Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Postmodernism and Romanticism
What is Romanicism? It is quite simply the denial of the superiority of Reason. I am a NeoKantian postmodernist. That makes me by definition, a Romantic. I believe that there are defining conceptual arguments contained in the brain at birth. Kant called these arguments, forms. These forms define our existence. To my mind, there are definitely three of these: God, game, and language. All of these preexist experience. I would entertain the notion that Love is a form but I'm not certain of it. The key to a form is that one cannot 'know' it. Therefore, if I am correct, one cannot know God, but one still must behave to His standards. That's difficult. Perhaps occult phenomena are simply a manifestation of God and a confirmation that one's brain is wired correctly. I would also entertain that notion. Be well and do good.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Pragmatism and Postmodernism
Americans are pragmatic, not as devout practitioners of a philosophy, but rather as an aspect of a national personality. We do not love idea for the sake of idea. We love idea for the sake of utility. Plato might have written, 'The Republic'. We created one. We are pragmatists. Pragmatism does not hold dogmatic Truths, only tentative truth. What is is what works. It is a perfect fit for postmodernism. It is a fit so perfect that cultural postmodernism could be said to be an occult codification of pragmatism. There are many manifestations of postmodernism, philosophical, cultural, economic, and political. They differ from each other and internally are not the same for all people. There is no large Truth to them. We all have our personal myths, our truths, that drive our psychological spaces and so our behavior. Do occult phenomena exist? Postmodernism answers, if they do for you. Pragmatism answers, if they do for you and your behavior is successful for you. We cannot ask more of a philosophy than personal success. Be well and do good.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Incommensurable systems and value calculi
Incommensurable systems exist when there is no common measure. Human beings with different genetic makeup, different databases and different histories are to a significant degree incommensurable systems. Yet we communicate. We participate in markets. How is this done?
There are two parts to this phenomenon - coincidence and value calculi. When two incommensurable systems coincide they 'agree' on some aspect of existence. Such coincidence is the precondition for the generation of brokered values, the marketplace, and the creation of an accepted value calculus which represents the values so generated on a relative scale.
Language is a value calculus. So is money. They exist not as common measures but as the representation of values brokered in marketplaces, whether the university or Wall street.
These values are generated in transactions between incommensurable systems which have achieved significant ad hoc coincidence. These transactions describe a market which the value calculus orders.
These concepts are simple yet powerful in their comprehensive scope, in their coherent structure and their universal utility.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
There are two parts to this phenomenon - coincidence and value calculi. When two incommensurable systems coincide they 'agree' on some aspect of existence. Such coincidence is the precondition for the generation of brokered values, the marketplace, and the creation of an accepted value calculus which represents the values so generated on a relative scale.
Language is a value calculus. So is money. They exist not as common measures but as the representation of values brokered in marketplaces, whether the university or Wall street.
These values are generated in transactions between incommensurable systems which have achieved significant ad hoc coincidence. These transactions describe a market which the value calculus orders.
These concepts are simple yet powerful in their comprehensive scope, in their coherent structure and their universal utility.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Friday, November 13, 2009
Instrumentalism and Postmodernism
J.M. here. The single question dividing postmodernism and postmodernist philosophy from the rest of creation is that of instrumentalism.
Instrumentalists believe, in a vast oversimplification, that we do not know reality. We only know our perceptions of it. Taken to the Nth degree, this fairly undeniable fact, tempered with inherited cognitive predispositions, gives rise to the radical position that human thought and reality are incommensurable in the terms of Thomas S. Kuhn. Given his explanation of and exceptions to incommensurability such a position is tenable with only one constraint, probability.
Is a construct a model or a flight of fancy? Is it possible to say something about reality when that reality is disjunct from human thought? The history of observable fact is a picaresque journal of events exhibiting probability constraints. The narrative of thought conserving these observations is punctuated by moments of extreme re-invention of systems of thought. It is not a grand narrative, as documented by Kuhn himself, but, in his words, an evolution and speciation. Any attempt at convergence across disciplines results in that one constraint, probability.
Any attempt at thought in terms of explanation and/or prediction, which is why we think large thoughts, must, in order to conserve the events of our individual lives, reference probability.
Can the occult constructions common to postmodernism and the bizarre constructions of paranoid minds have validity in philosophical argument? Only if they exist as an exception to an expectation of probability within the laws of probability.
'Tunneling', the well known phenomenon predicted by the probabilities of quantum mechanics has been described as 'spooky' by sober physicists. That is case enough to argue that reality really is disjunct from human thought and we cannot 'know' reality and that truth is a probability variable and the occult, as explanation, is simply a reflection of these facts.
Any system of thought that has a significant degree of coincidence with observable facts is explanatory and predictive of that incommensurable reality. If it references probability even as exception then it has validity in postmodern philosophy. We are not talking about Truth as the end result of a Grand Narrative. We are talking, to continue Kuhn's metaphor, of adaptive versus maladaptive behavior. It is not for us to 'say' what is true. It is for us to 'do' what is true.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Instrumentalists believe, in a vast oversimplification, that we do not know reality. We only know our perceptions of it. Taken to the Nth degree, this fairly undeniable fact, tempered with inherited cognitive predispositions, gives rise to the radical position that human thought and reality are incommensurable in the terms of Thomas S. Kuhn. Given his explanation of and exceptions to incommensurability such a position is tenable with only one constraint, probability.
Is a construct a model or a flight of fancy? Is it possible to say something about reality when that reality is disjunct from human thought? The history of observable fact is a picaresque journal of events exhibiting probability constraints. The narrative of thought conserving these observations is punctuated by moments of extreme re-invention of systems of thought. It is not a grand narrative, as documented by Kuhn himself, but, in his words, an evolution and speciation. Any attempt at convergence across disciplines results in that one constraint, probability.
Any attempt at thought in terms of explanation and/or prediction, which is why we think large thoughts, must, in order to conserve the events of our individual lives, reference probability.
Can the occult constructions common to postmodernism and the bizarre constructions of paranoid minds have validity in philosophical argument? Only if they exist as an exception to an expectation of probability within the laws of probability.
'Tunneling', the well known phenomenon predicted by the probabilities of quantum mechanics has been described as 'spooky' by sober physicists. That is case enough to argue that reality really is disjunct from human thought and we cannot 'know' reality and that truth is a probability variable and the occult, as explanation, is simply a reflection of these facts.
Any system of thought that has a significant degree of coincidence with observable facts is explanatory and predictive of that incommensurable reality. If it references probability even as exception then it has validity in postmodern philosophy. We are not talking about Truth as the end result of a Grand Narrative. We are talking, to continue Kuhn's metaphor, of adaptive versus maladaptive behavior. It is not for us to 'say' what is true. It is for us to 'do' what is true.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A Moment's Reflection
For those of us who have a generalist background, who lack a dogmatic loyalty to any political doctrine and who are paying attention to the large picture, there is present in these troubled times a sense that this is a critical moment in Western Civilization.
It is not a radical intrepretation of the history of Western Civilization that when the complexity of the social norm is raised, as the Greeks with mathematics and philosophy, it essentially raises the bar to meaningful participation in one's own society. When people find that the bar is over their heads, their knee jerk reaction is to do the limbo, to be a player in a game that is negatively referential to the social norm. They do this because they find themselves aggressed against by what is represented as civilization. Being the target of social aggression, they exhibit a counter aggression in a sort of psychological self-defense. This is the problem that all political address with the exercise of powers we have come to call counter-insurgency.
This is all comprehensible. What is not particularly comprehensible is the reaction of what we call liberals in Western Civilization, people who honestly care about the dispossessed. Their knee jerk reaction is to raise the bar further as though people doing the limbo to a higher bar would improve their social performance. The net result is that more people are dispossessed, aggression in social behavior is increased and at some level of significance, society endures but civilization is lost.
We have now empowering technology. We have the essential element in the construction of a society of minimal aggression, Game Theory. It will take twenty years for incremental advances in our knowledge of this paradigm to reach a critical mass sufficient to a General Game Theory. Which means we face twenty years of social aggression and counter-insurgency.
We are at a critical moment in Western Civilization, let us behave temperately, rationally and with compassion. It's for all the marbles.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
It is not a radical intrepretation of the history of Western Civilization that when the complexity of the social norm is raised, as the Greeks with mathematics and philosophy, it essentially raises the bar to meaningful participation in one's own society. When people find that the bar is over their heads, their knee jerk reaction is to do the limbo, to be a player in a game that is negatively referential to the social norm. They do this because they find themselves aggressed against by what is represented as civilization. Being the target of social aggression, they exhibit a counter aggression in a sort of psychological self-defense. This is the problem that all political address with the exercise of powers we have come to call counter-insurgency.
This is all comprehensible. What is not particularly comprehensible is the reaction of what we call liberals in Western Civilization, people who honestly care about the dispossessed. Their knee jerk reaction is to raise the bar further as though people doing the limbo to a higher bar would improve their social performance. The net result is that more people are dispossessed, aggression in social behavior is increased and at some level of significance, society endures but civilization is lost.
We have now empowering technology. We have the essential element in the construction of a society of minimal aggression, Game Theory. It will take twenty years for incremental advances in our knowledge of this paradigm to reach a critical mass sufficient to a General Game Theory. Which means we face twenty years of social aggression and counter-insurgency.
We are at a critical moment in Western Civilization, let us behave temperately, rationally and with compassion. It's for all the marbles.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Time goes away and the world with it.
'There is more day to dawn.'
Henry David Thoreau
I can think of very few moments in that memoir and museum we call Western Civilization that is so defining and differentiating as the moment we are now expecting in five years. In that moment, an experimental fusion power reactor will flash into life and a new world will be born.
Costly and difficult in its initial implementation, it will someday power the world and the hybrids the world will drive. I cannot imagine a more momentous occasion in the whole of that lore and lexicon that generates our institutions and values than when that reactor generates its first few kilowatts.
We are twenty years away from a coherent and comprehensive postmodernist model and twenty years away from a first generation of producing fusion power reactors. That is the kind of coincidence that is driven by inspiration and drives large events, such as a new world being born. We are so close to doing that that even a reclusive, provincial Southwestern writer can see it.
It is a huge moment.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.Amazon.com/books
Henry David Thoreau
I can think of very few moments in that memoir and museum we call Western Civilization that is so defining and differentiating as the moment we are now expecting in five years. In that moment, an experimental fusion power reactor will flash into life and a new world will be born.
Costly and difficult in its initial implementation, it will someday power the world and the hybrids the world will drive. I cannot imagine a more momentous occasion in the whole of that lore and lexicon that generates our institutions and values than when that reactor generates its first few kilowatts.
We are twenty years away from a coherent and comprehensive postmodernist model and twenty years away from a first generation of producing fusion power reactors. That is the kind of coincidence that is driven by inspiration and drives large events, such as a new world being born. We are so close to doing that that even a reclusive, provincial Southwestern writer can see it.
It is a huge moment.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.Amazon.com/books
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Taking 'Chances'.
Basil here. I'm enjoying the reactions to a very light and entertaining video trailer for my detective novella, 'Chances', currently available for viewing on my Amazon.com/books display page.
Speaking of 'Chances', I guess it's time again to write a little about the book. It's an entertaining look at the desert Southwest structured around a gritty tale of terrorism and smugglers. The message is that there is meaning in the moment. When someone is searching for meaning, a common pursuit in the dehumanizing machine culture of Modernism, they are searching for a defining moment, an instant of being alive in and to the universe.
I enjoyed writing the book and, judging from the critical comments I've had, it shows. It's written to be read quickly. It's an entertainment for an hour or two, not a hobby. If it interests you, check out the campy video.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Speaking of 'Chances', I guess it's time again to write a little about the book. It's an entertaining look at the desert Southwest structured around a gritty tale of terrorism and smugglers. The message is that there is meaning in the moment. When someone is searching for meaning, a common pursuit in the dehumanizing machine culture of Modernism, they are searching for a defining moment, an instant of being alive in and to the universe.
I enjoyed writing the book and, judging from the critical comments I've had, it shows. It's written to be read quickly. It's an entertainment for an hour or two, not a hobby. If it interests you, check out the campy video.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
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