Simulating the World & Remodeling Philosophy (Session 10)

Hello and welcome to the 10th session now of simulating the world and remodeling philosophy with Reza Negrestani. Happy New Year to everyone and here's Reza Negrestani now. Thank you very much, Steve. Okay, we were talking that, you know, given the fact that, you know, we are in a season-long change and it's a new year, still we are in the new year mood. And also that in so far as the seasonal change comes with certain kinds of calamities and we get sick. Let's end this session earlier than usual. And then, of course, I will make sure that I will add this on top of the sessions I have

promised already. Okay. So today's session is centered on, finally, toy models and the role that they play in scientific modeling. But before that, in so far as we have been basically away from our course for two weeks, let's hear if you have had come up with some sort of question, suggestion, whatever. Surely you should have a question.

I mean, God, do you really need me to come after you at this point? No. Okay, go on, Mari. I've came up with a modeled world, which I would like to use for a science fiction script that I'm writing, but this is something that I thought I would discuss with you during our one-on-one hour. Sure, sure, sure. sure if this model is uh and it was something that i've created on the back of this class i want to see if i actually with this model comprehend key concepts and maybe through this we could sort of discuss it i don't think it will be may i ask uh sure we can we can talk about it in details in our one-on-one session but may i ask for now so i can kind of get a kind of a idea

so I can think about a little more. What is the target of your model? Essentially, what does it deal with? Well, it's a world and it's dealing with all the changes that have arised on the premise that citizenship has become a commodity for society. And then certain changes have happened and then there are certain characters that need to overcome obstacles that have arised from this one parameter that have changed. There are different entities that are sort of like non-state and state actors that have been redefined by this situation and then I'm trying to see how would you proceed in

that scenario and then it starts quite simple but then things become increasingly complicated. Okay and may I ask one more question. that basically may ask one more question from a pragmatic standpoint insofar as all models you know have pragmatic commitments you basically as a modeler you model something insofar as you want to satisfy the criteria of your own field of research and in that capacity did you did you come up with this idea as an artist or as a theorist a philosopher how do you define the boundary between the two i think

artist is a theorist and philosophy i don't know any other artist no i i don't think that we have to i actually do believe in badi's claim that we shall not secure art and philosophy essentially these are two fundamentally different fields, sovereign fields like sovereign territories. The ideas of art, the convictions of art, the ambitions of art are fundamentally different from the ambitions of philosophy. Yes, they do share subambitions, methodologies so on so forth but we cannot at this point say that philosophy is science

or philosophy is art or is art is science no we should absolutely respect the sovereignty of local fields of thinking such as art politics philosophy and science Well, I think I... ...with understanding that there can be, you know, a crossbreeding between the two. Right, but would you agree that it's okay to be a theorist and then be an artist? So at one stage you're acting, okay, let's say within the sovereignty of a theorist, and then you take what you've discovered there and you turn it into a different output. Yes, yes. ...with my hands in a museum rather than... sure sure absolutely yeah yeah no i completely agree i agree yes i'm a terrorist who is making

a make-believe world and there is a reason with which i'm trying to make this and i'm trying to see whether it is possible to to to leave without identification with a particular state and what What would happen? OK. OK. Yes, yes. And of course, I have been always complaining about this idea that after Renaissance, unfortunately or fortunately, you can see this picture in two different fundamental different ways, all of which have their own justifications. That's science, philosophy, and art separated, became fundamental different disciplines. OK?

But I still have a nostalgia, being a romanticist enlightenment philosopher, I have a nostalgia for the unity of these fields. But the unity of these fields cannot be achieved anymore by the very ways in which art and science and philosophy were connected back in Renaissance time, there is a question of systematic methodology. Each of these fields require certain kinds of practices, doings, as ways of theorization of their own fields. And unfortunately, I don't see that they can be so

comfortably be put together. the integration of these fields requires a new labor a new enlightenment in your head you you one feeds the other feeds the other right there is a we can approach different methodologies but it's ridiculous to say that i'm just like a schizophrenic turn into a completely different person so and i guess yes yes no no no i completely agree i agree i agree yes but i don't be lying if i would say oh no i'm a terrorist because it's it's all one brain here and you don't know which one moves the other but methodology methodologically i agree with you this completely different set of tools yes and and you see methodologies reside outside of the brain

outside of an individual preferences precisely because a method for a method to be a method it should always comes from the outside from the social communal realm okay and in that sense It always comes with a baggage of standards and norms of doing that kind of methodology. And the whole question at this point is that with that idea that the method post-Renaissance is always socially instituted, how can we commensurate the norms of the methods of the

as pertaining whether to science, to art, or to philosophy, or politics for that matter. And this is, this I would say, is not really a given question. It's something that is not, so to speak, we have already solved. The solution to this problem shall herald or will herald a new age of enlightenment, much like Renaissance. It would be a Renaissance version too. Maybe Jean-Pierre, knowing his background, can say something on this.

I was late now, so I'm not sure what was the subject. I picked up some sentences, but... Okay, okay. We are not going to interrogate you. Maybe Theo can say, or Mikey, or Lenka. I'm saying the truth. No, I know, I know, I know, I know. No, the only reason that I said that, I basically absolved you from your sins. It's because I'm not in a perfect healthy condition to re-explain this stuff. But yes, don't worry about it. We are going to interrogate you nonetheless later in time.

But maybe someone else, Andrea, Adam, anyone, please. I think these are actually interesting stuff. You see, in the sense that, why is this interesting from our perspective? We are studying models. Why a question on model should be actually thought about these kinds of, you know, what you might call to be extraterritorial concerns about the methods of different disciplines? Well, precisely because, you see, we always make our models by virtue of certain kinds of methodological assumptions.

And these methodological assumptions, the way that we lend them credence, is because we are inhabiting a certain kind of theoretical domain, art, philosophy, science, and so forth. but as we have talked about a single methodology can make no make no robust model no single model can make a picture of the world story to that extent we shall not only expand our methods but also our models and to do that we have no choice other than foraying

into different disciplines you know but then how can we foray into different disciplines with the understanding that there is always a threat that you i think has perfectly perfectly seen the danger of this foray is called the suture. We usually have the habits of suturing politics, art, science, and philosophy as if they were the same. But no, there are local sovereign disciplines. We cannot suture them together. We cannot fuse them together, nor we can fuse their methods.

And in this case, how can we expand our methods without basically indulging in what Badiou calls suturing of different disciplines? I'm not sure if the searcher is bad per se. I think Badiu's problem is the fact that you have sometimes a searcher to one domain. Like when he talks about philosophy, the problem

with somebody like Heidegger, for instance, is that he's searcher to art or somebody like Carnap for him is such a science or something like that. I think philosophy has to reflect upon all the truth procedures, not just one of them and not just such a itself to either one of them. You're actually laying out what I would say Gabrielle Catherine's thesis, which is also I absolutely love it. It's essentially that I just didn't want to say that philosophy is above all disciplines because that is not a great way for a philosopher to talk. Yes, but yes, philosophy is the ultimate instrument or the organon of synthesis.

Philosophy sees and integrate, sees into and integrate other disciplines. That's what philosophy is. And that's why philosophy is so important. And literally, to... Again, now I'm becoming a kind of a philosophy monger. But that is exactly what I think philosophy is the most important philosophy, human endeavor. Literally, above it, there is nothing. philosophy is what lifts the sky in a newtonian sense reveals the abyss beyond

and gives us new prospects of adventures to see how the world lines interact you know yes but I don't want to go to this precisely because if I say this then I am just a fucking philosopher but do I want to be a philosopher to my dear students who are coming from different backgrounds no that's not good this is at least not diplomatically correct it's done already yes you've done it But nevertheless, yes, no, I, I, but let's, let's just not talk about philosophy.

I think the problem still remains science, art, politics, sociology, so on and so forth. How can we integrate them without fusing them? Yeah, that's a good question. Theo, you a skeptic snake. Go on. I don't have anything to say about how to integrate disciplines, I guess. I just... Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of struck by this idea that I find it both compelling and...

maybe disturbing that philosophy would see itself as this like all-inclusive, I don't know, the web upon which others- But here we are. I know, I know. Someone who actually makes a philosophical thesis. You see, it's philosophy who makes thesis, not other disciplines. The hypotheses of philosophy are sacred precisely because each of them will lead us to a new way of understanding what we are actually doing in this world.

Barrett, sorry, I just muted you because there's some strange loop happening. It was a great DJ performance. It still happened. Top notch! We shall record this! We have recorded it. And it's self-referential. This is something. Maybe I'll mute myself and other people who aren't speaking can mute themselves and you can try again one more time. Yes, no, I think this is actually a fantastic topic and it obviously has a very, very deep connection with what we have been talking about, essentially about modeling, because modeling is exactly about this.

It's about to see the world, to make a world a story in a Szilardian way. Okay, please do go. Is it something? Is it something? Is it something? Is it something? Is it something? Is it something? Barrett, sorry, it's still, I don't know if you can hear it on your end, but it's still just like a looping noise. Any of you who are a DJ should turn this into the final loop on a dance floor. for the humanity version one.

This is the ultimate, what you might call to be the loop. Okay, Barrett's gonna type his question, then I can read it. I'll try to- I would like to ask questions on this because I understand these are very controversial statements. And of course, philosophy has no qualms to make controversial statements. It is in our business as philosophers to make the most controversial statements.

that keep you awake at night, statements that turn your life upside down. A philosopher who cannot do that is not a philosopher. There's a way of... I have a friend who reads Bajio as saying something different, maybe he thinks Badiou is saying that philosophy is the least important of endeavors because every truth procedure has its own protocols. So philosophy is not in the business of legislating these protocols which are the domain of each different truth procedure.

what philosophy has to do, what is left to philosophy to think about is the compostability of the truth procedures, something like that. So maybe this is another way of phrasing what you are saying because the compostability of different truth procedures, this seems like one huge big endeavor anyway. so yes the way he phrases it is is more I mean more diplomatic that that in the sense of right philosophy is not the supreme science but is something more modest which is the reflection on the compossibility of different truth procedures which are autonomous in their own protocols of absolute absolute Absolutely more.

The whole point is that philosophy takes pride, not in making lavish thesis about truth procedures of different disciplines. What philosophy does, however, is far more subtle and far more sinister in its all modesty. Do you know what philosophy does? Philosophy is exactly a discipline that points out possibilities outside of our perceptual and cognitive edifice. And in that sense, even philosophy,

And in that sense, philosophy is not really a supreme science. To say that it would be just a complete misunderstanding of what science is, I would like to say that philosophy is more like this trickster, Loki, Ahreman, Drouj, in different mythologies, who give us a glimpse of a different possible world. And that's really the power of philosophy.

This possible world can be interpreted differently, methodologically, analytically, synthetically, theoretically, concretely, practically, abstractly, so on and so forth, whatever you like it. But nevertheless, it posits the possibility of something beyond the outside. The outside is not real. the outside is the true child of philosophy as such, an ideal. And philosophy takes pure responsibility, pure pride to posit this ideality

so seriously such that no matter who you are, scientist, artist, engineer, architect, so on and so forth, entertain this very possibility to be seduced by it. This is exactly what Sellars meant when he compared philosophy to the poisonous apple You know, when we bite into this apple, we get seduced. But of course, we are not philosophers at this point. To be a philosopher is to bite into this poisonous apple all the way to the core.

And that's what philosophy is. and that's why it is essentially the ultimate discipline precisely because it delivers us from this wretched planet from this myopic world of our senses our methods so on so forth and in that sense philosophy is not so different from science arts or anything it's just all those disciplines in a new universalist and integrated disguise adam

I can read Barrett's question too, while Adam's pending. I think we should let Barrett speak. Yeah. I think he's in his voice first. Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? Is he something? um yeah barrett i it's sorry to interrupt you but it's just like uh we can't make out anything you're saying but i'll just read your question yes this is the very confirmation of nick land

venerated sentence this is first for annihilation humanity shall be wasted on the dance floor And this is exactly the tune. Barrett, you can go after we're done archiving this. You can listen to it for yourself on the recording. But in the meantime, I'll just read your question. And if I do anything wrong, just clarify in the sidebar. So Barrett says, this is a question I'm struggling with. I think what you were referring to, the question was about philosophy as the totalizing discipline. This is a question I'm struggling with. Using a subject other than philosophy as a primary vessel, that is art, as a way to synthesizing phenomena with philosophy itself.

The institutions which create the phenomena have embedded many problems, however. institutional contradictory etc which inevitably negates the truth procedure well you know i i have a very trivial answer to this a very i'm saying trivial in quotes in the sense that if art can actually engage with this question of synthesis or global integration of different disciplines then there's no longer art as canonically understood we are talking here about canonical definitions of science philosophy art so on and so forth

It becomes philosophy. Art becomes philosophy. And this is exactly what philosophy is. Philosophy is not a discipline. Philosophy, a program, in the broadest possible sense of this world, for integration of all possible methodologies all possible perceptions all possible justifications as why we are in this world and why we should live it and this is why the greatest models are those which correspond to the philosophical discipline

not about one certain aspect of reality or physical phenomenon but models which can give us insight about possibilities of methodologies by which we can reinvent new models And through them, we can see new physical phenomenon, hitherto unknown to us. One more thing that Barrett said in the sidebar was, but there are institutional misalignments that negate it, which is what I'm wondering, what is the best way to go

about this problem? Well, institutional, you see, there's an old story coming from Heiko. the geist the social mind is at once its own enablement and its own curse its own limitation surely when you look at the evolution of human culture in scientific artistic political and and philosophical enterprises, you see that we ourselves put limitations and negative constraints upon such endeavors. It is not something that God subjects us to them, to these constraints.

No, we should take a responsibility. And this is exactly why that we should understand the possibility of a new enlightenment, a new renaissance, where philosophy, science, art, so on and so forth can cherish each other, but also evolve precisely because we no longer abide by what Plato calls the nomos, namely the social conventions of the institutes. Now institutes are not purely negative, they are also positive, precisely because they

commit us to certain kinds of positive forms of standards, positive forms of enablements. And here comes, again, back to why rationality is important. Precisely because rationality is what is capable of, in the long run, to tell the difference between those standards of institutions, which are purely conventional and hence should be blasted into oblivion, and those standards which are objective.

Mikey had a good question. I'm kind of wondering if I can poke him until he speaks. What is today? Everyone's microphone is malfunctioning? All right. Go on, Marty. All right. So the question I was asking was, can philosophy exist without any other disciplines? Or is it always going to be like a discipline reliant on other disciplines?

Even like as, you know, at its base, like, you know, it's like you read some like older philosophers and it seems like they're just you know trying to put this kind of uh image of them just like reaching inside their mind trying to figure out the world but is that ever you know possible obviously things like language and other structures exist which need to be there but is it somewhat contentless without kind of the reflection and use without without of other disciplines yes surely uh you know any philosophy that understand itself as a supreme discipline with no concrete correlation

with other disciplines art science politics so on so forth is not really a philosophy it's just a sophisticated endeavor. Now I would say that philosophy should strive with correlation without adequacy. The adequacy of philosophical discipline is not that it is dependent upon on such endeavors, local fields of thought. Just like as Socrates said, the courage of truth shall not be commensurated, shall not be reduced to the examples of politics that we have,

or art for that matter, so on and so forth. It's just that philosophy becomes great, becomes the ultimate discipline when it sees itself as something, as a discipline in which all these, finally, all these different modes of thought and practice can be commensurate. But to do so, philosophy has two tasks. One, exactly as Foucault said, to adopt a higher standard.

Always, always question every single of these local modes of thoughts and practice. but also a very much uh what you might call to be laborious criterion in the sense that for philosophy to to to to be elevated to this status you should actually take pride of devolving its status to those local modes of thinking, to learn

what actually art means for an artist, what politics means for a politician, what science means for scientists to learn the specific methodologies which are the methods of those very specific disciplines which philosophy seeks to integrate and elevates if no one has a question I had a follow-up on your

previous comment Rizzo sure sure absolutely if I'm rephrasing this correctly you were sort of posing rationality as like this faculty or arbitrating force between social convention and perhaps objective invariance of reality I don't know if that's a fair rephrasing but my question follows from that and and if that free sure sure thing is wrong but I get you would you be able to slightly increase the volume of your microphone I can increase your volume justin two is that any better yes okay do you want me to restate what i just

said no i i heard loud and clear okay um i guess my question is looking at rationality as it's posed by say like the inferential sort of camp and it's kind of in the place of your work and Ray's work of like the need for the rational agent as like an underpinning of the normative space by which like rationality can continue to be arbitrated amongst these agents. And like to some degree, is that not a convention that we're applying on rationality itself and not the actual, as you sort of called it, objective invariant? and like as we move into say these different agis and and other formats where perhaps like agents

fall out of the rational process and threaten this sort of normative substructure of like of of that rational process of norms like what happens there it seems like it loses its potency and actually I'll stop there. Fantastic question. You're essentially leading us back to the question of rationality versus skepticism. Deep skepticism. Okay, let me, and please do correct if I'm dissimulating or misrepresenting your idea.

Essentially, the idea is that rationality is the game in town. Literally, you cannot defect this game. And surely, for rationality to rise as a jurisdiction, There should be some conditions of possibilities in a Kantian sense, things that lead and make possible this kind of jurisdiction, this ultimate jurisdiction. And then, of course, we can say that, you know, but what if,

What if, in a Kantian sense, these conditions of possibilities, these premises, are themselves irrationalist conventions in a platonic sense, that of the nomos rather than the fusis. OK? So what if rationalism, as the ultimate jurisdiction, has transpired through fundamentally irrationalist norms or conventions. Well, this is exactly the ultimate challenge

of a true skeptic toward a rationalist person. Well, unfortunately, rationalism, no matter how it tries, it does not have the ultimate weapon against skepticism. Skepticism is like an asset. If you drink a morsel of the skeptic portion, you are gone for good. now the only reason and actually something that i wanted to talk about with regard to the modeling

i would like you to read this essay you know i i probably uh some of you know this person you know he's a popular um scientist he has written a great deal about quantum physics but also kind of popularization of science. But I actually think that this essay of his is actually fantastic. And Justin, I think that it somehow responds to your concerns, even though in completely different vocabularies, different terms, so on and so forth. OK, this is the text.

my apologies one second once again um okay are you ready it's called why Why Boltzmann's brains are bad by Sean Carroll Why Boltzmann's brains are bad by Sean Carroll Essentially, he talks about this very phenomenon from a physical standpoint, from a scientific

a purely scientific standpoint. You see, the idea here is that the challenge or the contestation, the rivalry between rationalism and skepticism of the kind that you are suggesting is as old as time itself. What does it boil down to? Well, it boils down to the very fact that there are such models of conduct and of the universe,

which deprives us from actually considering ourselves as such rational agents. And by doing so, they unleash a fundamental skepticism. Boltzmann brain is as close as you can get to the very idea that everything that we can ever talk about the universe is just an arbitrary Boltzmannian fluctuation in a thermodynamic sense. And as such, whatever we sense, whatever we observe,

whatever we experience, whatever we infer about this universe can be just a goddamn sham, okay? So this is the Boltzmann brain. hypothesis. But then there is a different kind of an alternative, which is called the ordinary observer, or the ordinary agent hypothesis, in the sense that we have evolved in certain kinds of ways. And we have thus and so competencies and faculties by which. We can sense, we can perceive, we can conceptualize.

And thus conceptualizations, even though they might be wrong, but they can be tested. It's not that they are wrong from the beginning. Okay? This is what you might call to be OA, Ordinary Agent Hypothesis. And there is, in opposition to this camp, as a deep skeptical problem, is OB. Sorry, BA. Sorry, BA. Boltzmannian agent, or Boltzmann brain. Now, the thing is that Carol talks about this. that surely we can never actually say that we are such Boltzmann brains

that even the most cherished fruits of our senses can be challenged and be exposed as pure falsities, illusions of senses. Precisely because if we adopt the other camp namely the Boltzmann brains camp or the Boltzmann agents we are in the business of deep skepticism and do you know what deep skepticism is? it is exactly what both and Carroll call cognitively

in a stable model of the world in which we live. Literally, within this world, you absolutely cannot say anything, because anything that you say can be arbitrarily true. Now, that puts you in a fundamentally metaphysical standpoint. If everything that you can say, once you have got rid of all these norms, epistemological standards, so on and so forth, everything that you can say can be metaphysically and epistemologically true, then you are absolutely in a nightmare.

This nightmare will come back and haunt you, metaphysically, epistemologically, ontologically, so on and so forth. It literally prevents you to say from anything. Because if you are truly a skeptic in this fundamental sense, then there is absolutely no way for you to even defend your own skepticism. there. It's just a castle made out of sand. Could I respond super briefly to that?

Sure. Actually, I came into this place by looking at you and Ray in relationship with Nick Land, actually and for me i hear the nightmarishness of losing losing the agent on that deep sense but that doesn't actually supply like a sufficient philosophical justification it just say it's like it's nightmarish to lose it is probably accurate but it doesn't actually make it any more like justified no it doesn't justify no it doesn't justify it you see you see justin that's exactly What not I said, losing agenthood in the deep sense doesn't justify philosophical endeavor

or philosophical norms and standards. What it creates is a nightmare of its own proportions. Essentially, if you have a more self and more self, of belief in idea of the standard criteria and norms in a platonic sense, then you should ask yourself this question, that what exactly relinquishing this world of norms will give you, namely transition to this new world, which is basically what you might call to be the Boltzmann brain

agents, pure skepticism, pure skepticism. What does it give you? Well, it doesn't give you shit. The Boltzmann brain cannot even guarantee its own self. That is the whole nightmare. And this is why I always take skeptics toward the challenge, not from my rationalist perspective, but I would call any skeptic to the greatest task that he or she can achieve. Take your skepticism to its ultimate logical conclusions. See how fast even your own skeptical world falter.

So in that sense, we as humans, unfortunately, sure, as I mentioned, a Boltzmann brain scenario can be real. We don't have an empirical evidence for it. But not having an empirical evidence for it doesn't logically exclude it from our world. It's just that we as humans, we should be Kantians. We should be transcendentalists. We should understand the very fact that, unfortunately, we cannot espouse such deep skepticism,

Because skepticism is cognitively unstable. It is self-undermining. And what does it mean exactly to espouse a thesis that is self-undermining? We yet do not know. Can I pose a question just bouncing off all of that? I guess it's just I understand that skepticism and at a certain level of extremity it has this unspeakableness but there's also

So there's an inherent skepticism in a rationalist mode of operating. And that is a healthy skepticism. That's a rationalist skepticism. It's a skepticism about the methods of how we arrive at such and such conclusions. And this is exactly what reason should commit to, the labor of investigation. But when a skepticism goes out of bounds, it is essentially a different ballgame altogether. I guess part of my questions about rationalism is that it plays the ballgame of challenging

everyone else's methods but just as you were saying it's kind of in this pickle where it's unable to evaluate the grounds of its own method. Is that the accurate summary of the problem in a way? But it seems like it has to ask that question. So rationalism has to be skeptical in a way. yes absolutely absolutely but it cannot take this to the farthest conclusions so this is essentially a philosophical question of its own so here we are science i'm not talking about rationalism here science has to take seriously its own methods right

otherwise it wouldn't actually give us anything about the world it wouldn't be a science it wouldn't be different from I don't know like theistic discourse about the characteristics of angels dancing in the heavens right okay so he has to do this but then he cannot go Go above this. Radicalize this. Because if once it radicalizes this question, then literally everything becomes arbitrary.

Science becomes on the same footing a theistic cosmology as tribal ideology, so on and so forth. Now, of course, this is a philosophical question and we should take it seriously, we should investigate it very healthily. What we should understand the limits of how these questions can impel us to fundamentally diverge, to fundamentally become to certain kinds of questions, which we might find fundamentally and absolutely disgusting. You might see yourself at the brink of true fascism,

at the brink of the political system, the most revolting medieval philosophy or logic. But yes, we have to do it. And that's why philosophy doesn't... is not afraid of moral sins. We have to investigate these questions. We have to... we have a responsibility as philosophers. It's just that we should always be careful about the methodologies that we deploy. Because absent a consciousness of the methods that we use,

there is no difference between a scientist, a philosopher, an artist, a charlatan, a ufologist, so on and so forth. You can add to this. And this is exactly what I wanted to tell you, Theo, that skepticism is a very healthy process. It's essentially the labor of investigation. Skepticoi, I investigate, that is the Greek and Latin word.

I investigate. There is nothing wrong with investigation. It's just that investigation should always correspond to some sort of fuses, objective standards. Without them, then how can you, in fact, pose such a question that you have been asking me? you might as well, as far as I know, be a follower of David Icke, those people who think that humans are lizards, alien lizards, or basically a ufologist, a follower of Madem Bulovatsky, or whatever.

You see, without the objectivity of the method, even though it is a previous endeavor, you literally leave yourself no choice other than become purely arbiter in your claims. You cannot even challenge me on a philosophical point at this point. It would be a conversation more akin to you as a basically, or me or you, whatever. I'm just making an example. One being the defender of the intelligence, intelligent design

and creationism, and the other one being an advocate of Darwinian theory of life. Essentially, the difference between these two becomes purely arbitrary at the level of skepticism. That's why I said that there are certain models which are cognitively unstable. They are self-undermining. And as such, they should be. taken away we can talk about them in a healthy way but of course we cannot commit them commit

to them we cannot endorse them because they are self-undermining once we adopt these exactly like deeper skepticism essentially whatever we say can be true whether it's about religion what about unicorns what about lava lamps so on and so forth. If people don't mind, I just want to ask another question. I think part of the...

I guess maybe the question I have is about the ends that philosophy seeks in relation to other ends, or maybe I'm asking for a definition of what disciplines are because I'm not really sure what the ends that philosophy seeks are. It seems like philosophy for me is wrapped up in an idea of skepticism. It's like a meat grinder or something. No, yes, philosophy is always wrapped up in skepticism. Essentially, however, philosophy does not budge or fall in the trap of pure skepticism.

This has been always the case since the time of pre-Socratics, from Heraclitus and Parmenides to Plato and so on and so forth. Why makes philosophy so powerful, so cherishing, but also very dangerous and prelious course It's precisely because philosophy cherishes skepticism. And skepticism can go all wrong ways. But philosophy tries to exactly adjust in set on the sidebar. So skepticism can be considered as pure de-territorialization in the Deleuzian-Ghattarian sense.

a pure line of deterritorialization. Okay? Now, philosophy tries to control this line a little bit to make sure that if this line is going to ever produce something, something that is beyond its own givenness, its own skeptical givenness, It shall be subjected to some sort of protocols of control. We shall, in the philosophical sense, call these objective norms. And such objective norms, distributed across the realm of the physis and the realm of the normus,

intersubjectivity, are only lights out of this mess. It might not actually lead us out of this mess. But here, philosophy's final and first enemy is the myth of the given. The myth of the given does not actually come as the sense data in the first place it actually comes as exactly what you talked about this idea of pure skepticism this idea that we can simply be skeptical of all norms and standards whether pertaining to the method or the ideal

this myth is exactly what is challenged by philosophy but of course for philosophy to challenge this myth to take the the the this myth very seriously can i ask a like a small little piece and then leave this it's actually i'm not looking at it for myself in a skeptical sense of like trying to actually tear out the rug from it i'm actually i look at it in a sort of positive sense of like

you know agis are likely to be coming and the possibility in a sort of david rogan's sense of like that disconnection and like the we don't necessarily know what that intelligence could take the forms of and and i could envision it taking like non-agental forms where it's not necessarily like this right right trading between individual nodes and so not not in a negative sense of like let's destroy all of this but like actually moving forward in a sense of like let's not have our our conventions be biases that limit us in the framework of how we think and move how could we undergird rationality perhaps even inferentially but in in a new way that doesn't

have us overlook other forms that are coming in a sort of landing way of like whether we like yes But isn't it exactly what Kant has already warned us against? Do you know what it is? Essentially, if we don't know something, then we don't have a case about it. If we don't have a case about a thing, a phenomenon, then everything that we can ever talk about it, no matter how what you might call unbiased, allegedly unbiased it might be, it looks like exactly what Kant calls shawamai,

fanaticism, vagaries of thought, whimsicality, pure speculation. In today's world, we call it armchair speculation. Literally, that which does not have a case insofar as it is unknown is only the object of pure speculation armchair speculation and to that extent this is why that a future intelligence should can only be approached by what intelligence here is here and now and of course we can criticize we can renegotiate our own intelligence such that we can enrich the possibility

of a future intelligence but unless until and unless we basically committed task here and now everything that we talk about the future intelligence is no more than those various scholastic talks we have talked about gods angels demons so on so forth and that's why i am fundamentally fundamentally against this kind of Rodanian disconnection thesis. It is, to me, simply another version of negative theology. Pure scholasticism.

Kant is the only initial point. We, of course, can challenge Kant, we can disagree with Kant, but of course, the very foundations that he put forward, namely transcendental epistemology, should be preserved no matter what. Because everything else is relapsed back into pure scholasticism, into pure theology.

Can I ask you about why is it that, or if this is even a rationalist premise, that reason is the in some way the sole arbiter of determining criteria for what counts as meeting some normative standard are there why is that it I don't know if

that's a tenable option I guess that's what I'm trying to say can you repeat your question a little bit yeah sorry disorganized the main question is can reason be its own ground can it be the sole arbiter of criteria of what counts as when you say reason can it can be its own ground i would uh challenge you on this question from a herman cohen's perspective You see, reason can be its own ground on many levels. It depends on what you mean by reason being its own ground. Aesthetically, epistemologically, logically, so on and so forth.

I think that this question is way too vague for me to answer. I would say that aesthetically and logically, yes. Epistemologically, no. Okay, I'll think about it a little bit more, too. um joven you had color you said something about plato you shall make it public at this point

yeah just i think that the date that we're having is you know how like what you were saying what counts as real and philosophy gives us the capacity of understanding what is real ufologist doesn't did i actually say that i think that's what i'm the distinction the objective distinction of uh this of uh yeah he has no business on the real sorry philosophy has no business with the real no i mean not getting to the real but the fact that the real exists i don't i don't think that philosophy even i mean sure some philosophers say something like that but

you made uh you addressed plato but i i really genuinely don't think that plato actually say ever something like that even in this kind of amended uh you know comment right i guess what i mean by real is what you mean by the object where well okay here are you talking about being or being Yeah, sure. Being with a small b or with capital. If you talk about being as capital B, yes, that is exactly what philosophy is.

Essentially, philosophy as the organone of thought is the organone of being. But about the being, that's the discipline of science. Philosophy has no truck with this. And so. big B will come to understand that it's not a good way to put it the the project of the big B is what separates philosophy from let's see you have all just and I don't have anything against you a fall just I I love you a fall is i love ufo i mean who doesn't love ufo i mean you would be so low on imagination if you don't love

ufo but yes something like that okay yeah okay the idea is that there is a possibility and of course i understand larwell that he actually makes this point quite very vividly. It's just that I don't think that Laruel anti-philosophy or non-standard philosophy, for that matter, can actually pose a serious challenge to the Organonaut philosophy, particularly to that of Plato, which, of course, I know that is an archenemy. The thing is that, literally, there is no such thing as a being other than as a designation

of thought. Thought designates being. 101 Eleotic Doctrine Parmenides. The thesis of the Eleotic Doctrine, that thinking and being are one, has, of course, been misunderstood, misinterpreted, in the sense that some people like Ray, and of course, no longer right, but I'm just making an example. Think of this as that there is a conflation or aligning distinction between thinking and being. But that is not really the case in Heliotic doctrine,

particularly in Parmenides, which Plato elevates it to a different realm. It's just that literally it's absurd to talk about being. If you don't have thought, thought, once specified, becomes a designation of the being. And this is exactly what we call today in the scientific domain the realm of theorization. Without a theory, you cannot have an object. As simple as that, would you be able to tell me what would be an object look like outside of a scientific theory or a theory as such?

Yeah, that's the, that's the, um, I could give an answer, but it would be really stupid. it, at least to you. I think Derrida does a lot of work on this. Yes, I understand. I think the more I have read of Derrida, he's, I think, on a good path. It's just that he has too much of these kinds of pre-established obsessions against the philosophical camps of a certain kind. But I genuinely think that Derrida is a really great thinker, and such so many other post-structuralists. And that's why I can absolutely, at this

point, even though I have finally initiated to the analytic camp, I cannot by any means get rid of the continental philosophers. I think continental philosophy has done a far greater investigation of this issue. Yeah. And no, I think, yeah, when you were saying what, there's nothing more than an organon of philosophy, I think I don't agree with that. And I think there are different kinds of organons. Would you be able to give me what one of these organon would be? Yeah, one of it, I can't really give it to you in detail.

It's just like a signpost. like a non-philosophical organon that's basically a project um okay would you be able to tell me or elaborate what a non-philosophy would look like okay so i'm writing my dissertation on this so in intelligence and spirit you there's one point where you start talking about the deep picture of the mind yes and the and this picture um has like a multi if i'm remembering the your the way you say it it's a multi-variant like scale or something like that um the question is i my critique i think is that you are putting

and with i mean i i think i keep saying the same thing you put identity as a kind of ground for difference that any mode of understanding difference um boils down to a kind of i'm it's common i mean i i get what you're doing but i still think that it comes down to a kind of understanding of identity even though it's vacuous right right no i i absolutely i assure you that that's not despite what you have read this was not my intention essentially we are essentially a functionalist today's functionalism what i call a dimensionally varied and multiply constrained account of function is the very idea of complexity and the complexity is about this

is that you have certain kinds of causal factors, emergent processes, and these are what you might call in a Deleuzian, Berksonian sense, the difference, the difference that makes a difference. And of course, the symptoms can be seen as simply a facade upon these differences. But this is exactly what the multiply constrained and dimensionally varied account of function is. It's an account of function or an activity that is not only emergent, but can also vary in time, you know, by virtue of new emergent processes across different scales.

scales but there's something that undergirds all of that even that which does not it's an undergirding that has no like without this undergirding how can you talk about skills how can you talk about well well okay okay let me let me talk about this uh okay we are talking hear about so you can get to this story with regard to our modeling session. You see, from the perspective of the physical sciences, we have such things as escalants. Escalants are essentially what you might call to be limits or brackets of certain kinds of behaviors or certain kinds of causal connections that can be formed within that very specific domain.

Like, for example, molecules of, I don't know, nitrogen can give rise to such and such behaviors of nitrogen. But if you go to a different level, an atomic quantum level, you might not see exactly such symptoms. Okay, now my answer to you, Jovan, is that this is exactly what I would say why non-philosophy fails against philosophy, precisely because it does not take itself up to the task of the methodological investigation.

would you be able to tell me that how complexity can arise if you don't have a scale yeah no no no no i i yeah i read i read physics avoidance and i i completely agree with a lot of what wilson says as well and i know i mean i think we're talking at like different lengths here because non-phalaxy cares a lot about complexity. No, I know this. I'm not absolutely, believe me, I'm not going against non-publicity. I'm simply holding you up to the task of defending your position.

That's all I'm doing. Sure, sure. the question it's not it's a capacity of understanding scales in a very different sense it's an anti-platonic but but but let me let me let me let let let's go to a Socratic dialogue is this such an understanding is conceptually is conceptual or not whether this is conceptual or not i will have to argue it's not and this is then how can it how can it actually talk about a scale sensitivity and exactly this is yeah no this

is you are either have concepts or you have pure human percepts no i don't mean kantian perception i mean human persons now so you know what in the realm of human persons what happens to you and your theory is essentially the very idea that mactaggart nature of existence made clear as the day okay this is exactly how it goes okay we have a few impressions of such and such phenomena in in evolving according to time, according to the flow of time. But then, at this point, without concept,

and this is the Humean nightmare, and you should understand that this is exactly why Kant felt that he had a vertical after reading Hume. How the fuck? this person talks about such majestic ideas without having concepts you see in the human scenario of these bundles of percepts of impressions you can no longer talk about something evolving or something devolving everything can be arbitrary The realm where time flows, where something evolves or something devolves is purely that

of the concept. Yeah. I don't think that the distinction that you're making between either concept or you go straight to human sensations holds up. I don't think that- You have to elaborate on this. Sure, but this is also Brasier's critique on Laraul. And this is Brasier's, yeah, Ray's critique of Laraul is that anything that Laraul does is completely conceptual. And if Laraul wants to say that it's not conceptual, it's just myth of the given. And so like, why are we even talking about that? Absolutely, I absolutely agree with it. I absolutely agree with it. Yeah, and this is not the myth of the given

in the canonical sense of the categorical given. Right, but of like sensory perception or whatever. So it's just- Yes, but it's a practical given. It's a practical given. Or kind of like empiricist. Yeah, so he attributes non-photical as a kind of like radical empiricism, et cetera, which whatever. But I think, and this is Ray's own point. for me the concept is of the object but the object is not of the concept yes well concept is not of the object concept is constitutive of the object essentially okay let me take you to this task of this very challenge

So you see such and thus and so stuff. Four rectangulars supporting a uniform bigger rectangular. Essentially, I'm talking about the table. Sure. Right? Okay, would you be able to talk about this table without concepts? I mean, no. I mean, in the sense that I'm not... This is the thing. I don't need to say that I have to abolish the concept as a category.

I can say that I could use concepts because the concepts are, in some sense, you could say it's a language or whatever and i'm not opposed to concepts telling us things i am opposed to recognizing conceptual knowledge as the only kind of knowledge yeah well well you see you see now i can go along with your idea but i cannot go along with this idea that can ever be a knowledge that is non-conceptual. To me, this is just absurd. This is absolutely absurd. Then this is the question that we are debating about what knowledge is exactly.

And so, for me, what I come to understand, and so, okay, for Laurel, he doesn't... knowing is not a category that he cares about. To see that you can know the world is in some sense ridiculous. And this is a contention between… This is exactly the point that Kant makes. Okay, let me tell you this. There is a difference between when you see that the categories are insufficient to categorize the furniture of the world, the order of things, that which is.

This is all fine and great, but there is also a greater danger, a sophisticated danger, in which we think that we can arrive at the knowledge of the things in themselves, or things even in the phenomenal appearances without concepts that is just absolutely utterly not only unethical from a practical perspective but also philosophically dubious no but yeah this is not so the project is not to get to the in itself the project is not to get no i i actually I actually mentioned not only things in themselves, but things in the phenomenal realm of appearances.

Okay. Now, I am completely with you in this arena that the kind of concepts that we have to categorize and structure, what appears to us are not sufficient. precisely because such concepts are constituted by a very contingent local constitution as agents. And this is why I think Kant is ultimately a conservative thinker. The very fact that he dismisses the idea of talking about alien is the very fact of his conservatism.

The idea of the alien is the very possibility of other agents who have different percepts and different concepts than the ones that we have. But to bridge this gap between us and the alien, we should be able to criticize our own concepts, our own concepts. And to do that, we shall investigate why our concepts, even though they are objectively constituted, are insufficient to think about the universe in a broader scope.

and this is exactly what I think both is the greatest strength of L'Arwell but also his weakness what is this the greatest strength and weakness that he can't talk to aliens no because because he up allows us to talk about the aliens okay about the other about those who have different percepts and concepts but the weakness is that he tries to in the vein of a scholastic philosophy medieval philosophy to get rid of the labor of conceptualization and justification

yeah there is only one way for transcendental philosophy conceptualization is that which allows us to postulate different beings out there aliens others people unlike us but to take this conceptualization seriously we should also criticize our resources of conceptualization here and now very seriously and this is this is exactly what philosophy tries to do yeah no I think yeah that I think the contention here is um whether the extension of

conceptualization gives us enough adequate resources to understand the object that we want to think and I think for me it's not the concepts are not enough of resources concepts are never sufficient but nevertheless they're necessary but I'm cannot just miss them it's essentially like the reason reason is sufficient reason is necessary for political concrete change but it's is never sufficient to do, to arise to the task of political change. We should do something more than rationality. And here, also the case, in order to talk concretely,

rather than arbitrary speculation about other beings, in this multiverse, we should talk about the concept concretely. You should criticize. Isn't this the conservatism that I keep heckling you about? That there is only one kind of organon by means of which you can come. If you call this conservatism, I am all for this conservatism. Yeah, but what if there are other kinds of organons, for example? But here my counter argument. You say that there is this different models of the world. But my question to you would be, would you be able to actually elaborate to me

in explicit ways what these models are, what these other ways of conceptualization would be? Yeah, I'm writing a fucking dissertation on this. Yeah, I mean- Okay, I'm looking for it then. Yeah. But you should understand that this is a very slippery slope my friend. Everything that you do, everything that we always do, is from the perspective of what we call the human mind. The human mind is a very, very dangerous realm. It can be both the source of our greatest discoveries, and our greatest weakness.

yeah yeah i just yeah i just think there has to be more ways yeah but those ways always always needs to be accounted for absolutely and i think if without accountability then it's meaningless so yeah i completely agree with you the question is how do you follow them etc yes yeah i i i i i would actually would love to see that a different alternative universe will be born something that does not abide by our parochialism yeah after all i'm the ultimate communist do you know what communism is the communism is the very idea that we shall

call it bullshit whenever we see our world as a totality of the state of affairs no i i shall not um basically endorse this idea. I think that the world is infinite, so I thought. It's an idealist perspective, and I'm proud to be an idealist. Any person, any idea?

I think we are here. OK, don't worry. We are going to go and cover our own ideas with regard to the various stuff that we have been talking about in the next few sessions. But I think that it's a kind of a strange stuff. We are essentially looking at these kinds of stuff that we have been talking about regarding modeling, methodology, so on and so forth, from a very philosophical perspective. And then we are now questioning the very edifice of philosophy.

and hence the very vision of what we take the world to be. Silent ones. Ian well by the way let me just say it on the record if I actually

make some sort of criminal move I shall select this guy as my attorney I hope that you can defend me in the court of the law I have lost a great deal of respect for you in this moment you seemed so very smart before this seems so much foolish you should understand that the smart people are not really smart it's just that they have a balance between personal trivial interests and some other body. This is exactly the definition of the human. A human being is always fighting a great fight

between really, absolutely, absurd, impulsive desires and ideals. And I have no excuse, nothing beyond that. I see well I'll give it a shot you know if we get to that point Lenka Justin Jean-Pierre Alberto Alan Adam I actually had a small question, but it's kind of like a really foundational level question, and I don't want to waste people's time.

But I'm actually kind of fascinated in some ways of like the sort of swing in maybe the neo-rationalist thinking, you and Ray and some other people, of like starting kind of with this like flag and drive towards the real. and then this sort of realization that like maybe almost a la like Carnap like early and late that like there's almost no access but I was wondering if you could give like the paragraph for like the two sentence like transition in maybe your own work or in general of that that strange sort of tension in there where it really becomes that like realization that the idealism I don't even know how you'd call that type of idealism that maybe you're endorsing that it's not naive but

it accepts that maybe being is only actless as you said through thinking right i was just hoping you could talk about that first right okay let me let me give you a very very brief idea about this essentially after I read Karna, I think that even in the early phase, namely logical and empiricism, for which Karna is being vilified, there was a great battle here between idealism realism. Now the idea is that I take side with Carnap, perhaps not the early Carnap

but the late Carnap, in the sense that everything that we can ever talk about this world of ours in which we inhabit is structured not by something given, but by something logical. And of course the question of this logical thing, you know, can be addressed differently, linguistically, mathematically, physically, statistically, so on and so forth. Doesn't matter.

So, the idea is this. This is exactly Carnap's vision. But now, we see ourselves exactly in the very predicament, in the very dilemma, that Karnat saw himself faced with. And what would that be? The idea. That's OK. Let's say that all these logical platonic stuff are out there,

and they can structure our experiences. But then, at exactly which level can we say that logic corresponds to the sensory stuff that we have experienced? is the very idea that Carnap calls ERLAPS, elementary experiences in Afbal. You see, even though Carnap fundamentally diverged from his vision of the correspondence or correlation

later on, but I think this is actually a fantastic problem. the most enduring philosophical problem in our age. In what sense? OK, let's say there are these Kantian platonic stuff after logical stuff, categories, ideas, forms. And there are also these kinds of sensory stuff. It's totally trivial. They are not structured, but nevertheless, they are real from an agential perspective, not from a university's perspective.

Now, the question is that, and this is really the question of a philosophical question, how can you relate those forms, those categories, those categories, those concepts, to such and such forms of sensory experiences. I don't think that Karnak ever managed to answer this question, nor did he can't. Essentially, this is an open field of philosophical investigation. Essentially, this is the very problem of the epistemological deduction, Kant's transcendental deduction.

in what ways are percepts lead us to make objective claims about the world well of course to answer this question you should be able to commensurate concepts and Percepts, categories and sensations. But my question is for you, how many philosophers have actually talked about this problem so

coherently, have elaborated this? We still don't know how concepts and percepts commensurate, how categories and sensations integrate. Until then, we are still in the very business of pre-transcendental philosophy. Okay. Theo? Theo? This could go on for a long time.

But maybe it's best if we cap it. I don't know. What do other people think? No response. I mean, I'm tempted to ask another question, but I just don't know if it's very appropriate. Okay. Let's stop at this point and reconvene next session. And by the way, next session, I'm not going to take your goddamn questions. I'm going to talk about toy models. I don't want to hear about your ideas of art or philosophy or mathematics or science.

You demanded questions. Yes, I know. At some point, you're forced to talk. Yes, I know. This is exactly my scam. I always ask people to say their free will, but then I would say that, why the fuck did you talk about this? Okay, Theo. All right, I'll end the broadcast. Thanks, everyone. Love you guys.