So, hello and welcome to the fifth session of the seminar, the Enigma of Carnap Southbound. Reza, please take it away. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. So, by the way, next course, just in case that we miss a little bit on this one, next course will be from Carnap's off-bow to conceptual, his idea of conceptual engineering. so that we can anything that we miss here for any kind of reason we will cover it next course
the spring course so now with that I have a little bit of a you know less stress to cover materials I will try my best to cover the materials as best as possible So, nevertheless, we should understand that we are behind. Today, I'm going to talk about the idea that insofar as constitution systems are what you might call to be proto-principle of tolerance. Namely, that if you adopt one constitution system in a Carnap system, you can also adopt other kinds of constitution systems, as long as they have the same kind of logic or configuration, right?
You can have different kinds of constitution systems. And essentially, as I talked about it in previous sessions, the whole point is that if you have one constitution system, you have all of the constitution systems. If you have all of the constitution systems, you can choose just one of the constitution systems, right? That is basically the very idea of the unity of all sciences. To have one science means that you're committed to all, the unity of all sciences. To have the unity of all sciences means that you can just simply have one specialized science, right?
So I'm going to talk about this a little bit and then start from saying that, for example, look, we are going to just simply choose, as Carnap does, one, first of all, one simple constitution system. the phenomenalistic constitution system in in the in the vein of mark phenomenalism in the sense that everything basically this constitution system has an epistemological priority meaning that you have different logical uh levels of constitution but they are ordered according to epistemological criteria or epistemological levels.
Down the most fundamental level would be what we might call to be auto-psychological experiences, right? So I'm going to talk about this. I'm going to talk about the phenomenologist constitution system and the context in which Carnap actually starts to propose this particularly specific constitution system as his first example. Why it is so important for him? You know, what is the context that makes it significant for Carnap's project? You know, so that's our today's program.
Without further ado, who are the victims today? Me. Yes. Me as well. Yes. Okay. So, please. Okay. Should I start? Sure, sure, definitely so, yes. Okay, I wrote a little text about it and I would like if anyone has any observation to tell me because I'm new in this. Okay, the title of my text is Outvows Constitutional System as Inferential Knowledge.
Selav's critique against empiricists based on foundationalist and representation of this theorist of knowledge, known as the myth of the given, was developed in 1966 in his paper, Empiricists and the Philosophy of Mind. One of his arguments is that these positions assume there are experiences that provide us with justified belief of the objects of the world or the world itself, and that happens independently from any kind of conceptualization, hence that this is an inferential empirical way of knowledge. If Carnap's constitutional system can escape from being one more epistemic theory adhered to the meat of the given is because it is a physicalist one, more elaborated in the logical syntax of language.
not only based in the subjective experiences, whether these are auto-psychological or psycho-psychological. Contrary to Russell's program in which the object of an experience can be the exterior object itself, causing the experience since it's possible to have a similar experience without the presence of the object, like an hallucination, for Carnap, all the necessary conceptual and objective elements in his logical structure of the world are objects. These subjects can be subjective, physical, cultural, and so on, but this only represents different levels of these objects and concepts, and even cultural objects, for example, having a manifestation. This means that even if the possibility of knowledge begins with
auto-psychological experience in one's unconscious, it is related by different levels with the manifestations of the external world and other people's mind, heteropsychological, and produce inferential knowledge. It is knowledge represented by a logical structure. The figure and color of the Ray D'Omero oneself is seeing is the same figure and color that the object possesses itself. It could be only different from the object because of physical interferences, such as the deformations of one's eyes, the color or position of the light, or if one is seeing the object through some lenses or reflected in a mirror or through a camera, etc. And for example, if one is seeing a red tomato in the absence of the object as a hallucination,
the hallucination is produced by a physiochemical, a physicalist, condition of the brain. Also if one is seeing something that is not in front of their eyes, the person can say or think is a proposition, I'm seeing a red tomato. It is the person can formulate a proposition no matter if its value is false or true. We must remember that to know something, not only is it necessary to verify that something is true, we must also need to differentiate what isn't true, whatever is is and what is not cannot be. This human property formulating propositions can be represented in logical notation. if the proposition has a meaning, then it is a logical, true function.
This is from . And if all scientific concepts can be logically reducible, then it does not matter if the concepts came from experience because this experience becomes knowledge, not because it is given by the sensation, but because it interacts with a reason. Therefore, it's inferential. That's my text. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. So a question for you or for all of you, I don't want to basically frame you for this question, right? To what extent do
Do you think that Carnap's strategy stave off the threat of the myth of the given in the Szilardian sense of the categorical given? idea that the structure is coming from the world or sense data and not from basically something extrasensory, extrasensory, right? Do you think that the kind of moves that he makes enough power sufficient to save off the myth of the given if yes then how so
sufficient i didn't mean i didn't say necessary yes he makes you he gestures toward a staving of the myth of the given but are they sufficient such moves As I say in the text, I think what it's how it's possible to rescue Carnap's program is in logical syntax. I don't think it's in the . Okay. What, okay, then if that is the case, then we can say that what is exactly in logical syntax that makes Carnap's moves against the myth of the given sufficient as opposed to
the kind of moves that he has made in Aufbau. I think the logical methodology he developed in that book. Logical methodology, okay, I'm merely trying to kind of, you know, squeeze you further and further so we can have better problems, right? So what is exactly in that logical methodology that can be a key here? Is it the problem that in Aufbau, he's using?
So there are so many things with regard to this logical methodology in Aufbau. One is that basically he doesn't have a system of formalism. Essentially, he talks about the constitution system in terms of still what you might call to be natural language resources, right? Ordinary language resources. He does not have a precise formal way of basically laying out the constitution system. Now, one. Number two, if he actually formally lays out the constitution system,
it wouldn't be just a formalism for him. It wouldn't be just some sort of haphazard methodology for exactness. As Jesse was talking about in regard to Karna last time, I wouldn't say that this is not simply a penchant for exactness, an appeal for exactness in an ordinary sense, precisely because the use of methodology will lead you to a different system of thinking, right? If you take a method to its farthest conclusions, right? So if he adopts a syntactic, formal syntactic
influence, language of formal syntactic influence, as the way that he is going to talk about what he has already talked about in Aufbau with regard to the constitution system, it wouldn't be just that he's more exact, but the conclusions would be different. Usually different methods. In terms of formalism and logic, lead to fundamentally different philosophical thesis. That's one of the geniuses that he discovers, actually, in the logical syntax of language. right it's not that logical syntax of language is simply there for nerd boys
to to feel that oh this is so good it's so exact no the method itself will lead to different philosophical visions so so these are i think that this these are like two of them and the third one would be the idea that he, in the logical syntax of language, he moves away from Tarskian idea of extensionality, pure extensionality, pure Tarskian extensionality, or type theoretical logic that he has been endorsing enough
about. precisely because that kind of generalization of syntax that he has now allows him to talk about both extensionality in the Freedian sense, namely truth value, but also intentionality in terms of senses, different senses and contexts in which we can use a statement in a specific science in different ways. Wasn't it the whole project of Bauer about this? That, for example, we have a different, we have a statement within
a specialized science, right? An economic statement, a statement made within economy, a statement made within, you know, electromagnetic theory in physics. And we can always translate such statements to other statements within sciences. And that translation is the evidence that all sciences can be understood within one single constitution system. And that one single constitution system is not a canonical one. It's not a unique constitution system. It can be just a constitution system. As long as there is a constitution system,
we have the particularity of sciences and the unity of all sciences, all at the same time. Questions? Curses? I do have a question. I tried to understand how he would discern between a philosophical concept and a cultural object. And it turns out I didn't find that difference. He might be similar to Cassiro in this respect, that all philosophy is a cultural product. Absolutely, yes.
Yes. The thing is that you would actually consider that philosophy, so you might say that philosophical objects and cultural objects. So yes, he basically, he would say that there is a fundamental isomorphic or equivalence between cultural objects and philosophical objects, but that does not render philosophy merely a cultural enterprise. Right? And that's the same thing that about that he's talking about economy and physics. his essential idea is reduction reduction so what is reduction really in in Carnap's sense that's the most important point reduction is a procedure right within the constitution system
if we reduce higher concepts to lower concepts higher objects to lower objects right what are we doing actually what are the what are the consequences of such a reduction according to Carnap within the constitution system reduction which is which is basically the point of unity of all sciences of all human endeavors right is cognitive endeavors is that reduction does not preserve epistemological value. It does preserve, however, logical value.
And that's the part of his basically Fregean extensionalism. So in Frigge, we understand that extension is equivalent of truth value, right? Or logical value. Whereas intention with S is actually sense, is contextuality. It's an epistemological value, so to speak. He tries to show that one of the greatest things within the constitution system, and this is part of the new logic, the valance of the new logic for this future philosophy, that every single thing, every science, regardless of their differences from one another or their similarities,
we can always reduce them to primary statements. And within this reduction, what is being preserved is the logical values that there is a logical equivalence among all sciences. What is different is the sense, in the Fregean sense, sense and reference, is the sense or contextuality of such a statement, namely their epistemological value but when it comes to logical value all such sciences by definition if they are truly science if they are truly science they should be capable of being reduced to primitive statements
and still their logical equivalences being preserved. And hence, you can say that philosophy and economy or political economy have logical values, logical equivalences, but not epistemological ones. The context of them are different. The sense of their statements being made within such disciplines are different. Rizzo, I think we have a question from Dilshad. He raised his hand. So Dilshad, you can speak. Dilshad, why is that Dilshad is not turning on his camera?
Is he in a hospital? Yeah. I'm completely untidy and disheveled, so you don't want to see me. I had a question, Reza. I know that Carnap follows Vahinja in saying that nothing is given. It's all chaos or undifferentiatedness. Yes. There's basically no naturally distinguishable element within the world or within our experience, except through the concept or the fiction. so my question is that you know if nothing is given how can how can we not say the undifferentiated and differentiatedness itself as some sort of given you know it seems to me
that maybe it's just a methodological move you know the undifferentiated is just for the sake of methodology or maybe i don't know undifferentiatedness is some sort of you know somehow ontologized or thingified or whatever. I see. Well, you see, this is the whole point, that undifferentiatedness... okay, it's more important. Undifferentiatedness in what sense? In the sense of being ontologized or undifferentiatedness as essentially the primary status or the primary step of any sort of respectable epistemological project, right? these are two different things the first this latter one is not really the myth of the given
though is it precisely because we say that we don't assume anything not assuming anything about the structure of the world means that we are in that kind of epistemologically undifferentiated way unstructured so to speak unstructured you know we don't assume anything I think, right? But the other kind that you said, the first one, undifferentiated as ontologized, yes, that's a form of the myth of the given. I have a question.
Yes, please. I can read it. So you were talking about how you have like, I'm not sure I'm getting things right, but you were talking about how there's, can you see me? I was trying to turn on the camera, but No, we don't. Okay, now we can. So yeah, you can have like different modes of constructing objects. But I was Constitution systems, constitution systems. Yeah. So, but what I want to ask is like, is there space for the construction of normative objects as opposed to factual, empirical?
Yes, of course. I mean, this is the whole point of Carnap's project. So we have different constitution systems, right? Some of these constitution systems can be actually part of an empirical realist project. some of them can be cultural normative some of them can be phenomenalistic transcendental some of them can be cultural religious whatever but as long as that you have the precise constitution system look that it has an internal consistency within with regard to what it means to constitute something, object and concept, then we can actually translate between statements,
between a statement made within one constitution system to another constitution system. Yeah, but so how can you That's part of that extensionality that he's trying to valorize here, the extensionality in a Phrygian sense that look, yes, it is really important to talk about sense and contextuality of such a statement. But we should also go for basically logical invariance between them, logical invariance. Yeah, I mean, in the sense, I don't if if he thinks of this as a particularly problematic transition when you go uh when
you have to go somehow from an art to an is like when you have to do this passage but i suppose he is going to take that yes he would say he would say that okay so he would say that first of all i this is what carl would have said it actually he actually talks about this in meaning and necessity this is like is what kind of is are we talking about an ontological is or is as as a different kind of art like this is this is this is this you know this might be actually that is might be actually another kind of normative injunction right so he he first tries to make distinction between these so some of eases might actually be or some of artists arts might be is right we we
know that i mean like um a bachelor ought to be an uh an unmarried man right so think about that So he tries to make such distinctions, and then he tries to show that every ought in a proper sense of normativity can in fact be reduced under proper conditions within the constitution system to eases. is this so like is there like a um a final uh final point of reduction to the side of the is
or do you have like um but this is but this reduction is only logical not epistemological that's the whole point remember remember that the idea that he's trying to put forward here is that he doesn't want to be a goddamn Daniel Dennett, right? Saying that, oh well, everything that we ever do is going to be some sort of evolutionary algorithm, right? He doesn't want, he's so more sophisticated than these charlatans, right? He wants to say that, look, we have, within the constitution system, we have two orders, the logical order and the epistemological world. Epistemological order is broadly on the side of experience, precisely because, you know,
how we constitute the epistemological order within the constitution system is by way of experience itself, right? The foundational rule of experience in human cognition, right? The logical one is a different matter. So he wants to say, simple as that, that, look, for example, when we are saying that a culture, a cultural object, or a cultural act can be reduced to a physical pattern, right, or physical object, we are here, merely doing what a constitution system ask us to. Namely, we are reducing one object to another object within the logical order,
but not within experiential order, namely the epistemological order. It would be fundamentally flawed to say that epistemologically or culturally or intersubjectively, we can turn a cultural object of thought into a physical object of thought that's just bullshit to Karnap right he says that logically within the constitution system we can make such moves but not epistemologically epistemologically they are so distinct that we cannot make such moves and you see this is this is really we are this is now we are kind of getting
how carl of actually works he's not you know he has been denigrated as a positivist a goddamn little uh vienna circle shit so on so forth but look is he a reductionist or someone like danielle danette or for that matter uh who's that uh another guy the the the the evolutionary guy you know who's a friend was a friend of jeffrey epstein you know everyone the canadian the canadian guy pinker steven pinker yes
so you see we are we are dealing here with real philosophers i just had one one absolutely absolutely absolutely i mean And the question. I'm sorry, sir. Please, please go ahead. I don't know if you were going to say something. What me? Yeah. Um, no, I was just going to say that I was thinking more of a Kelson, of course, because this is why I'm here mostly like I'm trying to get something here out of this out of Carnap to to help me understand this other positivist Vienna.
Well, you see, Vienna positivism is not really positivism in the history of philosophy. Just like their logical empiricism is not empiricism in the history of philosophy. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, just that from the, from, from Kelsen's point of view, it would seem that you would have to have a completely different construction, like a construction that wouldn't be reduced to the same like final point of derivation because you would have you would be completely unable to derive to to to put ought and is into any kind of relation but but but we didn't have like a an empirical you couldn't have experience of anything normative because the
point of normative isn't to have an experience but yes but isn't it the whole point that carter tries to avoid. Essentially by saying that from an epistemological value perspective, you cannot actually make the reduction. Meaning that when you are trying to reduce a cultural object to a physical object, epistemological value is not being preserved. Hence, there is no real reduction, right real reduction only happens within the realm of the logical values in a phrygian sense so you see kardav would say that yes absolutely that's the whole point it's just would be ridiculous to say that we can actually reduce a cultural object to a physical
object from an epistemological standpoint or epistemological value standpoint that's just preposterous. But we can, by the very logic of reduction, within this kind of logical, constitutional system of the world, we can turn every sort of a statement made within every sort of field whatsoever, logically, not epistemologically, not experientially, neither epistemologically not experientially but only logically to another statement essentially what he tries to do is simple as that it's really actually simple saying that look
with regard to the intentionality of the kind of statements we make within different fields of science, they cannot be reduced to one another epistemologically or basically experientially. We can make a reduction to only a certain extent, but not a thorough reduction. But when it comes to extensionality of such a statement, in a friggin sense of extensionality, we can actually say that logical or truth values of such estimations can be reduced to the logical and value,
logical or truth value statements of other more primitive statements. Yeah, Raza, I wanted to say something very small about that. I wanted to clear as well, if this also relates in how intentional propositions are intrinsically related. I mean, intentional propositions are not something... Intentional in what sense though? In a free sense because you know that in our file we are merely in free gates free get tosky sense not intentionality in a in a higher order of contemporary logic correct um how intentional propositions like they're not taken in by themselves and they need like in carnet they
need to be taken as well in relation to uh extensional uh relations extensional logic And how what you're saying here is that, for example, if you're talking about intentional propositions, we define a class, a certain class. Yes. And that class relates to other classes without one reducing a certain, let's say, a certain object to that class, assuming that certain object to that class. What we actually want to see is how each class relates to other classes. And I remember, I don't know if this might help, that Karna brings the example of a dog. Like, for example, we consider the dog, and the dog has different, like, property subjects inside of this organism.
But we cannot say that the dog is X thing. Like, we cannot say that the full dog as a complex system is just one thing. we would rather try to consider the dog as a set, a set of sets of relations between classes. Would that be correct? Like to try to picture this idea? Right, right. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. This is essentially, you know, and this is the moment where he's actually, you know that the transition from Afbau to the logical syntax of language is a transition from his explicitly Tarskian type theoretic model theoretic idea of semantic to something more
wholesome and less Tarskian right yes absolutely the whole idea is a class construction what how are we going to make a class construction? Like, look, think about an extensional definition of a bachelor, of a bachelor. Right? What would be that extensional definition of a bachelor? Well, you have to basically list. Right? It wouldn't be a monadic. monadic set right it would be it would require you to list all the names of possible
men unmarried men to which the concept of a bachelor can extend to or can be applied to right and and then you immediately find yourself in in a certain kind of computational problem if not logical problem so so kardav knows all of this stuff and this is there is a there is a there is a there's why as he moves away from our vow he tries to make a balance between the intentional and the extensional view of definitions in a constitution system.
According to what I just said, according to the criteria of reducibility, that's the most important thing, the criteria of reducibility, knowing that reduction in Konop's Aufbau should preserve logical value but not necessarily epistemological values. Among higher concepts and lower concepts you know, specific sciences and basic sciences so on and so forth. before we go to the next
Oh, okay. I can read some notes. Well, that's okay. Sure. How about this? I know that it's not listed. How about reading a Stanford entry, right? On the structure of appearance and the critique of Afbal for next session. Okay. Do you mean for me to present or everyone's assignment? For everyone, for everyone, but also for you to present. Yes, for everyone. Zey, where is he?
Missing in action as usual. Do you want us to read any of the Goodman itself? Yes, I mean, of course, yes, of course. You know, any person who can, who has time, please move forward, read. But I just didn't want to basically subject people to a whole book or a whole chapter. I think I listed this as a reading material, I mean, for the course. Yeah, no, it was in the downloads. So. Yes, yes.
Anything? Anything? Just slander. I mean, you have all become so soft these days. Post-COVID-19. Have you heard about the Danish zombie minks? Yes. I actually, someone, actually a friend of mine, Israeli friend of mine, I'll be recording. No, I don't, I'm not going to say it.
I'm going to say it. It's only on the archive. It's not on YouTube. It's fine. Okay. Okay. A friend of mine said, you know, so the mink vampires you know that are rising from the ground and i said what does greta think about it you know that i mean literally i i just like this is stuff to me are are the the pinnacles of human hypocrisy. Like, you know, humans always think that climate change revolves around them. So the consequences
or the prospects of a nightmarish climate is only about humans. Hence, human survivalism in all of these formulas. killing minks, you know, thinking about existential risk as extinction of the human. I mean, how idiotic humans can be to always think that extinction only applies to them and not other things. And actually, the real extinction is when the context in which human can be thought is going to be extinguished.
Human, humans as a species, like tomorrow they go belly up. Who cares? Who really cares in a broader scope of thing? It's just that humans do care about it. And precisely these humans are the ones who basically create this crisis a kind of passive-aggressive idea of their own survival. Look, what is wrong with vampire minks, COVID-carrying minks, right?
If you think about it, other than being threats to humans. There is this movie I think that you have some of you have watched it's directed by an Iranian director called Ali Abbasie uh it's uh I forgot it's called The Border something like that it's basically based on another novel by the guy who wrote let the right one in, right?
The vampire movie. And there is this line in the movie that humanity is a disease. You know, I am not an anti-humanist. I think anti-humanism is actually a mutated form of egotistic humanism. But I do agree that humanity is a disease. I mean, everything that humans have ever done was always been about themselves, even their idea of climate change, even the idea of extinction. Hey Reza, I've just got a quick question, if you talk about like human and stuff. In
the reading we did I saw a reference to Nietzsche and I saw, I've read an article in the past about the Vienna Circle's relationship to Nietzsche. How do you see sort of like Nietzsche's project and save your file? Okay, my honest answer. For the longest time, I have understood Nietzsche as one of those anti-humanists, basically sore loser humanists. That's what anti-humanism is, right it's a humanist humanist miserablism right but but lately i have started
reading Nietzsche again after so many years i don't think that i have a final answer to this it's pending my reading um i don't i don't want i don't want to be that kind of person who uh basically accuses a modern philosopher of certain kinds of charges that he never actually commits. But from the impression, the impression that I had earlier on was that, yeah, Nietzsche was part of this kind of brigade of anti-humanist sentiments
And he proposed a certain kind of anti-humanism, which was, in fact, as I mentioned, a kind of bloated humanism, losing its ground and now turning against itself. My position with regard to the question of human, as you know, is neutrality. You know, human is nothing special in a naturalistic or metaphysical sense. It can only be special within a logical sense, in the sense of transcendental logic, in the sense of practical self-consciousness.
and and but that but that is not really human that doesn't apply to you and me a goat can be a human as long as it has certain kinds of practical self-consciousness this is why for me the word human absolutely does not have any necessary connection with the species homo sapiens. It is simply a name for any collection or set of agency that can have, that can exhibit forms of having agency, namely theoretical and practical cognitions, broadly speaking, right?
I actually would hug my Casio 1970 calculator rather than another human being when it comes to the idea of the idea of the inhuman. this is of course a joke just in case some people will listen to this uh reza we have a question from your shot yes uh you should you can go yeah sorry uh didn't like the calculator joke
Yeah, definitely. This is quite Landian. Go on, Delsha. Yeah, Reza, in your book, Spirit and Intelligence, you say, in page 71, I think, you say, just as there is no structure in the world without the structuring mind, there is no mind and no unrestricted world without the structuration of language, and it's unrestricted universe of discourse, where everything can be questions or subject to systematic theorization. You know, I think maybe I'm wrong. It has been a long time since I just, I was, I cherry pick from your book that you knew your emphasis. This is what Middle Eastern do. I mean, haven't you noticed that how we read Quran?
Some parts of Quran becomes utterly fascistic, parts of it Marxist, part of it Trotsky, you know, that's the whole point. Definitely, yeah. So this seems like to be a jihadist Reza who says that there is this kind of, you know, there is no structure in the world without that structure in mind. And some sort of ontological presupposition about a structureless or undifferentiated world, not an epistemological or methodological move, as you said, in terms of this seems quite ontological. I don't know. This seems like a jihadist Reza. I don't know. Yeah, I think you're right. And to be honest with you, look, this is the thing, that if you ask me about what I actually wrote yesterday,
I would say that, no, I didn't, because I'm a changed man now. Right? The same thing goes with intelligence and spirit. I think that I can still defend this claim, but yes, I completely understand the kind of objection that you bring to it. And yes, under duress, I would confess that yes, that actually is a problem. but okay now my turn what do you think is the problem what is the source of the problem here
exactly in in you know think about the carnappian constitution system what kind of move downward from higher concepts to lower concepts or from lower concepts or objects to, you know, higher concepts or objects, did I make in a wrong way that I ended up in this quagmire? Yeah, I think, you know, just as you cannot, you know, make a positive characterization of the world because you will be afraid to fall into the myth of the given, you know, the categorical structure of the world. there is no categorical structure of the world.
At the same time, you cannot say there's no, you know, some sort of categorical structurelessness or categorical undifferentiatedness to the world. You cannot make a positive or a negative claim about the world, ontologically, because this is your quote. You know, I think, no, no, no, I think that we can, we can. You see, the world is different from universe, right? We cannot make claims about universe. we can make claim about wealth why precisely because what is the difference between wealth and universe right world and universe world is precisely because it's a habitat essentially you cannot have a definition of world without the kind of inhabitants
which recognize that world. So you see, that's actually quite interesting. And this is also Carnap's point. I'm really confused. For example, Peirce, Sanders Peirce, he says there are three different terms that you should distinguish. The world, reality, and environment. The world is the mind-independent object of what it is externally to us the reality is the linguistic conception of that world and environment is the habitat so i i'm really confused i don't know which one you mean yeah no no no i mean to be honest with you okay purse purse is not really a good person to go for it
you see purse purse is purse uh a friend of mine once said prayers um americans actually uh put forward purse because they didn't have anyone it was a pool it was it was a poor man's cant and hagel right in united states of america look at his prose what is it it is a rococo bed with hard mattress so as his philosophy right he comes with great insights but look the whole point that has been put into this
purse thingy it's just like you know do you really are we going to compare him with figures like kant no no definitely hegel or shelling is not on the same thing this was just an example you know i i i was i was simply trying to say that okay i would say that okay if we are going to talk about this wealth is really uh you know his idea of wealth is the idea of recognition of where i live my place in the world my place in the world. For me to recognize my place in the world, I need to also have an semblance,
a semblance, not an immediate one, a semblance of what the world around me looks like, right? So that's the whole point. Essentially, it's a manifest image kind of thing that we can extend it to the scientific image. then I would say what was the other one that you mentioned so it was reality reality I think and in the environment yeah reality I would say that it's just like no literally Karnam would say that
This is just like so metaphysically misguided that we are not going to adopt it. Environment is a good one. Environment is precisely because we can actually bring stuff like inactivism, like embodied mind, the interaction between concept and the body, right? Precisely because environment is all about interactions. Interactions at different levels. which basically undergird the kind of wealth that we have at this point. But reality, I think that Carnap would say that it's just like a total waste of time.
I think, you know, Pierce's reality is just Carnap's logical conceptual realm. but the world could be the universe or the thing that exists without us, we don't know anything about it and we can or cannot make any claims about it so I think the world for peers could be metaphysical but reality, because it's linguistic or conceptual or logical it's just like Carnap's so I think they're just semantics I see, I see, I see okay, Dana my apologies for the delay. Okay, so what's going to happen is I'm going to plug in my headphones and I'm going to
get dropped from the Zoom call and I'm going to be back. You should be a little bit scared always, but this will be brief. Okay, I'm still here. All right, I don't think I'm going to necessarily say anything that wasn't said by this point, but I'm just going to sketch out some of the reactions I had in thinking about Carnap in relation to the myth of the gibbon. Maybe I'll ask some questions.
So as John McDowell puts it, this idea of the myth is the idea that sensibility by itself could make things available for the sort of cognition that draws on the subject's rational powers. Given this in the sense of the myth would be an availability for cognition to subjects who's getting what is supposedly given to them, does not draw on capacities required for the sort of cognition in question. So avoiding the myth requires capacities that belong to reason to be operative in experiencing itself, not just in judgments which we respond to and experience. So Carnap is attempting to sketch out concepts that use the resources of human reason
on or over our experience. So as has been said, this isn't just receiving sense data as like a self-enclosed totality, nor are we understanding the mind is a mirror on the world. So then we enter into like the idea of Carnap's volunteerism. This is the decision that we get to make about what services are given. This is a matter of deciding a reality rather than the reality. I guess that's a question that I had come up. So we have this discursivity of different
conceptual realities, but there's not a singular real. And so I wonder, of is this sort of akin to the Benjamin real as a constellation of complex oppositions? Or is there this idea that like the reducibility gets us to some kernel eventually that is a real? um uh dana one uh question before we move forward kernel that leads us to something real real in what sense you see that's kind of actually hates these kinds of ideas you know the idea of pseudo
problem, we put the idea of real culture, religion. What do we mean by that? What kind of real are we talking about? Well, I don't necessarily get the sense from reading Karnap that he believes there to be some sort of real that's sitting there waiting to be discovered, that rather there's this... but that just i don't know how there can then be this continued reducibility like if there's just this network of elements this is how i'm seeing it this network of elements
that are enclosed within these different discourses that can then overlap or like interact with each other, then how, I don't know, how do we really look at that or parse through it? Like, how small does it get? Like, is it always, I guess this is what Dilshab was asking earlier about the chaos. Think about this, Donna, I mean, about the status of contemporary physics with regard to other sorts of exact sciences, right? essentially Carnap's position is not that absolutely it is not that as I mentioned first session
is not trying to say that within the constitution system within this paradigm of unity of all sciences and the paradigm of reduction even though we can go back to one science it doesn't mean physics he means a constitution system a principle for design accountability within a constitution system and that can be anything right he doesn't he's not interested in turning art to physics philosophy to biology so on so
forth essentially what he wants to do is to show that within a constitution system we can reduce the statements made in within one field to another by way of a logical procedure right while while at the same time uh basically preserving the epistemological values of each statement within these kinds of sciences physics philosophy economy so on so forth
So, with that regard, what is exactly, you might ask, the flow of positivism or logical empiricism in this sense? Is it that it tries to show us that beneath every source of claim that you can ever make about the world, there is a more generalized claim within the context of all sciences. and for to make that kind of claim you need to have a system of reduction
logical reduction so to speak to reduce the statements we make in social sciences to those of neuroscience and physics Okay, yeah. So then is it useful to imagine it as processing the received experiences at the most base level that can then be, this is the upstream, right? That's worked upwards into the different languages that we've established.
Okay. Yes. So, in the blog that was sent about Carnap and the myth of the given, there are these two types of givenness that the author is saying Carnap doesn't fall into, which is the Aquarian things known simply by grasp of our own meanings. and then there's the Solarzian things known simply by being in some states. So as I just said, going against the idea of being in some state, Carnap is taking what is what is received and working that through the available resources of logic
and using that resources of logic trying to create a constitutional system that doesn't as we talked about earlier it doesn't imply some sort of like kernel of real or multiple kernels of real but just that applies reason to what is being experienced right subjectively it's simply like this that look what is reality what is reality if not multiple perspectives looking at a supposed concept or object called reality like essentially what we are dealing with here
is that it's a certain kind of neutral pluralism or methodological pluralism that's okay you say that this is the world but what is the world in a metaphysical sense well isn't it the whole idea that a world cannot be a world unless true auto-psychological and hetero-psychological perspectives launched like satellites upon it. Like, how can we ever say that what Earth is if we don't launch theoretically and practically
like Copernicus satellites across the globe by way of the equations of motions And finally, we see that, oh, well, this is how the earth looks like, precisely because we have now a plurality of perspectives, objective perspectives. there's okay um so um so working this received experience this subjective received experience
the it's as quine puts it the envisions assignment of sense qualities to point instance according to certain canons um so so in out the the he's starting from the idea of vision he's starting from the two-dimensional vision as this sort of like base level point from which he's able to take these temporally ordered subjective color sensations which is the two-dimensional order of one's visual fields at any point in time this is from the Stanford Encyclopedia entry and so then he's taking this and he's translating it into the four-dimensional purely mathematical Euclidean
space time which is the working upwards um but this is like this is an analogic process it's it's an analogy it's not real this there's no reality to this and this i the inherent what do you mean here well i'm i'm speaking to the idea against that against him falling into the myth of the given that there's not this there's never the presumption that there's this tapping into this real or this extant truth that it's a process of subjectivity and translation analogy okay so when we are talking about real this is this actually i can i can ask from everyone when we are talking about real are we talking about some sort of external world
idea a lot russell external world project or are we talking about a realist project in the sense of, you know, epistemological realism, right, in sciences. Which one of them are we talking about at this point? That there is something real outside of my phenomenal or phenomenalistic sensations, right? or that reality is the collection of my phenomenal sensations. I think it's hard to say that something is real outside the constitution system,
since it's the very constitution system that allows us to talk about things and reconstruct them in a logical way. And so as he continues his projects in the logical syntax, it's very hard to talk about something as an existent object outside of any frame of reference. It is the decision for one particular frame of reference or one particular constitution system that allows us to take something as being real or not. that there is no way to to to hold something as real uh absolutely prior to this absolutely so
yes that that's a that's a superb uh point uh i can say really fantastic um right so yes please yes so i guess i i'm not really claiming that there is a real or that there's a real that that Carnap is trying to access either. I'm speaking to the fact that he's going against what sellers defined as the real, which is this idea, if I understood it correctly, this idea that there's this understanding that what we receive doesn't, or taking what we receive as knowledge without processing it correctly
or having capacities necessary to process that which is received. um and that which is received isn't the real either it's a state right it's it's it's subjective and it's the state that we're in um there isn't that purity that purity is not really even being discussed anywhere in in carnap or in sellers i don't know a question for you i mean um so So I think that your description was fundamentally really great. Think about this.
So think about that difference between early sellers and early car nap is really the difference between what you might call to be sellers being a fundamental canteen in a kind of a transcendental way to basically reject the myth of the given, right? Because that's just purely Kantian. And Carnap has a different kind of, what you might call to be a story in the game. What is this story? It's not simply epistemological transcendental
quid juris transcendental deduction a la Kant and Sellars with regard to the myth of the given, categorical given, but that he wants to put another chip into this discussion. What is that chip? The role of logic. that essentially we cannot determine the status of the myth of the given without the introduction of a new logic into philosophy meaning that every source of philosophy up until now
which hasn't, hadn't incorporated the role of the new logic is most probably susceptible to the myth of the given in various disguises. so pivoting off of that so there's the critique of alfbau and what's constituted in alfbau particularly by by quine is that it's incomplete, is that it's these sketchy statements that, yeah.
And so my reaction to that. And then there is also the question of observability statements. Right, so the empirical feasibility of what he's constituting. OK. But in regards to the sketchiness, My reaction was that this was actually a benefit. And I think that we've moved to the point of seeing that as benefit again and avoiding the myth of the given because it allows for this ex post facto construction or revision. And I don't know if this is what was intentional because I know that he sets out in the beginning saying that he's going to define all of these statements,
all of these non-primitive terms, and then he doesn't, but isn't there something inherently discursive about the sketchiness, about the non-totality of these statements that makes it, that gives strength to the system? That's the whole point, that you're merely trying to reformulate Woodcarnapp's project from off-bow off to the explication moment is the untotality yeah principle so that that's really how i'm saying he's avoiding the myth of the given is by leaving room for like discursivity and for
dana i don't want to hear about you anymore or what you have you are going to write this in an essay and you are going to write it good i think this is really a great topic this whole idea that it's not that carnapp uh basically had a strategies to to basically save off various myths of the givens no he had actually general strategy in afbaho which he basically specified as he moved forward and the one that you mentioned repeat it again
with regard to the untotality thesis that i'm confused by your question that they they're not he didn't completely finish yes defining yes the yeah the non-primitives yes but but then how so basically he's forming a certain kind of thesis which is not really a thesis it's a kind of a generalized strategy that allows him to basically suspend the myth of the given as he moves forward right like he's not going to so basically his fight with the myth of the given is never over
in every stage he tries to make a new claim about the myth of the given in a different guise from afbal to the logical syntax of language to the logical foundations of probability so on so forth right this is precisely because of his unique position toward what we call the given he doesn't give us a final solution a final myth of the given like sellers or these kinds of people He actually tries to give us that, look guys, the reason that the myth of the given is real is precisely because it can actually rise up, emerge in various contexts.
And the only way that we can challenge it is by understanding the context in which it becomes a myth, namely an ideological fixation. sorry donna for putting more logs on your back you're going to do it you have to write this essay I think it's superb.
This was one of the greatest, you know, kind of dialectical moves. I think it did great. It did great. Superb, superb. Okay. 12. it's 35 jesus christ this clock is slow these days okay how about two minutes break and then we come back and then i start whatever is left of our session uh talking about
Wehinger constitution system, so on and so forth. And Rafael, my apologies. It seems that one of our classes is going to coincide with Christmas, right? Yeah, I think there is a gap on the like already on the website on the dates, but I'm not sure if it is fixed on the webinar links, you know, I think that we stopped on the next week, if I'm not mistaken, I'm going to check that. And then we come back only in the second week of January, if I'm not mistaken, or the first one.
Let me check here. doesn't it say that the last session is january 6th um my uh my email says uh we have where me yes but uh my email says we're leaving the next sorry my connection was lost uh okay go ahead no my email says that we're meeting the next two weeks
uh and then january 6th okay okay that's good that's good and i assume that means that our papers due the last session or what's the what's the story there uh okay with regard to papers like uh some people ask you know uh we have uh presented oral uh you know presentations video presentations so on and so forth are we supposed to actually write an essay too? To be honest with you, no, I don't think so. But if you want to write an essay, yes. That's all great, good.
I will look at it. I will give you feedback. Essentially, my idea is this. You either write a paper, no more, no more than 1,500 words. or an oral presentation alternative of that. If you don't want to write an essay, just talk, record it, send it to us, everyone. And then I will actually give you feedback. Most probably, I will schedule, as always, a Skype with you for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I will give you some feedbacks and that will be it.
Sounds good. I'm sorry I lost connection, so I don't know if you guys actually talked about the dates, but just confirming we have classes until the 16th of December, and then we come back for the last class on the 6th of January. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, yeah. Basically, I think that everyone could hear it. So two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, break, bathroom break, and then we come back.
Any questions before I start? Yes Reza, I have already sent my video presentation. Do I need to resubmit it to the collective email? if you can yeah i actually uh are you talking about the uh one that you shared with me uh yes if you can if you can do it that would be much appreciated thank you so much thank you reza i was wondering are you doing are you planning to do a second part do you know yet second part of what of this class well it depends on you do you want to take it or not yes okay then take it
so there is a second part there is a second part it's coming in a spring summer okay okay no okay don't worry sophia i will i will send you an email a private email Okay. Anything? Can I ask a question about this? It kind of references this, and you also mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this notion of bracketing.
and notion of what he's he writes um when he when he talks about the the choice of the auto psychological basis yes he says um and and the the solipsistic methodology he he talks about uh Husserlian notion of the bracketed. Oh, bracketing, yes. And I just wanted to, because I mean, he doesn't, he only says that we should not, we shall not claim reality or non-reality in connection with these experiences, rather these claims will be bracketed. And that, and then he only explains it as that we will exercise the
the phenomenological withholding of judgment. But could you clarify what this notion of bracketing entails? Well, of course, you see the notion of bracketing or a pocket for ourselves is simply like that. I mean, look, we are, this is like his pen. This is a big pen, right? Is it a big pen? Yeah, it's a big pen. It's a big pen, right? So I'm going to bracket its properties, because otherwise I'm not going to actually say what it is. So essentially the idea of Osserl with regard to bracketing is that bracketing is a certain kind of perceptual
constitution or construction, right? Such that, oh, that fell. so that this virtual pen, basically we can talk about it. We can distinguish some of its properties from other kinds of properties, such that we can say that this is a big pen, but more importantly, it's a pen. More importantly, it is a black pen, so on and so forth. So we have a series of nested sets of bracketings or epoquet procedures where basically we say that we need to be in a condition of certain kind of perceptual judgings to say that first this is a pen and not a club or a baton.
right second we need to be in a certain kinds of and and you see the reason i'm talking about this perceptual judging precisely because the bracketing is not essentially a conceptual project right you know when we are using the concept pen obviously means that it is not a pencil because the concept of pen excludes the concepts of pencil meaning that is not a baton so on so forth now the idea of bracketing in Hosserl always applies to not conceptual judgments
or critical judgments but first and foremost to what to perceptual judgments like me or you having the same and such basically recognitions, perceptual recognitions of an object, we can bracket such recognitions such that we can say that, look, within the perceptual invariance that we have, this is actually the goddamn form of a pen and not something else
so it's this endeavor sorry if it's no please please go on please go on so this bracketing endeavor it's it is that which um constitutes these the quasi object Am I right? Absolutely so, yes But could you say In the context of the myth of the given That, I mean, he doesn't Specifically call it that But he, in the chapter That we read for today He talks even about a quasi Not only quasi-objects and analysis But quasi-constituents And so In relation to the myth of the given Could it even be said that his notion of the given, since he calls it given,
could be considered a quasi-given. A quasi-given, yeah, but then you might ask, what is a quasi-given, right? You know, quasi-given, obviously, when we're talking about quasi-given, we are talking about analysis, about analysis, a certain kind of analysis, procedure of analysis, for which there is already a given, right? Like, for example, think about this. I mean, it's just an allegory. It's not really something well-established. Think about this, that you say that old sciences,
within 20th century, early 20th century paradigm can be reduced to physics. So physics is a given for all sciences in humanity and social so on and so forth, right? But is it the same kind of given that we are talking about when we are mentioning sellers? idea of the given i think that they are not really the same can someone say why they are not the same
Yeah, my man who I cannot pronounce his name, Enda. I'm kind of, I'm not sure, I feel like I want to think about this more, but I'll just throw it out there. It feels like the given for Karnap is also not really about veridical representation of objects it is not really about representation really yeah absolutely that is that's the whole point that's really that's that's a great point that is the given for karnap is not about representation right it's about constitution about construction it's about fundamentalism
or foundationalism in the sense that what kind of elements go to your constitution system at the most basic level right can we actually replace them with other kinds of elements or not so this was kind of actually a thing that's been on my mind in terms of like maybe like a classic critique of the positivist project or i mean you know what kind of in a loose sense is trying to undertake here is like even if we can isolate these logical structures of constitution systems that doesn't really give us the picture of how constitution systems are themselves generally constructed but I feel like what the way in which like this is
kind of like my sort of the thing that's still bothering me in a sense is like I can get how in this kind of deriving some a posteriori kind of principles, we can then eliminate pseudo-problems of philosophy, because they don't adhere to this kind of logic in a way that's internally consistent. But then there's this other kind of radical .. No, no, no. Hold your ponies, my dear friend. what do you mean by certain kind of a priori principle you can do this or that yeah that's not what because if Carnap does that it would be just another cant right so like yeah
okay so um what what like what I'm understanding in it is uh through this kind of constructional system we can understand the basic logical but not epistemic um stress But why is that we can do it on the logical side and not epistemological side? Because we can't just derive like formal equivalences in epistemological terms between different constitution systems, right? Why not? I guess because they're like not reducible to like a basic kind of experience in a way that you could make that kind of equivalence, right? or um i don't know how to put this in like the right terms but uh what is what is exactly okay
this is like my question for you this is like the problem for next session problem number one thank you my dear friend for relieving of my duties look what is exactly in experiences that does not allow them to be reduced to one another. Right? Actually, I think it's a really interesting thing. You know, well, some people say that, oh, well, because, you know, I had a better life, more traumas than you.
But that's just bullshit, right? This is the myth of the lived experience, so to speak. But what is experience? Can we have reducibility within the realm of experience? If so, how are we going to go about dealing with it? Right. So this is actually a really good question. Magnificent problem. You're going to solve it, not me. Can I just maybe like...
Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, okay, so I still, so putting that to one side for a sec, there's still like this question of like how we can, you know, how, how does this radical project that seems very attractive in what Karnap is doing of reconstruct or constructing alternative constitution systems to the ones that currently exist using the tools that we, or using the kind of logic that we have reduced from existing constitutional systems. How does this actually play out in a sense? Given that it doesn't seem to me to be true that existing constitution systems are constructed out of this logic or what we're deriving this logic from, their causal history or their genealogy contains this logical system at its genesis.
but that's not really the concern of Karnak to be honest with you look, I mean if you can make a logical system differently, alternatively then by all means be my guest make it, right? Alta spoke Alta spoke, right? Be the speaker of the Alta spoke you know but but but the thing is that i don't understand how some of you actually interpret this project um so carl up talks about these kinds of stuff and certain kind of moves so on so forth
Ultimately, the problem converges upon one single problem and one single problem only. What does it mean? To say anything about anything. anything first within a linguistic ordinary framework and then within a logical framework. That's actually a really nasty problem. So within like look I you you you say that the problem of
i don't know um the problem of fascism okay the problem of fascism fashion is concept right the problem of fascism we are going to reduce it to a certain kind of concept such that we can't all talk about it right about the fascism but then you can by way of a constitution constitution system you can actually reduce the idea of fascism to certain kinds of experiential data right what does it mean for someone
of having such and such auto-psychological, hetero-psychological, physical, and cultural experiences to become a fascist. Think about that, that we are now in the business of saying that why is that a fascist become a fascist within the genealogy of experiences from an individual to intersubjective to cultural, so on and so forth.
Do we have a theory of fascism around these kinds of basically dynamics, intersubjective dynamics. No, we don't. For us, fascism has always been a vague certain kind of boogeyman complex, so to speak. But it shouldn't be, because fascism is real,
so as the processes which lead the conceptualization of fascism and its entrenchments within human cognition is some uh what you're talking about uh got to do with something to do with the distinction between like the form and content of a concept Yes, yes. But of course, I didn't want to reduce it simply to the distinction between form and content. Precisely because when we are talking about such concepts, semantically, contextually, culturally,
heteropsychologically concepts such as fascism we should understand that where are they coming from we are not actually interested if you are philosophers what they mean actually right now what we are actually interested is that where they come from for them to have such and not other meanings I don't know if I'm following it right, but with the example of fascism and in regards to this difference between form and content, what we are actually trying to do in inserting fascism in a
constitution system framework is to analyze it in terms of it in terms of the relations that constitute such a concept as fascism and does this uh uh unreducibility uh in the epistemological dimension and experiential dimension uh is due to uh uh the fact that when we analyze a concept such as fascism that causes really serious implications in our political and social lives and take it into the constitution system, it kind of loses its qualitative leap that
permits it to have things such as value in a cultural way for us. Is that why there is this irreducibility that you're talking about in the epistemological experiential level. I don't know if I was... No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I mean, we can always reduce such concepts to other concepts. I think that the problem is something deeper. What is the problem? problem is the idea that the neutrality of the constitution system you see
you can have a constitution system within which fascism will be justified or what you might call to be a reduction of fascist vocabularies to lived experience vocabularies as hitler had it gobls had it so on and so forth i mean people just don't understand that how lived experience historically has been in the service of fascism, right? So let's not talk about that. Let's talk about this fact that the main problem here
is that we can actually create a constitution system within which every sort of move we can from a higher concept to a lower concept lower concept to lower concept or a lower object to a higher concept or higher object we are going to be accountable for such moves and that's anti-fascism that's what Carnap's vision of enlightenment was as opposed to it's time for our ask tonight god damn marty OK. Instead of smiling, I start to ask questions.
Can I ask? Sorry. Please, whoever, whoever, who was it? Go ahead. I think it was Maria. Thank you. I wanted to ask what can we do with the theory of Hannah Arendt? Can we make it more rigorous? She said that fascism is when false beliefs are made, not sort of believe, but behave as if people believe. How can we make it logically rigorous and include in a consistent system of everything? To be honest with you, I think it's not as straightforward as that.
that. Essentially fascism is not like this kind of what you may call to be hardcore ideological way of thinking about the world and ourselves in the world. No it's not really. When we think about fascism, we should actually think about that it's just like a parasitic form of doing the right moves in the right time, right? And of course this applies to all of us. So exactly then what is the difference between fascism and us, right? That's actually a really
good question. I'd say that for us to distinguish fascism, we should say that, so what does actually fascism, what kind of concrete move fascism does in opposition to the kind of moves that we do that makes it a fascist movement and not an egalitarian one. I don't think that the question is so straightforward, though. And that's the appeal of fascism.
Fascism is not Trump. Trump is not fascist by virtue of the history of understanding what fascism actually is fascism always wants to preserve a certain kind of fuzziness in logic, epistemology and reduction of one experience to another and that's why it is so great because everyone regardless whether you have adopting a fascist ideology or not can plug into the fascist ideology
look do you really think that people at 1938 or during basically Mussolini's taking up the power were all bad guys? No. Do you know how many Jews became black shirts? Do you know how many good, really good intellectual people became the loud speakers of the Nazi regime? That should be accounted for. not inside all this bullshit
that oh well these are all Nazis and so on and so forth no we should think about this what kind of moves and how many of such moves we can make before we become a Nazi or a fascist because there is really no distinction between a fascist and a Marxist within the realm of making moves, certain kind of moves, in the realm of theory and practice. I'm trying to understand whether you're saying that fascism is something that is
primarily described as like a syntax or whether you're describing exactly you're saying the exact opposite of this it's a syntax it's absolutely a syntax yes yeah that essentially you know any any person who thinks that fascism has a has a fundamental meaning doesn't really understand what fascism is and how actually it becomes important and becomes so domineering, right? Yes, the power of fascism is precisely because it has an efficacious paradigm of being this kind of syntax of power and culture and so on and so forth,
rather than the others. I'm just going to say one small thing. That's why you probably think, I might be wrong, that, for example, Althussurian politics could be, in a certain sense, isomorphic with some elements of Carnap in the sense that the auto-psychological could be related to the ideological level where we take, for example, fascism is fascism. fascism as something that we take in itself. But if we go to the heteropsychological structure, this means the structural constitutions and conditions external to fascism, we see how fascism is not a substance.
It cannot be reduced to a substance, but a set of relations that are economical, sociological, political. Yes, definitely. It's essentially in a Carnapian sense, a collection of ours ours you uh when um how many of you know what ours means okay let me once one sec my apologies federico i didn't want to uh basically um cut you off but one second Jesus. What is this? How am I supposed to do a screen share? What is this? A screen sharing?
What, Riza? A screen share. Oh, yeah. A screen share. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. A screen share. it um okay one second one second i'm coming um So this is the thing. So Carnap wants to turn every statement,
even in Afval, well of course it takes it far more seriously logical syntax of language, his next work, into a formula like superscript of dots, F, then a subscript of dots, left parenthesis, A, dots, three dots, and parenthesis closed. Essentially, this is the very idea of formalism that Carnap wants to.
So every kind of sentence, every kind of a statement, every kind of claim that you can ever make within any sort of realm, culture, science, whatever, according to Carnot can be reduced to a metal level formalism of this kind of formula, right? It's just that in Afbaho, he does not pursue that kind of formalism. But in logical syntax of language, he does. So essentially, think about this, that everything that we ever make,
every sort of a statement, every sort of claim we ever make in any sort of discipline with regard to any sort of dimension of the world we encounter, can be reduced, not reduced, translated to a formula of such a structure. Right? Then, next, we can we can think about the idea of reduction now of reducing set of kinds of cultural objects
heterogeneous objects to auto psychological objects so on so forth with the understanding that all such objects and namely and by extension the idea of the reductions between such objects or types will follow this kind of formula for all x and y R, R stands for relation, X and Y, a double arrow definition, X, definition Y, in the sense of infinity.
so essentially what does that mean does anyone know what does that mean with regard to the constitution system anyone i think frankly had a question or a comment but i'm not sure if it's actually on that topic Franklin? Franklin? Well, sorry. I don't know if I can give a detailed account of that at a snap, but it does represent the only relationship that he thinks is allowable as,
I forgot what his term is, a means of ascension, right, from lower-level concepts to higher-level concepts, right? Yes. So I want to see what you'll say if I press a little bit. For sure. The notion that, oh, I'm not, you might as well see me. The notion, wait a minute. So the notion that fascism is basically a syntactical relationship is very colorful. but I wonder if it's a maybe a little too exciting in a way that goes beyond what Carnot might actually be doing and so what I mean is this I don't take it that so when Carnot says that the
same logic I mean what's very what's really exciting about about Phrygian logic right is that it applies to all levels of concepts, right? Universal generalizations have the same type of consequences, whether the terms in them are fascism, or cheese, or titanium, or what have you, right? Okay, so maybe you, maybe we could say that accounts of fascism, or high level cultural concepts are going to benefit from seeing themselves as beholden to these fairly basic logical forms. I think that is quite different than claiming that the way that these reductions work
is that notions like fascism have to cash out themselves on a term-by-term basis as something like, I mean, it ends up sounding like, oh, well, you know, something is fascist if blue dot here now, right, ultimately, that you get some sort of, you know, phenomenalistic reduction. Now, that maybe are not those terms. I really don't actually think that that is, is that helpful. In, and for example, I wouldn't say that the cultural criticism that we are political. But isn't it the fact that precisely it's not helpful precisely because Karnab already thinks that, as I said, the experiential or the epistemological level of reduction doesn't apply from fascism to have such and such a statement.
He merely tries to say that, okay, there is a logical invariance holding among these. And the epistemological purchase of such logical connections across the board from the lower level to top level is yet to be decided. It is not given. It is not given. He's the enemy of the epistemological given. Right. So, well, just to sum this up, I have some doubts that what we – leave Carnap aside for just a second.
What we find helpful in cultural criticism or sociopolitical philosophy or writing is going to be improved by, say, formalizing it in quite this way. So someone in the chat wrote, oh, maybe a Rents theory of authoritarianism could be made more rigorous. I think you could look for the wrong kind of rigor in there and I say this as someone who both who I say this as someone who both teaches symbolic logic and publishes poetry and criticism okay I don't see them as incompatible I also don't see them as identical right and just to
I mean and Carnap sometimes says things that lead you in this direction that I I don't find that So there's a passage that's been bothering me in the logical syntax of language. He says in the passage on physicalism, which I think was alluded to earlier, according to the thesis of physicalism, this is 151, if anyone has logical syntax, which will be stated later but will not be established in this book, etc., etc. So he's for it, but he's not going to try to, and he gives some examples. A is furious or A is thinking means the body A, that is such and such a space time domain, is in such and such a state. And then the society of such and such a people is an economy based on a monetary system.
Okay, and surely political system would work the same way means in such and such a space time domain such and such processes occur. I don't think fascism is a property of a space time region. I don't think that that is the useful way. So I think that this is a mistake or a speaking on his way that it is a property of a space time. He would say that it is a property of a certain kind of cultural type, right? Or heterogeneous heteropsychological classes. And I absolutely, I think that Carnap would agree with you.
Well, I think that this is just a kind of misspeaking, then, because I would suggest there have to be a number of levels of reduction or logical reconstruction to get to things like monetarism, or how it is that currency works or currency exchange. exchange it's not going to go right in in one step from fascism or uh trade unionism or what have you one step i have a good example uh auto psychological states yes i have a good example the term neoliberalism from a carnappian sense how are we going to talk about it
within the constitution system what is neoliberalism right so neoliberalism traditionally arises from either Frederick Hayek or other theories of neoliberalism. So we have certain kinds of what you might call to be individual choices, namely couched in terms of rational decision choice theory. Rational choice theory is that our individual preferences are actually behind our individual reasons. Our individual reasons are nothing but those preferences, right?
So we have that on a micro level. Then on the micro level, then we have no liberal market economy. So what is that? It's a micro level. in the sense that, look, the problem says that if you have such and such micro behaviors of the individuals with regard to preferences, we can simply extend them to the macro level such that a person who acts simply on his or her
preferences is exactly the same kind of person who basically creates a certain kind of market generalised, collected, choice markets within which the ultimate criteria are simply these individual preferences and nothing more. So essentially neoliberalism in a canonical sense is the bridging of the micro-individual choices at the level of rational choice theory to macro
decisions of market, which are simply the extensions of the former. And we have this, we have this in basically in what we have been talking about, in terms of what you are talking about, in terms of no liberalism, so on and so forth. So the problem here is that we know that this is the kind of mechanisms that we are dealing with. what we don't know is that how can we escape it off so conor in the same way
understands what he's dealing with it's just that he doesn't understand how we can stay off this hydra like form of the myth of the given right he just doesn't understand he i think i think that's not his weakness it's just that it's um literally is is under equipped at this point to say that how am i supposed to basically deal with the myth of the given if the myth of the given is a hydra
i cut one head three more heads emerge I'm not sorry try try one more way of saying that because I'm I'm not seeing what the so he eliminates it one place where does it come in the where does it come in the back door think about this uh so we just get rid of the categorical given right then we might actually end up in the semantic given okay like ala husserl we get rid of the semantic given we might actually end up in the practical
given by way of the principle of tolerance, right? So there is a whole dynasty of the given here. How are we supposed to deal with this? You get rid of the sensedatum given, you might end up in the Husserlian idea of semantic given. You get rid of the semantic given at Husserl, you might end up in practical given which is basically pertains to the idea of the principle of tolerance having the polarity of certain kinds of logic by way of which we can recalibrate our place in the world and from their other countries so this i think that's
this is kind of a slippery slope i wouldn't say that it is i i'm skeptical of this enterprise i say that carnap is not in a better position than any other philosopher in off wow with regard to the myth of the given Friends and foes, we are, it's 1.32, but if you have some questions and stuff, those handsome girls and boys
are looking and smiling at this point maybe they should say something Is it for a specific session of ours that we're supposed to read the structure of appearance or is it just to read whenever are we going to discuss it at a specific point? Yes, so my apologies let me let me actually
There is this essay that if you can get um it's called new life for car naps of bow i think i think it's kind of interesting i mean look it's not really that interesting but you know we can start from this
is it from hannes light keep yes yes sorry i cannot pronounce german sounding names or for that matter Irish ones Enda knows that mine's not too bad so what are we going to do next session just one
I think that one we are really really behind i mean look i i know that you know it's just like this is like reading shahnameh by fardosi which is like the book of all the kings in the universe you know so it's always we are going to be behind right we cannot catch up with the with the thing but But nevertheless, I think that we need to a little bit next session kind of tone down questioning and stuff so I can actually do some stuff. And of course, we have next semester.
But the thing is that it wouldn't be fair to you that if I simply say that, oh, well, I'm going to read the rest of it next semester. No, I actually want to at least cover the gist and the kernel of this project in our session, in our class. So, with that said, who is going to be actually talking next week? It was Cassio, wasn't it? If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah, I could present. Cassio is like the best. Like, when you actually run out of your ammo, Cassio, are you doing it?
Cassio is the first volunteer, always. The definition of a good person. So any last question, anything? Is there any questions that you have with regard to Kenneth Westwall essay that I asked
you to read? Nothing. Okay, how about this? Now that you are saying that I, oh, we don't have any sort of question. So I already gave you one paper. Then also read this. Andre Karus, critic of Salar's Space of Reasons. It's on his academia edu. Andre Karus. Andre, A-N-D-R-E, space C-A-R-U-S.
thank you so much and i hope you the best uh week and the weekend And ciao for now. Love you all. Thank you, Reza. Bye, Reza. Bye, everyone. See you. Bye. Bye.