Hello, and welcome to The Theory and Object, the second to last session, session 15. I'm going to pass the mic to Chagis, who has a question about Carnap, to Reza. So, thank you, most gracious Reza. I just, so I'm reading Carnap, and, you know, one of the things that I'm just kind of finding really, really interesting, and I know you've talked about this a million times, but it's just finally sinking through my thick skull is this idea that you know how he replaces intuition with logic and then also those given sort of like axiomatic elements and how we can kind of like he talks about the given he says the given
and yes absolutely does he does absolutely yes yes so I'm the term given is not something that is merely coming from Salaris. It is actually a term that is, in fact, invented by Neokantian philosophers. Let me open the window. You continue. I guess I'm just, yeah, yeah, yeah. My question is just, I mean, can with those given intuitive elements i mean those are still subject to um constructional language for him you you've talked about this a few times
how we just keep kind of going further and further down on these levels of um intuitive givens and i mean his big thing is replacing all of these intuitive elements with with constructional language with a structure with the structure with understanding the structure can only and only come from the mind otherwise you are buying into the method of the given. So yes, absolutely. The idea is that this is something that we have talked about it but not probably explicitly. We talked about this with regard to the idea of a transcendental logic in Kant, where the
idea of transcendental logic simply means the correct application of logical rules to sensible intuition so that we can, in fact, according to the famous thesis, the transcendental deduction posed at the beginning of the critique of pure reason form objective views of the furniture of the world, whatever they may be. According to Karna, even the idea of transcendental logic, first of all, Karna doesn't really believe in transcendental logic in the sense that Kant believes it. He's much more Hosselian
in that sense. In the sense that he believes that the very idea of transcendental logic, where we can in fact talk about as if it was something ready-made, talk about how we can correctly apply logical structures, mathematical frameworks, so on and so forth to our sensible intuitions already is predicated of a form of a given which is still preserved in Kantian transcendentalism. Why I'm saying that precisely because the idea of transcendental philosophy initiated by Kant is essentially tries to get rid of all source of givenness or the
the givens. So it's not that the world furniture tell us something about themselves by impressing themselves upon our senses, quaint parisism, but it is the mind, the transcendental dimension, actually structured it and garner some information from the state of things in the world. Now according to Karna, even in the Kantian transcendental philosophy and of course transcendental logic when you say that you are correctly applying logical rules to some sensory data
this is already implicitly pregnant with the myth of the given with an ideological pre-critical connotation. Why? Because how do we know what sensory data are targets for the right application of our logical rules? If sensory data we just simply think that we can simply the idea of transcendental logic namely the objective logic is that we can simply apply some sort of mathematical logical framework on some sensory primary sensory data then this already means that
we actually know what these primary sensory data are and that's why we are choosing the right kind of application but that's already a myth of a given You kind of get this feeling in Carnap though, like when he says the given it almost seems like it's kind of ironic in a way. That he's saying it as if the given is already a quasi object, you just don't realize it already. Yes, absolutely, yes, yes, definitely, yes. And that's actually quite open. You see we have tried to open massive amounts of cans of worms without actually dealing with them, but that's your job, not my job as a teacher.
You are the ones who have to deal with ramifications of studying philosophy, not me. I'm just a stupid teacher. So far we have been trying to actually show that, for example, the Carnapian vision of logic as an organ and pure constructivism can in fact be subjected to the Kantian transcendental logic skepticism in the sense that, okay, so we are making some logical, new logical frameworks, new mathematical structures, so on and so forth, but on what premise do they actually apply to our sensory data so that we can make objective claims about this stuff in the world?
but then carna actually comes with an even more radical kind of work how do you know in the kantian framework that your sensory data is actually should be the target of such and such mathematical frameworks if you say that uh precisely because the quality of such sensory data, I have the epistemic right to apply such and such logical mathematical frameworks to them, this means that you are already in the business of the myth of the given,
the ideological fixation that Kant tries to eject himself from. You see, this shows that the real import of objectivity or scientific objectivity is not really in the sense datum, but really in the idea of a structure as we have been talking since the beginning of our sessions via the Sneed, Stegmuller, so on and so forth. What is a structure? How can a structure be applied to the stuff in the world, including our rudimentary sensory impressions which are not by any means structured?
Because if we say that they are at some level structured and that's why we have to use such and such right applications of logical rules to them, then it means that what? We are back in the square one. The myth of the given. believe that there is in fact some minimalist structure among our sensory data is yeah I just love this the whole this these sessions becoming almost like Theo tried to auto-skeptize
me and I'm trying to auto-skeptize Theo Trust me, it's doing some it's taking its toll but is Kant trying to apply and this is just a technical question for Kant, I guess is he trying to apply concepts to empirical sensations Not empirical sensations Or is he trying to apply them to… Sensory data. He doesn't even use the word empiricism for sensory data. Right. Because if he calls them empirical sensation, he falls back in the Humean trap. So he's quite actually very cogent about this.
It's simply the idea that, okay, so we have, imagine that we have some rules here, what we call structures. They might be derived from logic, mathematics, language, so on and so forth. And then we have some bunch of stuff here we call the impressions or indexes registered at the level of outer senses, what you might call to be neurobiological encounters with items in the world, analogically speaking. So the idea of transcendental logic is about how we can correctly apply the former to the latter, the logical, the mathematical, the sensory data.
But then this is all premise on the very fact that you take that as if the targets of your application of logical rules is already negotiated, is already determined. But if there is such a determination, that means there is a structure. But then how can you actually justify this structure at the level of rudimentary sensory affectory impressions other than relapsing back onto another version of the myth of the given. So like with Carnap so he's saying that we so I mean we're focusing on the
structure so is it with him is it like an open structure because I feel like he's you know he's replacing intuitive data with definitions and he's saying that these definitions can just replace yes yes yes that's always gonna be like a definition is actually you know that is I would say that as far as I know I might be mistaken fundamentally on this front but I think the idea of definition is a little bit dodgy in Carnap, even in its later works. It is never fully detailed what actually it means by definition. Yes, we understand what definition is, what you might call to be an empirical picture,
which means that it absolutely has a category or a structure, which means that a structure that is not given by the sense Saturn, when it is given by some semblance of a structure and yes the structure is absolutely open for Karnat I mean the whole point of the principle of tolerance is to broaden the scope of what we mean by a structure to develop different languages with different functions like as I mentioned like different shiny colorful buttons on the panel of a spacecraft where you have to operate all of these in order to lift off. So is that kind of with the ascension of forms is that kind of where he's going
with that like trying to discover these new forms? Yes yes yes and I the more I I have read Akarna and you know definitely I am coming from the pragmatic school of the Peirce and Sellars and Brandome, the more I have actually noticed that the whole point is that of this overemphasis on semantics in Brandome and in Sellars is fundamentally misguided the whole point is about the ascension in forms ascension in forms is tantamount to ascension to the semantic heavens because how otherwise can we refine our semantic content
of what we actually talk about with regard to the world and then i mean at the same time and that's that's what i was asking about the given too is it seems like there's also this this problem that carna realizes that there's always these lower levels below the given too that like when we talk about colors he says like we you know we used to talk about red and blue and green until we realized that this was all just a relational structure and that's the proper way to talk about it.
Yes, yes. It just thinks, you see, the whole point, I mean that's really, I wish that Laura was here because Laura was, you know, asking me about, you know, the historical context of where these philosophers of science have come from. Well, with regard to Carnap, he's definitely coming from a Neokantian position. He of course changes that Neokantian position later on, but nevertheless you should understand where he has come from. He was a student of Ernst Cazirer, Ernst Cazirer was a student of Hermann Cohen. So the idea is that as I mentioned, even when Carnap endorses early on the thesis of logical
empiricism, he's not by any standard sense an empiricist. This is really important. Why? he thinks that even at the most rudimentary level that you can imagine your interactions with items in the world with the stuff out there you still need to have some sort of structuring relations and these are structuring relations are not actually given by those stuff in the world, by those items, but actually coming from somewhere else,
a la transcendental philosophy, Kantian philosophy. This would be like where Karnap isn't quite, asserting the given but really the constructability of the given through quasi-analysis, yes? To be able to create the quasi-constituents as opposed to just taking... Yes, yes. I mean, I'm not really sure. I'm actually working on this surprise. I'm working on this manuscript on Karna. yes thank you it's a thought experiment where it happens in some sort of science
fictional universe counterfactual planet where basically you want to leave this world this world what you might call to be the sensory datum and so they have to to make a spacecraft and Carnap is the engineer who advises on how such a spacecraft should be in fact designed. You see, I would say that Carnap actually doesn't believe in sensation at the end of the day.
He just thinks that it is not how philosophy should move forward and talk about, or science for that matter, talk about the furniture of the worlds. But he also, like Kant, realizes and also like Plato realizes that the problem that this might actually lead to and what is this problem? It's the problem that, okay, we say that sensations are not really important. Empirical footprints of things out there are not important.
But then how can we actually arrive at an objective worldview simply without sensations, merely by our logical and mathematical frameworks? So essentially, off-bowl is a response to this problem. And yes, the whole point of the constitutional system is that it tries to emulate, to emulate, this is really important, that what Carnap calls axioms or definitions are not exactly sensory data but what you might call to be logical emulations of them from which we can
actually go upward to the semantic heavens, start to find out the relations between such definitions and then once we start to lay out these relations then we are capable of actually having a more higher resolution the task of explication a higher resolution picture of the sensory datum and this is when Karnap actually takes side with empirical science in order for us to actually be capable of assess the coherency of such a constitutional
system and the definitions that we have put forward, namely, you know, kind of a structure sensory data, we need to test it against the real world empirical testing. With the understanding that empirical testing also requires a theory and also a theory like all theories requires logical mathematical structures. But most important detail about Carnap is essentially a pluralist. You know Carnap, content of philosophers, analytic philosophers have already caricaturized
him as this, you know, ancient relic of a bygone era of what you might call to be logical empiricism, positivism, so on and so forth. But no, Carnap is essentially pluralist. The principle of tolerance is about this, is that we cannot determine the answers to such problems with one single method, with one single paradigm. need to have a multitude of languages through which we can in fact craft multitudes of methods however unlike a regular pluralist he does believe in that such methods such languages
should have a hierarchy should have a ranking because each method is not equal to the other ones. In fact, methods can only be distinguished as methods when they are pitted against their target application and as such, insofar as every target application has a different context, such methods, such paradigms should be ordered according to their context sensitive local global ranking
sensations i mean it sounds to me like that is more or less what sort of an old idealist would say is like sensations are just confused ideas. Yes. Yes. I think that Carnap actually, I'm not going to talk for him, but based on my reading, I would say that Carnap would say that, yes, that's the case. However, idealism in that untethered, unhinged thesis also comes with a variety of what you might call auxiliary presumptions. Carnap is not willing to accept those auxiliary presumptions, but I don't think that he has
any objection to his thesis that sensations are just confused ideas. Yeah, he's pretty explicit about that, like realism, idealism. He doesn't identify with any of that. Maybe you should have called this whole fucking course. I'm telling you, I'm telling you. You should have just done Karna. A carn after God. But no, it is actually interesting that the point is that philosophers don't
need to know what they actually do when they do things. However, this is already the status The state of affairs, scientists don't in fact know what they do when they do things at this point. Say for some really, really philosophically informed scientists, we should understand where Carnap is coming from. an age of scientists where they were not simply trying to get things done but to explain things
and more importantly to vindicate and justify their own explanation of what they are doing. Boltzmann, Einstein, Newton, every Poincaré, all of these people. So yes, you see I have always been, when I read, I was 23 years old, you know, I had read Hosserl's early text and then I come across this famous piece by Hosserl on the crisis of the modern European sciences where basically was sale sounds like this stupid guy named Heidegger and I was so disappointed in him why why did you do that well there is a reason
because scientists stopped to think in the broadest possible way they were simply appeased with their own scientific pragmatism. And that's when science becomes as a dogmatic discipline as philosophy or theology or any other discipline could ever be. Yeah, and you know, everything you're saying I feel like it applies equally to philosophy. Yeah, when you look at Carnap You can look at any Aristotle Confucius all of them and you're just like there's just so much there that needs to be unpacked that
they're just not going into Anitka does a good job of analyzing Aristotle in this way I think but there's I think there's so many questions in these systems that Carnap just like explodes Yes, Carnap I genuinely think of Carnap that literally you know he's the bridge between content in the sense that he has come from the new canteen position but also he also comes from a Russellian position Russell and Whitehead in the principle mathematical and he's trying to go back and forth between them many people think of him as simply the worst
kind of analytic philosopher that you can ever come across. But that couldn't be further from truth. He is really the link, the missing key between how we can finally start to make sense of what we have been trying to do, at least in the discipline of philosophy. I see Lana I know that you have some questions you are rolling guys smiling I had some question in mind while you were talking about that does sensorial data and
And I was thinking to ask you this, if you imagine any enterprise that strives to be scientific or a new kind of science, what would you say would be the good, like data? What should count as data for some abstract, in a general kind of way, science? this is this is basically the entire Carnapian dilemma I would say in the idea that the word data means the given the donor since the time of Euclid data comes from Euclid work even perhaps
earlier but simply it means the given. The given it means that something that is given gives us some semblance of a structured knowledge about the state of affairs with regard to the world. Before Kant many philosophers like Hume believe that sensory data are actually the foundations of our knowledge, of our epistemic claims about the world, about the objective world. But, after Kant, and particularly with the rise of what you might call to be modern philosophy, modern science, these things fundamentally
changed the datum was no longer anything it was simply there and the idea is that we can only structure it later on the datum actually became something particularly with the rise of logical empiricism in the sense that as Chagis was saying the datum became a definition you see a definition has also a very
very technical you know what you might call to be definition in the sense that even Euclid when he calls Datum they call him also definitions at something but also at other levels different kinds of stuff. Nevertheless at the level of definition which is the most rudimentary level what is important to understand is that the datum is not really a product of mere
sensation what medieval philosophers or before them thought to be the given, the datum. The definition is some sort of a logical posterior it might be wrong it might be right it is what you might call to be something a logical proposition a logical hypothesis that we have not yet fully elaborated so for example a a triangle the definition of a line the definition of a triangle euclid obviously doesn't mean by the idea or the definition of triangle over a line something like
this such and such straight lines and shapes and colors hanging together in such and such ways because that would be just simply a sense data. It actually means by definition a logical hypothesis in the sense that a triangle should obey such and such rules in order to become a triangle. No matter what kind of lines we see that may look like triangles, these are not triangles. A triangle should follow or obey some minimum roots, some minimum semblance
of a structure in the sense that, you know, you need to have the sum of the angles within a triangle 800 sorry 100 180 and also that you know it can be right can be you know this can be that but nevertheless it should be an enclosed geometrical shape with such minimum properties So this is not really a sensory datum in the sense that usually datum is being put forward.
Usually datum in philosophy simply refers to the ultimate, to the ultimate impressions of the stuff that we can see with our naked eyes even if even if we didn't have concepts or even if we didn't have language or logic like I just simply see like some lines there and I am not a non linguistic species I say that oh this is a triangle well this is not a triangle according to you please nor according to can nor according to Karni in order for to be an actually a data that tells us something about what this thing is it should have some sort
of relational minimum relational definition and this relational definition is what euclid called a definition with capital d or a datum very very different from since that tone of how philosophers talk about it Karnak what call it an axiom other philosophers might talk about it in different ways but one thing is certain that in order for us to have something like the impression of a triangle we need to have some sort of very rudimentary logical relations between how we see things
doesn't so lines incline lines straight such and such color whether they are joined or not so on so So this is what you might call to be what in today contemporary philosophy is called datum. Datum is no longer a sensory datum, say for a few empirical antiquated philosophers like John Searle, but really no one really thinks about such things anymore. A definition is the datum, precisely because datum is somehow imbued with very, very rudimentary
logical relationships inside what Kornak calls a constitutional system. You should understand what a constitutional system is. It's a hierarchy. It's a hierarchy. So at the base level, you have the definitions. Then you build on these definitions. You go and explicate, but also make explicit the relations that hold between, for example, the lines or the angles that make a triangle exactly like Euclid's elements. It doesn't need to tell you that if you ever encounter such and such line on the empirical
sense, hold together with such and such empirical lines than you call it triangle. No, actually, already such sensations of or impressions of lines and angles in Euclid's the demoni, the data, the given, is already subsumed within what we call a definition in the sense that it has already been held together by a semblance of logical relationships and from which, from which we can make other kinds of logical relationships.
We can possibly different kinds of relationships between, for example, three triangles, a triangle and a parallelogram, so on and so forth. And that's, as you know, is the very course of the elements in the Euclid. This actually feels quite Kantian in some ways, you know, especially when you don't take the understanding merely as applying to, you know, sensory data. Absolutely. But actually the imagination being able to produce experiments to begin with. So I have one interesting question, though, which would be then, you know, it seems like,
you know, it's certain that these definitional hypotheses are core in initiating our relationship to the target of application. And what I wonder is, I mean, it seems to me, you know, like the problem here is that, like is that we're obviously entirely tied with our sort of natural biological faculties here but it seems like that then those would also be essentially in the same position as being you know a particular um a a particular logical tool the particular you know target of application and so forth and that that is often... Actually, when you bring the idea of our
particularity in the sense that we have been locally and contingently constituted, in the sense that we're just biological species. You see, if we are such and such biological species with such and such perceptual capacities, then we can actually postulate different kinds of lines, different kinds of angles, different kinds of manifolds of how these things come together precisely because, just because we see these things as a straight line and a regular angle, this doesn't mean
that this is how we should always structure the world. Certainly, my question is more like would you then also consider, and maybe this is you know part of the problem you've raised multiple times about whether our logical resources do adequately are able to explicate what is given through sensory intuition. And that, you know, maybe the biological particularity is, you know, it is a logical component, you know, much like the other hypotheses and definitions.
I wouldn't say it's a logical component. I wouldn't say it's a logical component. I would say that it is in fact a psychological component that pretends to be logical. okay point of car the whole point of philosophy and history of science is to progressively escape from beliefs and doxas imposed upon it and its methods, but what we think is really the
firm state of affairs. Many of these firm beliefs in the state of affairs, in how we actually do logic, in how we perceive the stuff comes from, of course, the particular and contingently arbitrarily constituted biological setup. And this is why I mentioned that it's very important for us to revisit Kant's idea about whether aliens are out there or not. Sure, we cannot talk about aliens in an armchair speculative way, like what transhumanists
or posthumanists these days do, but nevertheless, in so far as we do at this point, that we are contingently and locally constituted, there are psychologies imposed and creep on our logical objective claims about the world then this means that we should in fact be capable of postulating fundamentally new logics and new worlds and that's what science has been doing at least for the past 120 years at the very least
science is the enemy of psychology this doesn't mean that doesn't fall prey to psychology and he does but nevertheless its entire mythology is about how to escape from human psychology and how it affects our vision of who we are in the kind of world we are living do you think do you think that psychology is a science or can be a science or sure of course the thing is that psychologists and is not what you might call
to be psychology. Psychologism is when we take the immediate experience of who we are and impose it upon our objective pictures of the world. This is what actually what usually in philosophy is called Psychologism. Psychologism, of course, is a species of psychology in the sense that it is what you might call to be an after-effect or after-effect an auxiliary byproduct of psychological processes. Of course, we can actually, I would say, need to explain what is that
we are imposing such psychological biases on our pictures of the world. Like, you know, like I'm not going to even go that far and get sophisticated. Let's talk about monotheist people, the creationist people, in the sense that creationism is definitely a psychologic bias, in the sense that you think that, oh, shit, you know i have come from other humans and it cannot be other humans cannot merge with other species so this is what it is but then this also requires an explanation sure absolutely i would
say that uh one of the things that is missing today and i would say that for example take for instance the whole paradigm of new active atheism new a season like Dawkins and all these people talk about the same kinds of stuff but what they don't actually talk about is that Psychologism or psychologistic biases, whatever form they might manifest in, are not just delusions in a clinical sense.
They are actually epiphenomenon of certain kinds of processes. And for that matter we actually, if you are in the business of science, if you are in the business of philosophy, we should explain where they come from without actually reducing them. All beliefs, all beliefs about our own experience, about our own experience is epiphenomenal, I would say. But then, so be it.
The real task is that where these epiphenomenon after effects are coming from, why is that we have some delusions, some illusions about the world and not others. That is actually a philosophical question and a scientific one. Okay, guys, five-minute break.
way in which our semantic conceptions can come to be and hence free us from our own intersubjective and psychologic biases. That just seems... I don't know how to put my finger on it. It just sounds like there's a huge problem with that account. Well, I used to think like you, but this is the whole point that... Let's start the debate from a very minimal definition. What do you take syntax to be? I mean, going from what we've been talking about in this class, it's the...
It's a very structure... It's an external structure and extrinsic structure by means of which we can speak about... Why are you calling it extrinsic? can reconfigure this structure now now this is one one first thing extrinsic structure why are you calling extrinsic structure you need to elaborate this sure so I mean extrinsic structure in a sense that it's not all structures to be innocent of reconstruction it's not it's not a material structure I guess it's not a an immediately real structure it's a structure that but is there ever a material or realist structure that's the whole point yeah I mean this is what you
know people like I'm because even marks I mean a reading of much would suggest well you see you should actually I mean that that's exactly what I think rationalism and Hegel diverges from Marx and I think Marx would be considered from a rationalist perspective in the broadest possible sense a kind of dwarfing of the Hegelian thesis how can you actually diagnose how can you actually detect a real or material structure if you don't have some sort of in the broadest possible sense logo or logics mathematics logic language so on
so forth how can you in fact come across these how can you diagnose such as structures the structures you say are given in the fabric of society but how can you diagnose the pathologies of such structures to diagnose is to judge to judge is to a structure to a structure is to take a structure as an a priori component yeah and so like for in your account um materialism is therefore a kind of uh when i that's what i meant by reconstruction where it's um yeah it's not an immediate structure but clarification structure so idealism and
materialism like work hand in hand in some way to clarify its own realist like tendencies and so in some sense you go closer to the real the material and I get that and like my hesitation and my like real skepticism comes from still as if there's a kind of like real point I mean I don't want to be a full-blown skeptic but like first of all why do we think that our structures conceived in such a mechanistic way a mechanistic in the sense that you know you could move from one side to the other there are many different like skills and levels and then we can like find a point within all of those like that's
it still feels like a very you know a model for its age right um so why do we still think that that kind of mechanistic model uh could give us the knowledge that we want i don't think that is actually mechanistic uh job and you see i would say that is essentially the opposite of mechanism I would say Marxian historical materialism is fundamentally mechanistic in the sense that some processes social processes are taken to be primary and literally this is the entire legacy of what you might call to be critical theory up to Jameson up to Frederick Jameson
but the whole point is that Mechanism or mechanistic explanation is the idea that there are some stuff out there that can actually tell us something about themselves at some very rudimentary way to us so we can diagnose them. Rationalism on the other hand does not believe in such things. Yes, it does believe in mechanisms, but in a very minimal sense, in the scientific sense, in the sense that there are no such mechanisms ever, ever in the world.
Nature does not have functions. Nature does not have mechanisms. or how we, using our own conceptual resources, arrive at certain view of how these things actually do work. And by world, I do not mean natural world at this point. I'm simply meaning, in a Marxian sense, social infrastructure. Because you should understand that Marx is actually quite very, very cautious to not conflate or confound the view of natural mechanisms proposed by natural sciences with the view
of social mechanisms operatable at the level of human cultural impressions which might be actually concrete. Now the thing is that why do you think that for example something like the idea of a structure mechanistic the entire point of the rationalist viewpoint and let's not talk about Brandon or sellers and this one let's just talk about Karna or Boltzmann they were both rationalists in the sense that why do you think that their application of concepts to this stuff in the world is mechanistic
Literally, they have to create a multitude of methodologies, of methods, a multitude of paradigms, in order to actually justify in a very restricted way how and what they are talking about. Whereas Marx and Marxians in the traditional vein, they go on and talk about capitalist processes as if they were material processes somehow imminently given to us. The knowledge of them is obvious. But on what account? How can you in fact diagnose such processes if you don't have a multitude of methods, concepts, and paradigms?
different scales of reality I get that and I'm just wondering if this restriction then you were talking about the arm if this restriction is I guess rich enough you know this restriction I mean like the whole point of Marxist materialism no matter how flawed it is I'm not I'm not defending its dogmatism I'm not defending you know I completely don't worry about it but no no don't worry right but I'm just saying that it opens it opens up questions and it opens up the possibilities yes yes absolutely it opens up the possibilities but this possibility shouldn't but yet he can as
fundamental forms of a skepticism but methodological and systematic skepticism in what way you see I like with someone like Kemet, the thesis of real subsumption. First of all, real subsumption just really does not pan out in any kind of philosophical or theoretical way. But nevertheless, there is a grain of truth to it. We know from Marx that capitalism is nothing but the subsumption of all social relations under labor value which is time which is the time of labor which of course generate profit
and surplus value. Now the idea of real subsumption as Kamath how he puts it and this is actually I think that you definitely need to read random critique of the genealogical critique, the hermeneutics of magnanimity. Precisely because I think it's a very, very good point. You see, okay, Kemet is in the right course, surely. He overextends his views, his Marxist views. It is very true that those of us, basically all humans who do judge, who do reason about
the state of affairs, make concepts, make judgments, explicate these concepts, make explicit these judgments, so on and so forth, are working and functioning and operating within a certain kind of what you might call to be set of socio-political and economic relationships. In so far as they are working in this capitalist system, which is a set of these socio-economic relationships, we can say, according to Kamet, that every judgment that we can ever make
about the world is in one way or another influenced by the mechanisms which have subsumed us, capitalist mechanisms, profit making, surplus value, labor relationships, so on and so forth. But this is here a paradox emerges and this is Brandon is fundamentally I think great at detecting this paradox, this contradiction in the sense that okay let's pretend that we didn't have a reason, we didn't have conceptual resources, we never had judgments, we shouldn't
actually give up on the whole idea of this stuff. inherited to us from the time of enlightenment for good let's pretend that we are in the Marxian scenario or for that matter Freud and Nietzsche let's think about this that every judgment that we made is somehow distorted, warped and hijacked by the very natural and by that I don't mean physical but I mean social, social mechanisms which surround us, which subsume us. But then how can you actually come up with a recipe to identify
Communism from capitalism or for that matter to distinguish pathologies of capitalism from the virtues of something else. How can you in fact identify such mechanisms if you don't have judgment, if you don't have concepts? That's what Brandon calls semantic naivete. I think this is actually very serious, this is by no means I would say an objection to the sinister vista in which we live.
Surely everything that we do is somehow influenced at even infinitesimal levels by capitalism, the social mechanisms that it generates, but nevertheless we should be able, as scientists, as philosophers, to distinguish the objective norms of judgment from simply social subsumption of such norms. Lacking that, we can't even talk about why capitalism is bad. Because
saying capitalism is bad is already a fucking normative thesis. Why capitalism is bad? Why Why are we, us, all of us, against capitalism? Why capitalism has done to us that has been bad? To say something is bad, we need to have a normative recipe for how we think we should live the life and how social economic system should respond to our needs lacking such judgments objective judgment which is essentially that of the language and logic in a Kantian but
also Carnapian sense we absolutely don't have any means to diagnose or say that there are such mechanisms out there that subsume our logical relationships that capitalism is bad, that capitalism has in a Kametian sense implemented a fundamental real sumption on everything that we can actually talk about. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say that what makes me still a skeptic is the position that we can still in some sense have a better clarity of and this is qua uh judgment um a clearer conceptual reality of what we can call capitalism and what we can call communism as if these i mean this is this is the whole you know the french move right the french move is that there you there are no such divisions. There are no such splits. Everything is in some sense contingent. And so what you
need to do is find like modes of transversal conceptual making and you cut one part of reality. This is the French weasel move. This is the French weasel move, what I thought. Surely, surely yes, they say that everything is contiguous, that there is no distinction. But then, how can you actually understand that this is all contingent? How did you understand that these are actually contiguous? Surely these are judgments. Surely they require an objective perspective. Otherwise, how can you actually say anything whatsoever about the state of the world? That's actually quite scary.
I am not actually, to be honest with you, I am not actually overriding this recipe or this thesis that we might absolutely have never ever have any judgment about the world. All I am saying is that if we actually do come across some judgments or we make some judgment such as these things are all these things are just contiguous there is a separation so on so forth no matter how much benevolence in and laid back these judgments they look like they are nevertheless judgments and so far as
there are judgments you should be able to actually elaborate why is that I came across the judgments the conditions of the possibilities of me arriving at such judgments that would be the task of critical philosophy is it also that these types of philosophies that always or expose a eminent naturalists type of framework from within their own philosophy there's no perspective outside outside of which or there's no perspective inside of that imminent philosophy that would allow you to diagnose or identify the absolutely
absolutely I mean it's just like it's just like the Ptolemaic version of the world I am living on the flat earth I can actually make a really great questions about the motion of celestial bodies, the status of the Earth with regard to these celestial bodies. But then, they are actually objective in their own minimal sense. But then you should understand that what is not objective is the frame of reference. To talk talk about the stuff as if we were in some sort of eminent framework is not an objective
frame of reference. And that's really what science teaches us. Science is the very medium that constantly changes its frame of reference and not just its methods or its objective claims. Jovan, don't worry, this doesn't mean that I'm capitalist Niclandian, I'm actually a Marxist, a leftist I would say. I wouldn't call myself Marxist, but I'm a leftist. Nevertheless, I don't think that what would be the worst of a leftist who cannot criticize
his leftist brethren and sisters. The whole point of leftism is the incandescence of the critique. Yeah, I'm just worried about the scope of the idea. That's just my concern. Yes, absolutely. You think that sometimes I wake up at night and have these flashbacks of memories about what I have talked to you or what I have written and then I say, oh shit, these are all so stupid and feal. They don't make sense. But nevertheless, I would
say the only reason that I can go on is because I think that traditional Marxism as it stands today is even worse. They literally have no understanding of what they are talking about. How can there be material processes as the conditions of the mind, as the a priori, a priori, primary conditions of the mind? I mean, someone please tell me if I'm mistaken. I mean, how can we talk about some sort of mechanism if we don't have concepts, if we
judgments if we haven't already subscribed to some sort of paradigm of justification no matter how biased how prejudiced how false it may be so so uh what do you think of like althusser then because it kind of seems like althusser is like I love Althusser. I think Althusser for a great part, you should understand, I've already told you that never invest on philosophers. philosophers are transient fleeting moments invest only in philosophy never put your eggs in the
baskets of a specific philosopher because that would be a recipe for disappointment nevertheless i would say even though all two sir falls short on many accounts but he gives one of the greatest accounts of the critique of Marxism. By that I don't mean critiquing in a conventional vulgar way but what you might call to be the conditions of possibility of Marxism. Absolutely, yes, particularly controversies, humanist controversies. That collection of essays absolutely top-notch I really recommend all of you to read that it's
fundamentally great I mean he was kind of coming up with the idea of the myth of the given yes yes yes yes absolutely yes how to serve already has come up with his own version of the critique of ideological science and also within that framework the critique of capitalism and Marxism. And yes, no, absolutely, Althusser is one of the greatest thinkers. But of course, as I mentioned, just because he's a great thinker, it doesn't mean that
is free from faults. I mean we are just people, we are just trying to think as best as we can, but we always fall short. It is only the history of philosophy that should be glorified, not philosophers in it. Meredith has been silent. Justin has been silent. Can I say a few words?
Absolutely. Yeah, I might have to construct some kind of straw man, because my argument feels like it actually is... No, your critics are always great. Don't worry, don't worry. I have this very specific view on what materialism is and it's like, it's Aristotelian Lacanian and it's about that matter is different from a form but at the same time matter can only be thought of in a particular form always already. Absolutely, yes, yes. And I think, to go back to the question of, I think it was about how can we talk about
some kind of syntax which will solve all of our problems once and for all. So I think the point of Aristotle was not that, you know, like there is no structure or something like that. It's more about like every time. Common-zeration thesis. It's all about common-zeration thesis. Well, I think I would say, every time we study something, we study a form. And we have to always be conscious of the fact that matter is not a form. And we have to never replace in our minds one with the other. And actually I think this is a path of the best critique of Althusserian concepts there is.
Because where the Althusser falls short, I will only criticise his interpolation, but it's going to apply to everything. It's how the problem with interpolation is not that the subject... I mean, for Altusir, interpolation is how the subject is created to conform to be a subject of a state. But the problem here is that every time the state creates a subject, there is always something which does not fit into the subject. As far as state wants us to be perfect subjects, we are never perfect subjects. And this is how there is some kind of materiality of human, which is defined exactly as being
unable to conform to a specific form. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, let me just get a cigarette and I'm going to ramble. Hey, everybody. Real quick. I tuned in late. What happened? We're not doing the Grunbaum today. it does not seem to be the case okay i think we just sort of hopped into doing questions and then it's been uh
snowballing since then has anyone read the the reichenbach the direction of time no but i'm pretty sure that pdf is available online too oh no because i well that's exciting because I read that for today, I'd love to ask questions about that. My apologies. So, no, I do agree with your very generous reading of Aristotle. I tend to read Aristotle in that way. But we should also understand that Aristotle was not exactly this kind of person that you and I are trying to defend. In what sense?
Well, you should understand, first of all, that Aristotle is the worst reader of Plato. He's a student of Plato, but nevertheless, he reads, distorts, hijacks ideas of Plato and strawman them at the end of the day. What is really important in the book of Metaphysics by Aristotle, where he actually comes up with some of these main ideas is that, sure, all of these are great and this is what you might call to be our ideal Aristotle, but the real Aristotle actually believes
in the book of Metaphysic at the very least that forms should empirical datum should not be subordinated to forms. Empirical datum or datum should not be subordinated to ideas because he has already, according to him at the very least, he has already detected some sort of inconsistencies in the Doctrine of Worms as put out by Plato. Now the question here is,
and this is actually a very dangerous question, how can we actually talk about how can we actually understand how can we actually recognize even those stuff in the world which are not subordinated to forms with understanding the forms for even Plato simply means a structure like Karna. Form is the structuring organe of the world. Now we are in the business of the transcendental
philosophy. Do we believe that there are certain mechanisms that can override our judgments about the world, that can distort our judgments about the world or a little bit less what you might call to be intense. We just simply mean that in order for us to recognize that there are such overriding principles, material principles or empirical principles that might actually distort our
judgments about the world, we need to have certain core minimalist understanding of judging, objectively judging about the world, reasoning about the world. Without that, how can we in fact talk about such pathologies? How can we talk about the furnitures of the world? That would be nonsense. That would be entirely nonsense. Aristotle, I think, goes very, very, He walks between Plato and what you might call to be later scholastics.
And he's quite good at it. But you should understand that even though Aristotle is a great philosopher and even though he's misreading Plato, Aristotelian worldview as we know it later on was fundamentally and out of proportion by scholastic philosophers and then by the very philosophers and scientists who initiated the Enlightenment movement, the Aristotelian, the distorted Aristotelian view is still there, is still there all among us, among the philosophers of science and
philosophers and so on and so forth. And the kernel of this dilemma is that how can we actually talk about a mechanism? How can we actually talk about something in the world if we don't have what Plato calls forms or what he calls structure? This is, Sellars, I would say, and Hegel for that matter, fundamentally recognize the scope of such a dilemma. If you say that there is no inherent structure in the world that we can simply get it and
And hence, bypass judgments and reasons which might actually have been distorted by capitalist social relations or any other kinds of things. Even if you go and actually endorse the thesis that there are in fact such reasons, such logical structures then you are in a larger idea of a labor you are in more work you are in you are in hard work you are in the slavery you have to then justify why is that or how can I apply such a structures to such and such sensory
impressions of the world. The first one I would say is absolutely rubbish, the whole legacy of materialism or empiricism in the naive sense. The second sense, what you might call to be a rationalism in a modern sense that has understood the import of the empirical tests the imports of uh social relations and so on so forth but nevertheless it should still go on and actually explain how can we if we say that the world doesn't give us a structure and we are the
ones who make a structure how can we coordinate such as structures with the very rudimentary sensory impressions that we have got out of this world short of such answers I think we are back in the business of pretty critical philosophy here you are i can see you are you scratching the out of your face okay go on i don't really have anything to say i was just uh
wanting eventually it doesn't have to happen today but i I just want to hear you talk more about the third man argument and criticisms of forms because... I mean Kant, I think his strength is just demolishing empiricism and rationalism before him. Descartesian rationalism, not rationalism, precisely because Kant is in fact a rationalist. Right. But I still think that the third man argument doesn't... I still find it incredibly difficult.
No, it is difficult. This is why I'm saying I've been telling you since we started this whole overlong, overdrawn course, that literally we are what you might call at the beginning of the history of philosophy. We are in the prehistory of philosophy. We haven't yet solved the most important questions of philosophy. We think that we have done, but that's just ideology, that's just bias, that's just dogma. We should once more take up a skeptical weapons,
not to the detriment of philosophy or reason, but simply to question the right kind of questions. And for that matter, demand the right kinds of answers rather than the dramatic ones. Go on Adam. Was it Adam or Joven? It doesn't matter. I was going to say like, is this just going to go on forever? Like, because I mean, Kant saw the philosophy as a battleground and then he tried to kind of constitute this scientific, in his view,
like transcendental critique to sort of I don't know dissolve all of these aporias dissolve all these disputes and then it kind of just seems to go on forever and then other people will kind of claim that philosophical questions themselves like there's always a strategy of dissolving problems which seems like the best strategy to find oh it's the worst strategy you need to solve the questions not dissolve them dissolving them is very very easy many philosophers do that many scientists actually do that dissolving questions is so easy what's to solve them to actually appropriately address them is a fundamentally different kind of thing i to be
honest with you adam i really am not sure i mean that's to me as a philosopher is both a point of despair and a point of hope. I really do think that once philosophy tries to synchronize itself with science rather than just simply pretend that it is a handmaiden to science or it is better than science, but simply on par. We are doing different kinds of questions in different contexts. context or the same questions in different context. Once we can do that then probably this dilemma will be solved. I'm hopeful for that but nevertheless I really don't know.
I absolutely haven't, I mean this is, I cannot simply say that well I have answers to these stuff no I don't I don't if I did have answers I would have battle with you all day long but I don't yeah I mean so like what it I mean yeah what if philosophy and science just it feels often like a sociological just institutional problem that there's a certain ideal empiricist in certain sense like technocratic ideology of science whereas philosophers are kind of disconnected from this ideology and disconnected from their practice but it's like in a new society let's say when philosophy and
science really could it wouldn't be that philosophy became a science but the philosophy just started to meld into science to the point where they just became indiscernible in some sense like why can't why can't people like study the brain and think about like problems of yeah you see because thinking about the brain is not essentially thinking about the mind you see the brain is just a physical infrastructure sure it has fundamentally important consequences for how we talk about AI or mind but nevertheless there are aspects of mind that are irreducible to the physical thesis of the brain, nor biological consequences. Logic is a good example.
Right, but I mean I think we should still look at it materialistically, like we could see it as... But why do we need to talk about it merely materialistically this is actually I would say restriction of the methodological approach to the problems at hand why can't we have materialism neural materialism rationalism logicism structuralism all side by side why can't And we have all of these things at the same time, and through them we can actually determine what exactly, what exact question we are trying to address at what specific scale or resolution
of reality or the world. You see, one of our weakest points as philosophers is that we are simply trying to flatten the scales of reality as if we could just talk about person as if they are all physicalists or as if just they are all rationalists. We hold them to the space of reasons. But that's not the case. That's not the case. We are talking about an entity, a register, that ought to be examined at different scales. And sometimes these different scales are incommensurable. We should determine whether the incommensuration between these scales can be resolved or not.
If they cannot be resolved, should we actually get rid of some of the scales and reduce them or go upward? Or if we can do, in fact, make the resolution and commensurate between the scales, what kind of methodologies do we need? so so if but then so then we're replacing sort of like transcendental um idealism with a sort of like side with this multiplicity of grammars in a way yes formal syntax yes and so then so then what is philosophy so then does philosophy become what great finding new grammars determining what
grammar go with what like what what then like how does what then has that transformed philosophy well of course you see this the whole point is that I really do recommend you to read this book by Lorenz Pantel a structure and being I have suggested it a few times the entire point it starts with the idea of the transcendence of philosophy mind is the organ of the structure to a structure you require something like what Plato called local car not call them languages or grammars other people call the different things but nevertheless
The idea is that structures come from many different sources and they can be implemented in different kinds of methods. Of course, once we adopt such a thesis, the very nature of philosophy will change. It doesn't mean that it can become science because essentially, the crinical questions of philosophy are fundamentally different than that, than those of science. But nevertheless, this would be an opportunity for people to actually, to synchronize the idea of philosophy with that of science and hence not live in a world that is simply some
arm-chair philosophical speculation about the world, nor in a world that is just simply a scientific fact, as if our understanding of the world, as Poncara said, is merely a fact accumulation. It is not. It is not. So we have to synchronize philosophy and science. And to do that, I would say that we have to exert certain kinds of changes into these changes. Whether we want it or not, the very nature of philosophy and science will change. I mean, what do you think of like Husserl's approach?
this is why I think like deep down I'm ultimately a Husserlian because like I feel like his his attempt to constitute philosophy as a science makes a lot of sense that you take consciousness just as like an impersonal field phenomena and you can basically see that as just like a field of data yes it's given um and then his transcendentalism is just purely methodological Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. No, I think that the early Husserl is absolutely in line with what I was just saying. I mean, basically what I was just saying was just simply a plagiarizing of Husserl before writing that infamous essay, The Crisis of European Modern Sciences.
You see, at some point, Husserl actually lost the picture. because it was a philosopher he was not a scientist he tried to basically the reason that crisis of modern philosophy of sciences that essay was born was because he was trying to subordinate scientific methodology scientific paradigms to philosophical paradigms. No! These things are separate. Philosophy is a sovereign discipline, so as exact and empirical sciences. We should not subordinate them together, but more in the
the vein of early Vossera, Poincaré and so many others, try to come up with a set of methodologies, methods, logics and languages that can actually, what Walter Brenniger said is the logic of translation, moving, translating philosophical thesis to science, science to philosophy. And that's how we enrich both fields. Short of this, we are in the business of dogmas in the pre-critical, pre-Copernican sciences. Like one of the big things I've been taken away
from all these classes I've taken with you and especially this class in Carnap is, I'm seeing like the task of the philosophers more of like just sort of taking these structures for what they are and just sort of accelerating them to the max to see what the implications are. So if you read like Vandeloy and you just talk about spatial prepositions and then you just think about what are the implications of this use of structure and explore the application of just the structure and just take what that's with Carnap. He's like, just take a structure, whatever you think is the structure, take it. and then use that structure to analyze everything and then see where it fails. The implication, the space of implications. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. No, I absolutely do believe in this.
I am willing to defend this thesis. Sure, it has its own objections, but nevertheless, I think that taking seriously the idea of a structure is the greatest task of a philosopher or a scientist. Of course, what a structure is for a scientist differs from what a structure is for a philosopher. But nevertheless, they are translatable. We cannot talk about one unified vision of the world, one unified vision of ourselves living in the world other than the very urgent task of commensurating what we mean by a structure,
to commensurate our concepts of our structures and methods of arriving at that. Go ahead, Chagis. Sorry. no no i mean i just i mean i'm basically just saying the same thing i just i think if you look at any system like you look at spinoza or if you look at euclid i mean i think that the philosopher is just kind of there on the threshold of just applying that system and just sort of exploring the problems that arise and just sort of being able to look at those clearly and bravely and just say like well this is where we are with this yes yes yeah yeah absolutely and and the only difference I would say from the conceptual regime perspective
the only difference between philosophy and science is that philosophy exact the greatest revenge upon its concepts where science unfortunately at this point doesn't that's i mean that's just wanted to say one last thing i think you know if you look at even something that you know like aristotle's logic or something and just exploring that and just seeing like what are the implications of this system and like what are the sort of you know what are the limits of thinking in this way you know just kind of you know i think it always it's it's really important that you're using logic to do that though you know as you deviate from that then you're kind of you're limiting your thought there yes yeah absolutely
precisely because logic people think of logic as some sort of some sort of premise consequence uh and the sudden consequence manipulation of formulas but you should understand that the greatest merit of logic as frigate said is that it can deliver us from our experiential dogmatic biases this is the greatest merit of logic and this is why logic should in fact be adopted as a de facto and a du jour method of the
philosophical practice. Yeah I think anything else is just sort of an insult of philosophy. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's just... Is there some way in which the syntactical view of philosophy that you're talking about, it just kind of implicitly does subordinate the sciences to... I mean... I... I'm not sure it would be philosophy but definitely to grammar and I think… To a structure, not to a structure.
And literally I would say that the commonality between philosophy and science is really the concept of a structure. Surely philosophy and science at this point are talking about different concepts of structures. We haven't commensurate the concepts of structures yet, but nevertheless that would be a point of origin. I would say that you can't do science without the concept of the structure. And so far as the concept of a structure requires mathematics, logic and language.
No matter how you conceive these terms, nevertheless, they are the most important, they are really the components of the structures. If you are not subscribing to this idea of science, or for that matter to an alternative different versions of the concept of structures brought about by different methods of logical procedures, mathematical procedures or Lugoi as Plato said generally, then you are not in the business of objective claims. And that's what I was trying to, you know, talk about with regard to Marx critique of
historical materialism how can we actually talk about anything in the world if we don't have your gun on the structure it might be vague to us it might be far from over it might be not settled yet what we mean in fact by a structure but nevertheless if you don't have a semblance of the logical structure semantics and syntax breached together, then how can we ever talk about anything in the world? How can we actually diagnose anything in the world?
That would be just preposterous. That's a fallback on the worst kind of medieval philosophy. Can I have something, Rizal? Absolutely. So it goes along with that. So it's the question of objectivity, right? And it's the question of... So I work a lot with the French tradition. And so like the French tradition, you know, like even right now, like the Leleuzeans, think that there is a form of objectivity that isn't objective reality. So it's what
I would call real objectivity that I take from L'Oreal, which is a way in which you can... There are different epistemologies of objectivity, and you can't just say that philosophical traction depends on one mode of objective reality you must find multiple modes of reality etc and so like sure yeah like that is in some sense a response to objectivity to do you think that's a viable process i think it's a viable process only in so far as
Maybe, you see, I don't want to come off as what you might call to be a spoiler sport. I don't want to ruin this game. Surely, there are many great philosophers, whether they actually know about the dogmas or not. But nevertheless, if we want to talk about this problem very coherently, we should understand that yes, there are different methods, there are different ways and the French, what you
might call the way of epistemology is actually quite liberating. But the whole point is that you should understand that many of these people, not all of them course you know the jewel women and many others didn't even subscribe to such ideas like the loons out to serve Foucault so on and so forth so let's not bunch philosopher French philosophers altogether but nevertheless I wanted to say that let's imagine that they do in fact come converge upon the same ideas but then
the whole point is that okay you understand that there are different methods that are required for us to extract what you might call to be an objective fact, an objective fact from reality. But then by the virtue of your socio-political philosophies, the way that you talk about reason about judgment and you simply dismissed them out of hand then how can we actually determine what these methods can be?
You see I have never given up on French philosophy, it's just that I think that French philosophy needs to be supplemented with something new, with some sort of discipline that puts constraints on how we should decide what the methods are, how this method works, how they apply, whether they are actually applied correctly or not. It's hardly when you look into the history of French philosophy, modern history of French philosophy, since at least the time of Duane, you understand that these things are actually
brushed aside as if they were non-problems. But they are problems. They are actually quite severe problems. Definitely, and I think like, so like, yes, last thing I'll say, which is that they do care about these things as problems, so it's not merely, you know, a dogmatic implementation of research programs. No, no, no, absolutely not. Yes, you are right. You're absolutely right. And I'm sorry if I make the impression as if they are dogmatic impressions. They are not. Right, right. want to clarify because there are parts of the philosophy of sciences that come into this which is like you know they work with like they're interested in the logic of let's say discovery like in this i think they take from like hansen prior to kuhn right so there are these kinds of
like structural implementations that they are super interested in that they you know completely like not talk about and stuff but yeah i mean it seems like there is a real a real attempt at structural objectivity just in their own you know syncretic way or whatever yeah yeah absolutely it's it's kind of what what you might call to be you know a confession to be made even though i actually always those of you have come to my house and know what I talk about I always say that I don't talk in dead languages I only talk in English language surely Italians gave us the pizza the French
gave us the bucket bread but that's it I do not want to talk French or think French or Italian or German for that matter the whole point is that we absolutely cannot dismiss the achievements of French philosophers it's just that we have somehow arrived at a very specific moment in our historical time in philosophy where we can actually do criticize French philosophy.
I think any French philosopher should be proud of that and not dismiss it. French philosophy has contributed since the time of Descartes to Aurene, to Duem, to Deleuze Zanigatry and now to Tristan Garcia. But we are just philosophers. Ideas are important, but we should always question where the ideas come from, by what means they have come from. And that's one of the things that is somehow a little bit missing in French philosophy.
the idea of systematicity, the idea of how what the origin of these ideas are. Are we willing to make them explicit? Are we willing to explicate such ideas or not? And what I mean I want to hear Meredith's question really bad because I'm interested in hearing what you think about this, Reza. But I just wanted to kind of, one of the things I've really gotten from you in all these classes I've taken with you, and I was kind of skimming through the three nightmares essay you wrote, is this whole idea that in philosophy, it's more of like this idea of applying methodological skepticism that I've really learned from you is that
it's not about being confident in your answers. It's about being brave enough to ask the questions that completely destroy your certainty about things. Yes, the right questions that fundamentally challenge your asked questions. Yes. Like when you read like Varzy's book on holes, he's challenging Lewis's definition of a hole. He's not offering a definition. He's just going through this. Absolutely. Yes, yes, absolutely. All these different possibilities. The same thing about Hegel. The same thing about Hegel. Hegel is not really enemy of Kant. he just tries to reinvigorate Kantianism by way of new, fundamentally new kinds of questions with regard to the question of intuition, space and time,
objectivity, reasons, so on and so forth. It's just, I don't understand. It takes a very special mind to be on the threshold of those questions So to realize that there is these holes in what we think is this perfect picture of reality and being able to identify those problems, I think, is really the task of the philosopher. It takes a certain type of inquisitive mind to do that. Yes, absolutely. And I don't think it's really the task of the philosopher. You see, Chagy, philosophers, they do try a lot. I mean you should understand that these days to be a philosopher is a recipe for madness, depression and poverty.
Nevertheless, those people who actually do commit to such a recipe, they do it out of understanding that it is essentially philosophy that is important. Only philosophy in the history of philosophy, in the grand history of philosophy, that can resolve or bring such questions to the foreground. Philosophers are non-significant. I mean, you guys should absolutely forget about philosophers. Fuck all philosophers. We don't want to hear about them anymore.
Thank you. conversation but i was struck by one of the things you know so first of all i think this is a perfect example of how sort of a logical explication of scientific assumptions is like it's a great marriage of sort of like philosophy and science you know you know what is what is the nature of
order you know like you know um in any case but um i was sort of interested in the notion of the record versus the prediction. So it's like, we, you know, we know things, you know, in science, we know things about the past because of our, you know, and this sort of came to light because of this reading, because of our record of observation. And we, and we hope to deduce things about the future based on sort of like probabilistic law or, you know, probability. Or more the structure of our own memory. Yes, the structure. Yes, so the past would be the structure of our memory. And or, I don't know, that to me, something about that, I feel like how has that not been explored more?
It has been actually explored. It has been explored, but you should understand that these ideas are essentially fighting against the orthodoxy and not just of science, but also philosophy. Essentially they are fighting a battle on multiple fronts. I can actually give you a few if you are interested. Let me get the title, sorry. I have a, I think I'm really actually hitting my dementia phase. But in this I was reminded of like the RK...
Times arrow and Archimedes point times arrow and Archimedes point this is one of the greatest books that has been written another one let me let me just now Google it. That is absolutely a very actually serious problem and at some point if you are a very honest philosopher you are not taking a stuff for granted, you actually start to question why is that I'm actually thinking about this
stuff in fact to begin with? Because if these are utterly illusory then I shouldn't be able to think about them. One second, once again. Okay. It is called... It's by Joze Afnik, J-O-S-U-F-F-I-N-K.
The title is actually called Boltzmann's work in statistical physics. It was actually the essay that he wrote for Stanford Encyclopedia of Physics. And he actually brings these dilemmas that you actually pointed out to the foreground really, really in a very significant way. No, these are absolutely, I mean, I just cannot understand why philosophers are so in such cause cozy homes as if they are like that figured out what the world is what we are how we actually
interact with the world inside the plenial questions of philosophy as long as philosophy is alive we should renegotiate the questions and so the answers other than that we are in the business of the worst kind of philosophy. You know, and I hate to bring up this skeptical argument. Don't worry. There are so many skeptics in the classroom. You know, a few of them. I hate to be, you know, it's just not in my nature to be a skeptic. I think I am sort of like uber speculative, nonsensical about the direction.
But, you know, the obvious relativistic, you know, you have these parallel grammars. So you get out of the, you know, having these parallel grammars, you escape the, was it the correlationist? Like, you no longer have to have the human in there, you know. here and here you can see like you're now now this is becoming a very dangerous topic this is not even what i meant to say go on go on but we can go there um you know is uh so you know you know which
you know in in in competing frameworks you know which framework is more correct or which, you know, so obviously that's the big, I feel like, skeptical argument with this. Yes. But it doesn't... This is, Carnap has actually a very simple answer to it. You know, I actually do think that is a very great answer. This doesn't mean that I have actually accepted it. I'm still trying to digest the implications of it. Carnap's answer is a principle of tolerance that's okay let's go and design or conceptually
engineering so many infinitely possible formal languages each of which can give us a new structural insights that we might be able to apply them to the status to the state of affairs and thus we can arrive at new objective claims about the world. Now the principle of tolerance is about this that okay what does actually tell us what language is better than the other. Karnath in early works talks about something called a practical reason.
But when you really look into his words very carefully you understand that what he means by practical reason is actually a theoretical reason that we need to have certain practical theoretical or theoretical practical in order theoretical practical reasons in order to choose a specific language for a specific task and how we can that's how we can rank So, he does believe in some sort of ranking, but this ranking also requires theoretical justifications.
So really, I know that Theo might actually roll his eyes at this point, he's laughing, all I can say is really an answer to a ancient question ok so let's decide about our methods our logical methods well we can say that about the theoretical so on so forth reasons we choose these languages and logics in priority to such and such languages and forms of logic.
But then what does actually guarantee that this ranking can actually be of any significance with regard to the furniture of the worlds? Well Carnap actually has a fantastic answer to this. That would be my last sentence for today. It says something along this line, that everything that we can ever talk about the world is theoretical. The choice of our language and the frameworks of our logical method is also theoretical
the sense that there is no such a thing out there as giving us data we should accept this we should understand what theory means we should put all of our effort all of our scientific and philosophical efforts on explicating refining making explicit what we mean by theory so we can finally determine the reason we choose a more theoretically prior method over another he says that every other solution is going to hit rock bottom
that's it So we just have to do more work. Yes. Do more work in that specific arena. This idea of the theory. What do we mean by theory? What do you mean by theoretical method? How can we distinguish them from one another? Essentially, this is since the time of Kant, I would say, but more accelerated by Hegel. it is essentially the question of what mind as the organ of theorization is if
we can determine if we can answer this question then we can move forward with other questions until then we cannot bypass this task and just pretend that there are some stuff out there that can give us some sort of semblance of mechanisms, impressions, sensations, empirical stuff. These are all illusions. So Reza, I'm thinking about the way I'm going to be approaching reading your book is like a science
fiction novel about aliens would that work is that a good interpretation all I can tell you as I'm not going to spoil you but the last chapter is essentially what you are proposing philosophy I'm literally gonna be reading this as fiction like about aliens yeah no absolutely I mean you know I'm not that kind of philosopher who actually feels ashamed oh my scholarly book has been read as fiction oh Jesus Christ through is almighty no actually I would be proud if you do that actually a publisher review it you see we are in a good man in a multitude of
worlds we are doing philosophy we are doing science we are doing literature we we're doing art, we're doing music, so on and so forth. The thing is that these worlds that we have ourselves created are not essentially incommensurable, yet the connection between such worlds is far from to be determined. The task of world building to make new worlds on top of the worlds that we ourselves have created is to actually make sense of the connections which hold between these worlds and from which we can make new connections and thus new worlds.
I have a question. It's essentially what I asked earlier and it's just been quite something. Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. Okay, go on. No, no. But, I mean, I can't, you know, just, okay, make a little bit of a thought experiment to make my point clear. Suppose we have a language that is able to take various formal data and be able to situ that, say,
or a formal structure of light rays or something is able to situate objects within time and space. Okay. And then, say we have... You just say type of space. Time and space. Time and space, okay, sorry. Yes, yeah. And then we could say have a robot which has been furnished with local concepts, or it could also be a human with their natural biological faculties. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Absolutely doesn't matter. My question is, when it comes to the empirical testing,
it seems to me that you're forced to reckon with the fact that some of the resources you're using for this testing is, say, a camera on the robot or like your eyes and like your brain able to extract more primitive information okay but these are not the resources of the language though these are called to be neural sensory apparatus okay then what what's what is the the status of such things I think you see the thing is that since Since the time of Kant, we get a clear picture despite some stupid rationalist saying against
this thesis. Since the time of Kant, Hegel, Sellars and Brando, we get the very idea that you do not need to have what you might call to be logical structures or concepts or judgments in any sense in the broadest possible sense of the word in order for you to actually navigate the world of course not yet you see a predator a predator imagine a cat chasing a mouse this mouse darting away and at some point it goes and hides
behind a rock okay first of all the predator the cat doesn't need the concept of being versus appearances or reality versus appearances to not mistake a mouse that darts away and basically the visual field shrinks as it moves away as something that is just simply going to evaporate in the order of reality. Also when the mouse goes behind the rock,
cat doesn't mistake this as reality versus appearances. It doesn't need the idea of the appearances or the concept of appearances to not chase and come behind the rock and eat that stupid mouse. You see, not everything requires concepts. In fact, concepts, for the most part, make explicit and disambiguate the very stuff that all the fucking biological species have been doing for thousands of years.
And this is a new age for a different kind of species. But the whole point is that we should not forget that not everything requires every complex- Sure, sure, sure. But my question here is that has to do in terms of our pot, I mean, you've said that, you know, like the, we hypothesize postulates with a specific target of application and so forth. Yes. No, no, that's a different level. Right, right, right. But my point is like it seems like there's the problem that like must be confronted which is how do those postulates interact with not necessarily sensory experience because I think
it might be a bit more um but what we might call sets of empirical evidences yes well that's that's way that's how the method actually comes through into the picture. You see the idea of a method is very different from this idea of these kinds of nonchalant broad paradigms of empiricism or logical empiricism. It's in the sense that method requires us to triangulate certain kinds of premises that we have come across by virtue of using our logical resources or conceptual resources and triangulate them with the empirical testing.
The concept of triangulation is actually very important here. You see, when you understand what triangulation is, you understand that in the concept of triangulation if you would triangulate this is kinds of stuff together none of them can actually survive without the other they're co-constituted this is what triangulation means you can't triangulate a coordinate without at least three data with regard to the landscape these data might be hypothetical but nevertheless you use them and you test them and then you arrive at a very difficult very difficult or an objective claim now
this is the very important point the very difficult claim that you arrive out of this triangulation doesn't mean it is true doesn't mean that it is about reality in fact it just means that its connection with reality can in fact be assessed rather than simply taken for dear for granted that's the whole point of transcendental philosophy That's roughly exactly what I was thinking. So you're saying that a key part of these postulates is that they are able to tractably triangulate a certain portion of reality?
Yes, only in order to arrive at a veridical claim. A veridical claim that might be in fact false but nevertheless it is veridical in so far as it is because it is being predisposed it has certain kinds of features certain kinds of statuses that render it amicable to further negotiation to further movement toward falsity or truth determination and that's really the most important thing. And so this would also say, you know, postulates our, you know, neurobiological substrate as
like a part of what it is interacting with and triangulating in order to be able to arrive at these certain things but that as well is just a postulate a posture yes yes absolutely i mean remember even for cam nominon nominon which undergirds the entire idea of the phenomenon phenomenological coherency of appearances is a postulate of thought as if nominon was real see is a postulate of talk nothing else nothing else we never we never actually talked about reality as if it's there because that would be just a delusion
who can actually tell me that has a private access to reality know what no one no one can only a charlatan prophet can tell you that I know about the world no this is not the business of philosophy for the higher science okay yes yes next time I mean I know know that we are now basically kind of hovering around some stuff that we were
supposed to think we did but nevertheless yes yes raise a quick question like what you're talking about is this kind of what you talk about in abstract terms and hinge I've listened to hinge a few times and it seems like there's a lot of this going on this like you mean by triangulation just mapping onto nature and hinge. I'm picking up. Yes. The whole idea of triangulation and hinge. Yes. Absolutely. That was mildly disturbing because I had that word pop into my head but I couldn't pinpoint the origin. Okay. My dearest friends,
it's Sunday. We are not supposed to talk about philosophy all day. You're supposed to have some barbecue, you have some pool party, whatever. I don't want to hear about the rest of the stuff that you do the rest of the night, but nevertheless, let's cut it at this point. Sounds good. I'm going to stop the broadcast.