Think about this

boo boo · 06-06-2009, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veridical Fiction

Did you just make that?

Because... it rocks.

Nah. I haven't obtained such striking MS paint skills quite yet.

Freebase Dali · 06-06-2009, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boo boo

Nah. I haven't obtained such striking MS paint skills quite yet.

It wasn't so much the artistry as the concept, personally.

SATCHMO · 06-06-2009, 11:30 PM

This thready makes my brain feel funny

Freebase Dali · 06-07-2009, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

This thready makes my brain feel funny

Reply to my reply in the instrument forum, sucka.

Inuzuka Skysword · 06-09-2009, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent

i see the agency of 'man' which determines his freedom is his ability to focus his attention. a person will inevitably experience all sorts of emotions and see others undergoing the same, but we are free to determine which emotions we enjoy and seek out in the world, as well as which emotions we cause other people to experience through our interactions with them.

The bolded and underlined contradict. One cannot have free choice and at the same time be determined by another's will. I mean, you might believe in compatibilism, but then I would need to know how you define a choice. So if you could specify that then I would have some sort of understanding.

Quote:

usually these are similar, because if we embody a certain emotional state we will cause other people to experience it through us. i think the notion of 'control' doesn't apply in a world-picture in which gods are at play. the purpose is simply to continue the play, it doesn't need any aim beyond itself. the individual human essence, then, can be progressively purified as a person identifies more completely with one such 'state,' or it can be developed in multiple directions, and infused with a rich ambiguity. in this sense there is existence before essence, but there are nonetheless essences before existence. ultimately the question 'do we own our lives' seems rather meaningless to me. we affirm life by living it, but we are determined by life... there is no straightforward linear relationship. I is something very ambiguous, a whisp of smoke with a different appearance based on your angle of observation. the more a person defines themselves, and tries to redefine their environment, the more they open themselves up to conflict and struggle.

What do you mean by "purify?" I mean, I don't know your scale of what is pure and what is not so it is hard for me to understand exactly what you are trying to say. What I am interpreting is that you believe that this purification is through the realization of this so called "state" in which we are paradoxically in control of our own lives, but also being controlled by others. I mean, it seems as if you embrace contradictions and such. With that kind of thought one could make anything believable. I also don't understand what struggle you are talking of. Defining oneself is what gives us individuality and a sense of unique purpose. I mean, how far you want to take uniqueness is based on your reason. Personally, I believe we have no essence because of the fact that one is determined by his essence. Instead we have the free will to choose freely or be determined by others, which generally speaking is just free will. The reason this is better to believe is because this puts the ultimate responsibility of one's choices on himself. Therefore, his choices are what gives him that sense of uniqueness. From there one can build a pseudo-essence by choice. By pseudo-essence I mean that he creates himself an essence, but ultimately when it comes to his choices this essence does not affect him.

Quote:

as for 'why' i would want to believe this, i essentially find it more reasonable to attempt to give a subjective account of the universe rather than an objective account. the reason for this is that i believe all thought is essentially anthropocentric, and i think it's impossible to really think objectively about anything. the thing that characterizes 'objective' elements such as particles from 'subjective' elements such as emotional states is that particles seem 'indifferent' to us. however even indifference is just another subjective interpretation, we really can't interpret anything except subjectively. for instance, we speak of the 'birth of a star.' although we might scoff at the notion with our immodestly modest scientific worldview, we intuitively sense that the process of Birth is the same in a star as in a person. it is a universal allegory which transcends the arbitrariness of flesh and blood. science forces us to realize we are tiny specks of dust in a vast universe, but there is nothing objective about the sense of wonder at incomprehensible infinities nor about the feeling of smallness and insignificance. science does not deliver such sensations, it is something a few steps deeper.

Even if all thought is anthropocentric, why would one just walk away from the fact that some ways of thinking are more objective than others? I mean, I think a lot of this philosophy that struggles to find that deepest of truths is really interesting, but what benefit does it have on life itself. One could get more out of life by living by the themes of the play Our Town than one could find in this stuff. I mean, this is why I don't understand this philosophical problem anymore. I mean, you may ultimately "believe" in this, but do your actions necessarily reflect this philosophy? Do you actually live as if nothing is true? Of course not. Think of Sisyphus. He realized that there was ultimately nothing, but he kept pursuing. In the same way the objectivities may ultimately be worth nothing, but they are the best we have. They are the only way to beat the rock.

Ultimately, my problem is that with all of this post-modernism I feel like philosophy is drifting from its core purpose. No longer does one care about the best way to exist. Now it is about sacrificing one's existence for a truth that they have no need for, a truth that leaves no evidence of existence. Most post-modernists would say that they are anti-elitism, but I find them to be the most elitist philosophers of them all. Simply because they talk about jargon that really does not affect the existence of the individual, the only thing we "truly" know exists, (according to them.)

cardboard adolescent · 06-09-2009, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inuzuka Skysword

The bolded and underlined contradict. One cannot have free choice and at the same time be determined by another's will. I mean, you might believe in compatibilism, but then I would need to know how you define a choice. So if you could specify that then I would have some sort of understanding.

What do you mean by "purify?" I mean, I don't know your scale of what is pure and what is not so it is hard for me to understand exactly what you are trying to say. What I am interpreting is that you believe that this purification is through the realization of this so called "state" in which we are paradoxically in control of our own lives, but also being controlled by others. I mean, it seems as if you embrace contradictions and such. With that kind of thought one could make anything believable. I also don't understand what struggle you are talking of. Defining oneself is what gives us individuality and a sense of unique purpose. I mean, how far you want to take uniqueness is based on your reason. Personally, I believe we have no essence because of the fact that one is determined by his essence. Instead we have the free will to choose freely or be determined by others, which generally speaking is just free will. The reason this is better to believe is because this puts the ultimate responsibility of one's choices on himself. Therefore, his choices are what gives him that sense of uniqueness. From there one can build a pseudo-essence by choice. By pseudo-essence I mean that he creates himself an essence, but ultimately when it comes to his choices this essence does not affect him.

Even if all thought is anthropocentric, why would one just walk away from the fact that some ways of thinking are more objective than others? I mean, I think a lot of this philosophy that struggles to find that deepest of truths is really interesting, but what benefit does it have on life itself. One could get more out of life by living by the themes of the play Our Town than one could find in this stuff. I mean, this is why I don't understand this philosophical problem anymore. I mean, you may ultimately "believe" in this, but do your actions necessarily reflect this philosophy? Do you actually live as if nothing is true? Of course not. Think of Sisyphus. He realized that there was ultimately nothing, but he kept pursuing. In the same way the objectivities may ultimately be worth nothing, but they are the best we have. They are the only way to beat the rock.

Ultimately, my problem is that with all of this post-modernism I feel like philosophy is drifting from its core purpose. No longer does one care about the best way to exist. Now it is about sacrificing one's existence for a truth that they have no need for, a truth that leaves no evidence of existence. Most post-modernists would say that they are anti-elitism, but I find them to be the most elitist philosophers of them all. Simply because they talk about jargon that really does not affect the existence of the individual, the only thing we "truly" know exists, (according to them.)

I'm not really sure what you're responding to. Do I live as if nothing is true? I never said that 'nothing is true,' and if I did believe that, how would I act on it? There is no basis for action there. I could do anything and it wouldn't affirm or deny such a belief. If a particular philosophy is interesting, what further 'use' does it need? It fills your life with interesting thoughts to reflect on, that is how it benefits your life. Perhaps further understanding could lead one to nirvana or God, but it just seems like the top of Sisyphus' hill to me. Your criticisms of post-modernism seem pointless. Who/what are you actually criticizing? Most 'post-modernists' don't agree with each other, and barely agree with themselves. I find a lot of it interesting, if somewhat depressing, and it has forced me to reassess my life in terms of: what do I do compulsively because of a protocol someone has devised to make 'things run smoothly,' and what do I do because I get a deep sense of satisfaction, because doing such things is a part of who I am?

As for the 'free will' issue, I don't think it's a contradiction that you choose which emotional states you like to embody and that others will influence what emotional state you are currently in. Something as simple as ignoring someone who is excessively hostile or proud makes it less likely that they will continue to interact with you, and simply by not focusing your attention on them you have made a choice to reject that emotional state. The reason I speak of 'focusing attention' rather than making choices is that most of the time the choices we have and the paths we can follow are laid out in front of us by life, and what a 'choice' really amounts to is an analysis of which path will lead us to our preferred emotional state. So again, the choice is in what you want to be, how you want to feel, which relates back to who you already are, and how you are comfortable feeling. The reason a lot of this seems contradictory is because it relies on feedback loops, a person doesn't redefine themselves with every choice they make, they reaffirm who they already are or make gradual, subtle changes. Most of what we do is rather automatic, so it is more an issue of focusing in on a 'mode' of existence.

Finally, I do not believe certain modes of thinking are more objective than others. Certain modes of thinking simply constrain themselves to the surface of things, to phenomena of language. That's fine, but ultimately rather unfulfilling/boring.

cardboard adolescent · 06-09-2009, 08:06 PM

since post-modernism was brought up...

baudrillard, simulacra and simulation

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true.
Ecclesiastes

If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.l

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains. For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. But it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction's charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This representational imaginary, which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory, disappears with simulation, whose operation is nuclear and genetic, and no longer specular and discursive. With it goes all of metaphysics. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models — and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.

In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials — worse: by their art)ficial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.

cardboard adolescent · 06-09-2009, 08:14 PM

this is probably my favorite... melancholy and fascination...

baudrillard, on nihilism
Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulations - XVIII. On Nihilism

cardboard adolescent · 06-09-2009, 08:22 PM

and of course the classic,
derrida, differance

Differance

cardboard adolescent · 06-12-2009, 08:54 PM

i started a blawg, the link is in my signature, i think people could find something beneficial in it

06-06-2009, 11:30 PM	#43 (permalink)
SATCHMO Al Dente Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 4,708	This thready makes my brain feel funny

06-09-2009, 08:06 PM	#47 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	since post-modernism was brought up... baudrillard, simulacra and simulation The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. Ecclesiastes If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.l Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself. In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains. For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. But it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction's charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This representational imaginary, which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory, disappears with simulation, whose operation is nuclear and genetic, and no longer specular and discursive. With it goes all of metaphysics. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models — and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere. In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials — worse: by their art)ficial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.

06-09-2009, 08:14 PM	#48 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	this is probably my favorite... melancholy and fascination... baudrillard, on nihilism Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulations - XVIII. On Nihilism

06-09-2009, 08:22 PM	#49 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	and of course the classic, derrida, differance Differance

06-12-2009, 08:54 PM	#50 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	i started a blawg, the link is in my signature, i think people could find something beneficial in it