Absurdism

[Pow R. Toc H.]

So, I was recently reading The Stranger by Camus, and I came to understand Absurdism after reading the book. It seems to make alot of sense. It is pretty absurd to try and find meaning in a universe that is cold and empty.

What do you guys think?

[Idola Mentis]

Sure, it's all absurd. Which more or less reduces morality to a question of aesthetics, and leaves us free to build a reference grid to interpret the universe trough on the basis of what we find pleasing.

Of course, if we do not also look to what frames of reference works, in the sense of durability and sustainability, no amount of praying to our Lady Discordia will save us from her whims.

[tolstoyevski]

if I had to make a definition, I'd say:

<<absurdism is a petit-bourgeois philosophy, having a pessimist world view and saying, &#39;capitalism is very bad but it&#39;s impossible to destroy it, because in a universe which is very absurd, every move that we make is determined to fail, and even to make worse.&#39;>>

and this point of view is the apolitical "depression ideology" which is created by capitalism itself.

petit-bourgeois, because it sees only the bad conditions but not the revolutionary destructive and creatives forces inside the imperialism due to its lack of economic and ideologic analyses. It tries to find some metaphysical meanings embedded inside the world, forgetting that the meaning is produced by social relationships by human itself.
Result: nothing better than nihilism.

I see no contributions to class struggle in this philosophy.
It only makes some people think twice, and during their meditation, capitalism kicks them in the face..

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 07, 2007 05:21 pm
It is pretty absurd to try and find meaning in a universe that is cold and empty.
That&#39;s not the absurd.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 06:13 pm
if I had to make a definition, I&#39;d say:

<<absurdism is a petit-bourgeois philosophy, having a pessimist world view and saying, &#39;capitalism is very bad but it&#39;s impossible to destroy it, because in a universe which is very absurd, every move that we make is determined to fail, and even to make worse.&#39;>>
That&#39;s pure and utter tosh. Clearly who ever wrote that ridiculous paragraph has never tried to understand absurdism.


and this point of view is the apolitical "depression ideology" which is created by capitalism itself.

Absurdism isn&#39;t an ideology, it&#39;s a philosophy. How has absurdism been "created" by capitalism? And for the record Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre (although not an absurdist, but an existentialist of the same ilk) were extremely political.


petit-bourgeois, because it sees only the bad conditions but not the revolutionary destructive and creatives forces inside the imperialism due to its lack of economic and ideologic analyses.

That doesn&#39;t even make any sense.

Existentialism is not a political or economic idea or concept. How could it possibly, even if it wanted to, have an economic or "ideologic" analysis?


It tries to find some metaphysical meanings embedded inside the world, forgetting that the meaning is produced by social relationships by human itself.
Result: nothing better than nihilism.

You philistine&#33;

You first need to establish what absurdism is before you can attempt to refute it.


I see no contributions to class struggle in this philosophy.

I see not contributions to the class struggle in maths, but should we do away with that concept too?


It only makes some people think twice, and during their meditation, capitalism kicks them in the face..

Absurdism is a way of understanding your existance. It has nothing to do with class struggle nor does it negate it.

[Raúl Duke]

....I think absurdism as somehow influenced my life....even though I don&#39;t think I actually understand it&#33; :lol:

Nowadays I don&#39;t wander much into philosophy....I usually end up confused (especially the dialectic stuff and the anti-dialectics..Just not being able to understand both made me reject dialectics&#33;)

I would like it if someone could please explain absurdism to me.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD:


I would like it if someone could please explain absurdism to me.

Clearly not me, since I seem to have done none-too-well explaining anti-dialectics to you&#33;

You might like to reflect, though, on a request to be helped to understand something that is inherently incomprehensible: absurdism.

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by Principia Discordia
HERE FOLLOWS SOME PSYCHO-METAPHYSICS. If you are not hot for philosophy, best just to skip it.

The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper that is the level of distinction making.

With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about- reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.

DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE.

The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION. The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Reality is the original Rorschach.

Verily&#33; So much for all that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that, Idola -- and for confirming that this stuff is indeed incomprehensible.


Order is true.

WTF??

Indicative sentences are true/false, but "order"???


We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts).

Who says? And how did those drawing these &#39;grids&#39; manage to work without these ever-present &#39;windows&#39; getting in the way? Are they &#39;gods&#39;?

And, how can you look through &#39;concepts&#39; -- are they transparent? What are they made of? Glass?

And has this not too been filtered by these annoying &#39;windows&#39; -- so why should we trust it?

-------------------------------------------------

Who authored this piffle?

And when does his/her medication run out?

[tolstoyevski]

The Anarchist Tension, you&#39;re only making demagogy and saying nothing at all.
That is ridicule and this is tosh. Peh&#33;
And what should we get from your "ridicule defense" of absurdism?

- absurdism has nothing to do with class struggle and make no contributions to it (and that&#39;s why I called it apolitical, you philistine&#33; Secondly, you absurd anarco, maths has a great contribution to class struggle, you can&#39;t even imagine. but in your mood of agitation that means nothing to you. just empty words. Remember, facts are revolutionary, even it is a chemical fact...)

it is a petit-bourgeois ideology because it tries to hover above class politics and economy.
understanding your existence?
what existence?? an existence independent from class struggle? economy?
an existence free from social facts? peh&#33; this is pure tosh&#33;
how will you "understand your existence" without understanding what is going on around?
let me say, you cannot understand, so you assume that life is absurd&#33;&#33;
as if one can stay far from political, economical and social facts..

what is the philosophy of absurdism?
idealism, individualism.
which useful concept is brought by absurdism?
none.
what is the historical understanding of absurdism?
none&#33; ahistorical. just words, just myhts, idealistic bullshit..
what is its economy-politic point of view?
none. it can&#39;t have one..
what contributions did it make through the history of the working class struggle?
none.
which political parties or guerilla movements along the history benefited from absurdism?
none.

again, absurdism is a very well-known idealism which has no useful concept for life, let alone class struggle.
peh..

[Janus]

So, I was recently reading The Stranger by Camus, and I came to understand Absurdism after reading the book.
Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus to actually explain his philosophy or at least the ideas put forth in The Stranger. It&#39;s a pretty short and interesting read if you want to look into it.

Last two threads on this topic:
Absurdism/existentialism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=47948&hl=absurdism)
Absurdism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=32269&hl=absurdism)

[Idola Mentis]

Thanks for that, Idola -- and for confirming that this stuff is indeed incomprehensible.

You&#39;re most welcome. I can&#39;t say I find it completely coherent myself. But entertaining, and beautiful, yes. It&#39;s from an old booklet which has achieved a remarkable spontaneous circulation over the decades. It&#39;s satirical, whimsical, extremely hand-made and probably intentionally hard to comprehend. You need the paper edition to get a sense of the whole thing, but a PDF might do too.

I think your questions to the text more or less misses the mark. But that might serve as an illustration of its point, too. Our different perceptions of what we assume to be the same text indicates that something is distorting, or rather, differentiating our respective sensoria. I can spot a kind of sense in there somewhere, and you can&#39;t. The difference, I guess, is in our minds&#39; content rather than our generally identical sensory equipment. The metaphorical windows of our senses appear to reveal different landscapes, because the &#39;grid of perception&#39; - our culture, languages, beliefs, experiences etc. are different.

The point of the text appears to be that all truth is necessarily historical, constructed. Our limited senses can never directly access whatever it is out there that creates our sensorium. As you point out; how do you open a box with the key that is inside it? Thus all appeals to one universal truth are meaningless. Lovecraftian horror ensues.

When one galaxy crashes into another somewhere in the universe, maybe wiping out a million civilizations in the process, is that "justifiable"? It is absurd to apply human measures to the spin of atoms and bumpings of randomly assembled lumps of matter. But even so, we somehow aquired the ability to do so, and set about doing it. So now we&#39;re trapped in our own web of values. It seems the best we can do about it is to play this game we&#39;ve started as well as we can possibly manage. Awareness of its absurdity can only enhance our ability to do it.

[Pow R. Toc H.]

That&#39;s not the absurd.

Absurdism- A philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe.

I do not believe to be offbase in my saying that it is absurd to find meaning in the universe. If you could please explain this to me, comrade, it would be greatly appreciated.

Idola Mentis,

You are a stupid douche. This philosophy has nothing to do with any kind of politics. I really am amazed that you were able to twist this sort of idealism into some shapeless mass of utter and complete bullshit about petit-bourgoise nonsense. I would like to see where in any reference that absurdism has any ties to capitalism. Im assuming you wont be able to because you threw some ludicrous ideas into the mix to probably sound much smarter than you really are.
Go fuck yourself :)

[Lynx]

It is absurd to find meaning in the universe.

Apparently some people disagree.

Damn&#33;

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IM:


I can spot a kind of sense in there somewhere,

I think that is called &#39;naivety&#39;.


The point of the text appears to be that all truth is necessarily historical, constructed.

Others have said it better and clearer.


Thus all appeals to one universal truth are meaningless.

But, is this true?

If so, it looks pretty universal -- and if &#39;true&#39; it must be false&#33;

If not, then perhaps there are universal truths that are not &#39;meaningless&#39;.


So now we&#39;re trapped in our own web of values

Who is this &#39;we&#39;?

If you/the author are included in this &#39;we&#39;, then what you/he/she says is also &#39;trapped&#39;, and can thus be ignored.

If you/he/she broke free of this &#39;web&#39;, so you/he/she could deliver the good news, tell us how you/he/she did it.

Finally, you still have not revealed the identity of the lost soul who wrote this waste of paper.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PowR: please moderate your language. or i will have to delete parts of what you post.

[Raúl Duke]

You might like to reflect, though, on a request to be helped to understand something that is inherently incomprehensible: absurdism.


:D You&#39;re right...the request is absurd. I mean I don&#39;t think I would be able to understand it anyway. Well...it doesn&#39;t hurt to try I suppose.... :unsure:


If you are not hot for philosophy, best just to skip it.



It&#39;s satirical, whimsical, extremely hand-made and probably intentionally hard to comprehend.

Why do they seem to do this? Do philsophers enjoy making their philosophy sound obscure and metaphysical?

Is there any importance in philosophy to our existence? (in comparison to science?)


The Myth of Sisyphus

I actually tried reading it once. It didn&#39;t give me any new insight (thus it either told me what I already knew or it was incomprehensible....)


Clearly not me, since I seem to have done none-too-well explaining anti-dialectics to you&#33;

Don&#39;t worry&#33; In a somewhat "dialectical" (negation turned into a non negation?) way; my inability to understand anti-dialectics as lead me to avoid dialectics anyway, since it is also incomprehensible (to me). (Or maybe its because the first parts of the anti-dialectics is on explaining dialectics and its fallacies. Since dialectics is imcomprehensible to me, I found the explanations incomprehensible as well;thus, it is weird to explain something, that being dialectics, that straight away sound like metaphysical non-sense in the first place.)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD:


Why do they seem to do this? Do philsophers enjoy making their philosophy sound obscure and metaphysical?

In a word, &#39;yes&#39;; but there are psychological, social and class-based reasons why traditonal philosopers adopted this dogmatic, obscure form. Here is how I explain it in my basic introductory Essay (links and references omitted):


In the West, since Ancient Greek times, traditional theorists have been imposing their theories on nature. This practice is so widespread, and has penetrated into thought so deeply, that no one notices it, even after it has been pointed out to them. Or, they fail to see its significance.

If you belong to, benefit from or help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.

The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time, but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation (among other things).

Another way is to persuade the majority (or a significant section of "opinion formers" and administrators, at least) that the present order either works for their benefit, is ordained of the gods, or that it is &#39;natural&#39; and cannot be fought. As is well-known, this tactic has been used for millennia; hence we have Theology and other assorted ruling-class ideologies. All of these were imposed on reality (plainly, since they cannot be read from it).

This is how Marx depicted things:

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an &#39;eternal law.&#39;" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65.]

However, as Marx also noted, members of the ruling-class often rely on other layers in society to concoct the ideas they use to try to con the rest of us.

In Ancient Greece, with the demise of the rule of Kings and Queens, the old Theogonies and myths were no longer relevant. So, in the newly emerging Republics and quasi-democracies of the Sixth Century BC, far more abstract, de-personalised ideas were needed.

Enter Philosophy.

From its inception, Philosophers have constructed increasingly baroque abstract systems of thought. These were invariably based on arcane terminology, impossible to translate into the material language of everyday life -- which they then happily imposed on nature.

They felt they could do this, since, for them, nature was Mind (or the product of Mind). In that case, the human mind could safely project its thoughts onto reality. As above, so below, went the old Hermetic saying. The microcosm reflected the macrocosm, as another put it. The doctrine of Correspondences came to dominate all ancient and modern theories of knowledge.

All this was based on the idea that language (but not the vernacular) was in effect a secret code, by means of which each thinker (with the &#39;right sort of education&#39;, of course) could represent to him/herself the Mind of &#39;God&#39;. Language was thus seen to be representational and individualistic -- but, not communitarian or merely a vehicle of communication. Naturally, this view of discourse had profound ideological significance, connected with the legitimation of class power.

This ancient tradition has changed many times throughout history, as different Modes of Production rose and fell, but its main strategy and core rationale remained basically the same: the dogmatic promulgation of abstract theories that were said to reveal the underlying rational structure of reality, conveniently hidden away from the disconfirming gaze of working people -- which is why they were, and still are, inexpressible in ordinary language.

So, just like Theology, but in this case in a far more abstract and increasingly secular form, subsequent philosophies came to reflect the &#39;essential&#39; structure of reality, one that supposedly underpinned and rationalised alienated class society, mystified now by the use of increasingly baroque language and technical jargon.

And that is why they have to impose their ideas on nature: since their theses are based on ancient, ideal abstractions, they cannot be derived from the non-abstract material world, but must be read into it.

In earlier times, the vast majority of Philosophers were either members of various ruling-classes, or were patronised by them. These theorists saw the state as an earthly embodiment of the cosmic order; hence, just as society was ruled by law, so was reality.

In class society, rulers used highly specialised language to frame laws in order to reflect this supposed connection, to secure property and to order keep minions in their place. In all this, they failed to perceive this social form (language) for what it was: a means of communication. On the contrary, they saw discourse as a means of representation; a secret code that contained within it clues that revealed the essential nature of &#39;Being&#39;.

This encouraged them to think that if language was capable of moving servants about the place, and that words not only controlled the state, but secured power and property, it must be able to control reality -- and, on its own, it must be able to make things move.

It thus became natural for ruling-class theorists to think of conflict and change in linguistic or conceptual terms.

And that is why all mystics argue the way they do (as we saw above --, and will see again below, this time in the case of Heraclitus (540-475BC).

So, what had once been the product of the relations among human beings (ordinary language) became inverted and fetishised into a code that theorists took to be, or to represent the real relations among things, or indeed those things themselves -- to paraphrase Marx (on money and commodity fetishism).
In that case, it also became natural for the ruling-class and their theoretical hangers-on to think that this is how the &#39;gods&#39; must have constituted the universe. As early creation stories show, this is exactly what they did: the &#39;gods&#39; merely had to speak and everything came into existence, and all of reality did as it was told from that day forth. Just as good citizens obey the law, so everything in nature &#39;obeys&#39; the &#39;divine law&#39;.

According to this world-view, reality was either controlled by language or was constituted by it.

I call this doctrine "Linguistic Idealism" [LIE].

LIE, in one form or another, underpins all subsequent philosophies, and it is why all traditional philosophers think it quite natural to impose their ideas on reality.
Hence, those who conceptualised reality in this way would naturally think that, if the status quo on earth is the product of language (which deliberately or accidentally masked the realities of class power, hidden now behind this superficially &#39;benign&#39; façade) --, and reality reflected or was a reflection of the state --, then thought alone could uncover the secrets of nature. Thus was born Philosophy, the most abstract form of ruling-class ideology.

Such theories could now be imposed on nature because &#39;God&#39; it was who originally did this, and reality was merely condensed discourse. Nature was thus Mind, and constituted by the Divine Logos, which, as bad luck would have it, was an idea invented by the first dialectician, Heraclitus:

"Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus&#39;s philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change -- the Logos -- form the essential foundation of the European world view. Every time you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus&#39;s speculations on change and the Logos....

"In reading these passages, you should be able to piece together the central components of Heraclitus&#39;s thought. What, precisely, is the Logos? Can it be comprehended or defined by human beings? What does it mean to claim that the Logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe? What is the nature of the Logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Finally, how would you compare Heraclitus&#39;s Logos to its later incarnations: in the Divided Line in Plato, in foundational and early Christianity? How would you relate Heraclitus&#39;s cryptic statements to those of Lao Tzu?"

[The short to that last question is, obviously: The ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class.]

From then on, for most traditional thinkers, Logic itself determined the underlying form of reality, its essential structure. This further justified the imposition of the products of thought onto nature (which is also something dialecticians are happy to do, as we can now see).

Although there were exceptions, for such thinkers, empirical knowledge (that is, knowledge based on material evidence) was unreliable since it reflected the debased experience and life of ordinary folk.

[This is brought out very well in Conner (2005).]

So, from the beginning philosophers denigrated the material language of workers, just as they undervalued their view of the world, turning discourse into a baroque code that represented &#39;divine truth&#39; --, but only to them.

And, surprise, surprise: dialecticians do the same, too. Which is odd, since Marx did the opposite:

"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content....

"...We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118.]

Traditional Philosophers indeed sought to derive or to invent a priori theses that revealed the underlying &#39;essence&#39; of reality -- i.e., fundamental features of existence unavailable to the senses, and hence irrefutable by material means.
In every case, but in different forms depending on which Mode of Production was dominant at the time, and because they saw the world as &#39;condensed language&#39;, Philosophers derived their doctrines exclusively from words -- either from specially-concocted jargon (like "Being", "Entelechy", "Substance", or "Nothing"), or from suitably distorted ordinary terms (such as "cause", "law", "thought", or "determined").

These theses were then imposed on nature, and were not only held to be true everywhere and everywhen, they determined the form of any and all possible worlds.

And because they were derived from language alone, they appeared to be &#39;self-evident&#39; (that is, no external material evidence was required to establish their truth). In that case, those who adopted this style-of-thought found such super-truths not just easy to invent (a few moments reflection on the &#39;hidden meaning&#39; of a few words was all that was required), they were impossibly difficult to disbelieve (since these were apparently self-certifying).

This approach to knowledge is well summarised by James White (in this case in relation to German Idealism):

"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996), p.29.]

It is worth noting here how the word "law" had been lifted from legal theory and projected onto nature -- the use of which term simply suggests that reality is governed by a cosmic will. Hence, if nature is deemed to have an underlying rational structure, then not only does it become easier to &#39;justify&#39; the status quo (as its reflection), all those who rebel against the state can be opposed on &#39;legitimate&#39; grounds (these days called "Western values").

The above is further amplified by the following two authors:

"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is&#33; Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers&#39; fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.

"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege&#39;s case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a &#39;third realm&#39;). Mathematics seems to be the &#39;natural history of mathematical objects&#39; [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], &#39;the physics of numbers&#39; [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors record this erroneously as p.139, RL] or the &#39;mineralogy of numbers&#39; [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41, RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….

"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less &#39;brutish&#39; than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent &#39;indefinables&#39;. Yet if &#39;the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple&#39; [Russell (1937), p.xv; again these authors record this erroneously as p.v, RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck&#39;s constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75.]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20...ditionalThought (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20I%20Oppose%20DM.htm#TraditionalThought)

I hope none of that is incomprehensible&#33;

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 08, 2007 04:46 am

That&#39;s not the absurd.

Absurdism- A philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe.
Did you take that from wikipidia?

Absurdism can be described as that at it&#39;s very basic, but you actually used the word &#39;absurd&#39;, not absurdism.

The Absurd refers to our role within a meaningless and irrational universe. I can see how easy it is to make this mistake. The difference is only nuanced and this can be confusing.

Sisyphus is the Absurd Hero. He roles his rock up the hill only for it to fall back down again. The fact that we are forced to exist in such a world that is meaningless and which fights for our destruction is the Absurd nature of our existence.

We are forced to exist in an existence, which provides death as the only certainty.


I do not believe to be offbase in my saying that it is absurd to find meaning in the universe.

Why is it absurd to find meaning in the world? Surely it is more absurd that we have to find meaning, rather than the actually process of finding it.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 10:23 pm
The Anarchist Tension, you&#39;re only making demagogy and saying nothing at all.
That is ridicule and this is tosh. Peh&#33;
And what should we get from your "ridicule defense" of absurdism?

- absurdism has nothing to do with class struggle and make no contributions to it (and that&#39;s why I called it apolitical, you philistine&#33; Secondly, you absurd anarco, maths has a great contribution to class struggle, you can&#39;t even imagine. but in your mood of agitation that means nothing to you. just empty words. Remember, facts are revolutionary, even it is a chemical fact...)

it is a petit-bourgeois ideology because it tries to hover above class politics and economy.
understanding your existence?
what existence?? an existence independent from class struggle? economy?
an existence free from social facts? peh&#33; this is pure tosh&#33;
how will you "understand your existence" without understanding what is going on around?
let me say, you cannot understand, so you assume that life is absurd&#33;&#33;
as if one can stay far from political, economical and social facts..

what is the philosophy of absurdism?
idealism, individualism.
which useful concept is brought by absurdism?
none.
what is the historical understanding of absurdism?
none&#33; ahistorical. just words, just myhts, idealistic bullshit..
what is its economy-politic point of view?
none. it can&#39;t have one..
what contributions did it make through the history of the working class struggle?
none.
which political parties or guerilla movements along the history benefited from absurdism?
none.

again, absurdism is a very well-known idealism which has no useful concept for life, let alone class struggle.
peh..
:wacko:

[Idola Mentis]

You are a stupid douche.

Um, okay. I&#39;d ask what that has to do with anything, but I see you got a warning. We all loose our temper sometimes.


This philosophy has nothing to do with any kind of politics. I really am amazed that you were able to twist this sort of idealism into some shapeless mass of utter and complete bullshit about petit-bourgoise nonsense. I would like to see where in any reference that absurdism has any ties to capitalism. (...)

I think you are confusing me with someone else, dear. I never said antying to that effect.

[Idola Mentis]

I can spot a kind of sense in there somewhere,
I think that is called &#39;naivety&#39;.
Be wary of arrogance.
The sense I&#39;m seeing in the text might not be there. It could be an artifact of my perception. How would I know?


The point of the text appears to be that all truth is necessarily historical, constructed.Others have said it better and clearer.
Yep. Others have deduced various consequences from this discovery too, and explained them better, clearer, and at much greater lenght.


Thus all appeals to one universal truth are meaningless. But, is this true?
If so, it looks pretty universal -- and if &#39;true&#39; it must be false&#33;
If not, then perhaps there are universal truths that are not &#39;meaningless&#39;.
I am aware of the problem. Continuing to play the devil&#39;s advocate, I guess I should repeat that the text suggest that the division true/false is an artifact of human perception-culture. Thus your question wether it this statement or any other statement is true is actually meaningless in the absolute sense. The suggestion appears to be that we should choose our truths based on other criteria than objectivity, because objectivity does not exist/is unavialable? But that doesn&#39;t solve the infinite recursion, does it?

Who is this &#39;we&#39;?
Everyone human, I guess?

If you/the author are included in this &#39;we&#39;, then what you/he/she says is also &#39;trapped&#39;, and can thus be ignored.
If you/he/she broke free of this &#39;web&#39;, so you/he/she could deliver the good news, tell us how you/he/she did it.
Don&#39;t ask me; I didn&#39;t do it :) I once read this guy who claimed to have transcendend duality, and that no one else had. He didn&#39;t seem to spot the contradiction. But philosophers claim to have transcended some common point of view all the time. Your question might as well be: how is it possible to form new ways of seeing? Observing and thinking about what you observe, maybe?
Anyway, this is text is just part of one very obscure absurdist artwork. Camus is probably a much better representative.

Finally, you still have not revealed the identity of the lost soul who wrote this waste of paper.
Now, now. Let&#39;s not be too harsh with&#39;em, shall we? I gave the title of the work at the head of the quote. The writers use a number of outlandish pseudonyms.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IM:


Be wary of arrogance

I am far too perfect to be arrogant&#33; :D


I guess I should repeat that the text suggest that the division true/false is an artifact of human perception-culture.

Once more, is this true?

If it is, it falls into its own trap; if it&#39;s false, we can ignore it.

Obscurantists cannot be allowed to get away with nonsense like this so easily.


Thus your question wether it this statement or any other statement is true is actually meaningless in the absolute sense.

If so, and it is meaningless, how did you manage to understand it to be able to come to that conclusion?

And you will note that nowhere do I use the word "absolute" -- no need to. I need only use boring old ordinary material language.


The suggestion appears to be that we should choose our truths based on other criteria than objectivity, because objectivity does not exist/is unavialable? But that doesn&#39;t solve the infinite recursion, does it?

Again, I did not mention &#39;objectivity&#39;; once more, I do not need to.

Ordinary truth and/or falsehood will do nicely.

And, what &#39;recursion&#39;?


Everyone human, I guess?

So, when did &#39;we&#39; have this meeting to decide to start drawing these misleading &#39;grids&#39; and &#39;windows&#39; -- and what did we use beforehand?


But philosophers claim to have transcended some common point of view all the time. Your question might as well be: how is it possible to form new ways of seeing? Observing and thinking about what you observe, maybe?

Ah, but this is just one more reason to stop listening to these madmen/women.

Wall-to-wall boll*cks.

New ways of seeing?? Do you mean drilling holes in our heads?

Or are you being metaphorical?


Now, now. Let&#39;s not be too harsh with&#39;em, shall we? I gave the title of the work at the head of the quote. The writers use a number of outlandish pseudonyms.

Harsh??

Not harsh enough&#33;

Let me tell you what I&#39;d do with this stuff if I could: follow Hume&#39;s advice and torch the lot&#33;

[Raúl Duke]

I hope none of that is incomprehensible&#33;
Actually, I understood it and it quite resonated with my opinion of philosophy

Especially Marx&#39;s quote:


"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance."

Another reason why I don&#39;t trust philosophy&#33;

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 07, 2007 08:21 am
It is pretty absurd to try and find meaning in a universe that is cold and empty.
Uh could you define "meaning" for me? I have no clue how you are using it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD, I am glad you undertstood it; I was worried since you earlier said you understood neither dialectics nor anti-dialectics.

[Idola Mentis]

Found this blog: http://chaosmarxism.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-on-bob.html

And immediately thought of this thread.


Obscurantists cannot be allowed to get away with nonsense like this so easily.
Agreed. Extra suspicion is warranted - this sort of thing lends itself too well to easy ways out. But I think it&#39;s useful to evaluate ideas which consider forms of obscurity separately. If we immediately discard every idea which incorporate limits to our knowledge, we&#39;d be approcahing obscurantism from the other side. Even basic HDM allows for the fact that we may never have access to all the facts.

I&#39;m not sure if I understand what you mean by saying that ordinary truth/falsehood will do. Seems to me that what absurdism questions is the nature of truth and falsehood. If ordinary truth is not relative, aren&#39;t you implicitly talking about objective truth? If you accept that ordinary truth is socially and historically constructed, you are already a relativist. Unless you can find some way of banishing the arbitrary nature of the relationship between sign and signifier, that position leads straight into absurdism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IM:


Seems to me that what absurdism questions is the nature of truth and falsehood.

It can only do this by hypostatising these terms and then by &#39;questioning&#39; that artificial &#39;idola mentis&#39; of its own.

Ordinary truth and falsehood would, of course, be unscathed by all this.


If ordinary truth is not relative, aren&#39;t you implicitly talking about objective truth?

No. I am not talking about &#39;objective truth&#39; which has nothing to do with ordinary truth and falsehood.


If you accept that ordinary truth is socially and historically constructed, you are already a relativist. Unless you can find some way of banishing the arbitrary nature of the relationship between sign and signifier, that position leads straight into absurdism.

Houses can be constructed, truths not. In that case, I am not a relativist.

[In fact, I am a nothing-at-all-ist (and please do not read this as me being a &#39;nihilist&#39;, a theory I reject too), since I reject all philsophical theories, 100% of them, not 99.9%.]

And I reject this sign/signifier stuff from Saussure, too.

Why?

Well that another story....

[Idola Mentis]

Ordinary truth and falsehood would, of course, be unscathed by all this.
Hard to comment; I can&#39;t figure out what ordinary truth and falsehood is. What separates it from truth arrived at trough scientific methods, or truths arrived at trough discourse?


Houses can be constructed, truths not. In that case, I am not a relativist.
I can&#39;t see why truths, and truth itself, are not subject to the same conditions as any other concept in language?

Aren&#39;t you just running the same hoops as the postmodernists here - even though you reject all philosophy, to do so is unavoidably a philosophical act?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IM:


I can&#39;t figure out what ordinary truth and falsehood is.

Well, you would be dead if that were the case.


What separates it from truth arrived at through scientific methods, or truths arrived at through discourse?

I think the problem is that traditionally (and in general), philosophers decided that if there is a word for &#39;something&#39;, like &#39;truth&#39;, then there must be one thing, or one &#39;essence&#39; to that &#39;thing&#39; which it was their job to find.

Because this isn&#39;t so with anything (except singular terms, like proper names, etc.), others decided there was no such thing.

Few questioned the background assumption upon which this 2500-old year wrong turn depended.

In this case, I&#39;d merely advise you to see how the word is used in different spheres of life.

So scientific truth is not the same as everyday truth, and so on.




I can&#39;t see why truths, and truth itself, are not subject to the same conditions as any other concept in language?

Well, as I noted, there is no such thing as &#39;truth itself&#39; -- except in the fevered imagination of traditional philosophers.

And, the word &#39;truth&#39; cannot be subject to the same sort of conditions as other words, since, in order to decide if a characterisation of anything is correct, one would need to know (in practice -- I am not suggesting in theory&#33;) what &#39;truth&#39; meant.

But truth cannot itself be defined (except under certain restructed circumstances) -- if you do not know what it means, you will not be able to say whether the definition itself is correct, or not; on the other hand if you do know, you will not need a definition of it.

That pre-condition does not apply to other words, as far as I can see.

Of course, as with most things, the situation is far more complex than this suggests, but it does capture a central &#39;truth&#39;, if I might be permitted the use of that word here.


Aren&#39;t you just running the same hoops as the postmodernists here - even though you reject all philosophy, to do so is unavoidably a philosophical act?

No more than to reject capitalism is an act of support for capitalism.

I am not in fact rejecting all philosophy as false, but as far too confused for anyone to be able to tell whether it is true or false ([i]and that this condition is not capable of being fixed).

So, my position is far more radical than PM.

But, I am not rejecting science.

So, it is nothing like PM.