Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "Tories Abandon Lee Anderson + Islamist Threat & No Go Zones + Trans Killer" video.

  1. Part 1: I watched live a Novara Media program last night (03/03/24) that was an interview with a former currency dealer. An issue came up concerning the relationships between the theoretical models for rational decisions over buying and selling in currency markets, and the reality of being a successful dealer. The techniques of this successful dealer involved many techniques that were not really part of the normal academic training of the dealers who it was said by far mainly come from a few top universities. That the person didn't use the academic models because they had come up by another root, and that they were more successful, than their post grad economics counterparts leads to the view of a "disconnect" between the theoretical models of reason and justification for predication and the actual in real time application in a trading event. The gap that opens up is not between theory application and a simple view of a transcendent reality, but rather the comparison between the theoretical motivated anticipations of graduate economists, and the more successful non theoretical anticipations of the interviewee. of course just because some share goes up, and in accord with an anticipation, does not mean just because of a coincidence of anticipation and fact that the theoretical reason corresponds to the reason for the fact from some other, even imagined Gods eye view. One interpretation is then that the non grad dealer if they get better results, must mean they have a better theory or model or technique or intuition. My point in the chat response was that this "could" be classed as a Gettier type problem. Gettier claims that people can turn out to be correct but their justifications or reason or theory have little or no bearing on why they were true or turned out correct. Standardly put, people can be correct but for the wrong reasons, and so its might be said "a gap open's up between reality as truth and justification in an agent belief. In this case though their is no need to explicate truth as some reality, it is a contrast between two different agents and their reasons. The interviewee whet though their various heuristics, many involved techniques related to other "players", and obviously there is some necessary connection between other players and the outcome of reality. For example if all the player buy a certain commodity then it will go up necessarily for this "reason" of numbers alone alone. There jsut isn't a mass human action "reason" and anticipation independent reality and truth here. The truth value is dependent not independent of the actions of traders. it a minimal case of Soros's reflexivity (see ineteconomics "Paradyme Lost: Sympathy for the Devil" online from about 14 years ago). you could contrast this with betting on a horse, the number of people betting does not normally effect the performance of the horse, even if the betters are using good judgement on the horses past performances. The non theoretical trader then described being attuned to various things others were not, things not to be found in say, game theory. We might say they were lucky lots of times, or we might say they have a form of understanding and vision like prioritising like an intuition. Now the Getteir problem was used to try and exploit a Critique of Quine's version of the Sellars "myth of the given" in philosophy of science and epistemology, and i think later general theory's of knowledge that see justification as wholly "internal" affair without reference, to an independently "external world" that is independent of theory agents belief Davidson and agents action (see Davidson Mental Events and The Coherence theory of truth and knowledge and justification). McDowell an externalist on epistemology describes Davidsons position of coherentism as a "spinning in a void", in "Mind and World". McDowell is not a standard realist here eg a metaphysical realist, with some higher theory about external reality, rather he is a quietist, diagnosing the original deep philosophical metaphysical error of a separation between mind and world, such that he is not proposing to solve the gap problem rather dissolve the metaphysical gap that makes the problem of real verses appearance, appear a genuine problem, in this strategy he references the later Wittgenstein.
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  2. Part 2: Wittgenstein gives examples of contrast one appeared at the end of a US teen movie “Mean Girls”, where a weather reporter is standing in the rain while the report from the met office says it will be a fine day. The sort of scepticism we might have for a weather report on either/or cannot apply when we are actually standing in the rain. In the old late 1970’s Open University Wittgenstein course book it was described as meaning problem not an epistemic problem. That is there has to be something like an event that “is” raining means “it is raining” that cannot be subject to the scepticism moves of Critique because then we would no longer know what the word or phrase meant and so not then even know how to make sceptical moves of doubt, because the “activity” of scepticism and doubting has to presuppose that something is there where the meaning of “raining” and raining are immediate in the sense of not defeasible and as a condition for any meaning and moves at all. He says “doubt presupposes certainty” the “action” and strategies of scepticism as moves all presuppose a situation of “it is raining” and raining. I can doubt the barometer because I have actually standing in the rain as a contrast a Criteria for correctness. If I then apply a pseudo scepticism from my machinations against the barometer to doubting saying “it is raining” when I am actually standing in the rain, then I no longer have anything left over to mans by “it is raining” the epistemology critique tactics applied while in the rain result in me no longer having anything at all left over for my word rain to mean anything. Thus immediate meaning reference and state of affairs has a certain priority or sets a limit to what is viable scepticism. This was a view I also formed though a course on “On Certainty” in the 2000’s, by comparing it to Kant’s Refutation of Idealism, because it is normally set against Descartes, but the link is well known from years ago and discussion of transcendental arguments). Wittgenstein and McDowell link this to the problem of interpretation, that scepticism about the ability to close down a manifold of possible interpretations, to get at meaning (Eg Derrida perhaps mis-translated as “there is nothing outside the text” or “there is no outside text” might be a target here). Some have claimed this is an argument for paradigm cases, and seek to redraw epistemology based on and understanding of meaning in terms like a legal paradigm case or president. So we might have here the importation of a scientifically legally framed thinking and reason with its standard meter in Paris as the necessary immediate length that makes all other length measurements possible. A view I held for many years but no longer. For while we might need an inter-communal standards to measure lengths for a mirror manufacture, that are shared by the person who wants the mirror (Descartes outch!), the standard is a standard for use in such activities, but of course the standard meter in Paris is not necessary for my recognition of length or my ability to compare two lengths of wood in my hands. Wittgenstein and I think McDowell are not making a claim in science and law about the necessary conditions for science and law, rather it is claim about ordinary intuitive human capacities of language work. When Wittgenstein says something has to mean rain, he does not think we need a detour though some academic discipline, even the philosophy of language and linguistics, our learning need not be like this and if it is it opens up the sceptical gap, of representation and reality. Immediacy here means in way wholly differently from any disciplines. Indeed the disciplinary attempts at reworking this are as much a problem for getting a grasp on “meaning as use in context” as scepticism. The two can come together where the legion of scientists and lawyers and linguists might try to convince me, that I actually standing in the rain is not a case of it is raining. There is a deep connection between the academic disciplines scepticism techniques, and their ability to argue that all kinds of statements are racist. In this they are praxis-ing an attempt to revise and change our normal intuition to “see” a dripping tap as a case of rain. For just as the scepticisms can empty the word rain of meaning anything at all, it can also be used to make everything a case of rain. In this they attempt to change our ordinary language use and give it over to academics and elites, with social justice theory and praxis in law and education it amounts to making our language owned by them. Its not just a freedom of speech problem its meaning problem like Orewell’s language correctors. Now we might say this works by eliet machinations but really they have to draw on in praxis many co-oppters to try and fix new linguistic norms in this it might be more like the trader and theories of guaranteed trade price rise if all traders buy it. This of course is analogy for I am working at a different register than trying to find an economic trading theory of meaning. The quietism here is not silence its to prevent the attempt to solve this by use of another theoretical framework. That said such an approach can throw light on both, but no theory-theory here, rather the hope of connection to revise the limits of theory to reality, in non-representational way. I knew in advance that the meaning and classification category of “racism” in language will surly be Bull Market in academia, but maybe I can sneek in somewhere and figure out the source from the manifesto’s and pledges, but I’ve done this many times before and you end up in a world of references to infinity like a coherence theory of truth. It does look like mob epistemology after Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm. Have a read of Irvine Welsh’s story in “The Acid House” called “The Two Philosophers”
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  3. In crawling though the maze of reports papers and so on that justify a policy, in my experience, we first have to make the realisation, that the political aim is first, then the political aim as a legal tool is next then the theories of language and so on tend to have been constructed at the end and for the political purpose. they can't really deny that this is origin story of meaning for those of the left and liberal left, because they have made this a method and called it interdisciplinary interventions and connection: A chain of anti racist political activist though the maze of academic disciplines.
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  4. Moving on to your discussion of "no go zones", and so on it makes me realise, this thing called "woke", is down stream from the financial crisis. Perhaps then we can realise that it sis not even the politics that are first, rather the politics in general are an array a manifold legion or better an aggregate of tactics by those that control tactics and strategy to keep themselves in place. That is the middle class and their interests that is first. Tactics include confusion and dissonance and incoherence. it can be seen by the way issues are raised like racism is situated as opposed to freedom of speech here. This is not a fixed logical political or metaphysical dichotomy but a manufactured one. the terms are all wrong in this opposition, as it is designed not as a genuine problem but a confusion to consume our energies. There is a level of thinking where you can see how to disingenuously organise opposition so as to be insoluble in those terms. We used to think totalitarianism needs absolute definitions, but that's still later at the moment we are still in the confusion and absorb energy and discourse phase. there is then another thing thrown in as well as dead cats and that's throwing in an axe to break up the table of thought. Then they throw in the cat. My mate helped me out over this some 15 years ago in relation to Kant. Kant offers a way out of dialectics: amphibolies antinomies and so on but at the metaphysical level. My project was to rationally work out why Kant had selected particular sorts of oppositions in the Dialectic sections, and not what to me looked like many other possible dialectical constructions. I had come to the conclusion that this sorting reflected his moment in history they were already there at that moment. I wanted to start my interpretation of Kant with the "dialectic" first then the "analytic" contra Strawson for example. my mate who also knew Kant very well, said its called a "transcendental" dialectic because he ahs already jiggered the dialectics so as to be already apt for his solution. So he's saying i think Kant's Analytic is really first. if we make the actual history of philosophy and particularly the history of metaphysics a given then it looks obvious as a history of the same kinds of problems and conflicts. Kant taught the history of metaphysics for years. it makes us see problems from Ancient Greece and Rome of say Is God necessarily moral or can God command an immoral prescription, as a frame for "can man be free and responsible with an all powerful God" we can end up making freedom of man in the image of Gods freedom and agency and causal action as sue generic, a first anomalous cause. . This was Heidegger's later Critique of Kant that he had done jsut that, and it was an error. The alternative might be Kant's is a patchwork not an architectonic,, the criticism of the Kant scholar Paul Guyer (1987) I worked on him for 10 years and still had to look up his name today! This stands opposed say to Robert Pippin's formal reading of Kant. So there you have another dialectic not in Kant explicitly. It was a big philosophical methodological issue for me in the 2000's, and quickly dragged me into reading Hegel. I ended up back to my original position but in a radically transformed way. it was motivated in part at least by a early feminist methodology presentation where she asked us if philosophy has really a continuity of the same sorts of problems over time or whether its is so tracking of the contemporary that there really is no continuity only anachronistic conflations. That led me some 15 years alter to move to the "event" in history. Which means the politics and class are already there. I mean Kant's dedication to the King is a bit incongruitous to the apparent meaning of his Critical work if read without the later political writings.
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  5. I'll stick my neck out and say if you want an example of what I think McDowell mans by non representative, non metaphysical realism, watch some good cat video's like "When your cat has an IQ of 200", and "When your cat has one brain cell". You are looking to intuit a distinction, we can put provisionally as, between intelligent problem solving, verses habitual reflex or habitual action. Now you can then divide this dialectic in many ways within many different disciplines as part of many different projects. So many different dialectics can emerge, or be constructed. The thing is after watching many of them and perhaps having had a cat yourself, you might discern a difference what ever way you put it. Then there are examples that show clearly the cat has been trained. This is not unorthodox an example as we might expect since at least the example of a cat was used in the debate following the McDowell Dreyfus debate on AI, and intelligent coping. This debate actual goes way back to McDowell on Gareth Even's "Varieties of Reference." You see we don't really need a theory of some kind to make the distinction. We may want to draw in theory later for some purpose of coherence of many explanations and descriptions to clarify the difference in some radical way as an either or like nature nurture, we think habit is un free and intelligence reason, has to exhibit some sense of freedom. What can happen is that we get obsessed with unity and coherence of projects and images that we begin to think the theory comes before the intuition of difference, even that the theory is what allows us to se the difference in the first place. But now the difference becomes more of a conceptual distinction first and the intuition is slowly diminished in importance for learning theory. Now we have the theory that intuition itself is a theoretical accomplishment or a bias to be removed by theory. its not just your speech they are after but your intuition because then your experience if not fitting to the political project will have no public cognitive value. This means the elites have taken over pretty much everything though concepts and theories. A political coherence theory of intuition. If you don't get the point of my discussion of the history of philosophy earlier, then think that the Islamic world after the philosophy of the middle ages did not have the Enlightenment and the scientific critique of religion that we had in the Western Europe in 17th and 18th centuries. Problem is the Islamic world to a large extent missed this at he time and perhaps they leaped frogged strait to 20th century Marxist Critical Theory followed by Heidegger. Does this make a difference. but now maybe its a dialectic between metropolitan and countryside. Maybe science is understood more as technology in Islamic world and so truth as what works, a jump to 20th Century American Pragmatism. Of course my position is not to oppose this with science, for the sciences are the terms of the oppositions now. and their are many possible opposition jsut in contemporary science to keep us all busy and the elites producing many more day by day.
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  6. Well I'm listening on and from my point of view I've stolen your thunder at 23:00 mins, on the eastern gap of the enlightenment Critique. From your point of view you've stolen my thunder. this means when you ask about freedom of speech it has no one to one metaphysical analogue in Eastern Tradition. And the freedom of Speech under Critical Theory has 1. deflated speech to writing Derrida and then 2. made speech as an act schematised by power differences eg Butler from Critical theory but via Wittgenstein Rorty and Austin and Rea Langton i think from Austin Nussbaum MacKinnon. Not the expected background of radical Frankfurt School and French philosophies of Critique.
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  7. Following om from the cat example someone is going to say this means cats as rational animals are to be classed alongside and included with man and so too the Neanderthals i guess. But what do they mean. They mean under the enlightenment idea of intra categorical transcendent utility and right eg Peter Singer, as Critiqued by Bernard Williams. But this is not the conclusion to draw. rather it throws the light on the problem of utility and right as universal criteria . for instance no notions of action intent or freedom here only consequence.
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