Overview of responses to Paradox and the Dogma of Common and Good Sense: First James S. Saint’s response to 3Sum: “The thing about philosophy is that you can talk about whatever you want, literally, if you at least try to back it up with decent arguments or even just make it look like its backed up with decent arguments.” “Do you call it science if you just make it look like experiments were done? Philosophy is about the actual reasoning, not the rhetoric. And Zenos paradox is resolvable. It just looks like a paradox. It is for people who love to hate logic (and philosophy). A paradox is like magic. It only exists as ignorance.” There are several erroneous assumptions in Jame’s argument. First of all, who here is talking about “science”? The assumption here, of course, is that philosophy should be little more than a sub-division of science when, that is in many circles, the primary role (or the one that distinguishes it) of philosophy must be as check and balance to the excesses and dogma science can fall into especially given its dependent and intimate relationship to Capitalism. There is a role for science in the systems of control and hegemony involved in our present powerstructure. The second erroneous assumption comes from the question of what constitutes “actual reasoning”. I mean psychopaths do a lot of reasoning. Everyone reasons for that matter. This, once again, is one of those abstract buzz terms (like objectivity and the scientific method) that, when actually scrutinized, turn out to be little more than sloganeering: a way of just talking about something without actually showing what they mean. Plus that, I’m a little perplexed as to how it is that Zeno’s paradox has been resolved outside of the point I made about it: “My argument, however, is that paradox tends to work by only utilizing 2 of the 3 ways we can reach understanding: Through the syntactic which is defined by logical formulas: A is B, B is C, therefore A is C. And we can see the limits of this. The next is the semantic which seeks understanding through the meaning of what we say about reality: All mammals reproduce without external eggs; platypuses reproduce through external eggs; therefore, platypuses are not mammals. Once again, we see the failure language, and semantics, in its failure to fully represent the reality it is faced with. Finally, there is the existential approach that deals with reality as a whole but is not as concise as the syntactic or the semantic. “ In other words, in order to resolve the problem, the only thing we can do is stay within the syntactic and semantic and stay completely away from the fuzzy existential. It only fails when it gets out of the domain of logic, that which James claims is why paradox is only for people who “hate logic”. And as logical as this would seem to be, it fails to get out the realm of mental concepts in that it rests on the falsehood of assuming just because people question Logic, and recognize its limits, they somehow hate it. And we can assume that James makes this accusation based on an assumption that the reason they “hate it” is because they’re too lazy, or stupid, to understand it. And the presumptions behind this can be seen in this clip: “It is for people who love to hate logic (and philosophy).” Really? The last I heard, Logic was only one field of exploration in philosophy along with metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, and politics. Once again, all I’m seeing here is a lot of sloganeering and buzz-phrases: a lot of talk with no show. That said, we can move beyond the first 2 approaches to understanding (the syntactic and semantic) with a discourse that emerged between 3Sum, who has gotten so ridiculous as to warrant ignoring with statements such as: “I dont have contempt for philosophy, I pity it because I see it ruined even though it has massive, unused potential. It could be reborn in a more practically useful form.” And: “Im the funniest guy in the world, why wouldnt I laugh at my jokes? Im the best and thats it. If there was a like button on this shitty, maggot infested forum Id like each and every one of my posts because theyre all awesome, just like me. And if you think otherwise youre obviously wrong. Heres me laughing at my funny jokes:” (I think the self indulgence speaks for itself.) And my respected peer, Moreno (an important influence on my process and jam mate). I start w/ 3sum: “Thats a false premise. Its true that MOST mammals reproduce without external eggs, but not all and the platypus isnt the only one mammal which doesnt lay eggs. Youd be better off rewriting it in a form of an inductive argument: Most mammals reproduce without external eggs. Platypus reproduces with external eggs. Platypus is not a mammal. Thats a cogent inductive argument, but nevertheless its still untrue.” To which Moreno responds: “Its not a cogent inductive argument. Its a silly conclusion and a poor argument. Also its an odd use of an inductive argument since it deals with taxonomy, not say, the liklihood of an event. A better version would be to say that a platypus is not likely to be considered a mammal, but that would be in the situation where we just discovered them and were confused by their apparant mixed nature.” In a sense, Moreno, 3sum argues against their selves. It took me several readings before I actually understood this particular argument (starting with my point): “Plus that, paradox seems to be the one thing that science can’t seem to deal with” To which 3sum responds: “Cant deal with? Thats a perfect example of basic physics right there. I hope youre not being serious. I dont find transparent attempts at verbal manipulations such as Zenos arrow paradox impressive, at all.” Once again, it took several readings before I realized what it was that 3sum was getting at: basically the same point I was trying to make. He was basically saying that once you move into the 3rd realm of understanding (the existential) the paradox starts to fail. Of course, the inclusion of the phrase “Can’t deal with it?” threw me off. And that is because 3sum was more interested in debasing me than they were a real or cogent argument. Plus that, they can’t seem to distinguish between a logical and inductive argument. I’m not sure either him or James can since, for them, both logic and induction have that scientific aura about them. And I came up short by focusing mainly on the science of logic when we can see how problems emerge for philosophy when we get into the inductive. You rightly move the argument a little more to the existential and, in the process, recognize the limits involved. But let’s (hopefully) push a little further into the limits of the scientific method, that these guys flash like a badge of authority, and explore the limits of their restrictive assumptions about philosophy. It mainly has to do with the inductive limit. One could easily argue: In order for something to exist, it must be observed. No unicorns have been observed. Therefore, unicorns must not exist. Of course, this argument is based on the assumption that every corner of the universe has been explored. Therefore, the above argument can be countered with: There is every possibility that a unicorn exists in some unobserved corner of the earth or universe. And this argument, because of the semantics involved and the phrasing, would be just as logical (if not more so) than the more dogmatically empirical and logical argument above. This is because it plays with the limits of the syntactic and semantic while appealing to the existential as well –that is in terms of the inductive limit. And in this sense, we see the limits of all three and the import of, in the face of these shortcomings, of looking at all three as tools and not some dominate mode of inquiry. We can play around with all 3 all we want. But no one alone will give us full understanding of the reality we face. I was, perhaps wrong, in just quoting the book I was reading in arguing that paradox is the domain of philosophy. It would have been better to argue that paradox is only a part of the bigger project of philosophy: to deal with the existential overflow: what Lacan referred to as the Real or that which overflows the symbolic order of what we do here. 3sum puts way too much faith in the provability of the premise based on their faith in the inductive method while abusing the formality of the rational one.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 22:12:52 +0000
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