate of the giant Grof[*].
The other meaning of the word “philosophy” is, nowadays, an intellectual pursuit that attempts to assign Meaning.
immanuel, n. (from im-, not, + manual, guide or rulebook) A set of instructions for doing something that kant (q.v.) be done.
For those of us who believe in God, the Universal Principle gives us jewels hanging in space, entire of themselves while interacting with other, similar entities. Those who do not are stuck with turtles all the way down, and after a while the descriptions get repetitive.
Regards,
Ric
No, I Kant. Sorry.
Strange, my entire church/religion is based on “go see for yourself.” And learning what’s what from the school of hard knocks.
Which makes “This is present, and that is not. This works, and this does not,” the whole End of the quest for knowledge and even salvation. No more and no less.
None of that useless abstraction about “nous” and “ultimate causes” and whatnot. I guess that’s why I like it.
Those who do not are stuck with turtles all the way down,
I think that Dr. Happyfeet would think that being stuck with turtles is not such a bad thing.
“As someone else said on another trip “No man can be a solipsist with dogshit on his shoe.—
You can be if you’re a pantheistic multiple-personality solipsist.
The dog is just your other end.
“#Comment by mojo on 8/19 @ 10:35 am #
“Is Not is not Not Is.â€Â
– Keith Laumer”
Sweeeet, another Keith Laumer fan.
“…it was capable of duplicating any background pattern short of a clan Ginsberg tartan”
Oh, my goodness…..
“A Plague of Demoms”
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743435885/0743435885___1.htm
“…five-eyed sticky-fingers!”
Lots of puns and so on in Laumer’s stuff. Take a look at people’s names with an eye for alternate pronunciations, sometime.
I especially love the “Reteif” stories. The man knew whereof he spoke.
Screwing anything and thinking nothing of it is I forget what, pansexual nihilism?
It’s not a orgy! It’s just a toga party!
#32 dicentra:
IIRC, there is a pendulum in the Smithsonian museum of natural history that is actually a clock. As it swings back and forth it actually swings through the 360 degrees, knocking over little markers.
Been about twenty five years since I’ve been there.
There’s a Foucault’s pendulum in the science building at BYU, and they set up golf tees for it to knock down. It’s not a clock per se: its orientation stays the same while the earth rotates under it.
Hence the still point in the turning world comment, but because pendulums aren’t exactly still, I had to put in the qualifier…
Though as Ric noted, philosphy and science are two different things and address different issues. Science is about what is observable, and can be repeated. Philosophy isn’t about that at all; nor is theology, really.
That’s what I was thinking about, dicentra. It was described as a clock because you could set up the tees to be knocked over at the time o’clock, as it were.
Seeing it was like when I realized that if the day is twenty four hours long, and the earth is about 24,000 miles diameter at the equator, then everything there was moving at about a 1,000 miles an hour, even if standing still – and that didn’t take into account the earth’s orbit around the sun.
You can’t observe infinity. The two overlap quite a bit, from Descartes, Leibniz, Russell to Zadeh, many things science, or math at least, have broad theoretical aspects.
Foucalt pendulums (pendula?) aren’t particularly common, but there are a few around. There’s one in the foyer of the Portland (OR) convention center, for instance. It takes a pretty high ceiling to make a good one. As a clock, they have deficiencies. Four minutes+ per day slow, for instance.
Philosophy and science were parted in the eighteenth century, at the request (make that demand) of the philosophers; science shrugged and went along. The “Natural Philosophers” from before that time would have been happy to include theoreticians like Einstein in their number, and sometimes they try (Hawking, e.g.), but the people in the Philosophy Department won’t teach ’em the secret handshake any more. However airy their speculations may be, scientific theoreticians are just as pugnaciously defiant as any other scientist (“That’s the way it is, and you can’t prove otherwise, phfbbbbbbt“) and can thereby be distinguished from modern philosophers, whose goal appears to me to make their windy effusions as uncheckable as possible.
Regards,
Ric
Actually, I’ve heard you can, but you have to open your mind so wide that your brains fall out.
I think nishtoon came close, but got scared off at the last minute.
nishinishinishinishinishitoonishinishinishinishinishitoonishinishinishinishinisitoon was a crazy happy thing.
Try just ‘crazy’ and you’ve got it.
matoko could never quite grasp the chasm between ‘I can do this’ and ‘Should I do this’. That is where science parts company with philosophy/morality/theology.
She could never acknowledge anything but ‘I can’; which made her a very dangerous girl, and so not an adult.
The consequences thing; bugger to have to grow up and take that into account.
Think about the ban on using any of the Nazi medical research – there may be good information in that research, but the way it was acquired was so evil that the results of that research is banned.
matoko couldn’t understand that concept, and to have to explain it is more information about her than anyone needs to know.
The implicit pithiness and wisdom of this remark renewed my admiration of you.
My wife will send a note along to guarantee you I am not a stalker.
My husband is not a stalker.
Lord, he has so little energy as it is for me.
#32
Since all pendulums are regular in their movement they are/were ideal for clocks. They could be regulated.Like malitias.
Just thought I’d swing this in a whole other direction.
Comment by McGehee on 8/19 @ 4:52 pm #
You can’t observe infinity.
Actually, I’ve heard you can, but you have to open your mind so wide that your brains fall out.
I think nishtoon came close, but got scared off at the last minute.
Enough said.
Used to be that science and philosophy were partners….a scientist was awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy, and we studied the science of natural philosophy. Now, not so much.
thor (#9)
What the fuck?
Are you trying to sound like a teacher’s manual, or what? I love it when “academics” write their hilarious sploodge. Three page sentences that make anyone with a brain shake their head in awe of how many words one author can make up within that sentence. I like to call it “I love my own incredibly intelligent, intellectual ass” writing.
Fancy words do not an intellectual make.
And besides, anyone who actually claims to be an intellectual is a pompous, phony, flying asshole. At least in my experience. And my experience is not limited to sitting at my computer. I have been around the block many times, and that post made you appear to be the guy who holds the sign: “Will work for food”.
The thing is, what I have found with the “will work for food” guys, is that if you stop and actually offer them work, they will tell you to fuck off, and get out of the way. They only want cash, thank you.
I am truly hoping that post was a goof.
It’s bad enough that you have a problem with the real world and facts. Please, please tell me that was a goof!
TLG: my favorite part of it was
I think it was for fun. I mean, “political…moral…vacuity” and “religious moral vacuity”?
It had to be for fun.
And I simply wish I was more pendulous. But I am not.
After O!’s election, can I get a subsidy to study pendulosity?
Sure, if you don’t want anymore than what’s already there, but for many of us there’s something else hiding in the ivory than “formalistic” or “text-centered” approaches to literature. Take yourself, I’ve been carving you, maybe I can free your shape. I want to whittle it all down to your heartbeat, but I can’t, see, because of the Beckettian webbings of alphabet, the signs signifiers and assorted shit, but if I get to your your heartbeat then I can see your word’s breath.
Have you read this all wrong or have you just not gotten it? Maybe the obvious turns out to be true, maybe there’s nothing more than what’s there. But human tragedy does not exist in the world of necessity. So it’s down to the bones! And if beauty can’t save the world, the Bones, Condi’s cat, probably could. Don’t ya think or do you drink? Don’t take this many famous last words all wrong. Happy hour is finally here. There’s a litter of Bones and little bones, scared hares with fuzzy ears. Tell the rabbits they’ll be fine if they start in on the wine. Highballs, ears, and of course Bones, they’re all here.
Truth in parts isn’t my cup of tea but carving centered wholes is never done vicariously. As when the pendulum swings for the executioner and the sentenced man, it’s never done when it’s out of your hands. Sure, you’re forced you to bend to glimpse over the top, but from high above with in pages of those books, they’ll employ you and ignore you and walk next to you, like facts written where they stood should.
Acquiescence, in essence, is all about trust. Right, Little Bones?
And what conclusions have you drawn, Lost Dog? Traced or drawn, penciled or penned, framed or stained?
Vivid expressions written in nebulous cells creates uncertainty and/or a subjective realities. To go past directly spoken realities, “le reel ecrit,” as Flaubert described this thing of vivid expression mixed with madness. Others can’t find an adjective past poetic, likely you, but is it madness or simply maddening? It’s reality and logic subordinated to seductive abnormalities of language, to a gallery of freak-words at play. It’s thought-chunks hitting the floor directly out of the birth canal. The necessary and some of the unnecessary is the orthodoxy and heterodoxy, together is all a mess of non-conformed consistency.
Sleepwalking fast asleep. Are you reading, decoding symbols as sometimes Jeff calls it, in linear sequence, words as 1, 2, 3? But what if 2, 3, 1? Then the sentence means something else entirely different versus a linear reading interpretation. What exactly is my inttentionalism? You may call this nothing but a bunch of word play, but oh no, did not Damiens the Regicide die in 1757? Did Foucault not resurrect him, and his legend meant what to whom? His teeth were still chattering words as his limbless torso was impaled on the stake, before he was burned and melted. Guilty of patricide but never of blasphemy against Jesus and God. Damiens was a word/meaning monster with a Latinized name! A symbol of the multi-perceived dualities of language-formed images and mixed signifiers, its freedoms versus the agreed rules and society’s discipline and punishments for violators of rules as well as a symbol of the power of the few who lord over the powerless.
Which is why Ric is an philosophic arse and you a subjectified subjectifier. Me, a blinding subversive thwarting finality’s dynamics just to stoke a fire.
Jackhole.