Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "75% of Britons Fear Speaking Out. Anti-White Hate Speech is Permitted." video.
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Part B1: Look all this philosophy stuff is my problem at the moment. I see you have interviewed Carl Benjamin at some point, he knows about this sort of stuff, and is more than capable of assessing and critiquing my arguments when hopefully I have finished, and can put them into some kind of a comprehensible form. Its very abstract and its meaning and the arguments are locked into complex philosophical debates in the 20th century. There is much "shadow boxing" going on, that is much of the debates are found straggled across many different papers by many different philosophers. Its shadow boxing because is not always clear why they make the moves they do when reading papers written some 70 years ago. That is any pawers must be read with several others that were in play at the time ie we must reconstruct the argument's context from within among many papers. This means interpreting a paper is much like the constructions of conspiracy theorists ie everything is connected, the question is how and why.
In a very broad sense then i am seeking the place of "the human being" in all this. That question today is very much about the place of the human within modern science technology and law i include instituional innovations, like the beurocracy of conscription, as a technology in this I follow Philip Bobbitt.
In my work in this some years ago i came across a book about the experience of war, that is written by a soldier who was also a philosopher. It is meant to be the best book on this written. A quote on the back cover reads "War reveals dimensions of human nature both above and bellow the acceptable standards of humanity". The book is: "The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle" by J. Glenn Gray (1959/1967/1970 and University of Nebraska Press (Bison Books 1998). It has an introduction by Hannah Arendt, who is one the the major political philosophers of the 20th century.
So to start with Peter Geach, it seems to me he wants to distance the humna from what he calls the "re-description" of man by scientific psychology. We might say the reduction of man to the idea of a complete causal nexus of scientific description and explanation, which makes man entirely subject to causal effects from outside. later by others this will be expressed in the tradition from Hobbes as the "representation" of man as a self interested being, and since these are external causes then man does not exist as "self determined" making a determination from himself, against external relations that can determine him. Thus in this scientific picture, man is wholly an object (in Kant's sense) subjected to causal psychological technology from elsewhere. Catch is of course the psychologists and scientists and technologists are themselves only ever subject to causal forces external to them. Eg they might complain that their patent is trying to manipulate them, by applying "mindfulness" and cognitive behavioural analysis and technologies the psychologist has taught them. Of course why a patent might do this they claim is due to self interest and does not involve any normative or just or legitimate reason like "the psychologist must be subject to their own laws and science and technology" by the patent. A kind of version of the social contract, where the sovereign is, must be, subject to their own rules. the line is drawn between agent and patent, sovereign and subject, station and duty and authority verses subjects consent (and for Onora O'Neil all this presupposes trust because the science is to complex for the patent to understand an use effectively so "informed consent is lacking in full legitimacy to the authority. So you see how this problem of man and science has a certain similar metaphysical shape to the idea of a political social contract between sovereign and subject in consenting and legitimising "to be ruled". The problem is if the science is causal psychological, then the very same science can be used to manipulate consent for anything, including paradoxically and self referentially the consent to the very science doing the manipulating. (this may be similar to Chomsky's meaning by "manufacturing consent" but I'm not sure)
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Part B3: Now what interested Geach was what the above two parallel poles of the cosmology, make human reasoning and judgment look like, as a psychological reflex with reason as self-interested and obligation to follow the law as only due to the threat of force by other organised self-interested groups mediated by an institution. Here Geach wants to show that human reasoning is not well described as mealy reasons for following the law. He uses a mixture of logically and philosophy of language and mind. In this context then he wants to show that truth functional logic, Kant’s “General Logic” and Davidson truth functional “coherence theory of truth”, just fail to describe language structure and reasoning and so is wrong. In a way he making a distinction between how language and reason works in instituional legal settings, and how ordinary language of peoples and their reason work. So he is trying to demarcate a kind of instituional language and reason from real human ordinary language and reason, so the latter is not captured and manipulated by the former.
So Geach is if you like viewing the political cosmology as two poles: psychology of man and truth functional reason, and then like taking a bridge, you normally attack it from both sides at once. Bizarre as it may sound Geach then can be seen as a friend to whistle blowers in grounding there ability and content of reason beyond the sciences of psychology and laws and institutions. (note we can think of computers and instituional computer technology AI as truth functional or general logics.)
What I think can be gotten from this is that the political reduction of everybody else’s position and reasons as only self-interested and reflecting bias can be rejected (I have my own arguments here) and the idea that any kind of consistent reasons can be maintained if all the subjects and instituional actors are using is General logic and tactics and friend enemy distinctions. Indeed I began with this approach to answer the question: why does science and institutional political reasons for action result in having to either abandon the full scope of truth, or hold two contradictory views at the same time. This being difficult to do might explain completely why politics always tries to silence some people, or in the media just to ignore the troublesome events as if they don’t exist beyond their media representation.
I am using Geach as part of a diagnostic tool for what has gone wrong with contemporary politics. that jsut accuses opponents of self interest in all their reason giving, and uses tactical reason (instrumental reason) to justify policy which results in contradictions that need silencing and a media that ignores anomalous events to there contradictory political reasons and aims.
Like Hanna Arendt, but in a very different way then, I see this as a modernised version of Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment?". I'm afraid I must confess, i am no where near the abilities of Arendt or Kant, not in the galaxy even, but going to have a go any way out of hubris and pride, with the free use of a self contradiction and hypocrisy. I mean everybody is doing it now, but i want to "better" than them.
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Note to B
I wrote above that understanding 20th century analytical philosophy is about understanding a philosophical paper in its context, because the papers are mostly responses to other papers and so on. So I said interpretation is a similar act to how people construct conspiracy theories by making connections. the connections are not arbitrary, indeed already there are many books written by others that make there own connections, but hat is not closed, rather it is open for anyone to make new connections too if they are reasonable. The books that construct standard connections can teach us how to connect bits but then we might come to disagree with, or add to, the actual connections made in the book and so want to make our own.
The difference between a conspiracy theory and this kind of modern philosophy though is its substantive content is open to view. That is from Wittgenstein "nothing is hidden". The papers lead us back to our own language use, not to some hidden reality behind a veil. So rather than seeking some new scientific knowledge or discovery, it is reflection on how we use language and what we are meaning. For me this contrasts with what we might describe as the workings of language in burocracies. So there is much work contrasting how we ordinarily use language and reason with how buracraceis use language. One way to "show" the difference between these two is to compare the kinds of error both might make. So i might mistake the address on a xmas card and send the wrong xmas card to the wrong friend or family member. A burocracy with rules and machines computers can errors but not in the same way. The logic and content of a burocracy is different to ordinary language and further: seeks to replace the later with the former. This has been described as the attempt by them to construct a perfect language to replace our ordinary language.
Here is an example by Peter Geach from the online Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on "Negation":
Starting with a quote from Wittgenstein from his "Philosophical Investigations":
According to Wittgenstein (1953, §447), “the feeling is as if the negation of a proposition had to make it true in a certain sense in order to negate it”.
and further back with Aquinas in 13th century:
"The affirmative enunciation is prior to the negative for three reasons… With respect to vocal sound, affirmative enunciation is prior to negative because it is simpler, for the negative enunciation adds a negative particle to the affirmative. With respect to thought, the affirmative enunciation, which signifies composition by the intellect, is prior to the negative, which signifies division… With respect to the thing, the affirmative enunciation, which signifies to be, is prior to the negative, which signifies not to be, as the having of something is naturally prior to the privation of it." (St. Thomas, Book I, Lesson XIII, cited in Oesterle 1962, 64)
and even further back to Aristotle:
"The affirmative proposition is prior to and better known than the negative (since affirmation explains denial just as being is prior to not-being)" (Metaphysics 996b14–16)
"There is, as a kind of orthodox view, a thesis defended by Frege (1919) and Geach (1965), namely that denying A is the same as asserting A’s negation. This view implies what Ripley (2011b, 623) calls the denial equivalence: that to assert the negation of a content A is equivalent, in its conversational effects and commitments carried, to denying A.
Thus we can see that even an accusation eg "That p" by a burocracy or another person, that is proved false does not return us to zero, but only to "P not proven". "not p" is not nothing but the assertion of a sense or meaning with the denial of some reference. it is then interesting to compare burocracies doing this to people doing this. These philosophical investigations work with what it open to view in burocraceis and our ordinary use of language.
Incidentally Wittgenstein who is credited with starting this kind of philosophy off was big fan of American Pulp Fiction Crime novalas particularly Norbert Davis.
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Part B2: On the other opposite end of the human cosmology then is the idea of institutions and rules and laws. These are meat as a kind of scheme framing a sue generic posit of man as self-interested. That man “is” self-interested saddled with only what used to be called the vices of pride and hubris in abstraction from their context of Aristotle’s virtues, and so a vice is a self-standing name or general term. In this then rules and laws both limits self interest externally, to the subject, but also afford a frame or structure for action in the world within the law and though and by virtue of the law. The cosmological shape of this is at once that man has consented to these laws he is both subject to as limit, and allows his affordance. This gives the impression of the laws as the product of convention and agreement if not in the past as a real convention, then in present as one we are either obliged or under an obligation to follow by consent or threat of force. This of course means questioning the law is its self speech act that requires the very law for it public performance as a speech to the political realm. This means the speech cannot be thought of as just a natural event of the speaker but as one within the structures of public and private speech or the categorical distinction between the private and the public realm. Maybe think that a individual speaker can only really be public from within the media systems and so from within the laws that limit and constitute and determine the possibility of a public speech. Again it seems kind of paradoxical that we can only critique the laws and rule from within and by the sue of the laws and rules.
One way this paradox is expressed by the left generally is that the rules are conventions, and so were once agreed on by its subjects to constrain themselves externally ie not by character alone, but then 1. The rules are seen as removable revisable or changeable from within the system. This can be done as policy voted for in an election or as various tactics and strategies of speaking out or whistle blowing or lobbying by individuals and or favoured institutions such as charities. The question is by what criteria do we change or make laws that bind and afford for us. That is a question of laws legitimacy, Hanna Arendt’s central political philosophical problem I would say. Now we might stick with the scientific picture of man and its cosmology, so then consent and legitimacy is really down to self interest or grouped self interest , ie that political life is already made up of groups of people, of various kinds natural and constructed (internal v external relations perhaps) groups. But that means the group is only the aggregations of self-interests which means really the whole business of consent and legitimacy is rooted in self interest and so the psycho social description of man as such.
The left in this though wanted to ground the revision of laws and conventions in Justice not just self interest. This raises more questions also addressed by Arendt and Derrida and so on. It as old as Socrates/Plato walking out from the Pariaha “is the law or what is called justice really the rule of the powerful and their self-interest in disguise” (translation modified).
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