Pride

HextorFreebish · 2008-10-28T21:31:19+00:00

I like the second half of this post. The first half is difficult to parse. Paragraph 5 in particular...

It can be said, tongue wobbling in cheek, that the field of analytic philosophy went hyperkantian in either the pseudo-pragmatistic rejection of higher ontologies put forward by the vulgar quineans and the tangled hyperreal web of modal logic and kripkean reference theory. Analytic philosophy can forgive me for this sweeping indictment because I really belong to their camp. I do exempt Deleuze both because his rococo stylings are really ten stairs upwards of the vulgar baroqueness of his “continental” contemporaries and because in spite of its deep bergsonian vein there’s deep analytical wisdom — being currently unearthed by De Land and followers — that not only would qualify as first-rate analytic philosophy but cuts through some gordian knots that have the divided camp of analytical philosophy at its wits’ ends.

Here's me trying to parse it:

analytic philosophy - areas of philosophy that typically includes logical steps, elucidation through argument, and a foundation in the natural sciences.

Hyper-kantian - a view of knowledge that implies that it arises both from experience and from reason and does not need to rely on either. It would purport that closing yourself in an oven and thinking "I think therefore I am" is all well and good, as is seeing and feeling the world and concluding that you exist, but to have hyper-kantian knowledge that you exist may arise from both but depend on neither. I don't really get how that could be. Perhaps this explains why the label is derogatory.

pseudo-pragmatistic rejection of higher ontologies pseudo-pragmatism - asserting a belief to be true if it is satisfactory. i.e. this block of ice supports my weight, so H20 is solid. It is an incorrect application of pragmatism.

higher ontologies - mapping of more complex meanings to linguistic constructs which are themselves mapped to simpler things. The trick here is in determining if the mapping is or could ever be completely well-defined in its connection of idea to concrete thing. For example this blog post.

So a pseudo-pragmatistic rejection of higher ontologies would be a rejection of a delicate mapping of abstract concepts to reality on some poorly thought-out basis. And those who we are to understand have put forth such rejections are:

the vulgar quineans - philosophers arguing for Willard Van Orman Quine's ontological relativity. Essentially saying that referring to an object requires so many other unseen things to work (electromagnetic forces, optical nerves...) that you don't understand and just make assumptions about that you are actually not directly referring to that object, and so your reference is no less symbolic than one to Pegasus.

tangled hyperreal web of modal logic and kripkean reference theory modal logic - the logical description of things with the modes possible, necessary, or contingent.

kripkean reference theory - a thing is named by a significant event of this thing in relation to its referent and that later uses of the name refer to the referent by being linked to that event through a causal chain.

So a web of modal logic and kripkean reference theory would be an attempt to label and connect things together based on how they interact, linking it all conceivably back to the Big Bang.

So I guess what he's saying is that analytic philosophy as a body of work made the error of claiming special knowledge of existence apart from experience or reason when it superficially rejected higher ontologies that arise from quinean ontological relativity or from this big web of things being defined by how they interact, down to the smallest particle and back to the Big Bang.

Mmmkay I suppose he'd know more about it than me. But as I am not a philosopher, this is a blog that I can really only read after eating something really hearty for breakfast, like a bagel. Just a bowl of cheerios wouldn't do it. I can get low blood glucose after just some cereal. It's not my fault; it's just my metabolism.

Title	Pride
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	0
Comments	1
Date	October 28, 2008 2:11 AM UTC (17 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/79rbh/pride/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/pride.1056238 https://theredarchive.com/post/1056238

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