5 ms·

"In a world where 2+2 currently equals 5, who are yee enlightened ones to argue different?" Yells a 'modern' day citizen of "success". For those who feel enlig

"In a world where 2+2 currently equals 5, who are yee enlightened ones to argue different?" Yells a 'modern' day citizen of "success". For those who feel enlightenment still matters, think deeply... Very deeply about the meaning of this.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
I'm not sure that "present-day citizen" and "the New Republic" are exactly congruent. The New Republic faces, itself, the central paradox of the Enlightenment humanist's project: if he succeeds, he abolishes himself by converting humanistic literature into accurate naturalistic and scientific description. Having done so, he is out of a job. Thus the Enlightenment becomes the enemy of the humanist, who must defend his office lest he be pushed around by those awful math nerds.
- astrocyte 11y ago
  Strong words that should be reflected on equally.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Strong words, but also an accurate, if wry, characterization of the official stance of the New Republic[1][2][3]: scientists are awful, and "we" humanists can't go around letting them own the public debate just because they make predictions while "we" ask what silly old things like predictions mean about the nature of the soul anyway. Which is unfortunate, since naturalistic philosophy can be quite good[4]. [1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114172/leon-wieseltier-scientism-and-humanities http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114172/leon-wieseltier-sc... [2] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-scientism http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-re... [3] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112481/darwinist-mob-goes-after-serious-philosopher http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112481/darwinist-mob-goes... [4] http://edge.org/conversation/dennett-on-wieseltier-v-pinker-in-the-new-republic http://edge.org/conversation/dennett-on-wieseltier-v-pinker-...
- pron 11y ago
  I don't think anyone, including Foucault -- actually, especially Foucault who viewed Enlightenment philosophers and even existentialists as essentialists -- would think or want human-related literature to be an "accurate and scientific description". Anyone concerned with the "ought" does not confuse it with the "is", and therefore any scientific description of human society can only be temporary and certainly not normative. If anything, this view is even more associated with opponents of the Enlightenment than with its proponents. The only way the philosopher will be out of a job is if people confine themselves to the notion that society cannot be changed and there's nothing we can aspire to. Since the entire history of the human race empirically disproves this notion (and shows that the chance of people resigning themselves to this idea is very low), the philosopher is unlikely to lose his job. I think pretty much all philosophers warn against the naturalistic fallacy, and even scientists who believe science may assist in making value decisions do not think it can dictate values.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    More on Foucault and the Enlightenment: this essay is a classic http://foucault.info//documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault.whatisenlightenment.en.html http://foucault.info//documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault...
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Excuse me, but this is yet another time at which we must differentiate between naturalist philosophy and non-naturalist. In naturalist philosophy, "ought" statements eventually dissolve into a very specific class of "is" statements. One observes that the universe consists of particles, bits, and joules, and comes up with moral foundations suitable for living life as a human being who is made of particles, bits, and joules. If the universe contained a fundamentally moral component which we could exhibit and manipulate - the same way we can exhibit and manipulate particles, bits, and joules - we would consider that to be basic too. But it doesn't: so moral statements must reduce to non-moral statements. What one does not do is precisely what is done in non-naturalist philosophy, which is to insist that "oughtness" is an ontologically primitive property of certain objects called "moral propositions", which have nothing whatsoever to do with atoms, bits, and joules, and which, despite the non-naturalistic philosopher's inability to exhibit any such thing beyond "Surely torturing puppies is wrong!", are nonetheless considered an essential component of the universe on a level with particles, bits, joules. People have always been all too ready to insist that anything we don't fully understand, but which affects us emotionally, is an irreducible, ontologically primitive component of the fundamental nature of the universe, while anything you can actually exhibit and manipulate is mere gadgetry, used to make smartphones run but otherwise of no account. Problem is, the reverse is true: examining things we can exhibit and manipulate, naturalism, has given us more fruitful and abundant insight into the world and our lives in it than any other approach ever tried. It has taken endless seemingly-disparate phenomena and united them in a single conception of the universe that ties everything from the stars in the heavens to the beat of the human heart in grand threads of causality. When we rely on any fixed and finite system of propositions to describe our universe: ignoramus et ignorabimus. As we learn more and more fundamentally independent propositions and unite our disparate magisteria: wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen! And this will extend to the moral realm as well, so that when we say torturing puppies is wrong, we will know that we are describing a matter of fact.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

I'm not sure that "present-day citizen" and "the New Republic" are exactly congruent. The New Republic faces, itself, the central paradox of the Enlightenment humanist's project: if he succeeds, he abolishes himself by converting humanistic literature into accurate naturalistic and scientific description. Having done so, he is out of a job. Thus the Enlightenment becomes the enemy of the humanist, who must defend his office lest he be pushed around by those awful math nerds.

astrocyte 11y ago
Strong words that should be reflected on equally.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Strong words, but also an accurate, if wry, characterization of the official stance of the New Republic[1][2][3]: scientists are awful, and "we" humanists can't go around letting them own the public debate just because they make predictions while "we" ask what silly old things like predictions mean about the nature of the soul anyway. Which is unfortunate, since naturalistic philosophy can be quite good[4]. [1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114172/leon-wieseltier-scientism-and-humanities http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114172/leon-wieseltier-sc... [2] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-scientism http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-re... [3] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112481/darwinist-mob-goes-after-serious-philosopher http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112481/darwinist-mob-goes... [4] http://edge.org/conversation/dennett-on-wieseltier-v-pinker-in-the-new-republic http://edge.org/conversation/dennett-on-wieseltier-v-pinker-...
pron 11y ago
I don't think anyone, including Foucault -- actually, especially Foucault who viewed Enlightenment philosophers and even existentialists as essentialists -- would think or want human-related literature to be an "accurate and scientific description". Anyone concerned with the "ought" does not confuse it with the "is", and therefore any scientific description of human society can only be temporary and certainly not normative. If anything, this view is even more associated with opponents of the Enlightenment than with its proponents. The only way the philosopher will be out of a job is if people confine themselves to the notion that society cannot be changed and there's nothing we can aspire to. Since the entire history of the human race empirically disproves this notion (and shows that the chance of people resigning themselves to this idea is very low), the philosopher is unlikely to lose his job. I think pretty much all philosophers warn against the naturalistic fallacy, and even scientists who believe science may assist in making value decisions do not think it can dictate values.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  More on Foucault and the Enlightenment: this essay is a classic http://foucault.info//documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault.whatisenlightenment.en.html http://foucault.info//documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault...
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Excuse me, but this is yet another time at which we must differentiate between naturalist philosophy and non-naturalist. In naturalist philosophy, "ought" statements eventually dissolve into a very specific class of "is" statements. One observes that the universe consists of particles, bits, and joules, and comes up with moral foundations suitable for living life as a human being who is made of particles, bits, and joules. If the universe contained a fundamentally moral component which we could exhibit and manipulate - the same way we can exhibit and manipulate particles, bits, and joules - we would consider that to be basic too. But it doesn't: so moral statements must reduce to non-moral statements. What one does not do is precisely what is done in non-naturalist philosophy, which is to insist that "oughtness" is an ontologically primitive property of certain objects called "moral propositions", which have nothing whatsoever to do with atoms, bits, and joules, and which, despite the non-naturalistic philosopher's inability to exhibit any such thing beyond "Surely torturing puppies is wrong!", are nonetheless considered an essential component of the universe on a level with particles, bits, joules. People have always been all too ready to insist that anything we don't fully understand, but which affects us emotionally, is an irreducible, ontologically primitive component of the fundamental nature of the universe, while anything you can actually exhibit and manipulate is mere gadgetry, used to make smartphones run but otherwise of no account. Problem is, the reverse is true: examining things we can exhibit and manipulate, naturalism, has given us more fruitful and abundant insight into the world and our lives in it than any other approach ever tried. It has taken endless seemingly-disparate phenomena and united them in a single conception of the universe that ties everything from the stars in the heavens to the beat of the human heart in grand threads of causality. When we rely on any fixed and finite system of propositions to describe our universe: ignoramus et ignorabimus. As we learn more and more fundamentally independent propositions and unite our disparate magisteria: wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen! And this will extend to the moral realm as well, so that when we say torturing puppies is wrong, we will know that we are describing a matter of fact.