Non-self is not to lose oneself to emptiness or nothingness. This is to gain a different kind of self that is utterly full and truly something.
Tag: postmodernism
YouTube Premium still gives you ads. You just don’t notice them
When you pay for YouTube Premium you are led to believe you are getting an ad-free experience. But this is further from the truth. Let me explain.
Before I joined Premium I watched videos which were interspersed with ads that popped up in the middle (sometimes several times) and at the end. Usually, they are random and unrelated ads to the video that either require you to skip or wait until they finish. Furthermore, I could not play videos in the background.
My experience with Premium is that more I can play videos in the background, not having to skip the ads, and I can multitask. YouTube is much more enjoyable.
But why is it more employable? That is because of the convenience now offered. But more subtlety, I am getting different content. imagine watching the normal content I watch now without Premium. It would mean I would get not only the in-video ads but also the interlaced ads that normally come up. But that is not what makes ads annoying. It is the need for me to skip ads that is annoying. In other words I am paying for this privilege and convenience.
I still get ads. They are still in the videos pumped to me by the vlogger. They are less annoying and also more relevant to the content. It is basically a version of good ol’ television … except I am paying for it.
The kidnapping of postmodernism
People complain about postmodernism, saying it gave us all the troubles we have today. I don’t believe so. These terrible water with us from the beginning. Or, at least, from the start of modernism.
After the death of Derrida postmodernism lost its voice. It was open to criticism. It was bullied into trauma. The anxiety of postmodernism is what we have. Given that it allowed itself to be open to criticism, it was betrayed. Like a cheating modernist husband it hide the fact of its duplicity from its trusting postmodernist wife. She is in shock. She is trying to recover from it. She will expose them once again for what they are — deceivers.
She has escaped from her kidnappers. She will tell her story.
via negativa, via positiva
The obvious problem overlooked with describing God is that describing what He is not is to assume there is a god (or gods) in the first place.
The problem is really the same as describing unicorn with positives. That is, a horse with a straight horn on its head. The speakers assume there exists something horse-like with something horn-like on its head-like part.
The difference is that God has no attributes to describe (which is its description) and a unicorn had attributes to describe. Either way we have described an assumed something.
Is realism colorless reductionism?
Realism that has been described as colorless reductionism I call your colourful additionalism*. My move is a kind of Ockham’s Razor and partly Zen Buddhism. I was taught that some things are unnecessary.
*Mix of American and British spelling fully intended.
Of the mind
Once and for all I shall rid myself of absolutes. Not in the real sense for absolutes firstly do not exist other than in the mind. To say in mind is to give it substance for which is has not. Such is the power of language. Of the mind is better but still not adequate.
Without the process of thought there is no idea or concept of absolute. For it to be conceived is for it to be thought. In this sense Descartes is right – I think therefore I am. And for Berkeley to be is to be perceived is a leap of faith too far in my opinion.
The notions of rationality and idealism are in the end notions of process not notions of corporeal things. As much as ideas are in language countable they are nowhere to be found. Neither are their minds independent of the very metaphorical machines that produce them.
The unexperienced reality is no different from the experienced one. I can say then that the mind produced by the body is as much part of the reality that it inhibits. But I cannot say that it exists outside of the process that produces it. The Rylean categorical mistake is thus to believe something exists because it is named.
The objectification of non-things
Unless a concept is turned into an object – a noun – we cannot talk about it. We cannot escape the the idea of it being an “it”. Notice the countability of “it”. This move or ability to convert a concept into a countable, tangible thing is one of the most powerful and useful tools to us – the human being. It defines us and at times separates us from other beings. So much so, that it may elevate us about gods or even God. This is not a new idea. Nietzsche had said so much with the phrase “God is dead”. But let us go further and talk about what it is like where God may be talked about in the past tense, to be able to talk about a time when God was alive. The fact that God was, is and will be yet is only ever discussed in terms of the present or presence (as it were) should set off critical and philosophical alarm bells. Fundamentally, we must see through the power (and weakness) of language which had once moved us forward but is now holding us back.
No direct access to anything, inside or out
Following partially Berkeley’s conclusion, Hume also concluded that we have no access to the thing-in-itself. It is always indirect knowledge. It is always the representation. Schopenhauer concluded that we have access to one special thing – the self. It being so, this being the will, as opposed to representation. But I will contend that the will is also secondhand access.
Like the things “outside” we can know it only through sense perception. The self “inside” is also known only through sense and perception. The feelings and emotions are only ever representations themselves.
Two things, then. There is no direct access to anything, including to the self. And secondly, there is strictly nothing to be inside or outside.
Stop the modern loop with postmodernism
Year after year I end up defending postmodernism first from hostility and second from misunderstanding. It isn’t really my job, nor am I the most qualified (far from it) to be doing this. But I agree with a lot with what postmodernism has to offer.
Last year, I had to defend against truth. Truth it was claimed to be out there, pure and obvious. Universal Grammar, modules and Language Acquisition Devices are like this kind of truth. That there is a brain, and that many creatures have it, I will not argue with. I will even agree with there being part of the brain that is especially good at language. But that anything outside of that – for example, language – is universal would mean that we should have the same concepts and forms for these. The fact is we don’t.
Language is a general and ordinary physical process in the same manner as vision is a process of the body. To see does not require exact identical machinery. Just as bees have differently structured eyes, spiders with their array, or rainbow mantises with their colour range, we human beings have a system that is unique to us. It solves a common problem to all sentient things – that of knowing how to relate to things in space.
Returning to postmodernism, it attempts to describe the nature of the world, including our own nature as a human being thing. It describes how we operate, as though we are in conflict with one another. In a way we are. Survival of the fittest, perhaps. But by not fearing we may have another way (not a better way) of surviving. Postmodernism is saying that rather than sounding like broken record forever looping we should fix the scratch and get on with the rest of the song. In other words, postmodernism is a way to move forward from centuries of repetition.
But this repetition isn’t accidental. It was a consciously (or at best subconsciously) perpetuated one. The strategy is one called by Lyotard a metanarrative or grandnarrative. In order to maintain a perceived advantageous position one uses a narrative which eliminates all objection. Not only this but also does so without drawing attention to the fact that is doing so. Broadly speaking, we can term this kind of strategy modernism.
Modernism hasn’t disappeared. Postmodernism wasn’t meant to replace it. It was never its intention to do so. Postmodernism owes much to modernism. It is indebted to it, and for this reason postmodernism includes modernism in its term. For without pointing out the strategy and tactics employed by modernism, postmodernism would not be necessary.
Postmodernism happily operates within a system of difference, while modernism operates a system for hiding differences. Postmodernism is like the YouTuber telling you how tricks are done. Modernism is like the magician keeping up the illusion of no illusion. But just to be sure, both are making money from you.
An object is an object is an object; the world is the world is the world.
No matter what (pun intended) an object is an object. Be this a single atom, a group of atoms, a non-sentient cluster, a sentient cluster, or any other way an object can be.
I am not even talking qualities, but only existence or being. Unobserved, objects are just objects. The world (or reality) is just is, or simply, the world is.
I am not promoting anthropocentrism. But any differentiation discerned is done by a sentient (in the “sense” sense; again pun intended) object. We should neither privilege nor disparage it, because an object is an object is an object. I would be more than happy to let a rock philosophise. And I am sure a rock couldn’t care less that I can philosophise either. So let it be and let us get on with philosophy.
signature103 