Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "Carl Benjamin: Starmer's Days Are Numbered. Millions Sign Petition for Another Election" video.
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Bellow is a note to my earlier piece that got removed. I didn't make a copy so i cant repost it with changes. anyway the note to it:
Note: i think once you have a continuum or something that serves this kind of role or function, then all differences are seen as differences of degree, and then of course just how to refer to any point becomes impossible and so you have Dedicand Cut type new approaches to the old problem. (See Russell's "Principles of Mathematics" It's ok its not the "Principia", its a Sunday afternoon read!)
Thing is if all relations are subliminally differentiated and not indicated, then as well as the traditional problem of reference in knowledge, we have the problem of intentional in action. Here the architecture of "Theory" removes the ground condition for action and agency and responsibility. In a way the problem is not how to fit agent responsibility into a continuum number theory, rather the latter removes the ground conditions of the possibility of the former.
Inspired by:
Death of Philosophy: Reference and self Reference (I've only read the free bits on line)
Wolfgang Kluxen "Thomas Aquinas: On what makes an Action Good." in Contemporary German Philosophy Vol 4. (Ed Christensen, Riedel, Spaemann, Wiehl, Wieland)
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Part 1: I'm afraid i cannot rewrite with changes the earlier piece that got removed. It took up the question of a revolution in thought or a paradigm shift. Firstly i made the point that revolutions in thought begin somewhere specific. I mean this is usually a particular place and by a particular person. Back in the Medieval/Renaissance worlds we have a Monastery and or University named and a person. Already there is a modern sounding division of reference: I guess those on the left prefer to refer via the institutions while conservatives prefer to refer to a person. In this sense talk of a Paradigm shift usually focus on shifts in conventions rules and institutions. but also they developed the idea or figure of the charismatic leader as effective too, and the idea of a unifying research program. there is a modern sort of problem here, that we can get he impression that such shifts are a kind of mob rule or dictatorship or totalitarian research program. This produces a kind of idealism with respect to the input form the world, and answerability to the world. It might be that the above versions of paradigm shift are all attempts not to ignore or forget or deflate the role of the world, but to replace that role with something else that goes proxy for this role. eg if we consider that the world must be the source of content, then theory is either seen as derived from the nature as its origin, or that nature provides a constraint to theory. the first view was rejected by criticisms of abstractionism to provide an account of concepts (Geech), the second that empirical content can offer no absolute way to reject a theory (Quine).
McDowell interpreted this issue in terms of concepts or theory spinning "freely" in a void without constraint from the world. This he expressed in Kant's terms of spontaneity of the conceptual. If we take seriously the issue in terms of an analogy of constraint on freedom, then since individuals or science cannot do this, then maybe there can be a Platonic constraint in terms of rules and Rights and justice. The idea is that a certain coherence of theory provides the constraint. In this sense self contradiction or some kind of inconsistency plays the role of limit that was previously held by the world or nature. It is a shift from seeing and expressing the world, to following rules and maintaining consistency. it is shift from a realism to a coherentism. That is the idea of a paradigm shift is itself a radical paradigm shift. We might say from justification to legitimacy. Then of course, the problem in abstractionism from the manifold of sense, means the supporters of coherentism, can just freely pick and choose what ever events they want and even freely choose what aspects of an event to use and deal with and of course ignore and silence. Legal and constitutional and institutional rules along with a unifying idea like Platonic justice and equality.
This is my interpretation of what is going on behind the debate between adherence and conformity to rules and laws of political correctness, verses the "unhelpful" whistle blower or speaker of some unseen fact or truth. The expression of the anomaly to the received view or ideological view. it follows almost logically that the privileged instituional view, will view the anomily as a problem to be defeated or rejected but also that the speaker must also really be part of their own instituional and ideological system. That is the coherentists view this, view both sides in terms of conflicting institutional coherentisms, or conflicting views of legitimacy, and ideolgoy.
Thing is of course now we see lack of coherence and the tolerance of self contradiction and hypocrisy in self reference for who says and what is said has shown that coherence is not a norm of constraint. I did the work for this in the late 2000's and included Agamben, Carl Schmitt and Hanna Arendt and Peter Subter in my discussion.
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Part 2: We can express the problem then in terms of the undetermined manifold of sense and the idea of coherence. But let’s be clear coherence means within a discipline so this is a narrow number of degrees of freedom than we might imagine if we take this image to be cosmologically homogeneous. That is the above abstract manifold/coherence image is not transcendent of any discipline, it is not a meta-structure for all, like a binary origin, rather it features in each discipline and institution in a different way. Different practices and referential instrument focuses and interests ie their sphere of legitimacy and authority. So instead of problems of a Platonic meta unity for all the disciplines, we have instead the problem of commensurably between disciplines in terms of translation or interpretation between disciplines or for the left information exchange. Indeed, the left have tried to create both a meta unifier in terms of regulations over institutions, and the formation of networks between disciplines (interdisciplinary work). Such networks are not driven by the exchange of information epistemologically but for the purpose of public policy in the real world that has to work with several disciplines together to be effective. In this the root to a pragmatic theory of success becomes privileged over truth. In this sense it is both the imposition of political correct regulations for all and a pragmatic criteria of targets, that has replaced the older view of empirical justified content and theoretical constancy. The regulations make sense if you think that social agreement and/or mob rule shape what is content. It’s not that political correctness is in conflict with truth, rather this is a shift to evaluating content in terms of project outcomes as legitimacy. Any so called single person unhelpful speaker of a truth must be part of a whole different and opposed political, project aim.
Thus much of the conflicts here are in a way talking at cross purposes, and each attempts to categorise the other as a deficiency of their own view, rather than understand the radial differences here. Clearly the disciplines and the sciences contents, are not treated by actors in institutions really as facts or falsehoods but as project helpful or unhelpful. I just don’t think science is in the game of trying to understand nature, rather it’s in the game of how to use and for what. Indeed how this works is by media giving example of sense in action and success against say belief in a Flat Earth, but then this is used as a bad analogy for wholly different sorts of activities called science. It begin though at school, with say lesson one on maths where its obvious what correct and incorrect mans and then lesson tow on political correctness say is made analogous to this. Indeed in the real world of legitimacy we have a manifold of bad analogies instead of attempts at coherence or truth, interpretation or translation. In this sense then the modern world has taken science back to a late medieval early renaissance context, in which rhetoric from Cicero holds sway. Rhetoric uses manifold, analogies and so does science. The two have become blurred we might say by analogy.
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Part 3: Certainly the debate over “elected dyeing” in the House of Commons, involved a manifold use of bad analogy’s, and the sciences the law and the institutions are all in the fray too, they are not a foundations at all. Also interesting was the wide use of first and second person cases and experiences. This has the rhetorical effect of drawing in various ethical and moral attitudes of the debaters. When assailed with stories of pain and suffering “a person ought to show sympathy” is the tacit ethic here, even if it is used to then equivocate to the same in a wholly different institutional context. Indeed along with the above paradigm shift from individuals with justification and agreement on an event, to institutions of legitimacy and compliance, we have radical shifts in the roles of ethics morality and virtues and vices. Quickly such differences are used to describe the other as a deficiency of their own and to use morality, ethics, virtue and vice as a tool.
The Renaissance focus on rhetoric seems to have outrun the focus of truth as opposed to dogma. In this analogy is an internal to the coherence science not an bit of add on political machination to pure scientific truth. But I think the logic and metaphysic of analogy from the Scholastic critics of Renaissance Humanism, shows us that the whole modernist tradition rest on an analogy of foundations in logic of subsumption of species genus type and kind. I hope to show that in Thomas de Vio “Cajetan” (1468-1534) we have the view that analogy operates also as a logical structure of foundations: that is the logic of subsumption of things subsumed have something in common has fist became as kind of matter or prime substance, but then in our own day as above this ground was replaced by Humanist Rights law. Thus it is really at root an analogy too. I hope to run this (from Fredrick Copleston, S.J. “A History of Philosophy Vol. III” Scholasticism of the Renaissance Ch. XXI) through discussions of essences in the 20th century (by Patricia Hanna and Bernard Harrison “Word and World”) in the later discussion of John McDowell the emphasis is on Bilder or acculturation. So we see a strange constancy that those critical of institutionalism emphasize the family and community, while those of the left public educational institutions. Indeed the left first baptise the family as an institution by analogy with institutions and social structural anthropology, and then think they have the right legitimacy authority and scope to improve the institution as they would any public institution.
I have an analogy I heard over Halloween: The bodies 6 feet under in a grave yard actually move over time in relation to their grave stones.
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Part B1: Carl Benjamin outlines the failings of the liberal philosophy to "work" by its own principles i agree. I grasp the nettle here and say Marx was correct about this. Some hundred or so years later we get the exceptional State totalitarianism, that fails though not necessarily in a way that is without excuses. I mean they took the Criticisms of it, as definitional, as racist, but expressed say as violations of Human Rights and the rule of law, and then from the 1960's the French left realised they could use these criticisms as tools to take liberalism from the Hitler/Stalin archetypes of the State straight to Trotsky. That is international socialism first. Once you have the legal expression as functionally usful definition, you can create substantively the same thing, but at the same time it can claim anti totalitarianism its base. You need to train a population of people to primarily think deductively scientifically and legal like this to get consent. They added in our recent time, a turn to subjectivity, and another dramatic world event of the pandemic to erase the collapse of liberalism and its definitional excuse, turn (in internal terms) to social justice. the thing common to all this are the middle classes. Those on the left, on liberalism, made a false analogy between Prince Leopold and the "super rich" or the corporations and so on. I means Leopold had to work though systems but he was the actor and had the intent. in a way because the left think in terms of functional/substantive equivalence they could claim this without worries about intention and responsibility. there was a debate over N**I sometime ago was it Hitler or the system. Again this question is an ideological divider. Also there was the question of original intention verse gradual degeneration. I guess now this could be an ideological divider question. Maybe for our time the later question is more relevant.
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