Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "How Islamists Influence u0026 Infiltrate the British Government. Connor Tomlinson" video.
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There is a type of isomorphism between the logical semantic structure of process of governance and of legitimacy, and the logical semantic structure of sciences of process of confirmation or justification.
The synergy is at the level of early to mid 20th Century Analytical Philosophy logic and semantics. Analytical logic and semantics is explicitly related to justification in the sciences. eg Carnap and Quine logical positivism and post logical positivism launched a radical program in the Philosophy of Science, originally away from questions of ontology in the sciences and towards the structure of theory in science, or methodology. It was later called the logical reconstruction of science, and sought at once to find a single logical semantic structure for all the different sciences and so demarcate science from non science by this method. It also meant that the history of science was itself exterior and subservient to this structure: that is history itself ought to follow this method, ie conform to this structure in its explanations (Hemple ), and that the psychology or otherwise of great scientist is also subservient to this structural method in its explanations. Where when and who makes a discovery then is of only secondary curiosity for science, the structure of theory and evidence, is prior, and curiosity about social psychological origins its self must conform to the logical semantic structure. They said it this way: the primary distinction is between the privileging of the context (structure) of confirmation, over the context of discovery.
Now while their writings in this period between the two world wars, centred in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, appear to be primarily concerned with mathematics and logic in the natural physical sciences, it is clear that many had active political and economic intentions. Some were Socialists some were liberals, but the massive emphasis on probability theory suggests economics and its scientific methods were a major focus, and i suggest so was political instituional governance. In this regard the logical mathematical methods they used were transformed from a static or synchronic structure, to a dynamic process by Turing. I used to know very well someone who worked in this area of development in computing for the State from the mid 1950's to the 1980's. Even in the late 1960's it was clear that the primary application of computing was the synthesis and application of population data to policy. In the early 1970's they said every home will have computer and much of our lives will be mediated by them. I remember for years and years they had a book shelf with only one book "Data Processing".
Now the post modern left from 1968 switched over to a Critique of the State and its systems. I believe in France they were ahead with the early internet. This political critique was directed at "binary logic", "bivalence", disjunctives, and True and False. They inaugurated a differential material and gradual process of political entry and revolution that first disrupts the logical semantic bivalence's or binaries eg Deleuze, but then once in power they re-establish their own binaries eg Derrida. The process of the application of binary policy, is "disrupted" by a revolutionary process, but then a new version of the binary process is applied by them.
This opens up a question: How are these two process related. Now for Foucault this is a practical tactical and strategic question for actors and performers on the ground, given who they are and when and where they are. But this is not an answer. Its the question of the relations between the legitimate State system and an orthogonal action on and in it. The revolutionary actors have to claim the State is illegitimate or just de facto, and that they can change this de facto to a de jure State, usually now its based in super public international human rights and Justice critique, along with sub public, private expressions of critique. The State on the other hand has to make the reverse claim.
This suggests to me that whereas States would emphasise the "context of confirmation" in science and political legitimacy, revolutionaries will emphasise the context of discovery in science and political legitimacy. This means what is de facto and de jure are opposite for the State and Revolutionaries. It also means that the old Humeian view of separating questions of fact from value in science eg is and ought misconstrues that Kuhn's "normal science" verses "revolutionary science" is not already a political distinction. Science is in its very structure of practice is already politically orientated and so the type of practice is value laden.
Science far from being a neutral method for knowledge and action, is already under a prior political moral ethical decision, in how and what it investigated. Different methods correspond to different approaches to politics. In this sense there is no value or ideological neutral science or method. Indeed it seems to me increasingly that the "use" of science is not taken up as constrained within a public duty, and so rather than separating out or constraining the personal, social, psychological, dispositions and proclivities of its practitioners, science in its deep institutional logic and semantics is a mere method for its practitioners to project and act out on mass and at an anonymous distance there private vices and prejudices. We might consider this a de facto entry into a de jure system but, they consider it a de jure entry into a de facto system. Of course responsibility and anonymity is a structural problem for both. It is in the anonymity of State actors in the wider apparatus than parliament, and the anonymity of masked revolutionaries. Of course these are usually opposed anonymity each being the excuse for the other, but that is until the revolutionary win. Then they are both masked and hidden in the State apparatus they now control.
Most of the logical positivists left when H*tl*r came to power in 1933.
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Note 1: The Bradley Regress: So we can imagine a contract between two people. Is this an abstraction already? Well we might go down the ethical path and so introduce Character Terms i.e. virtues and vices as adverbs to the act or adverbs in the act. Then we say the contract presupposes certain character of or in both parties. But this has to be known by both parties, ie they both can only rationally make the contract if each have knowledge of the other's character. But each also must have knowledge of their own characters too. Traditionally then, this involves a mutual proximate acquaintance of both. We might say this is knowledge of each other and their own character. Aristotle says then this must also presuppose time or temporality, as well as proximality ie space or place. The parties to the contract then must each be fraught with certain virtues. such as trust worthiness and its seems knowledge of this. Aristotle says they must have shared "pitcher of salt" ie lots of meals together. Now the vices here untrustworthiness and also pride and hubris cannot accommodate then this as a rational contract. It then might be better to call this a promise. It might seem that the promise is a constraint or limit on each agents subsequent freedom. But this might then, make us think the state of each agent prior to the promise is a wider or even absolute freedom. We might say each can be fully engaged in pride and hubris (Being in self interest) prior to the promise and the promise alone shifts both from pride to trust Trust then as negative limit to each parties original freedom.
This is strange however because it is hard to imagine how two people in pride hubris can ever sit together for even the first shared meal. You know is the "Flagon with the Dragon" the "brew that is true" (Danny Kay "The Court Jester"). I heard they say cheers and exchange drinks. Others might say it requires an act of faith of blind trust. We say each needs a doctor to do a scientific test of the wine. Or they get some Knave to sample the meal first. But of course this jsut sets up a doubling repeat of the problem. Now each party has to trust the doctor or knave, and so we need another doctor to test the doctor and so on. We are in a Bradley Regress and the temptation is to find a halter, a foundation, the perfectly virtuous doctor, a knave who is not threatened that if he doesn't his family will suffer. The absolutely unconditioned knave.
Now in a way the role of blind faith or trust at the start is also doing the work of the absolute knave doctor. Instead of a halter it’s a starter.
Now it may be that these impossible searches for foundations and the unconditioned, the infinite dialects of the promise, is due to an error in the original representation of the problem. Approaching this via term of knowledge ie knowledge of others and one’s self character is the wrong picture here. Indeed would ethics be removed from the picture if it’s just about knowledge and a foundation/halter. That is once we are in the orientation of the problem as akin or reduced to knowledge, we are not “in” the ethical but the clever, the calculating etc. The Bradley Regress here appears because we have attempted a non-ethical account. Making and Keeping promises is not ethical its calculative. We may think we need a third person here really as in a knowledge role eg as in dependent judge on whether the promise has been kept. But of course this sets up a Bradley Regress about both parties agreeing to the same mediator and unconditioned and independent. But also if we begin with an ontology of self interest then surely the judge must either allows punishment for promise breaking by the judge or the wronged party. Thus the Bradley Regress is in contracts and the law too. A absolute mediator the United Nations, along with an absolute force is required but this presupposes the unconditioned and the parties knowledge of this which is impossible. Law and politics begins with some de jure object to mediate the de facto states of the parties. We might think of the punishment in a different way. That it is not external to the party to be punished but must necessarily be connected to an original intrinsic vulnerability. That is the starting ontology of self interest and freedom has abstracted from the context that self-interest is not a given. Even self interest has its condition, eg you can be less than self-interested i.e. dead from the meal you ate the day before. This must mean the ontology is flawed because its posit of absolute self interest and absolute freedom as original is just wrong. If there is a prior conditionality then self interest is not unlimited freedom but involves a prior endowment, a gift we might say, or a state of already “being-in-a-promise-with-others”. We might get anew regress for a foundation like gift or debt to be repaid or prior promise to be kept. Thus the promise between two people can be said to require already the keeping of the promise that is the state of the parties before during and after this present promise. Clearly there is already a limit on freedom built into existence, that the present promise must respect as a prior limit to freedom to make a new promise, and as a possible target for punishment if the present promise is later is broken. The punishment then is not something separate from the original state but rather repeats the real vulnerability and condition of each party prior to the promise. We might say with modern liberals that the punishment is that no new promises can be made cos they have no ground in trust to be kept.
But what happen when we realise both parties are originally in a state of vulnerability and conditionality and limited freedom bound to prior promises. My mate years ago put it like this: “the model of absolute freedom and self-interest as original prior to the promise is as if each party were dead and then the promise brought them to life”.
This Bradely Regress is there in legal models for this also talking about rights and freedoms and a third mediator the law between the parties. We quickly end up with the myth of an absolute un conditioned law like International Human Rights Law. But the above problems just reappear.
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Note 2 Now this is already a problem with two parties in abstraction but of course while it is possible that each party before the promise is only in a prior promise with the party in the present, if we think that each party is in a prior promise with other third and fourth person like doctors role earlier, we now have a three and four body problem. And this is intractable to reason. They will be in intractable relations and networks and reason from self interest will be impossible as no one can see where the past relations end and new ones begin it’s a complex nexus topology not a field of relations. Bradley said then the relations view of ontology plus relations is wrong. This the world of the Thirty Years War.
For Aristotle, I think, drawing on John McDowell , we are not in an ontology of vice, vice is in a semantic continuum with its close virtue and its opposite vice and other vices and virtues. A virtue is between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. Vice is not an ontology. We have erred in an abstraction from the context of full character. How have we errored? We think we have a knowledge type problem, but it’s not a knowledge type problem. Character and virtues are adverbs to actions. Even if we can leave them out of a sentence they are their covertly.
In knowledge people forget that there is a prior non removal intentionality or directedness to an object by a subject. We think this might be a relation and even contingent ie that we have knowledge with intentionality but this is reflex. Even knowledge presupposes intentionality, thus its quite wrong to talk of knowledge of intentionality. We can have ontic knowledge of risk and vulnerability eg subject to errors of various kinds but of course if this was understood as complete knowledge of intentionality, it would have to be a relation between Being and Nothing, it’s a bit existentialism but you cannot have intentional to nothing, the nothing here would be when there is no intentionality at all. Being and conditionality already with Being, and this is not really knowledge at all. Vulnerability here means conditionality thought of as error or bias, and its must be an original bias. Now this view is the familiar view of erred/biased intentionality, but now the bias is built into the intentionality, just as prior conditionality vulnerability, is built into all actions. The thing is we conceive of knowledge as if it can remove the knower from the picture ie knowledge without conditions. Knowledge without a knower, Knowing without knowing about knowing, kind of like the Gettier problem but not that there is a transcendent truth to justification but that there is a transcendent knower that cannot be known. We might have a go at his self-knowledge, and other will critique our claims with this knowledge of the others knowing. “To see what condition my condition is in”.
This approach came to from watching the first series of the original “Onedon Line” from 1970ish, around ten years ago.
I hope this serves me well for my dive into Kant’s “Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection” in the First Critique. We’ll see.
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The following is just notes really. It ought to be introduced though utility projects and the law with duty in play as well as the good. (I've written this but not happy with it)What follows is straight to Kant.
Part 1: There is an approach to equality and inequality, that seeks to take the world as it is, in its sameness's and differences, and then describe from there inequalities and equality's. Perhaps by forgetting, or covertly, or due to this being an abstraction, we tend here to require a distinction between what is intrinsic and extrinsic to an object. But issues of sameness and difference, between two objects, and questions of intrinsic and extrinsic "natures" must be related. Before we can say A and B are different types of something, we have to have established in what way they are the same ie identity before the difference. Indeed sameness and difference seems to be after the fact of establishing intrinsic and extrinsic. but we might say rather just accounting all objects we sort out empirically sameness and difference and then from there project this into or on nature as intrinsic extrinsic. We may make a view of these as not so much issues of properties but of powers eg acting on something else ie a relation of agent to patent active to passive. This can still be a realist view just with relations between things as the only access to objects substance and property. This is really the position of Locke. While there is a realism here it would seem clear that either sameness and difference, intrinsic extrinsic or active and passive can play the base distinction that the others must then adjust to.
On the other hand there is the idea of structure a matrix or ledger into which we sort things out. Here the conceptual field is central. Even if we talk of one object, we at once, draw on concepts and so are talking about all objects of that kind. Quickly what is key are the relations between objects in a concept, and we might ask if there is here, for any concept a definition, that first distinguishes covertly, what something is by virtue of it being under that concept, this is like Leibnitz or is it the other ways round?
The realist position suffers horizons of temporal and special proximity, and so is like a narrative who's only job is to record receive events find repetitive similarities and use these as anticipations and projections. Quickly saving appearances and pragmatics take over issues of ascribing intrinsic and extrinsic natures.
The structural view as conceptual seeking universally begins with the idea that this structure already captures the whole of reality though its concepts. The definitions as determinations and the binary logic means the whole of reality is captured and talked about in the use of concepts as a kind of implicit obligation tot he universe of any conceptuality. Everything is either a cat or not, in the universe, upon and immediacy with any concepts and its definition. While this Universal structure of reason audit appears static Leibnitz also drew on a principle of sufficient reason, here which introduces a dynamism of finite projects that operate for and with the structure.
see very difficult books:
Huaping Lu-Adler "Kant and the Science of Logic" (2018).
R. Lanier Anderson "The Poverty of conceptual Truth" (2015).
One of these was recommended to me by Ralph Bader, there is a third book but it very expensive, and i think a fourth now.
There seems to be an attempt at a realism by Locke that the proximity condition or determination would undermine, leaving it as a horizon or kind of regulative aim a telos, to capture all nature in subsequent proximity projects. While Leibnitz holds a obligatory universal structure for all concepts eg all projects are to be recognised as universally (All) expressive if only universal wrt the chosen objects conceptualised.
It is clear, with both of these approaches, Locke's realism is really an telos aim with the finite projects, and Leibnitz structural idealism merely indicates that projects even as finite must be universal committed in expression.
When Locke and Leibnitz are described this way, its easy to see that there original claims of realism and idealism are not sustained wrt to projects but sustained as various aims. Traditionally Kant's claim then in the "Amphiboly of concepts of Reflection" (CPR) is seen as an after the fact of the Analytic of the CPR attack on Locke and Leibnitz's. But in "Kant's Philosophies of Judgement"(2010) Douglas Burnham argues that it can be read as rather the beginning of the CPR. That the "same" problem that "unfolds" for both Locke and Leibnitz in the course of there projects, eg: sameness and difference, intrinsic and extrinsic, ought to be made the common problem their work was trying to solve. Kant then in asking us to first look at the grounds of our claims of sameness and difference, is asking us to see if the ground is claims as realist or idealist, that is grounded outside or inside us. This might suggest then that this Amphiboly is really the origin dialectic for Kant's apparent starting point of just positing Intuitions and Concepts as different but always related. That is the Amphiboly is like the first dialectic for the CPR Analytic. And that this problem of identity and difference is the real inaugurating problem for the Critical project.
I think Kant's move from realism and idealism ought to look more obvious from the way i have described Locke and Leibnitz. This is characterised as a frame by Henry Allison for the centrality of Kant's claims of a new position of Transcendental Idealism and Empirical realism.
It would seem clear that while particular realist utility projects might claim a base in a reality, it is temporal speciality advance that is actually going on eg a process. and that also while an idealist might claim Justice and equality through the structures of conceptuality is an aim, these are also projects.
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Part 2: So Kant wanted us to escape from trying to find a ground for sameness and difference in either a real now, or an ideal to come. But since these grounds are to be left behind as transcendent errors, Kant offers not so much a new ground for an absolute distinction or method, rather judgement as human finite responsible grounded at once within justification and legitimacy and agreement is the criteria. Indeed I claim that for Kant the realist and the idealist attempts at grounds, as well as undermined by the project nature of their philosophies, are actually more attempts at being able to make claims that are de subjunctivised, unauthored, and not of agency and responsibility. Attempts to fix a ground for sameness and difference outside of the person making such claims, are the exculpations behind posits of realism eg proximate utility, and idealism Platonic Equality.
So if what you are after here is a formulae for an final account of determining sameness sand difference, that you can just anonymously apply without judgement, and that will compel all others to agree with its criteria you are in the wrong place. Indeed most philosophy tries to do just this to given us a formulae and method, such that we are not responsible but just apply the formulae. Indeed this is what most people expect from philosophy a clever new trick to both oppose their opponents and allow them to not be responsible for their judgements.
So as well as utility sciences and Justice though law being both opposed and sharing in attempts to escape from judgement and responsibility, Kant is after judgement and responsibility. In sameness and difference.
Now i think this way in is appropriate to Connor's report because in that report there are both posits of claims of real sameness and differences, but such as are already seen though their instituional embeddedness. That is at once we see them as dynamic and projected as they are with institutions that have policies rather than have representations of the real or the just, eg functions as opposed to statics. This shift to functions and projects happens at the lever of our understanding of Space and Time and different Logics eg General Transcendental. The subject ash to maintain self consciousness from within their temporal experience, and within the ever changing institutional rules concepts.
As the Locke view turns towards science of nature as cause and so man as subjected to disconnected successive causal forces cause, Leibnitz turns towards the law as both universal in its form and as whole connected structure. Put this way we can see the link here already to the Categorical imperative: of problems with causal force and blind adherence to law. of course in reality causal forces must be ordered to effect, and laws must be applied particularly. Realist claims of attempting to find examples of sameness and difference are doomed, as are attempt to use justice and an image for equality as a criteria. The former can not escape parochialism and subjectivism, the later absolute equality schema cannot be applied to real cases even if its done though universal laws.
But one thing is clear with Kant, and already in Connor's report, that to address this problem either as if there are no institutional functions constitutive of the problem already, or that there can be a real institutional schema that applies all laws equality now and though concepts from the end of time. The old criticisms of the former was scepticism and the latter dogmatism.
Linking these issues directly to already involve the moral and the ethical see Susan Meld-Shell's work on Kant.
Its not just the twin philosophical errors of a scientific realism and legal Platonism that is the problem for Kant but these are both temptations for us to seek a non ethical non moral basis of judgements. ie a basis that excuses us. "It was the local utility that made me carve up identity and difference this way" "it was the image of absolute equality and law that made me arrange identity and difference this way.
Ps I'm just hoping to be able to do something here with this problem here. That is it doesn't go the same way, suffer the same fate as what i called "Owen Jones's Nightmare before Christmas" and the demographic problem. ie unsolved a few years ago.
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Part B1: upto 20 mins: So yes there is freedom for any institution to have a particular aim: grounded in "political representation" or "legal advocacy". if the former then the idea of being a political representative has origins in a geographical space as a part of a whole democratic State. From the idea of a particular area as a particular demographic, then this representation can be seen as justified in terms of that particular demographic in contrast to others. it can be expressed in purely self interested terms for that group. If then there are other areas in the State with similar groups according to some definition, then they too can be justified from within the same sort of policy.
As you move higher up in the institutions the scope widens its geographical interests to cover more people and projects, and from a point of origin might go on to claims the whole world though its definition and transcendent of the State by pure law and they call it now an aim for universal justice. As they move up the institutional shells, the definition that was an abstraction in the first place, becomes a kind of abduction of all by the defining and now the first origin abstraction is seen as mirrored in all the other abductions. Just as the origin act of abstraction is a burying of all other properties, so the act remains free to select descriptions of people so as to preserve the origin. This becomes increasingly difficult since, the grope of people under the original abstraction are already involved in groups not in accord with the definition. As they expand the scope then some groups might well have various institutional actions going on through many other concepts and definitions. Obviously when You dealing with people from another country they may well have their own trans State projects in operation, and some might be antithetical to another definition and project here. Again there is much increasing freedom to rearrange definitions and objects institutionally as the scope expands. This is why there is increasing risk of contradictions in reasons and increasing multi-level changes to try and avoid this.
The problem of inequality and bias then is bound up with policy projects not statics data. data must be seen within the context of motion activity and institutional projects. there missions what they do. This ought to mean shift from the image of a population and a anonymous machine working on them. The projects are done by people. Their duties mean their reference is post facto the abstraction and they can justify though this ignoring the original act of abstraction ie from what it was taken: eg use the definition as a schema that leaves most things out. if Rousseau is still ok he was critical of these "particular and group wills". In a way then we could see the changing ways things can be taken up or ignored as ways not just of dividing people but of shifting duties. in some cases they will want to expand the scope and claim of duty and in other cases close it down so as to place stuff outside of their duty.
If this makes for a difficult unity of the State in Spirit, though policy projects it makes the unity of a person on the ground impossible since they are exposed to this ever changing sea of modified definitions along side the abstractions. Justice for mental disarray, or mental disarray for justice.
We need a shift form the vertical down wards method of science and law: as from above to bellow, to the people who do all this project stuff.
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