The value of honesty.

A Senna Plant in Bloom

 We talked yesterday about interconnections of such magnitude they are sometimes referred to as "Global." The word "Global" was supposed to hint at a meaning so vastly interconnected and complicated, that it ultimately defies attempts to accurately define it with structures. 

 On this topic of interconnections, another way of defying Wittgenstein's "whereof one cannot speak" is to go full "Global Web," blind everyone with Tech Bros Speak and raise the banner "Epistemic Holism" as though it was an untouched round of cheese.

 "It all sounds a little like foreplay?"

 Of interest, in this wide world of meanings, "Epistemic Holism" has a twin opposite called "Epistemic Atomism." Epistemic atomism is the understanding that knowledge, justification, law, pretty much anything that looks whole, is actually made up of what can be referred to as: individual, foundational units.

"What about true scientific value prior to empirical testing?"

Therein lies the rub, my friend. Sometimes when you test the individual, foundational units to find out why the whole isn't working there's nothing wrong with the parts........

"I know the feeling.  It's when the whole is too ennui-laden to get out of bed."

 The Duhem-Quine thesis does rather shrink the value of reductionism as it supports a more coherentist grasp of our universe of things. Pierre Duhem's own Underdetermination Theory of empirical evidence and of course Willard Quine put Akron Ohio on the map with his acid distinction between "no unmarried man is married" and "no bachelor is married" argument which suggested that the analytic stance is fundamentally circular in nature and therefore prone to repeatable  errors.

 "Atomists are such Dweebs."

 Logical Positivists aren't so much Dweebs, Comrade, as reluctant to risk the perils of intuition and that chasm of subjective hopefulness that results in the extreme vacuum of belief states that result in a solidarity around such absurdities as Raelism and Vicarious Redemption.

"They don't actually believe that! It just makes them feel special and different."

 For God's sake! We were not made in laboratory by an extra terrestrial species who has lost contact with us, anyone who thinks that's where we came from struggles with retardation.

 "When you're trying to boff a UFO princess who has a BMW, Raelism makes a lot of sense."

 I'll give you that, but there is no way an infinite, invisible deity came into the world disguised as a man, was executed, and this specific execution is a cosmic legal substitute for the moral failings of all humanity.

 "Stop being a whataboutist!"

 Don't make me go Epistemic Fallibilist combined with Pragmatism all over your kitchen floor comrade! We don't build our ships in the dry dock, we build them from drift wood and bits of floating plastic along with loose bits of kelp while we're at sea. 

The Trouble with Air Breathing Swim bladders

Raintree

  One view suggests language is a representation of reality that varies from language to language and as a result produces different understandings of reality.

 Chomsky's  view suggests  that language is essentially the same from one language to another language.

 You and I talk about flexible meanings in the symbols of language. I think my view is that while the symbols might stay the same meaning changes, gets added to words and it gets taken away from words. Language is a process that moves.

 What do Cognitive science people say about language and  how we understand things.

 What they come up with is an interconnection, sometimes called Global to mean really interconnected, that ultimately defies attempts to define it with structures. That old Austrian Wittgenstein's conviction "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" is a tidy axiom. But we forget that synthesizing thought predates the noises of spoken language, we have to work out how to say things and sometimes we have to invent new words, or take one from another language, like "schadenfreude" to satisfy those "thereof one must be silent" moments.

 God knows where grammar comes from.

 We humans did not make our vocal cords from scratch, they go back to a simpler time 400 million years ago, when we were air breathing fish. A lung fish which had developed folds to prevent water entering our air breathing swim bladders. 

  

The Husserl/Sartre Heresy

Mallow

  Easy to get side tracked with Saint Teresa, she was an astonishing person, and I wonder about the causes and sources of her fits, which might have been epilepsy, might have been moldy bread, could have been mushroom or womanly wiles.

 Which brings us back to Husserl's influence on Sartre's essay - Emotions: Toward a Theory. His suggestion that Emotions were a Bad Faith, magical source of illegitimate excuses for inauthentic action must have been received with degrees of astonishment from professionals in the psychiatry business who, I believe, had been suggesting since Descartes that the Ego was a guide or some sort of decider with the power to squash rebellion and exile the rebellious 

  Sartre's Ego-less existence, when confronted be a Bolshy back row does, in his theory of emotions, seem to have a rebellion squashing technique. I think Freud and maybe Jung saw the role of psychology in our society as "bandage the damaged and send them back to the front." Sartre was, if you'll forgive me, more wishy-washy liberal in his search for a cure rather than a bandage.

  Patience sweet one! For Husserl consciousness was always "intentional." What does that mean? It means consciousness is always directed at something. Might come as a surprise to some, but you aren't just always slack- jawed conscious, what you are is always conscious of something, of a tree, of ruby red lips, of a spot on someone's nose, and so on. Consciousness for Husserl darts around from one corner of the eye to the other, and yes it can be absolutely exhausting.

 Sartre would have seen Saint Teresa's visions, whether from epilepsy, moldy bread, or mushrooms, as her mind choosing a magical transformation of the world. His main squeeze, de Beauvoir, along with a vast swath of psychiatrists, psychologists and the like would want to remind Sartre that the brain was part of a situation. Then they'd go on to moan about how Consciousness does not start from a vacuum. It has to interpret and it has to inhabit the physical state it finds itself in. Consciousness doesn't just lush out and dream of sex and chocolate, it's intentional, it darts around form object to object.

 With Husserl and subsequent thinkers the meaning in "Object" contained the idea that Consciousness was always conscious of something, this something included both traditional objects such as cups and loaves of bread and other objects of the mind including ideas, fear, emotions anything that consciousness could be conscious of. 

 Here the argument goes, "As soon as you reflect on something, that something becomes an Object." 

 This understanding was a golden moment for Sartre. Consciously and intentionally reflecting on something resulted in that object becoming an object that could be examined. The object, in this case an emotion, whether it be ennui or rage, is no longer you. It's an object.

 For Sartre, "If I can step back and observe my own fear, my own ideas, and even my own Ego, then none of those things are ME. They are all objects floating in front of consciousness." And as such, from occasion to situation, these objects could be thought of as a rebellious back row, which meant the magical transformation this particular rebellious back row was attempting to make could be eidetically examined, the layers peeled away and the truth, bad faith or otherwise, revealed.

  Husserl’s phenomenology had dragged everything out into the light. Sartre loved it, it was liberating. But for traditional Cartesian Philosophy, your "mind" or "Ego" was a sacred inner room where emotions, thoughts, and identity lived together as a cozy, neurotic heap of "I'm thinking therefore I am-ing." It was a pile or a stack rich with potential for well paid work, so long as Union Breakers like Husserl and down-right Bolsheviks like Sartre didn't have their way. 

Beauvoir's Situation

Boots and Socks

  Beauvoir's views on object and subject explored in her book Ethics of Ambiguity, addresses an understanding that "You cannot manifest freedom in a vacuum." My freedom requires your freedom. You can't just say "hell is other people" because other people mess with your theory. Schopenhauer might have agreed with Sartre on the "other people" issue, Beauvoir did not.

 Those who avoid wallowing in the extreme irony of sociopathy and retain a fondness for ethics, moral principles and good human conduct, might enjoy Beauvoir's : "To will oneself free is also to will others free." We can think about that as we look to understand the world Beauvoir preferred to live in. 

 In Ethics of Ambiguity, creating the "Me" is inherently political and collective. You build your "Me" through your concrete actions in the public square, and your primary moral duty is to tear down the physical, economic, and political structures that prevent others from building their "Me." Freedom isn't an abstract feeling inside your head, it's the physical space you fight to clear so that every human being has the bread, the dignity, and the air to decide who they want to become.

 She had her archetypes, her villains, her "other people," her crew of inauthentic. They included:

 The Apathetic. They live in a state of dull inertia, letting society, habit, or routine make every decision for them. They fear passion, fear commitment, and live like a houseplant.

The Serious Man. Claims to care deeply about morality, but they surrender themselves to an external Cause, an Organization, a Party, or a God. They say things like "The doctrine is absolute. I am just a humble servant." By pretending the "Cause" is an objective truth, they feel justified in crushing anyone who opposes it.

The third type, Beauvoir referred to as Nihilists.  I think we can consider Beauvoir's Nihilist as the person who knows the Serious Man is full of crap, but has decided that nothing is objectively true, nothing matters! Everything is permitted! It's a cynical and destructive nihilism, an Existential Nihilism rather than an Epistemological Nihilism.

 Her fourth archetype, she called The Adventurer. The Adventurer loves their own freedom and lives wildly, taking risks, pursuing passions, and exploring the world, but doesn't care about anyone else's freedom. They treat other people as mere scenery or obstacles in their personal game. A cad and bounder. A spittoon next to an altar, as they say. 

 For Sartre without a pre-ordained "Me," you are radically free to become your own "Me" in a world that is simultaneously material and idea, object and subject. Now if your existence precedes your essence and if you are radically free to be a "Me" your "Me" has no excuse for your Bad Faith choices

 Sartre treated the emergence of "essence" as a solo flight into empty space. Beauvoir saw that emergence as a human life lived on solid ground among other people. For her, essence is not something you invent in a vacuum, it is a slow, concrete sediment built up through your choices in dialogue with the world, your body, and the choices of others.

 Beauvoir agreed that there is no divine blueprint or fixed "nature" waiting inside us when we enter the world. But her point was that even without a fixed nature, you never exist as a blank slate. No!  You exist in a Situation.