Recently, I posted a comment on John Immel’s blog, http://www.spiritualtyranny.com, under the article “Welcome to the Problem of Universals”, which you can access here. John then responded to my comment, and I responded back this morning. My last comment is still in moderation limbo. Not content with this, I have decided to post my comment here, for those of you who care. I know that some of you who read here also read on John’s site, so I feel compelled, I admit, to finish this conversation, even if it means using my own blog as the platform. I have been doing this blogging/commenting thing for several years now, and I have learned that the amount of time one lets a comment languish in moderation is inversely proportional to the level of people’s commitment to the discussion. In this sense then, moderating someone can equate to a form of passive aggression, and a means of manipulating the debate. Not that we can ever really know that this is actually what’s happening (not that knowing matters…the fact still remains, the longer a comment goes unpublished, to less effective the comment will be, because of the naturally waning interest of other readers). I mean, for all I know, John may be on a honeymoon. But since I understand the benefits of being the gatekeeper of a discussion, determining not only what can be said but when, I would like to try to mitigate this as much as possible. So, here we are. If a comment of mine is not posted on the original blog for which it was intended by, say, the late evening of the day in which it was originally submitted, I will post it here. Now, in this case, it is particularly important that I do so. As you will see, John essentially accuses me of sharing philosophical identities with Marxism (he actually specifies Hume and Kant, but I suspect these are names one uses when they want to accuse someone of Marxism without actually referring to Marx). I reject this entirely for the rank nonsense it is; but the reason for the accusation has everything to do with John not particularly understanding–nor even attempting to understand (because he makes no attempt to point out any inconsistencies in my thinking)–my perspective. This I submit has to do with his full-on concession that the foundations of philosophical thinking have already been established, and there is nothing else to be said in this regard. The only thing left to do is pound one’s opponent with ordinance that hasn’t changed significantly in the past thousand years or so. In other words, you think within the boundaries of institutionally accepted metaphysical and epistemological theories, or you are disqualified automatically. It is akin to a music theorist telling a musician that he or she cannot put two specific notes together, not because they actually sound bad within the context of the song, but simply because music theory doesn’t have a formula which allows for it. This argument is ridiculous for obvious reasons, and bears no further commentary. I concede that only the individual human being is the rational Standard of Truth; that is, the yardstick by which any belief, idea, opinion, concept, or faith can be actually and efficaciously known as both true and ethical (or, conversely, by which these things can be known as false and evil). Period. How I get there is by proclaiming that man, by his powers of conceptualization, starting with the primary concept of the SELF, gives meaning and value to his environment, and that he thus is not a product of that environment as the empiricists and Objectivists would have you believe. For if man is a function of his environment, then man cannot actually be a distinct SELF. He is doomed to the determinist forces which govern all of “objective reality OUTSIDE of himself”. And further, a reality OUTSIDE of man cannot be known nor defined by man by definition, because it is OUTSIDE of him, and thus cannot include him. And so what is the point of the fucking conversation anyway? Why is John so committed to pointing out my inherent Marxism, as though he can even be in an epistemological position to observe it, according to his own ideas? If man is OUTSIDE reality, which is the explicit assumption behind appeals to a reality which is “real” whether man exists or acknowledges it or not, then the question “does reality exist?” is unanswerable on its face. But as we shall see, John doesn’t come within a million miles of even acknowledging this implicit rational flaw. Anyway…somehow, I’m communist. And somehow this idea, that the INDIVIDUAL is the only rightful owner and definer of his or her own life–and that it is the ability of one to conceptualize his or her existence which makes all humans equal and thus negates as immoral all violations of other people–will lead to inevitable bloodshed, tyranny, and heartache for everyone on earth. Amen. Well…look, I’m not a philosopher. I never said I was. I have never claimed any formal education and I have been entirely up front about the fact that I know fuck all about most of your major philosophical players. And if you think I’m sitting through Plato’s Republic, you might as well go dig a hole and fill it in with fairy dust. Because…no way. I have not spent many wee hours of the night sitting by candlelight in the Library of Congress and pouring over old manuscripts until my eyes bleed. I care nothing for dissertations and theses on these subjects. Could give a shit. I have simple questions concerning the rank contradictions which blaze forth, not from arcane writings in long forgotten textbooks on long forgotten shelves in long forgotten libraries in institutions of intellectual snobbery, but from everyday ideas, implemented to destructive effect, which is the efficacious and relevant conclusion of all of the esoteric blather when all is said and done. I don’t need a dissertation or a canon of philosophical dogma. I only need to turn on the fucking TV or open a newspaper. Within four minutes I’ll be inundated with the causal effect of time; or the cosmic, determined imperative that I submit to some abstract political, collectivist ideal; or I will be told under some stupid science article that the universe is a a trillion years old and yet in the same article I’ll be told that time was created AFTER the Big Bang, which means the universe could not be a trillion years old because the question “a trillion years from when?” cannot possibly be answered. So to hell with your shelf of books. Riddle me these things. All the bullshit need not apply. I don’t want appeals to intellectual or educational pedigree (see John’s response below). I don’t want the rhetoric of “if you only understood what I understand you would accept that you are all wrong”. I shouldn’t have to study philosophy in some stuffy formal setting for years on end before the geniuses can answer a simple question like: If man is a function of the laws of nature which govern, how can he in fact be distinct? Or: Of what efficacy and relevance is observation without a definition of WHAT is observing and WHAT is being observed? That is, without a conceptual paradigm grounded in a Standard of Truth by which “observation” and “reality” and “SELF” and “truth” and “objective”, can have any meaning in the first place. And: If there is no definition of any of these ideas without first their conceptualization, then just how can we know that observation comes first in the epistemological chain? How do you define something without conceptualizing it? How is man actually man without a definition of man? How do we “observe” that which lacks any definition? I could go on and on, but you get the idea. And for all of John’s words, I’m still waiting for the superior intellects to answer. I know they may seem complicated, but these are really not hard questions. They are only hard when we have already decided that the QUESTIONS are in fact, the answers. That is, contradiction is the root metaphysical and epistemological primary. And, don’t doubt me, John fully accepts the contradictions, because they are grounded in “objective reality” as he defines it. And so once again, the philosopher kings get to define the terms. Contradictions aren’t contradictions as long as the “right” people with the “right” philosophy (e.g. those philosophies, like Objectivism, which toot their horns as the moral antipode of Marxism) are in charge of them. Your continued objections are merely proof that you are intellectually insufficient; that you have not been “given the grace to perceive”. And this is why nothing changes. Because as soon as you dare to question the idea that man gets his truth from his ability to observe, as opposed to his ability to conceptualize or reason, you are a Marxist, ’nuff said. And that’s the point of John’s entire comment. I have denied the senses as THE singular source of truth, so I must be a moral relativist. I must concede that there is no truth. And he sees absolutely nothing beyond that. Which is a shame. As soon as one condemns man to his senses for his truth, he condemns man to WHAT those senses sense. Man becomes fully a product of what is NOT him…that which is outside of himself. Which destroys the SELF, by definition. I, however, submit that man himSELF is the source of his truth, and nothing else. Not his environment; not his senses; not his God…nothing. Man IS, period. And it is by knowing that you ARE, because you can define what you are, that you can BE YOU; and you can think, and you can do and you can choose. And knowledge is conceptual. Not because it is my opinion, but because it must be. There is no definition which is not ultimately a conceptual definition. This is not up for debate. This is not subjective. Sorry. And whatever John says Kant or Hume or Marx thinks about that, I just don’t fucking care. That’s not my problem. I will not be pigeon-holed into the either/or dichotomy John Immel’s philosophy demands. That is, you are either essentially an Objectivist or you are a rank Marxist. That’s just plain weak. Answer the questions; explain the contradictions. That’s your only moral and intellectual obligation. Not to appeal to your vast educational experience, or to draw up new textbooks for us all to ponder until the wee hours of our life’s winter years. Not to tell us how we need to agree that if we only understood what you understand, we’d put down our raised hands and go back to knitting those shawls or rebuilding those carburetors or head back to the movies. Explain why your contradictions aren’t actually contradictions…and if that takes a while, by all means, we’ll wait. In case you didn’t notice, I have over two hundred and fifty essays on this blog. I’ve got nothing but time. So, take yours. By all means. * Here is my first comment wherein I respond to a question John asks in his article. The question is, “Does reality exist?”.
GASP! Is Argo Really a Repressed or Closet Marxist?: Response to John Immel from Spiritual Tyranny
““does reality exist?” I have spent the better part of six weeks debating this question on YouTube with atheists (I started a v-blog specifically aimed at dismantling scientific empiricism), due to its rank and obvious contradictions (e.g. Man is a function of the laws of physics which govern/man is distinct from the laws of physics which govern). My conclusion? The question is irrelevant. Because any attempt to define “objective reality” outside of man is inevitably discussed in conceptual terms, which man authors, which then renders moot any notion of “objective reality OUTSIDE of man”. Since “objective reality” is only relevant insofar as it affirms man’s ability to conceptualize and thus know it and thus know TRUTH, the argument is really about conceptual consistency, and nothing else.(with conceptual consistency being “reason”). What the material world is “objectively” and “outside” is irrelevant, and thus, yes, unknowable, for all practical purposes”-for again, “knowing” it for what it is OUTSIDE OF MAN is impossible, since YOU are the absolute frame of reference by which you know reality. So again, the question “what is reality or does reality exist”, where reality is assumed to be OUTSIDE of man (putting man, implicitly outside of reality and thus making him NOT real, interestingly), is moot. The only path to TRUTH then is maintaining the consistency of the conceptual paradigm as a means to affirm the individual, because the individual is the frame of reference for ALL of reality, and there indeed is no other verifiable reference “outside” of him, full stop. The individual gives meaning and value to his environment, not the other way around, which would necessarily be determinism. For if we concede that there is an “objective reality” outside of man, we must logically subordinate man and his mind to whatever forces govern that reality, because man is either NOT real and thus is nothing, or he is OBJECTIVELY real and thus at the mercy of the OUTSIDE forces which determine/govern/control him. And this of course naturally negates man at the root existential level, because at no point does man ever get to be HIMSELF, and distinctly so. Most people adopt a hybrid approach whereby reason is mixed (well, really s a function of) empirical observation. This is rationally impossible for all the reasons I just described. And hence the massive contradictions in science as a means of interpreting “reality”. And hence the fact that scientific empiricism is really scientific determinism, which is really plain old, run of the mill Platonism, which alway finds its way to the rivers of blood.” Here is John’s response:
Argo/Zack, I’ve always admired your passion for these discussions, but I have to ask . . . if the existence of reality is irrelevant why then are you spending time on the discussion? Your investment in the argument (at minimum six weeks by your own admission) betrays your conclusion. You wouldn’t spend six weeks and start a video blog arguing for the non existence of say Santa Clause? Or the non existence of flibbertigibbets? This is a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious. But I want to further point out that to argue for the non-existence of non existence is an oxymoron. If there is no reality then there is no existence, no matter how one tries to parse out an existence created by consciousness. This is exactly the problem the Bishop Berkeley and David Hume and Immanuel Kant ran into—their nominalist/conceptualist argument invalidated the whole of humanity. The fact is—facts of the objective variety—the existence of reality is central to the entire philosophical equation which is exactly why I posted this article. This question cannot be escaped because without an answer the whole of human epistemology collapses and the only conclusion left is skepticism. You are right to hold Platonism in contempt but skepticism—of the Humian and Kantian variety of which you are currently dancing around the edges—has proved to be quantitatively more disastrous. I understand that you think you are defending man by defending reason (i.e. the supremacy of consciousness) by invalidating a determinist universe. If there is no causality then man is free in every sense of free. But your solution is akin the Vietnam military policy of destroying the village to save the village. I need to point out, Mechanistic Determinism is not a function of Platonism. Mechanistic determinism is a byproduct of Thomas Hobbs nominalism and has been passed down to the Logical Positivist who are also nominialists—who indecently philosophically dominate the field of physics. Whatever the failures of the mechanistic/determinists, and their intellectual heirs the Logical Positivists, the solution to their conclusion is not to invalidate the whole of causality which is an direct assault on the whole of reality. This is like dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki to save the Japanese man walking the street. Your central error is failing to understand concept formation and the roll of concepts in human cognition. This is in fact an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical issue. And it is impossible to understand the distinction between the epistemological and the metaphysical from a nominialist/conceptualist position—because by definition a primacy of consciousness formulation subsumes existence into consciousness. As such, there is no concept formation—at best ideas are arbitrary constructs: at worst . . . well take a fast look at Hegel and the Soviet Union and you will see the end result of a conceptualist ideology. (And in brief answer to one of your posts: Primacy of consciousness was originated in Thomas Hobbs but found its full formulation in Rene Descartes Prior Certainty of Consciousness. This was later shorted to the category of Primacy of Consciousness to describe philosophies that place consciousness as the primary metaphysical starting point—which by the way is most of them, including your formulation.) Here is the thing. I have the same challenge today that I had when I first objected to your formulation: time. Unraveling the central error in the Nominalist/Conceptualist understanding of existence requires a substantive knowledge of the most highly technical parts of philosophy. I was eighty pages into my response when I realized my readership would have no context for my comments. Nor would they necessarily understand why you were/are important and why this conversation is important. Eighty pages . . .and I was not even close to done. So I cut out the article on the problem of Universals and I’ve pondered how to address this issue ever since… unfortunately with no success. Make no mistake I think this is very important. As a student of history and philosophy I already know where your nominalist/conceptualist formulation goes. And I am telling you the truth—it can only lead to the absolute collapse of human cognition.” Finally, here is my as-of-yet still unpublished response: “”Man is both himself and a DIRECT function of the Laws of Nature. Man is wholly determined and yet wholly distinct.” “Not at all. Man (all life for that matter) is wholly determined. Our perceptions of it are irrelevant. We may feel like we as distinct from nature, but that feeling is an illusion, if a useful one for the deterministic end-point of our species in the situation we are in. Cats and dogs probably have the same illusion of choice. Choice is just the feeling we have when a deterministic brain reaches the only conclusion it can or will.” John, The first quote is mine, pointing out the contradictory existential assumption behind scientific empiricism (or just “empiricism”). The second quote is the response from someone appealing to the idea of an “objective reality OUTSIDE of man”. I assure you, this kind of response is most common, and it is the invariable conclusion of the kind of empiricist thinking that you [(as an Objectivist)] defend (because any other idea MUST be Kant or Hume…the sides have already been determined, we just need to pick one, right?). So, if my ideas inevitably lead to the collapse of human cognition, I wonder where yours lead. Free will isn’t free. Choice is an illusion. Man’s mind is a cog in the cause-and-effect mechanics of a determined universe. That doesn’t sound too enlightened to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s quite the opposite. This guy spent the entire debate defending the absolute integrity of man’s senses to observe “objective reality” only to conclude that “our perceptions are irrelevant”. I have little doubt that should our discussion continue, you will reach the same conclusion. And that’s a problem [for you]. [Here’s why.] You are deciding I am wrong based on questions which [you admit are central to the philosophical debate, but] which you cannot possibly answer [based upon your devotion to the idea that “objective, observable, empirical evidence” is exclusive and distinct from reason]. For example: What is reality? That question cannot be answered except by appealing to that [(“objective reality OUTSIDE of man”)]which [naturally] makes man irrelevant. Which [naturally] makes the question irrelevant. [This was the nature of my youtube debates; they did not concern the idea of debating an irrelevancy…or rather, a negative; that is the actual “nothingness” of reality. By the way, there is no such thing as a negative assertion. My argument wasn’t about why “objective reality” ISN’T, but why belief in “objective reality” IS irrational, contradictory, and destructive to the individual. I assumed you’d understand this, but I suppose in hindsight I should have been surprised if you did, and thus been more clear in framing the context of the debate.] Answer the question “What is man?” and you will answer the question “What is reality?”. Separate them and lose both answers because you will have invalidated both questions. “Reality” is of no use unless it validates the right [and the fundamental ability of] the individual to exist as a distinct self-aware agent; otherwise, there is no individual and so there is no one to define reality and so there is no reality for all rational and practical purposes. Thus any definition of reality MUST include man as its root context [or frame of reference] and Standard so that it can ACTUALLY be defined, both rationally and ethically. And t his being the case, the notion of an “objective reality OUTSIDE of man” is rendered utterly moot. I am still waiting for someone to point out the inconsistency in my thinking. Appeals to arcane debates and [and philosophical particulars and equations] and warning of the [coming storm] of inevitable human destruction is not really an argument. (NOTE: Portions in brackets are additions to the original comment; an advantage of reproducing it here.)
unreformingtheology 