I'm creating a second contents page because the first was too disorganized. This page will be organized only by chronology, not by topic.
All posts prior to November 9, 2005 are on Page One.
On The Road Again - November 09, 2005
An attempt to create a plan for the next few posts. Rubbish, of course.
Roots - November 16, 2005
Part 1 in the presuppositionalism series.
What Kind of Humanist Are You? - November 16, 2005
Answering the Ready Answer - November 25, 2005
Part 2 in the presuppositionalism series.
For Whom The Bell Tolls - November 29, 2005
Sneering at the fall of the Liberals.
Lacanfest - December 10, 2005
My questionable attempt at translating Jacques Lacan's psychological stages into understandable terms. This is where I really start to lay out and systematize the stuff I've been thinking about the last 2 years.
Year That Was - January 1, 2006
A recap of 2005's best entertainments.
Bloggin' - January 14, 2006
A list of blogs I was reading at the time. I still regularly read Right Reason and Vox Popli.
Suicide is Painless - January 18, 2006
Possibly my favorite post ever. It's a stew of Lacan, Camus, Nietzsche, Bataille, and The Last Samurai.
Loose Ends - January 24, 2006
Attempting to clarify and develop what began in Lacanfest.
Laboring in the World - Febuary 1, 2006
An account of how humans interact with their environment: we change it, and in doing so become something.
Justified - March 20, 2006
Forming and developing our self image.
Empiricism and Death - April 6, 2006
Setting one foot down the ill-fated road of the epistemology project.
Another Mile Down the Road... - April 22, 2006
Just like the title says.
. . . another hour deep in the night - May 2, 2006
Just like the title says, part 2.
Webs - May 11, 2006
The conclusion of the attempt at epistemology.
Symbolic Representation - May 23, 2006
A very basic intro to semiotics.
Truth and Such - May 23, 2006
The difficulties in defining "truth."
Uses of Truth - May 29, 2006
Just like the title says.
A Revaluation of All Values - June 8, 2006
The first round in a discussion of morality.
Words as Pockets - June 13, 2006
More semiotics. This post is pretty essential, in my opinion.
Thinking - June 25, 2006
Asking why philosophy matters.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Another mile down the road. . .
In the previous post, I spoke of empirical facts and empirical conclusions. Here, I'll offer definitions of both and problematize their relationship.
Empirical facts are objects that make up the physical world. Even more specifically than that, they are the objects that make up one's own experienced world. The mouse beside your hand, the chattering people in the room around you, the air you breathe, and - significantly for future posts - the words on the computer screen you're reading now. Observed human behavior, also significant for future posts, also counts as being a fact. We all operate in the world of empirical facts; this is our common ground. We can all be killed by the truck on the highway.
Empirical conclusions are accounted-for sets of empirical facts. These conclusions do not share the same unavoidable nature(remember, the object objects) as the facts they are built with. Different facts are highlighted for us to different degrees according to the interests of our imago. Person 1 is interested in facts A, B and C, but is uninterested in fact D and is unaware of fact E. Person 2 is interested in facts B and C, but is uninterested in A and unaware of both D and E. Person 1 and person 2 will come to hold different conclusions, even if they strive to be empirical.
It is important to maintain the distinction between facts and conclusions. Conclusions are mistaken for facts on a fairly regular basis. Facts are atomistic; that is, they are the basic constituents of the world around us. The photos of New York City I have seen are facts; the existence of the city itself is a conclusion. This computer I see in front of me is a fact; the existence of others "like" it is not.
To a certain extent, we all live in the world of empirical conclusions, even if these conclusions are articulated in a completely different way. We all live in a world that includes New York City and Compaq laptops. However, because we are all interested in and aware of different facts, there will always be a multiplicity of conflicting conclusions and bodies of knowledge (a definition of knowledge can wait).
I should make clear that my idea of the "fact" is descriptive and really just a tautology. My idea of the "conclusion" has both an element of tautological descriptiveness and an element of proscription. We all use empirical conclusions, some are just more circumspect and less thorough-going than a committed empiricist. Examples would be rationalists and fideists.
I think I've already laid out a respectable and convincing case against this, however. To beat a dead horse, incorrect empirical facts and conclusions can get you killed must faster than incorrect rational notions, thus leaving your side of the debate voiceless.
So, what exactly is the path from facts to conclusions? Well... why we travel from facts to conclusions to whatever your system defines as knowledge is one thing. At base, it's about power. Knowledge is power. I think it is an easily observable human trait - an empirical conclusion - that humans want their worlds to be a systematic, ordered place. Even Buddhists develop complicated metaphysics. Blindspots in our knowledge not only resurrect our childlike/evolved fear of the dark, they also cast doubt on the quality and value of our personal centre. Ignorance makes us afraid of the world, and it makes us feel bad about ourselves. That's why we travel from facts to conclusions to knowledge. Rationalists, fideists and empiricists do it the same way. Why is a matter for psychology and an anthropological philosophy.
How we make that journey is an entirely different question. A description of this would itself neither be a fact or a conclusion. It's not a physical object or an observed behavior pattern, and it isn't an accounted-for set of facts. How can we move past that question of why - which if fail to do, we will most certainly end in a naive relativism?
So what is that description? Looks like we need a third epistemological concept. Look at the above paragraph about why; can you see where I am speaking of conclusions and where I am speaking of something else entirely?
Look! If you come to the same answer I do, then I'm leading you just fine.
Hmm. I feel like I'm about to write myself into a corner. I'm going to go eat dinner... I'll pick this up at another time.
Empirical facts are objects that make up the physical world. Even more specifically than that, they are the objects that make up one's own experienced world. The mouse beside your hand, the chattering people in the room around you, the air you breathe, and - significantly for future posts - the words on the computer screen you're reading now. Observed human behavior, also significant for future posts, also counts as being a fact. We all operate in the world of empirical facts; this is our common ground. We can all be killed by the truck on the highway.
Empirical conclusions are accounted-for sets of empirical facts. These conclusions do not share the same unavoidable nature(remember, the object objects) as the facts they are built with. Different facts are highlighted for us to different degrees according to the interests of our imago. Person 1 is interested in facts A, B and C, but is uninterested in fact D and is unaware of fact E. Person 2 is interested in facts B and C, but is uninterested in A and unaware of both D and E. Person 1 and person 2 will come to hold different conclusions, even if they strive to be empirical.
It is important to maintain the distinction between facts and conclusions. Conclusions are mistaken for facts on a fairly regular basis. Facts are atomistic; that is, they are the basic constituents of the world around us. The photos of New York City I have seen are facts; the existence of the city itself is a conclusion. This computer I see in front of me is a fact; the existence of others "like" it is not.
To a certain extent, we all live in the world of empirical conclusions, even if these conclusions are articulated in a completely different way. We all live in a world that includes New York City and Compaq laptops. However, because we are all interested in and aware of different facts, there will always be a multiplicity of conflicting conclusions and bodies of knowledge (a definition of knowledge can wait).
I should make clear that my idea of the "fact" is descriptive and really just a tautology. My idea of the "conclusion" has both an element of tautological descriptiveness and an element of proscription. We all use empirical conclusions, some are just more circumspect and less thorough-going than a committed empiricist. Examples would be rationalists and fideists.
I think I've already laid out a respectable and convincing case against this, however. To beat a dead horse, incorrect empirical facts and conclusions can get you killed must faster than incorrect rational notions, thus leaving your side of the debate voiceless.
So, what exactly is the path from facts to conclusions? Well... why we travel from facts to conclusions to whatever your system defines as knowledge is one thing. At base, it's about power. Knowledge is power. I think it is an easily observable human trait - an empirical conclusion - that humans want their worlds to be a systematic, ordered place. Even Buddhists develop complicated metaphysics. Blindspots in our knowledge not only resurrect our childlike/evolved fear of the dark, they also cast doubt on the quality and value of our personal centre. Ignorance makes us afraid of the world, and it makes us feel bad about ourselves. That's why we travel from facts to conclusions to knowledge. Rationalists, fideists and empiricists do it the same way. Why is a matter for psychology and an anthropological philosophy.
How we make that journey is an entirely different question. A description of this would itself neither be a fact or a conclusion. It's not a physical object or an observed behavior pattern, and it isn't an accounted-for set of facts. How can we move past that question of why - which if fail to do, we will most certainly end in a naive relativism?
So what is that description? Looks like we need a third epistemological concept. Look at the above paragraph about why; can you see where I am speaking of conclusions and where I am speaking of something else entirely?
Look! If you come to the same answer I do, then I'm leading you just fine.
Hmm. I feel like I'm about to write myself into a corner. I'm going to go eat dinner... I'll pick this up at another time.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Empiricism and Death
Ok, I'm going to continue on a topic that I first commented on last August. Epistemology: theories about knowledge. How we gain it, how we verify it, how we use it. This is part one, and is only an intro.
How we gain knowledge is perhaps the logic starting point; how do we gather information? How do our brains (and whatever other part of us that use information, ie a hypothetical soul) interact and organize the input received from our senses? Do we have innate characteristics that organize this information for us, or are we completely blank slates?
I can't help but think one would partly need a heavy background in neurology to deal with those questions. Answering the question of how we gather and process information must be at least in part biological, quite apart from any metaphysical or religious concerns. So in this regard, I'm as handicapped as Kant ever was.
But then, perhaps the acquisition of pure information is not the necessary starting point. Perhaps we need to know how to verify and use information before we can even talk about how we gather it in the first place. After all, how can we discuss the acquisition of information without first learning the language that allows us to discuss it? We can all agree we acquire information; the mechanics of this can be left for later, more theoretical discussions.
So that leaves two topics. How do we verify our information, and what do we use this information for. In other words, how do we test for truth, and what do we use this purported truth for?
The verification of statements is a tricky thing. It's so tricky that it is common to conclude that we can't really know anything for sure. Or even worse, there is the conclusion that all human knowledge ultimately rests on something called "faith."
The so-called "conclusion" of extreme skepticism isn't really a conclusion at all, and I doubt anyone other than over eager first year philosophy students would actually attempt to defend it. Holding to an extreme form of skepticism will simply get you killed on a highway when the truck whose existence you are questioning smashes into your puny body.
While we may not be able to articulate exactly how gather information about the physical world, we know that we can indeed gather accurate information. I would argue that this information - aka empirical data - is the primarily, privileged source of information for us. My argument: empirical data is the only information with which we can form conclusions that can either kill us or keep us alive.
To get a feel of how this argument goes, cast your eyes back to this post about suicide. I said that there is a wide range of ideas about the good life, but that there is no real way to choose between them. The only real indicator of one's quality of life is whether or not one wishes to end it. In other words, a life style that leads to suicidal tendencies can't be considered a good life.
In questions of life style, our lives are literally on the line; it is the same with knowledge. If we act by the light of false statements, we'll walk off a cliff or drink poison or get hit by a truck.
Our lives aren't on the line when it comes to other kinds of conclusions. Other statements - moral, theoretical, political, religious - can be pursued and lived by, even if they are false, and you won't necessarily die because of your errors.
We can gather empirical data and form empirical conclusions, and we can all live by these conclusions. What exactly is empirical data, aka facts? Facts are the entities that make up the physical world. We observe connections between these empirical facts - ie causation - and form empirical conclusions. Conclusions which we can then risk our lives by.
(Aside: "Facts" are not synonomous with "truth." Truth is a property of statements, not objects or events. Linguistic expression + empirical facts = "truth." That's another post, though.)
We'll all fly in planes; big hunks of metal 4-5 kilometers above the Earth. We hold the empirical conclusion that the principles between flight are accurate because the empirical facts will support or be easily explained by any other conclusion. We'll do it, because we all trust empirical conclusions. If empirical conclusions were truely wishy washy and worthy of the extreme skepticism offered by some, then a lot more planes would be inexplicably dropping out of the sky.
There's a phrase that must always be remembered when talking about our knowledge of the physical world, and it really is a fundemental axiom: the object objects. The physical world places limits on the truthful statements we can make about it.
I can hear the presuppers now; accepting the regularity of the world must be taken on faith. You can't really know that the sun will come up tommorow, and saying that it will is a statement backed by faith. As if there was an element of uncertainty that can never be exorcized from human life. Presuppers are haunted by their own latent philosophical nihilism; they're the other side of the extreme skeptic coin.
Well, I would point them in the direction of the concept of reasonable doubt. It is indeed possible to doubt anything and everything. Every statement can be doubted.
Some statements can be rejected in life, though. There may be theoretical room to doubt the regularity of the natural world and the safety of my flight, but I can easily lay my life on the line and live by the expectation of regularity. What other definition of "certainty" can anyone wish except that you can calmly put your life in the hands of a particular conclusion?
All this stuff I've basically said before. The new stuff will be in upcoming posts. One will be about truth as a property of statements, Another will be about the role of theory in a rigidly empirical epistemology. Then I'll talk about how historians, scientists, homocide investigators and philosophers can all use the same principles.
How we gain knowledge is perhaps the logic starting point; how do we gather information? How do our brains (and whatever other part of us that use information, ie a hypothetical soul) interact and organize the input received from our senses? Do we have innate characteristics that organize this information for us, or are we completely blank slates?
I can't help but think one would partly need a heavy background in neurology to deal with those questions. Answering the question of how we gather and process information must be at least in part biological, quite apart from any metaphysical or religious concerns. So in this regard, I'm as handicapped as Kant ever was.
But then, perhaps the acquisition of pure information is not the necessary starting point. Perhaps we need to know how to verify and use information before we can even talk about how we gather it in the first place. After all, how can we discuss the acquisition of information without first learning the language that allows us to discuss it? We can all agree we acquire information; the mechanics of this can be left for later, more theoretical discussions.
So that leaves two topics. How do we verify our information, and what do we use this information for. In other words, how do we test for truth, and what do we use this purported truth for?
The verification of statements is a tricky thing. It's so tricky that it is common to conclude that we can't really know anything for sure. Or even worse, there is the conclusion that all human knowledge ultimately rests on something called "faith."
The so-called "conclusion" of extreme skepticism isn't really a conclusion at all, and I doubt anyone other than over eager first year philosophy students would actually attempt to defend it. Holding to an extreme form of skepticism will simply get you killed on a highway when the truck whose existence you are questioning smashes into your puny body.
While we may not be able to articulate exactly how gather information about the physical world, we know that we can indeed gather accurate information. I would argue that this information - aka empirical data - is the primarily, privileged source of information for us. My argument: empirical data is the only information with which we can form conclusions that can either kill us or keep us alive.
To get a feel of how this argument goes, cast your eyes back to this post about suicide. I said that there is a wide range of ideas about the good life, but that there is no real way to choose between them. The only real indicator of one's quality of life is whether or not one wishes to end it. In other words, a life style that leads to suicidal tendencies can't be considered a good life.
In questions of life style, our lives are literally on the line; it is the same with knowledge. If we act by the light of false statements, we'll walk off a cliff or drink poison or get hit by a truck.
Our lives aren't on the line when it comes to other kinds of conclusions. Other statements - moral, theoretical, political, religious - can be pursued and lived by, even if they are false, and you won't necessarily die because of your errors.
We can gather empirical data and form empirical conclusions, and we can all live by these conclusions. What exactly is empirical data, aka facts? Facts are the entities that make up the physical world. We observe connections between these empirical facts - ie causation - and form empirical conclusions. Conclusions which we can then risk our lives by.
(Aside: "Facts" are not synonomous with "truth." Truth is a property of statements, not objects or events. Linguistic expression + empirical facts = "truth." That's another post, though.)
We'll all fly in planes; big hunks of metal 4-5 kilometers above the Earth. We hold the empirical conclusion that the principles between flight are accurate because the empirical facts will support or be easily explained by any other conclusion. We'll do it, because we all trust empirical conclusions. If empirical conclusions were truely wishy washy and worthy of the extreme skepticism offered by some, then a lot more planes would be inexplicably dropping out of the sky.
There's a phrase that must always be remembered when talking about our knowledge of the physical world, and it really is a fundemental axiom: the object objects. The physical world places limits on the truthful statements we can make about it.
I can hear the presuppers now; accepting the regularity of the world must be taken on faith. You can't really know that the sun will come up tommorow, and saying that it will is a statement backed by faith. As if there was an element of uncertainty that can never be exorcized from human life. Presuppers are haunted by their own latent philosophical nihilism; they're the other side of the extreme skeptic coin.
Well, I would point them in the direction of the concept of reasonable doubt. It is indeed possible to doubt anything and everything. Every statement can be doubted.
Some statements can be rejected in life, though. There may be theoretical room to doubt the regularity of the natural world and the safety of my flight, but I can easily lay my life on the line and live by the expectation of regularity. What other definition of "certainty" can anyone wish except that you can calmly put your life in the hands of a particular conclusion?
All this stuff I've basically said before. The new stuff will be in upcoming posts. One will be about truth as a property of statements, Another will be about the role of theory in a rigidly empirical epistemology. Then I'll talk about how historians, scientists, homocide investigators and philosophers can all use the same principles.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Justified
So here's part 3 in my little philosophical anthropology.
So: fundamentally, our efforts are devoted to justifying and pursuing our imago. If there is a difference between justification and pursuit, it is thus: our pursuit of our imago lies in the activities that we perform to take up certain roles in life. Our justification of our imago lies in the ways we attempt to add value to our imago itself.
Now, how do we increase/justify the value of our imago? Social recognition.
Consider gold. The value of gold lies entirely outside of practical concerns; gold's value is a purely social construct. If no humans recognized the value of gold, it would just be lumps of rock. It is the recognition of gold in the eyes of people that gold gains its value.
Our imagos are largely the same. Basically, we all want social value. We want others to Desire us. I wrote a bit about capital-D Desire near the bottom of this post. We need others to look at us and find us valuable.
Now, this is slightly different from one's value hierarchy. Saying that your "self" ranks high in your value hierarchy is not the same as social recognition. Your value hierarchy is basically a cognitive tool for judging the world; social recognition is part of our attempt to engineer the world into our own image. When we know others value us, it provides confirmation of the value of our personal centre (where our imago and highest values intersect). It is one of the two ways we can confirm the value of our personal centre; the other way is through actions, such as exercising our talents.
Social recognition also plays another role: it exercises and increase our power. When others value you, you increase your power; aka you increase your ability to engineer the world in your own image. Just like physical muscles. Working towards social recognition exercises our muscles, and gaining recognition acts like nutrients.
Social recognition is one of the most important aspects in our fight against nihilistic suicide. Being valued by others, and having a high social position, confirms and inceases the value of our centre and whole meaning structure.
So how to gain recognition? There are two ways: empathy and dominance. Empathy is a matter of two people seeing themselves in each other. You look at another personal, you are able to identify with them on some level. This provides them with recognition, and when they emphathize with you, you gain recognition from them.
Dominance is different. There is only one context that "equality" can possibly exist in human life, and that is within a complex legal system. Equal before the law and whatnot. Other than this, however, our lives are constant struggles over dominance and submission. You'll never find a social situation in which someone is not dominant. One person's meaning structure and power will always - even if subtly - shape the nature of any social situation. If you play the dominant role, than you gain more recognition from the submissive than the submissive gains from you. Um... I don't mean to sound so S&My. Really.
Empathy isn't better than dominance and vice versa. They have a strange relationship, and there are counterfeits of both. All for later dates, though. This is long enough already.
So: the justification of our imago takes place largely in the social world. Recognition tells us we are valuable and increases our ability to affect the world We gain recogition through mutual empathy and a master/slave relationship.
Questions? Yawns? Baffled looks?
(Post script: in later posts, probably about religion, I'll say that what we want is the recognition of "active subjects," or "knowing Is." Spirits such as God would then be included. But it's not important for now.)
So: fundamentally, our efforts are devoted to justifying and pursuing our imago. If there is a difference between justification and pursuit, it is thus: our pursuit of our imago lies in the activities that we perform to take up certain roles in life. Our justification of our imago lies in the ways we attempt to add value to our imago itself.
Now, how do we increase/justify the value of our imago? Social recognition.
Consider gold. The value of gold lies entirely outside of practical concerns; gold's value is a purely social construct. If no humans recognized the value of gold, it would just be lumps of rock. It is the recognition of gold in the eyes of people that gold gains its value.
Our imagos are largely the same. Basically, we all want social value. We want others to Desire us. I wrote a bit about capital-D Desire near the bottom of this post. We need others to look at us and find us valuable.
Now, this is slightly different from one's value hierarchy. Saying that your "self" ranks high in your value hierarchy is not the same as social recognition. Your value hierarchy is basically a cognitive tool for judging the world; social recognition is part of our attempt to engineer the world into our own image. When we know others value us, it provides confirmation of the value of our personal centre (where our imago and highest values intersect). It is one of the two ways we can confirm the value of our personal centre; the other way is through actions, such as exercising our talents.
Social recognition also plays another role: it exercises and increase our power. When others value you, you increase your power; aka you increase your ability to engineer the world in your own image. Just like physical muscles. Working towards social recognition exercises our muscles, and gaining recognition acts like nutrients.
Social recognition is one of the most important aspects in our fight against nihilistic suicide. Being valued by others, and having a high social position, confirms and inceases the value of our centre and whole meaning structure.
So how to gain recognition? There are two ways: empathy and dominance. Empathy is a matter of two people seeing themselves in each other. You look at another personal, you are able to identify with them on some level. This provides them with recognition, and when they emphathize with you, you gain recognition from them.
Dominance is different. There is only one context that "equality" can possibly exist in human life, and that is within a complex legal system. Equal before the law and whatnot. Other than this, however, our lives are constant struggles over dominance and submission. You'll never find a social situation in which someone is not dominant. One person's meaning structure and power will always - even if subtly - shape the nature of any social situation. If you play the dominant role, than you gain more recognition from the submissive than the submissive gains from you. Um... I don't mean to sound so S&My. Really.
Empathy isn't better than dominance and vice versa. They have a strange relationship, and there are counterfeits of both. All for later dates, though. This is long enough already.
So: the justification of our imago takes place largely in the social world. Recognition tells us we are valuable and increases our ability to affect the world We gain recogition through mutual empathy and a master/slave relationship.
Questions? Yawns? Baffled looks?
(Post script: in later posts, probably about religion, I'll say that what we want is the recognition of "active subjects," or "knowing Is." Spirits such as God would then be included. But it's not important for now.)
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Laboring In The World
Or Loose Ends part 2.
So, to recap the previous post. I talked about how our imago is the foundation of our motivations in life, and how the knowledge that we build up over our lives is used by our imago, and how that imago regulates the significance of particular statements. Our primary use of information - be it education in carpentry, math or theology - is giving aid to justifying and pursuing our imago, the horizon of our efforts.
So, what do I mean by justifying and pursuing? Attempting to justify our imago is about asserting the significance or value of that image. It shares a lot in common with what we normally mean by "building confidence." That's the personal aspect of it; however there is more to it. We attempt to justify our imago in order to gain recognition from other humans. That is the common denominator of all social relations - the quest for recognition. More on this later.
Pursuing our imago centres around actions. Now, I'm going to be a bit cheap and lazy here: I'm going to set forth a rather strange and counter intuitive thesis, and then not defend it fully. We primarily perform actions not for the productive or practical benefits they offer, but rather because of how particular actions allow us to "look like" our imago.
Why do people become doctors? For sake of being doctors. Not to help others; the concern for the welfare of others (which is a real concern!) is secondary to the importance of the doctor pursuing their imago.
There's some ambiguity, of course. We all have careers for social purposes - people without jobs are bums. But this is simply another aspect of our imago at work. Even the seemingly mercinary goal of earning gobs of money has this truly unproductive and impractical fundamental purpose of pursuing the imago. I'm not saying practicality and productivity are not a part of our decision making processes. I'm saying the primary, fundamental drive is the attempt to assume our imago and to be just like that image we see in the mirror.
Now, justifying our imago works in two ways. One, the knowledge we have allows us to pursue our imago in fuller and more complete ways. I don't really mean to sound Platonic here... or maybe I do. I'm not sure. Anyways. If you know you're a kick ass carpenter, then you can more completely justify your own value relative to your imago's ideal. But even here, practicality and productivity take a back seat; the main concern is one's perception of their abilities and the resultant practical benefits. Hair splitting is fun for the whole family!
So the carpenter works for the usual reasons. He doesn't want to be a welfare bum. However, if he is a lucky man, than he also wants to be a carpenter. Being a carpenter helps him pursue his imago. So he builds a cabinet. Productivity is a seconary matter; so why does a carpenter take such pleasure in a well built cabinet?
A parallel motivation to wanting to be something: we also want the world to reflect our efforts and desires. When the carpenter builds a cabinet, he has taken some raw wood, and with his own labour, he has changed a part of the world to reflect his desires for the world. He has recreated at least a part of the world in his own image. This is the pleasure we take in our work. An addition source of pleasure is the exercise of power; both the labour and the skill required to build a cabinet are expresses of power.
Think about it. What is one of the surest ways to claw at someone? Call their work or art shit. And some of the highest praise you'll ever receive is towards work that is close to your heart. That's because it really is a piece of you.
Once the cabinet is complete, it becomes a tool for him to pursue some other goal. It can allow him to participate in the economy by selling it, or it will allow him to store his equipment in style, or it will gain him social recognition when others acknowledge his skill.
Ideas work the same way. Building what a presupper would call a worldview has many common denominators with building a cabinet. You select the body of knowledge your imago needs, and carefully build it with propositions and conclusions and concepts and whatnot. If you are really good, then you come out with a system you find coherant and useful. If you're kinda lousy at it, you end up an Evangelical. I JEST! ha, ha.
We're all engineers of our own worlds; some of us do it better than others. Some of us are so terrible at it that we lay on the couch all day sinking into depression, and some of us are are so God awful at it that we swallow a bottle of pills.
So, that's pursuing. Justifying next time.
So, to recap the previous post. I talked about how our imago is the foundation of our motivations in life, and how the knowledge that we build up over our lives is used by our imago, and how that imago regulates the significance of particular statements. Our primary use of information - be it education in carpentry, math or theology - is giving aid to justifying and pursuing our imago, the horizon of our efforts.
So, what do I mean by justifying and pursuing? Attempting to justify our imago is about asserting the significance or value of that image. It shares a lot in common with what we normally mean by "building confidence." That's the personal aspect of it; however there is more to it. We attempt to justify our imago in order to gain recognition from other humans. That is the common denominator of all social relations - the quest for recognition. More on this later.
Pursuing our imago centres around actions. Now, I'm going to be a bit cheap and lazy here: I'm going to set forth a rather strange and counter intuitive thesis, and then not defend it fully. We primarily perform actions not for the productive or practical benefits they offer, but rather because of how particular actions allow us to "look like" our imago.
Why do people become doctors? For sake of being doctors. Not to help others; the concern for the welfare of others (which is a real concern!) is secondary to the importance of the doctor pursuing their imago.
There's some ambiguity, of course. We all have careers for social purposes - people without jobs are bums. But this is simply another aspect of our imago at work. Even the seemingly mercinary goal of earning gobs of money has this truly unproductive and impractical fundamental purpose of pursuing the imago. I'm not saying practicality and productivity are not a part of our decision making processes. I'm saying the primary, fundamental drive is the attempt to assume our imago and to be just like that image we see in the mirror.
Now, justifying our imago works in two ways. One, the knowledge we have allows us to pursue our imago in fuller and more complete ways. I don't really mean to sound Platonic here... or maybe I do. I'm not sure. Anyways. If you know you're a kick ass carpenter, then you can more completely justify your own value relative to your imago's ideal. But even here, practicality and productivity take a back seat; the main concern is one's perception of their abilities and the resultant practical benefits. Hair splitting is fun for the whole family!
So the carpenter works for the usual reasons. He doesn't want to be a welfare bum. However, if he is a lucky man, than he also wants to be a carpenter. Being a carpenter helps him pursue his imago. So he builds a cabinet. Productivity is a seconary matter; so why does a carpenter take such pleasure in a well built cabinet?
A parallel motivation to wanting to be something: we also want the world to reflect our efforts and desires. When the carpenter builds a cabinet, he has taken some raw wood, and with his own labour, he has changed a part of the world to reflect his desires for the world. He has recreated at least a part of the world in his own image. This is the pleasure we take in our work. An addition source of pleasure is the exercise of power; both the labour and the skill required to build a cabinet are expresses of power.
Think about it. What is one of the surest ways to claw at someone? Call their work or art shit. And some of the highest praise you'll ever receive is towards work that is close to your heart. That's because it really is a piece of you.
Once the cabinet is complete, it becomes a tool for him to pursue some other goal. It can allow him to participate in the economy by selling it, or it will allow him to store his equipment in style, or it will gain him social recognition when others acknowledge his skill.
Ideas work the same way. Building what a presupper would call a worldview has many common denominators with building a cabinet. You select the body of knowledge your imago needs, and carefully build it with propositions and conclusions and concepts and whatnot. If you are really good, then you come out with a system you find coherant and useful. If you're kinda lousy at it, you end up an Evangelical. I JEST! ha, ha.
We're all engineers of our own worlds; some of us do it better than others. Some of us are so terrible at it that we lay on the couch all day sinking into depression, and some of us are are so God awful at it that we swallow a bottle of pills.
So, that's pursuing. Justifying next time.
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