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Episteme is always political once it gets societal acceptance and there is little difference between it and doxa. Techné is what actually does all the work and

Episteme is always political once it gets societal acceptance and there is little difference between it and doxa. Techné is what actually does all the work and though you can find how to do it through episteme or doxa, it does not actually depend on them -- it does not matter what you believe as long as you know how to do something. At the end of the day humans really only have techné, everything else is political... and it's also obvious that the political is generally dysfunctional scientifically -- i.e. inability to manage stability of the environment through science... and also scientifically managing the political is fascist or totalitarian. We get stuck with a set of choices that don't lead to good outcomes... maybe can never lead to good outcomes.

voidhorse 8y ago
If you dig into some Philosophy of Technology you'll find that Techne, too, is often highly politicized and not easily separable from the knowledge or outcomes it is devised to produce. Techne is already political to the extent that it needs a motivation to get going in the first place--it's really impossible to think of technology's social effects in a way that is not informed by historical materialism. The hows are necessarily coupled with the whys and the belief systems behind them, especially when you consider the fact that in many cases there are multiple ways of getting things done, and the selection of one of these over the others comes down to value judgements (e.g. consider how many technical possibilities are deemed unsatisfactory because of exorbitant costs, this is the manifestation of a value judgement that places finances above other considerations that factor into a particular issue such as e.g. in some cases thoroughness or safety). Not to mention the whole field of techniques that don't make sense divorced from an epistemic context (e.g. the technicalities of performing a ritual sacrifice are partly determined by the belief system backing them--remove this belief system or exchange it with another and there's no way to even make sense of the practice as a technique. I.e. under the ancient greek religious system the procedure of visiting an oracle to glean information was technical and important. Within the context of modern beliefs such a procedure seems patently ridiculous, but it wasn't for the Greeks, and the deployment of the technique still had significant effects and consequences, and produced results in spite of its patent preposterousness from our modern day epistemic viewpoint). Some of Robert Moses's schemes are a great example. Consider, for instance, how he hoped to deny whole segments of the population in NY access to his parks by making overpasses en route to the spaces too low for buses (which serval poor folks relied on to get around) to travel under. The application of technology and techniques is fundamentally entangled with the wills of the subjects employing said techniques. I'd go as far as to say human life is inherently "political" in all its aspects. You can't really live and not be politicized in some way--the really baad state to be in is to be unconscious of the political implications of the way you live, which primes you for manipulation by parties that are more 'in the know'. This idea that certain realms of life are free from political influence or external factors doesn't really have any representatives in the real world. I think people often confuse our ability to treat something abstractly and divorced from the concrete situation of present reality with the ontological claim that said thing itself is abstract and can be wholly treated and solved in an abstract manner. That doesn't even hold in the case of a domain as fundamentally abstract as algorithmic time analysis, in which the concrete inputs have a direct impact on the performance of algorithms. In the jargon of historical materialist philosophy such a process is sometimes called reification--thinking the abstract representation of a concept is the thing itself, ignoring all its concrete manifestations. This leads to certain errors. E.g. thinking we can solve problems with schooling in a particular district without having to look at other issues, such as the population dispersion, the distribution of finances, the district's layout, etc. etc. We have to be vigilant of 'nounifying' abstractions and keep in mind that they are the products of thought and a helpful intellectual tool, and means of orienting and structuring the world, not latent realities.
marcosdumay 8y ago
Technical capabilities strongly interact with politics. It's not unusual for people to deny a problem with full strength and suddenly accept it after somebody comes with a desirable solution (see climate change). Dialog techniques (including propaganda and communication media) have a great impact on ideas. Success breeds trusting, even on unrelated issues. At the end of the day, as usual, those things aren't as much independent entities as classical ideas leads one to believe.

voidhorse 8y ago

If you dig into some Philosophy of Technology you'll find that Techne, too, is often highly politicized and not easily separable from the knowledge or outcomes it is devised to produce. Techne is already political to the extent that it needs a motivation to get going in the first place--it's really impossible to think of technology's social effects in a way that is not informed by historical materialism. The hows are necessarily coupled with the whys and the belief systems behind them, especially when you consider the fact that in many cases there are multiple ways of getting things done, and the selection of one of these over the others comes down to value judgements (e.g. consider how many technical possibilities are deemed unsatisfactory because of exorbitant costs, this is the manifestation of a value judgement that places finances above other considerations that factor into a particular issue such as e.g. in some cases thoroughness or safety). Not to mention the whole field of techniques that don't make sense divorced from an epistemic context (e.g. the technicalities of performing a ritual sacrifice are partly determined by the belief system backing them--remove this belief system or exchange it with another and there's no way to even make sense of the practice as a technique. I.e. under the ancient greek religious system the procedure of visiting an oracle to glean information was technical and important. Within the context of modern beliefs such a procedure seems patently ridiculous, but it wasn't for the Greeks, and the deployment of the technique still had significant effects and consequences, and produced results in spite of its patent preposterousness from our modern day epistemic viewpoint). Some of Robert Moses's schemes are a great example. Consider, for instance, how he hoped to deny whole segments of the population in NY access to his parks by making overpasses en route to the spaces too low for buses (which serval poor folks relied on to get around) to travel under. The application of technology and techniques is fundamentally entangled with the wills of the subjects employing said techniques. I'd go as far as to say human life is inherently "political" in all its aspects. You can't really live and not be politicized in some way--the really baad state to be in is to be unconscious of the political implications of the way you live, which primes you for manipulation by parties that are more 'in the know'. This idea that certain realms of life are free from political influence or external factors doesn't really have any representatives in the real world. I think people often confuse our ability to treat something abstractly and divorced from the concrete situation of present reality with the ontological claim that said thing itself is abstract and can be wholly treated and solved in an abstract manner. That doesn't even hold in the case of a domain as fundamentally abstract as algorithmic time analysis, in which the concrete inputs have a direct impact on the performance of algorithms. In the jargon of historical materialist philosophy such a process is sometimes called reification--thinking the abstract representation of a concept is the thing itself, ignoring all its concrete manifestations. This leads to certain errors. E.g. thinking we can solve problems with schooling in a particular district without having to look at other issues, such as the population dispersion, the distribution of finances, the district's layout, etc. etc. We have to be vigilant of 'nounifying' abstractions and keep in mind that they are the products of thought and a helpful intellectual tool, and means of orienting and structuring the world, not latent realities.

marcosdumay 8y ago

Technical capabilities strongly interact with politics. It's not unusual for people to deny a problem with full strength and suddenly accept it after somebody comes with a desirable solution (see climate change). Dialog techniques (including propaganda and communication media) have a great impact on ideas. Success breeds trusting, even on unrelated issues. At the end of the day, as usual, those things aren't as much independent entities as classical ideas leads one to believe.