#cartesian doubt

[omegaphilosophia]

Aspects of the Philosophy of Doubt

The philosophy of doubt explores the concept of uncertainty and skepticism regarding knowledge, beliefs, and truth claims. It questions the reliability of human cognition and the certainty of our understanding of the world. Doubt can be seen as both a philosophical problem and a methodological approach, influencing epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and other areas of philosophy.

Some key aspects of the philosophy of doubt include:

Epistemic skepticism: This is the view that knowledge claims are inherently uncertain or even impossible to justify. Epistemic skeptics raise doubts about the reliability of our senses, reasoning, and cognitive faculties to accurately perceive and understand reality.

Methodological doubt: This is a systematic approach to inquiry that involves questioning assumptions, beliefs, and conclusions in order to arrive at more reliable knowledge. Methodological doubt is often associated with the scientific method and critical thinking.

Cartesian skepticism: Named after the philosopher René Descartes, Cartesian skepticism is a form of radical doubt that seeks to doubt everything that can be doubted in order to find indubitable truths. Descartes famously expressed skepticism about the reliability of the senses and the possibility of being deceived by an evil demon.

Existential doubt: This form of doubt concerns questions about the meaning, purpose, and significance of human existence. Existential doubt often arises in response to existential crises or profound experiences that challenge conventional beliefs and values.

Moral skepticism: Moral skepticism is the view that there are no objective moral truths or that moral knowledge is inherently uncertain. Moral skeptics may doubt the existence of moral facts or argue that moral judgments are ultimately subjective or culturally relative.

Overall, the philosophy of doubt encourages critical reflection, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility in the pursuit of truth and understanding. It reminds us to question our assumptions, challenge our beliefs, and remain open to new possibilities, even in the face of uncertainty.

[nostalgebraist]

Here are some fun / amusing / potentially-interesting facts about the process of writing and plotting Almost Nowhere, if anyone's curious.

Major spoilers for the whole of Almost Nowhere under the cut.

(There's really no way to spoiler-censor this material without rendering it incomprehensible. If you haven't read the book, do that first before reading this post.)

(1)

A large fraction of the book's eventual plot emerged from my attempts to patch a single, in-some-sense trivial continuity error I made while writing the very first chapter.

The Mooncrash section of that chapter ends with this sentence (emphasis added):

All parties were used to stillness, now, for the Mooncrash was nearly four years old.

And a few paragraphs later, in the opening of the Academy section, we get this (emphasis added again):

For (as everyone knows) the Shroud is upon us and while it tolerates the Academy — as it presently is, as it has been for the last eight years, a chrysalis, preparing itself step by minuscule step [...]

So: The Mooncrash is 4 years old. The Academy crash is at least 8 years old, and indeed older.

Yet the Mooncrash is also as old as the crash system itself! It was made by humans, during the period between the discovery of the anomalings and the mass-crashing of the human race. (This is only shown in the second chapter, but I had it in mind before then.)

How long has the human race been crashed, then? At most 4 years, and at least 8 years? How could that possibly be?

It would have been easy enough to just edit the chapter, but that's not how I do things. Restrictions, famously, breed creativity. I enjoy attempting to solve puzzles I have inadvertently created for myself, and many of my best ideas have been produced through this process.

It would also have been simple and easy to merely say: "OK, I guess time elapses at different subjective rates, in different crashes."

Amusingly, I ended up doing that anyway! But for some reason, this avenue didn't occur to me at first. By the time I started asking myself whether to include this kind of effect, I already had a different solution in mind.

I spent a lot of time beating my head against the figurative wall, trying to resolve the 4-vs-8-year issue. The early parts of my AN notes are full of this stuff.

----

At some early point, I came up with the idea that the anomalings/shades would deal with troublesome crashes by "rebasing" them, rewriting their histories.

I didn't intend, initially, for this idea to take over the plot as much as it eventually did. It was just a fun idea that underscored the huge power differential between the anomalings and their captives, and felt in line with the Cartesian/Wachowskian themes of transcending a "fake"/illusory world, radically doubting one's own perceptions and memories, etc.

But, having stipulated that "rebases" were a thing, I hit upon the idea that they could be used to modify the total quantity of past (subjective) time inside a crash -- turning 8 years into 4, or vice versa, or whatever.

So, I could fix the problem by stipulating that one -- or both -- of the problematic crashes had already been rebased, in this way.

But why? And by whom?

----

Now, at this early stage, I also had the idea in mind that the character "Anne" would eventually escape from her crash, and that she would have a hand in various major events in the story -- including some events that had already occurred, relative to the "present" of the textual PoV.

But I didn't know, yet, what these interventions actually were.

(I put "Anne" in quotes, here, because in the very early stages I casually assumed that only the PoV Anne introduced in Chapter 1 would be a major character, and that her sisters were merely background material for her personal narrative, like the tower itself. Of course, in the process of thinking through the details of things, I realized that this assumption was needless and indeed counterproductive.)

As often happens when I'm plotting a story, I found that two unknowns slotted neatly into one another, each one providing a potential solution to the problem posed by the other.

We need something for "Anne" to do in the past. Something consequential, something that shows off her newfound agency -- but also something that obscures her role from view. Ideally, something kind of weird, esoteric, "advanced"; something that feels buried inside the deep, dark center of the backstory, which the reader will only "excavate" at the end of a long, strange journey.

And we need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

That answers the "who?" question. But again -- why?

Well, it was already in the plan that Azad would join forces with Michael, when Michael went in search of his lost Anne. That Anne would meet Azad, as a result, and that it would be Azad who persuades her to return to Michael's crash.

I didn't, at the time, have much else planned for the Anne-Azad connection.

As originally conceived, the "Azad convinces Anne to return" scene was about Azad's uncertain loyalties, and about Anne's lack of exposure to other human beings (and to the power of words, as deployed by human beings with access to real human culture). That is, it merely served specific, separate purposes in the sub-stories of these two characters. There was no intent to set up, or develop, a thread connecting these sub-stories, making Azad a major character in Anne's arc and vice versa.

But that seems like kind of a shame, doesn't it? Why go to the trouble of preparing these characters, and bringing them into contact, if I didn't have anything for them to do together?

Anne and Azad.

We need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

We need Anne to learn about real human culture, somehow, before she leaves. I knew that, already, though I didn't have a mechanism in mind.

(I also knew, by this point, that causing Azad's appointment as translator was another one of "Anne's" consequential moves. I had conceived of this, at first, as a relatively impersonal act, done only for its historical significance. Indeed, that would have been enough -- but the more the merrier, theme/motivation-wise.)

Problems paired up, interlocked, and became each others' solutions.

(1b)

As is obvious from the above, I didn't have the scenario planned out in very much detail when I wrote the first chapter.

At the time, the story had been gestating in my head for a while, but only as a bunch of vague inklings and intentions.

The proximate cause of writing-the-first-chapter was a sudden and unexpected burst of inspiration. I was riding the bus to a social event, and suddenly my mind was awash with crisp, never-before-glimpsed details about Anne and her tower, the Mooncrash, the Academy, Cordelia's blue dress -- all the stuff of Chapter 1. It felt like a crucial message was being beamed into my brain, VALIS-style, from the Muse / Higher Power.

I had an urge to bail on the social event, turn around, ride back home, and start writing immediately -- what if the magic went away, as suddenly as it had arrived? I resisted that urge and made a perfunctory appearance at the event, but then went back home and wrote as much as I could before falling asleep.

So, when I was writing that chapter, stuff like "four years" and "eight years" wasn't based on any single coherent picture, just vibes and vague inklings.

(I think 4 years probably sounded like the right amount of time for G&A to have been in the Mooncrash, character-wise. Meanwhile, Hector's ascension from the Academy had to be long enough ago that there would be no direct overlap between Hector and any of the current students. The "Bad Old Days" had to feel like something you'd only hear about in rumors, or from authority figures who probably weren't telling the full story.)

(2)

Like TNC before it, Almost Nowhere was originally conceived as relatively simple and straightforward story, only to become something much weirder and more complicated as I fleshed out the details.

As I said above, I only had a very vague "plan" at the outset of the writing process. But I kinda knew where I was going with it, in very broad strokes.

The original arc, insofar as it existed at all, was something like:

The bilateral / anomaling tension is introduced.

The bilateral PoV characters come to an understanding of their situation.

Many of the bilateral PoV characters join up with Hector Stein, who is already trying to defeat the anomalings and free humanity from the crashes.

Azad temporarily sides with the anomalings, and Anne temporarily returns to her captive state. But both them "come around" eventually.

Anne eventually triumphs over Michael, delivers a dramatic monologue castigating him for imprisoning her (etc.), and mounts a successful escape.

Shortly after Anne's escape, some (TBD!) resolution to the main conflict is achieved. Whatever it is, it is proposed/spearheaded by the bilateral faction (and specifically Anne herself), and it somehow exemplifies "the bilateral way of thinking/being."

The humbled anomalings conclude that "the bilateral way of thinking/being" has its advantages, both practically and morally.

So the story, as originally conceived, was much more straightforwardly about the "good" PoV humans fighting back against aliens.

It unabashedly took the bilateral side in the conflict, and it ended with a "beauty of our weapons" sort of moment in which the bilaterals are both victorious and righteous, and in which these two kinds of success are closely linked and almost merged.

I have to imagine that, even in counterfactual worlds where some things went differently, I never would have stuck to this version of the story all the way through.

Because, one way or the other, I would have eventually realized that.. like... this version of the story kind of sucks, right?

I mean, why go to the trouble of introducing these aliens, and trying to make them interesting, only to say "nah, actually these guys were just wrong, it's us and our existing 'ordinary' pre-conceptions that are right, and that's what the story was about all along"?

It would have been "inventing a guy to be mad at," as the saying goes.

Not a great foundation for a story. And the least interesting possible direction to go in, given this kind of setup.

It also presents a seemingly unresolvable tension, for the writer, about how to portray the distinctively "bilateral" nature of the bilateral side in the conflict.

If "bilateral" is as broad a category as the anomalings say it is -- if you and I and all of us, whatever other qualities we possess, participate equally in this sin -- then it's hard to strike a note of emotional triumph around the quality of "bilaterality" that doesn't feel wrong, vacuous, or bloodlessly abstract.

"Woo, yeah, humans are great!" I mean, are they? All of them? You don't get to say "well, only the good ones," here, or "in their ideals if not always their acts," or anything like that. Everyone is included in the relevant category, except for the guys-who-aren't that were invented for this specific story.

It's difficult to make this land properly, in the same way it would be difficult to write a story that inspires "carbon-based life pride" or "having-DNA pride" or the like in its reader.

So this version of the story was dead on arrival. And indeed, by the time I was thinking through the stuff chronicled in (1) above, this version of the story felt like a provisional placeholder, at best, in my mind.

Nonetheless, there are various echoes of it in the story I eventually landed on.

For example, in the original version of "Anne's" escape -- conceived in a much more straightforwardly positive way -- I had Anne reading "real" books in secret, drawing moral strength from them, and then including a bunch of literary quotes in her big dramatic monologue to Michael. (I took inspiration, here, from John the Savage reading Shakespeare in Brave New World.)

And I had the idea that "Anne," being an autodidact, would read omnivorously without making culture-bound distinctions familiar to you and me; that her selection of quotes, in the monologue, would put low culture alongside high culture, infamous books alongside famous ones, etc.; and as a particular case, that it'd be fun if -- before going on to quote Shakespeare and co. -- she began the whole thing by quoting Ayn Rand.

And that one idea stuck, even if the rest of it didn't.

(Or, consider how the idea of "a powerful move in the conflict that exemplifies the bilateral way of thinking/being" actually crops up multiple times in the finished story, right up to its last scenes. One can see traces of it in the "trick" that obsesses Michael, in the use of autobiographical writing to build up nostalgium, and in Annabel's improved crash design.)

(3)

I came up with the Mirzakhani Mechanism relatively late, in between writing Chapter 13 and writing Chapters 14-15 (in which the MM is introduced).

The MM was a product of looking back at the sci-fi elements that already existed in the story, like crashes and rebases, and trying to invent some single underlying explanation that covered all of them in a relatively parsimonious way.

This basically "worked," I think -- it certainly worked better than I had been expecting, after playing the dangerous game of "write a bunch of weird stuff and hope you'll be able to explain it all later." (I remember talking to one reader who was shocked that I hadn't had the MM in mind from the very beginning, which was flattering.)

It also had unintended consequences that kinda took over the story, but largely in a good way.

Earlier, I had planned to have the post-rebase crash timelines "screened off" from the outside world somehow, so that rebasing a crash wouldn't mess up the timeline of the outside world. But, once I'd fixed the idea that "rebasing is an MM event" in place, I realized that this wasn't consistent with the way MM events were meant to work. Instead, the exposition in Ch. 15 directly implies the stuff about rebases that Grant realizes much later in Ch. 41.

Once I'd noticed this, it was obvious that it was extremely important, and I re-incorporated it into the broader plot.

On a related note, I eventually decided that the account of the anomalings "going backward in time to our era" in Ch. 15 didn't really make sense. This meant I needed a different, more viable way anomalings and bilaterals to exist at the same point in time.

This line of thought, along with several others (like "what happened to all the nonhuman organisms?" and "which parts of the MM multiverse are real?"), eventually led me to invent Everywhere-Heaven and the beasts.

That happened right at the start of 2022, between Chapters 21 and 22.

It quickly became clear that the E-H/beasts stuff could be put to a lot of valuable use in story's third act, which was largely a worrying blank space in my head (even at this point!). From thereon out, I worked on fleshing out the third act behind the scenes while writing the second.

Not coincidentally, Chapter 22 contains a ton of E-H-related foreshadowing, and also some hints that human scientists (like Aidan in Ch. 15) had never fully understood the anomalings.

The use of Maryam Mirzakhani, a real (and recently deceased) mathematician, was a weird choice and arguably one in poor taste. All I can really say in defense of it is that it came to me suddenly, and had a number of properties that fit the vibe of the part of the story in which it appeared, and I have a policy of "going with my gut" when it suggests such things to me.

I felt similarly about this choice and another thing introduced in Ch. 15, the nuclear attack intended to kill scientists. Both of these things underscored the fact that the story took place in an alternate reality. And both felt sort of "edgy," "too dark," "too close to the real world" compared to the tone of the story so far. But I wanted to take the story to new places in the coming acts -- "darker," "more real" places -- and something felt right about introducing these elements at this exact point, as signposts providing an indication of where things were headed.

(4)

The phrase "NOWHERE TO HIDE" was originally "NO MERCY," in my notes.

And the abbreviation "NM" for "NO MERCY" was used throughout my notes for Nowhere-To-Hide related stuff, e.g. "NM Annes."

This wasn't the product of much thought, just the first thing that came to mind that had roughly the correct vibe. I almost immediately concluded that I'd have to replace "NO MERCY" with something else in the work itself, since it would seem like an Undertale reference that I didn't intend to make.

"Moon" was originally just a placeholder name -- a shorthand for "the 'NM Anne' who rebased the Mooncrash." But I liked the idea of actually using it, once it had occurred to me.

The corresponding placeholder name for A11 was "Ling," as in "linguist" (but also an actual name).

(5)

I went through 3 different outlines of the third act.

Really, there was a first outline, which was really bad, and then there were two slightly-different versions of a very different outline that mostly corresponds to the finished draft.

The first, bad outline was amusingly titled "notes-satisfying-ending.txt", because I explicitly used this post about "satisfying endings" as a guideline while writing it.

(To be clear, I don't think the linked post was to blame for the badness of that first outline. I didn't ultimately find the post very helpful as writing advice, but the "satisfying ending" outline wasn't even a "satisfying ending" in the post's own terms, and was also bad in unrelated ways.)

I don't want to go into much detail about the bad outline. It was really bad, and also really different from what eventually occurred. It's honestly a pretty embarrassing document.

A lot of the key ideas were there (E-H, etc.), and the very end of the story was roughly the same. But it had a ton of needless flaws that I later corrected. Various existing character arcs and motivations were dropped and never picked up, or suddenly diverted in some new and unfruitful direction; way too much time was spent on getting characters and objects from point A to point B, or otherwise sort of rambling about in a way that didn't matter in the end; it included a lot of whimsical "fun ideas" that weren't necessary and would have added clutter to an already very full canvas; etc.

I never got to the point of building a chapter-by-chapter version of this outline, but I'm sure it would have much longer than the existing third act, also.

The existing third act is pretty long, but it was actually the result of an aggressive pruning and tightening process.

If the "satisfying-ending" outline had a single greatest flaw, it was terrible pacing. Lots of slack, lots of empty space, and when big things did happen, they came out of nowhere, not really prompted by what came immediately before them.

The next draft of the ending resulted from taking the raw materials of "satisfying-ending," purging all the dross, re-thinking all the obviously flawed stuff, and then trying to rearrange the pieces in front of me in a way that was maximally "tight" and interconnected, with questions and tensions introduced and then resolved in a rapid-fire manner, and without any major thread "sitting around in the background" long enough to feel stale, or get forgotten.

That outline was in a file called "notes-good-end.txt."

Much later, I tightened up the plan even further, merging some things that were originally in separate chapters. This was in a file called "notes-true-end.txt", and -- true to its name -- was the version reflected in the book itself.

So there was "satisfying-ending," which sucked; "good-end," which was good; and "true-end," which was slightly better.

(I realize the multiplicity of the ending, and the account of deliberate "tightening" etc., is in apparent tension with my recent account of working by direct inspiration.

There are a few things I can say about this tension.

For one, it really is true that the third act of AN was more deliberately reasoned-out, and less directly-inspired, than some of the earlier stuff. This is kind of inevitable: you don't get to do anything after an ending, that's what an ending is, and so you have to deliberately try to make the final act of a story fully work as a thing unto itself, rather than writing checks in the hope of cashing them at some later point.

And separately, I do think the final version of the ending feels "more real," "more true to the work" than the satisfying-ending draft.

I think I was aware, even while composing "satisfying-ending," that it felt off and wrong in some ways. But it was only after going through the exercise of creating a complete ending -- some sort of complete ending -- that I was able to look back and say "OK, this fits, but this doesn't fit," and distill something that actually felt right.)

[philosophybits]

The Cartesian doubt, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[dateinmarsh]

The term vita contemplativa is not meant to invoke, nostalgically, a world where existence originally felt at home. Rather, it connects to the experience of being [Seinserfahrung] in which what is beautiful and perfect does not change or pass—a state that eludes all human intervention. The basic mood that distinguishes it is marveling at the way things are [So-Sein], which has nothing to do with practicality or processuality. Modern, Cartesian doubt has taken the place of wonder.

The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han

[juliansummerhayes]

Language is everything

"If you can’t say it, you can’t see it. Our ability to say something with the beauty and elegance of our own language carries our way of knowing that thing. Language is the way the thing is known to us. Language makes a continuity for our knowledge and gives us a way of acting on what we know. This is why the bard or the storyteller is in most every culture the one revered for his or her capacity with words. They are the great rememberers." -- Stephen Jenkinson

Sadly, and this point isn't beyond doubt, English has become the lingua franca of so much of the world. (If it's not someone's first language -- i.e. Spanish -- it's definitely their second language.)

And as someone who knows no other language, I can say this: it's hollowed out the mystery of life and being human. Everything is reduced now to a form of Cartesian, know-it-all narrative that abhors imprecision of any kind. It's ten times worse for lawyers (mea culpa) and that means I'm constantly rowing against the literalist tide that is the raison d'être of my industry.

And then weave into the mythos the hyper liberalism (a phrase I first heard John Gray mention), slouching on the bar of 'my rights' and an extremism that stakes out its territory with falsity and untruths at every turn, and you can see why it's not an exaggeration to say that language is both a spell maker and spell breaker.

If those last few words seem a little tendentious, then my point is made to the extent that even the notion of 'rights' will trigger some people into a vitriolic pitch to convince everyone in their purview that they are right.

I'd take a slightly different tack and say: ask yourself in the context of what you believe you're owed, does the world need you, or do we need the world? I know it's way off beam but I would want to set the scene that absent a liveable planet, a bushel of rights isn't going to be much use to you or anyone else. And yes, there's a hue of generalisations in what I'm saying but the next time you begin to question the dominant narrative -- as I do each and every day -- ask yourself what place language has in the continued melee.

Take care, Julian

Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash

[jacquelinemerritt]

Postmodernism: It’s a Thing.

Originally posted March 7th, 2016

So, recently I’ve taken to reading the work of Film Crit HULK (who you should totally be reading too, by the way), and I came across an older article of his where he argues that postmodernism doesn’t exist. To summarize, HULK argues that there is no actual distinction between postmodernism and modernism, as both artistic movements had the same fundamental goals of questioning the validity of classically accepted truth, whether that truth be how to tell a story, how to express concepts with line and color, or how to construct buildings.

Now, I’m actually a postmodernist, but I still found his argument to be pretty compelling in regards to the weaknesses of our cultural definition of postmodernism and our collective lack of understanding of what modernism actually was and is. And as he argued, those problems lead to problems when attempting to discuss it, as most people just have a general sense of the concept instead of a solid definition.

The thing is, postmodernism definitely exists, and its existence is made clearest when looking at how it can be defined in the context of moral and political philosophy, as opposed to its murky existence in art. To put it simply, postmodernism in moral and political philosophy is the rejection of the modernist paradigm of rationalism, progressivism, and amorality in favor of a return to classical understanding of knowledge and the good.1

Okay, so I recognize that that’s a pretty technical definition that you’re not likely to get unless you’ve studied contemporary, modern, and ancient political philosophy, so I’ll explain what I mean. Modern political philosophy is defined by the works of three particular people: Niccolò Machiavelli, René Descartes, and Thomas Hobbes. All three of these authors’ works are concerned with tearing down the classical notions of the purpose of government, knowledge, and the good2, and in its place building a new standard for those things from scratch.

Machiavelli is first on the scene, and he challenges notions of morality and government by claiming the most effective and most secure rulers are tyrants who engage in an evil and selfish rule. Descartes chooses to take nothing for granted concerning knowledge and builds a systemic approach to knowledge based on the principle that the human ability to doubt is the only absolute certainty. Hobbes then takes Machiavelli a step further and questions the reasons for government existence (drawing of Cartesian doubt) determining that the sole purpose of government is to prevent us from killing each other and provide safety from external threats (the basics of his social contract theory), and by such logic the best government is the one that keeps citizens safe through extreme enforcement of harsh law3.

I could track the development of modernism by philosophers further4, but instead I’m just going to note that Cartesian rationalism and the Cartesian Method (which is quite similar to Newton’s scientific method) led to the rise of industrialism, and social contract theory led to the rise of democratic regimes across Europe and America, wherein democracy itself ended up being espoused as a good in and of itself (a la Lincoln’s American Civil Religion). From here, we can already see a parallel between philosophical and artistic modernism; both began as revolts against the traditional or classical doctrine of what art and the good is, and both developed their own approach to art and philosophy from scratch, questioning the very nature of beauty and thought in the process.

Postmodern political and moral philosophy then was a reaction to the ideals of modernism, with philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Hannah Arendt emerging as harsh critics of their ideals. Now, HULK actually acknowledges this, and he argues that the reactionary nature of postmodernism makes it indistinguishable from modernism, but in doing so he chooses to ignore the significant methodological departure made by Heidegger and those that he influenced.

Heidegger’s philosophy was, on the surface, a rejection of both Modernist and Classical ideals, but his concern with the etymological significance of language and search for the original meaning of words and concepts was a shift from developing concepts based on evidence to developing concepts based on the “text” itself. Derrida expanded on this with his concept of “deconstruction” as an approach to textual and political criticism (deconstruction is the de facto approach of anyone concerned with systemic injustice), and Arendt used this textual approach to examine the nature of human activity and thought, and propose a return to the “active life” and emphasis on public action present in classical thought.

Most postmodern thought builds on the Arendtian paradigm here, focusing on a return to classical ideals and deconstruction of modernist ideals, with the final addition of note being how postmodernism rejects both modernist and classical notions of human relationship in favor of focusing on developing an empathetic relationship with “the other.” This is also the primary function of postmodernism’s “incredulity towards metanarratives,” as Jean-Francois Lyotard put it, as the emphasis on “the other” leads to a willingness to criticize any overarching concept put forth by society that attempts to denigrate or harm people for perceived differences. Also, as HULK noted, the focus on deconstruction certainly is a metanarrative itself, but the embrace of classical values within postmodernism means that it isn’t simply a rejection of metanarratives, as is commonly misconceived. Finally, it’s also important to mention postmodernism uses the metanarrative of “philosophy” itself as its tool to deconstruct philosophy (this is the stated goal of Heidegger, in fact).

So, going back to my original definition, if postmodern philosophy is “the rejection of the modernist paradigm of rationalism, progressivism, and amorality in favor of a return to classical understanding of knowledge and the good,” can we use that definition to create a similar one for art? I think we can, and given my explanation of how postmodernism approaches these goals, I think it is as simple as “Postmodern art uses the classical tools of art to deconstruct or interrogate either the classical or modern paradigm of art.”

Now, I’m not going to attempt to apply that to any of the arts outside of film and television, but the application of this definition becomes pretty easy: Community is a postmodern show because it uses the format of the sitcom to interrogate all kinds of concepts and assumptions associated with traditional storytelling, and Hot Fuzz is a postmodern film because it interrogates the tropes of action films while remaining an action film. On the other end, a modernist interrogation of sitcoms would be Too Many Cooks, as it interrogates the “TGIF” sitcom era by showing the assumed state of peace and happiness within those sitcoms to be a complete lie, and a modernist action film would be one that distances itself entirely from and critiques the basis for that violence directly (unfortunately, I can’t think of a film that actually does this). Obviously there are many more potential examples I could turn to, and I’d actually be interested in discussing how this definition could apply to mediums outside film and TV, but for now, I feel like I have gone on for long enough about postmodernism and modernism. And I will be damned if they are not complicated to talk about.

Stray Observations

1Eudaimonia, if you prefer Greek.

2This is a slight fib, as Descartes had next to no concern with government, and neither Hobbes nor Machiavelli cared much about knowledge, though they certainly used Cartesian rationalism.

3Both Machiavelli and Hobbes have an incredibly pessimistic view of human nature, and it guides the entirety of their philosophies.

4If you want a much better and more detailed history of the development of modernism, you should read Leo Strauss’ essay “The Three Waves of Modernity.”

Let the record show that I feel like a proper pretentious douche for talking about Heidegger with no hints of irony whatsoever. There’s a similar feeling regarding Derrida as well.

I obviously have no shame in talking about Hannah Arendt, because she’s the freakin’ best.

I also recognize that this is hella esoteric, and that I’m also really failing to do justice to the ideas of any philosopher I mentioned here (it’s why this is a blog post instead of a proper academic paper), but I hope that this was still fairly easy to follow.

Also obviously most films with basic dramatic structure would fall under a “classical” paradigm.

[latin-phrases-showdown]

Round 1 Poll 27

De omnibus dubitandum

"Doubt everything"

Also the title of Kierkegaard's work on Cartesian doubt.

Disco Inferno

"I learn by hellish means," usually translated as I learn through suffering

Also the title of a Quantum Leap episode

[informatikerin-freyja]

By the time you get to a cartesian category, the corresponding logic is so limited I doubt it is worthy of a name.

[cozyunoist]

opinions on descartes' skepticism?

i would tag my bf in but, in spite of all my wheedling, he refuses to get back on tumblr :/ he's really much more of a knower of cartesian scepticism than me. i really only know the literature on external-world scepticism, which isn't strictly speaking coextensive. while i know my way around the meditations i only really know vague generalities about the historical reception of, like, descartes & doubt; so my opinion is more or less about what got barfed up by the analytics & dragged into, like, silly epistemology, philosophy of perception & so on. honestly this makes me think i'd like to read a good history of how we wound up reconstructing descartes as the canon's worst sceptic!

in my bf's absence, my sketchy opinion is this: 1) it's a deeply truncated form of scepticism compared to pyrrhonian scepticism, and this truncation only makes it a less persuasive position, as it scepticism bracketing itself in this fashion is generally self-undermining, 2) it's not a position anyone really held or holds, least of all descartes, and 3) in its present form, it exists largely as a ceremonial scapegoat for the benefit of analytic philosophers, so they can debunk an internally incoherent scepticism replete with ridiculous axioms & closure principles so as to make themselves feel better about not having anything very decisive to say to pyrrhonian sceptics besides 'but how's that working out for you' and 'i've got hands'.

and, i mean, i'm usually not one to hype up the underbaked soteriological aspects of pyrrhonism, but it's really quite something to make up 'scepticism but it makes u upset' as a kind of confusing decoy for leading undergrads away from the light. final note, as a sidebar i think it's hysterical that we've gotten all this 'simulation-hypothesis' discourse given there doesn't really seem to be any salient difference between it & brain-in-vat stuff. anyway, sorry that was all a bit meta-level! like i said, it doesn't occupy a whole lot of brain space for me, but if there was something specific in the literature you wanted to chat about feel free to jump back in & i'll give it a look when i have a chance.

[thisisgraceunderpressure]

the quest for the Cartesian subject

...both Nishida and Lacan approach the subject through an experiential practice: Zen meditation for Nishida and the exercise of psychoanalysis for Lacan.

Nishida held that the subject could be apprehended only by acting and not by purely intellectual means or by some aspect of consciousness. Lacan, for his part, held that the subject of the unconscious could be approached only through the twists and turns of language in the practice of analytic free association. In no case is it the fruit of some kind of ratiocination; nor does it involve any sort of certitude. The important element here is “experience.” This term is frequently evoked by Nishida in the form of “pure experience” and by Lacan as “analytic experience.

The Cartesian experience is based on a series of negations. Everything is negated, up to and including existence as such. Yet, for both Nishida and Lacan, Descartes did not go quite far enough with this. Instead of pushing forward into the deepest possibilities of doubt, he stopped with the cogito, the “I” who “is” because “I am thinking.” He looked to the external world for the validation of this being, in a substratum of extension, and then left the problem to God. This was not, indeed, just any God: Descartes’ God was not a deceitful, “evil genius,” and was therefore able to provide a certain certitude about being. That is where the Cartesian approach stumbled, where its quest for the subject came to an end. The consequence of this was the advent of a subject brimming with subjectivism and even solipsism. This subject is made of substance, is reflexive; it is a subject of knowledge that becomes an object like any other and gives rise, among other repercussions, to a rejection of the body.

Blondelot, Xavier, and Marie-Jean Sauret. Japan Review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.15055/00006024.

[the-chomsky-hash]

F. [Crossed out:]

Ultimately, can we say that the truth is false? No doubt, this would not make much sense:

1. it is no more possible to say in the Nietzschean mode that the truth is false than it is possible to say in the Cartesian mode that the truth is true.

2. It would be better to say, at least provisionally, something like this: truth

it is not that which opposes error

it is that around which error is distributed: that which arouses by its (....”

– Michel Foucault, Beginning, Origin, History, (Course given at the experimental university of Vincennes, 1969-1970: Annex 2), from Nietzsche: Cours, conférences et travaux, edited by Bernard E. Harcourt

[dog-uncrushed]

Rancière: “there are no madmen except those who insist on being right”. What does this signify? That madmen are all Cartesians. Descartes attributed the source of error (and therefore the source of non-being; of madness) in human being to the fact that the sphere of man’s will exceeds the sphere of his intellect. As such, man for the most part acts and dreams without the intellect’s backing, whose meagre dominion can seldom justify the will’s hyperactivity. Man’s folly and unreason is thus simply the result of the conjunction of a potent will and and an impotent intellect. To avoid madness one must remain within the certitude of pure reason’s circle: only this way can one achieve rational being, pure from the wilful folly of unreason. 

Yet Rancière’s formula turns the Cartesian view on its head: it is this insistence that one must not stray from reason’s circle of certitude that makes man paranoid and anxious, persecutory and domineering, guilt-ridden and manically frenetic. Which is to say that man goes mad to the degree to which he begins to doubt the intelligence of his will. For Rancière man is a will served by an intelligence and never the reverse. For the will to serve the intellect is for man to pervert himself and become alienated from his nature: this is his madness. One can contrast the madness of the will which doubts itself with the sanity of the healthy animal that obeys the transforms of its will with unwavering fidelity.

Perhaps madness is a striving which goes after what the will cannot in earnest attach itself to: an idea which lies beyond the limit of the will’s power. Sanity then consists in the recognition of impotence, of “knowing one’s limits”. Equally, one recognises the imperfection of the other, who is just as impotent as one’s self. To form such an opinion allows one to give up jealousy and paranoia, idealisation and condemnation. In this fragile kingdom of sobriety, equality and reason reign with good faith.

Yet what disturbs this conclusion —— “knowing one’s limits” —— from resolving the matter is the fact that limits dilate: they expand and contract. One can become more or less powerful, and this becoming has everything to do with the spontaneous exertions of madness which challenge the subject to perform feats that exceeds his capabilities. It was mania that dreamed the fields on whose slopes “victory” and “defeat” were first uttered. It is on the dream-fields of mania that cultures of potency reap the fruits of competition which in their accumulation index the power differentials that return again and again to the question of who has piled up more in their circle of certitude: who has claim to more knowledge than the other? He who has the most will be crowned, as is customary, the victor-master-king. And his name will be written, recorded and memorialised.

Yet every capo awaits a decapitator, a young gun who has pillaged the master’s storehouse of secret knowledge will come equipped to oust the reigning monarch by performing a feat greater than that seen before. Thus he secures the top spot, advances the culture and progresses knowledge and history once more. So goes the Oedipal dream of mania. That this dream is a fiction — which is obvious — does not stop it from being a reality. It is a powerful dream, so powerful that it has become incarnate as that which structures power. Power is this dream, power is this fiction. Yet it is a fiction that arms itself with facts and thereby becomes efficient. This is the Cartesian project: to load the armoury of the intellect with the atomic artillery of the indubitable. Cogito Ergo Sum. 

[the-philosophers-shirt]

Cartesian doubt is a good start to get rid of (acquired) dogmatism.

[dan6085]

Creating a list of the top 20 philosophers in history along with details of their works and timeline is a substantial task. Here’s a comprehensive overview:

1. **Socrates (c. 470-399 BCE)**

- **Works**: No writings; his philosophy is known through the dialogues of his student Plato.

- **Contributions**: Socratic method (dialectic method of inquiry), ethical focus on human virtues.

2. **Plato (c. 427-347 BCE)**

- **Works**: "The Republic," "Phaedo," "Symposium," "Timaeus," among others.

- **Contributions**: Theory of Forms, ideas on justice, the ideal state, epistemology, and metaphysics.

3. **Aristotle (384-322 BCE)**

- **Works**: "Nicomachean Ethics," "Politics," "Metaphysics," "Poetics," "Organon."

- **Contributions**: Logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, biology; systematic approach to knowledge.

4. **Confucius (551-479 BCE)**

- **Works**: "Analects" (compiled by followers).

- **Contributions**: Focus on morality, social relationships, justice, and sincerity; Confucianism as a social philosophy.

5. **Laozi (6th century BCE?)**

- **Works**: "Tao Te Ching."

- **Contributions**: Founding figure of Taoism; concepts of wu wei (non-action), naturalness, simplicity.

6. **Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) (c. 563-483 BCE)**

- **Works**: Sutras (compiled teachings).

- **Contributions**: Founding figure of Buddhism; Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path.

7. **René Descartes (1596-1650)**

- **Works**: "Meditations on First Philosophy," "Discourse on the Method," "Principles of Philosophy."

- **Contributions**: Cartesian doubt, cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), dualism.

8. **Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)**

- **Works**: "Critique of Pure Reason," "Critique of Practical Reason," "Critique of Judgment."

- **Contributions**: Transcendental idealism, ethics (categorical imperative), epistemology.

9. **John Locke (1632-1704)**

- **Works**: "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," "Two Treatises of Government."

- **Contributions**: Empiricism, social contract theory, ideas on natural rights.

10. **David Hume (1711-1776)**

- **Works**: "A Treatise of Human Nature," "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding."

- **Contributions**: Empiricism, skepticism, philosophy of religion, naturalism.

11. **Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)**

- **Works**: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," "Beyond Good and Evil," "The Birth of Tragedy."

- **Contributions**: Critique of traditional morality, concept of the Übermensch, will to power.

12. **Karl Marx (1818-1883)**

- **Works**: "The Communist Manifesto," "Das Kapital."

- **Contributions**: Historical materialism, critique of capitalism, theory of class struggle.

13. **Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)**

- **Works**: "The Social Contract," "Emile, or On Education."

- **Contributions**: Social contract theory, education philosophy, ideas on human nature and society.

14. **John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)**

- **Works**: "On Liberty," "Utilitarianism," "The Subjection of Women."

- **Contributions**: Utilitarianism, liberty, rights of individuals, feminism.

15. **Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)**

- **Works**: "Summa Theologica," "Summa Contra Gentiles."

- **Contributions**: Scholasticism, synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, natural law theory.

16. **Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)**

- **Works**: "Fear and Trembling," "Either/Or," "The Sickness Unto Death."

- **Contributions**: Existentialism, Christian existentialism, critique of Hegelianism.

17. **Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)**

- **Works**: "Phenomenology of Spirit," "Science of Logic," "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences."

- **Contributions**: Absolute idealism, dialectics, historical development of spirit.

18. **Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)**

- **Works**: "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity."

- **Contributions**: Feminist existentialism, gender theory, ethics of freedom and responsibility.

19. **Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)**

- **Works**: "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," "Philosophical Investigations."

- **Contributions**: Philosophy of language, logic, critique of philosophy.

20. **Michel Foucault (1926-1984)**

- **Works**: "Discipline and Punish," "The History of Sexuality," "Madness and Civilization."

- **Contributions**: Power-knowledge relations, social institutions, history of ideas.

These philosophers have had a profound impact on various fields, including ethics, political theory, metaphysics, epistemology, and logic, shaping the way we think about and understand the world.

[geopolicraticus]

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

René Descartes and Non-philosophies of History   

Today is the 428th anniversary of the birth of René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), who was born in La Haye en Touraine, in central France, on this date in 1596. The town where he was born has since been re-named for him.

Descartes was a skeptic of history, doubting (as he doubted most things) that history could be the basis of certain knowledge. However, Descartes’ skepticism about history was a spur to some historians to submit their discipline to Cartesian criticism, but Descartes also left a legacy of neglect of history, which was thus largely passed by during the scientific revolution.

Quora:              https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ 

Discord:           https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD

Links:              https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/

Newsletter:      http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

Podcast:           https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nick-nielsen94/episodes/Ren-Descartes-and-Non-philosophies-of-History-e2hqigi  

Text post: https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/rene-descartes-and-non-philosophies

[jonathanbrostar]

Like many trans people I often have doubts about my gender, like maybe I am just deluding myself, maybe I don’t want to be a girl after all, that kind of thing. BUT. The thought that always reaffirms my desires to be a woman is realizing that most people don’t spend most of their lives imagining what it’s like to be the opposite gender or wishing they could transform into the opposite sex. That’s a uniquely trans experience (even if someone feels that way and doesn’t end up identifying as trans). By a pseudo-Cartesian process, I know I’m not faking that, if nothing else.