Book/Philosophical and Cultural Consequences of Amnesic Knowledge

Philosophical and cultural consequences of amnesic knowledge and communication: big words and magic words

Actual communication. Context amnesia and content amnesia. Testing for the presence of tautological content by rewriting the words to restore the definitions and contexts.

The pieces of a mosaic form an accepted, if not confused, kind of coherence. I call content amnesia the fact that this coherence independent from any content. It is typical of reviews.

The other form of amnesia, context amnesia, is not peculiar to reviews. It affects knowledge in general.

❝ Beyond its elements each building is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements. (…)

At first sight, it seems as though these patterns of relationships are separate from elements. Think of the aisle of the cathedral. It is parallel to the nave, and next to it, it shares columns with the nave, it runs east-west, like the church itself, it contains columns, on its inner wall, and windows on its outer wall. At first sight, it seems that these relationships are “extra,” over and above the fact of its being an aisle.

When we look closer, we realize that these relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements, indeed a part of them.

We realize, for instance, that if an aisle were not parallel to the nave, were not next to it, were not narrower than the nave, did not share columns with the nave, did not run east to west, … that it would not be an “aisle” at all. It would be merely a rectangle of space, in gothic construction, floating free… and what makes it an aisle, specifically, is just the pattern of relationships which it has to the nave, and other elements around it.

When we look closer still, we realize that even this view is still not very accurate. For it is not merely true that the relationships are attached to the elements: the fact is that the elements themselves are patterns of relationships.

 ❞

Christopher Alexander

Patterns of space, in the Timeless Way of Building

The expression “at first sight” is indicative of our natural inclination toward amnesia. Take the following introduction to the concept of door:

❝ A door is a moving structure used to block off, and allow access to, an entrance to or within an enclosed space, such as a building or vehicle. Similar exterior structures are called gates. Typically doors have an interior side that faces the inside of a space and an exterior side that faces the outside of that space. While in some cases the interior side of a door may match its exterior side, in other cases there are sharp contrasts between the two sides, such as in the case of the vehicle door. Doors normally consist of a panel that swings on hinges or that slides or spins inside of a space.

When open, doors admit people, animals, ventilation, and light. The door is used to control the physical atmosphere within a space by enclosing the air drafts, so that interiors may be more effectively heated or cooled. Doors are significant in preventing the spread of fire. They also act as a barrier to noise. Many doors are equipped with locking mechanisms to allow entrance to certain people and keep out others. As a form of courtesy and civility, people often knock before opening a door and entering a room.

 ❞

English Wikipedia

Door

The context of a door is the coming and going of its users. So an essential part of the door is accessibility. If “doors normally consist of a panel that swings on hinges,” I expect the panel to be tall enough to let people through without crouching. I also expect it to be planted at or near floor level, otherwise it’s a window. But the Wikipedia description of the door doesn’t mention any of that. In fact, this description applies to windows for the most part.

We could describe as amnesic the gap between the intuited idea of what a door is and what the description actually communicates. Sure, we implicitly know how the door is in relation to its context (the door frame, the house, the people and their activities). But what we know and take for granted is not always what we actually communicate or involve in our conscious thought processes. It is not the door in particular that makes us forget. We forget all kinds of relations and easily get tricked, as in the Mars Climate Orbiter crash fiasco, where teams of software engineers from different countries were mixing up units of measurement when manipulating numbers—i.e., they forgot the implicit units of measurements.

Putting a door in relation to its context (including its users) won’t teach you how to construct a perfect door, but it will certainly help you reinstate the basics of a functional door.

When it’s not a door, but words, context amnesia takes on a particular quality. When one “forgets” that some words originally refer to other things, this can lead to words being “thingified”; that is, to them not needing any kind of context to exist. I alternately call them either “big words” when the words in themselves acquire such a value that they create debates regarding what they ought to mean, or “magic words” when they lead to belief in the real and practical implications of their conventional or tautological meanings. For example, defining “philosophy” a certain way is believed by Popper to inhibit people from thinking forward:

❝ Most of the philosophers who believe that the characteristic method of philosophy is the analysis of ordinary language seem to have lost this admirable optimism which once inspired the rationalist tradition. Their attitude, it seems, has become one of resignation, if not despair. They not only leave the advancement of knowledge to the scientists: they even define philosophy in such a way that it becomes, by definition, incapable of making any contribution to our knowledge

of the world. The self-mutilation which this so surprisingly persuasive definition requires does not appeal to me. There is no such thing as an essence of philosophy, to be distilled and condensed into a definition. A definition of the word ‘philosophy’ can only have the character of a convention, of an agreement; and I, at any rate, see no merit in the arbitrary proposal to define the word ‘philosophy’ in a way that may well prevent a student of philosophy from trying to contribute, qua philosopher, to the advancement of our knowledge of the world.

 ❞

Karl Popper

Preface to The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Magic words and magic names always make me think of a Faulkner quote:

❝ He did not know that he was dead, then. Sometimes I would lie by him in the dark, hearing the land that was now of my blood and flesh, and I would think: Anse. Why Anse. Why are you Anse. I would think about his name until after a while I could see the word as a shape, a vessel, and I would watch him liquefy and flow into it like cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel, until the jar stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame; and then I would find that I had forgotten the name of the jar. I would think: The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is in the shape of a      and I couldn’t think Anse, couldn’t remember Anse. It was not that I could think of myself as no longer unvirgin, because I was three now. And when I would think Cash and Darl that way until their names would die and solidify into a shape and then fade away, I would say, All right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they call them.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I lay dying

The lack of context is the basis of many false philosophical problems which have distracted generations of literature and counter-literature, such as the quest for the “core” of things (for example, Kant’s “thing-in-itself”), although all things only exist in a proper context.

Context has implicit and explicit elements. In literature, the explicit elements of context are provided by the text itself. For example, the context of a mathematical theorem might be provided in the same paper in the form of definitions, lemmas and other theorems. While the explicitation of context is expected in mathematics, the level of explicitation is much lower in other domains (even science in general). In fact, reading a philosophical paper with a mathematical level of rigor will reveal all its problems. In maths, every inference can be verified by tracing back every part of it to a definition, previously proven lemma or theorem. We could describe this process as “restoring the actual context”, with “actual” in the sense of “as written.” Restoring the actual context that surrounds big words and magic words—i.e., most of philosophy and politics, really—is an exercise in revealing tautologies and arbitrary statements, often expressed in the form of misleading syllogisms, which are essentially consequences of previous definitions with no factual basis. One famous example is the ontological proof of God: “if God is perfect, then He must exist. Since He is perfect, He exists,” which is about as eloquent as saying: “let’s assume that it is true, therefore it is true.”

Sure, authors might have “forgotten” to rigorously provide all the contextual details that would put an end to the accusations of tautology and triviality. But since we can only rely on what’s written, what we have is a belief in words. It may even happen that the author freely acknowledges the value judgment supporting their use of the big word. Such is the case with Popper’s proposal for a falsificationist science, the big word here being “science:”

❝ The aims of science which I have in mind are different. I do not try to justify them, however, by representing them as the true or the essential aims of science. This would only distort the issue, and it would mean a relapse into positivist dogmatism. There is only one way, as far as I can see, of arguing rationally in support of my proposals. This is to analyse their logical consequences: to point out their fertility—their power to elucidate the problems of the theory of knowledge.

Thus I freely admit that in arriving at my proposals I have been guided, in the last analysis, by value judgments and predilections. But I hope that my proposals may be acceptable to those who value not only logical rigour but also freedom from dogmatism; who seek practical applicability, but are even more attracted by the adventure of science, and by discoveries which again and again confront us with new and unexpected questions, challenging us to try out new and hitherto undreamed-of answers.

 ❞

Karl Popper

The problem of demarcation, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery

But even the “freedom from dogmatism” and “practical applicability” that Popper so desires, despite being well-defined, don’t save the author from centering their communication around not just their usefulness, but rather their usefulness in defining “the aims of science.” For what it’s worth, the latter could well be rewritten as “the aims of Karl Popper,” as Popper has, for whatever reason, this compulsion to define what the big words “aims of science” ought to mean.

Big words

Art

All discussions on the value of individual works typically culminate in the resigned acknowledgment that “it’s just a matter of taste.” The same fate befalls Art.

“What is Art?”

“Is is Art?”

“It’s not <insert here>, it’s Art!”

Nothing new should ever be expected of a discussion or debate on what is Art. There should always be a courteous agree-to-disagree posture before the debate is even engaged—the famous “I respect your opinion,” which usually means “but no thanks, I’ll keep mine.” Nonetheless, people like to talk and have passionate arguments for the sake of having them. Each participant comes with their own definition of Art. Naively, one would expect every debate to start with a tacit agreement on the meaning of the terms before they are used. While the “tacit” part is fulfilled, the “agreement” part is not. People never base their usage of words strictly on dictionary definitions (not even mentioning the fact that the dictionary definitions themselves have their own problems like circularity). Otherwise, there would hardly be any room for most philosophical debates. For example, are video games art? In a blog article from Roger Ebert’s Journal, Ebert first contends that video games aren’t “worthy” enough:

❝ No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.  ❞

Roger Ebert

Video games can never be art, in Roger Ebert’s Journal

But, what were we talking about exactly?

❝ (…) But of course that depends on the definition of art. Kellee Santiago says the most articulate definition of art she’s found is the one in Wikipedia: “Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.” This is an intriguing definition, although as a chess player I might argue that my game fits the definition.

Plato, via Aristotle, believed art should be defined as the imitation of nature. Seneca and Cicero essentially agreed. (…)

Santiago now phrases this in her terms: “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging.” Yet what ideas are contained in Stravinsky, Picasso, “Night of the Hunter,” “Persona,” “Waiting for Godot,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?” Oh, you can perform an exegesis or a paraphrase, but then you are creating your own art object from the materials at hand.

Kellee Santiago has arrived at this point lacking a convincing definition of art. But is Plato’s any better? Does art grow better the more it imitates nature? My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through a passage through what we might call the artist’s soul, or vision. Countless artists have drawn countless nudes. They are all working from nature. Some of there paintings are masterpieces, most are very bad indeed. How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste.

 ❞

Roger Ebert

Video games can never be art, in Roger Ebert’s Journal

It is worth noting that, had the definition of art been asked first, the debate would have become boringly trivial. It would amount either to quoting Wikipedia and cordially agreeing that video games are art according to definition, or to convening that whether this is art is a matter of value, which is the equivalent of asking, “Are video games great?” Instead, we are treated to passionate debates that seem “profound” but in fact are disguised value debates and taste contests as to what meaning some word ought to have—i.e., a “convincing definition of art,” as if art were not only a human-crafted word, but a thing beyond the conventions and powers of mankind; a thing with its own ontological definition and that mankind tried to “convincingly” transcribe. The debate therefore shrivels to no more than an emotional argument about the meaning of the word “art,” with Ebert casually dropping the humble acknowledgement that “it is a matter, yes, of taste.” Meaning that the whole article was for nothing. The fact that something is bound to be liked or disliked is not very interesting, particularly when one agrees that arguments from authority are void. It is as profound as two scientists battling over whether one should call the blue color “blue” or “red.” The decision doesn’t affect the scientific value of the statements the word appears in, as long as the word usage is consistent—e.g., if one decides to say that the blue sky is “red,” then we would also say that “red has a shorter wave-length than green, which explains why the sea and the sky appear red to the eye.”

The reason for the farce of inconsequential debates is easy to root out. When people talk art, they don’t talk about actual content.

• When it is about Art, it is actually about the magic word “Art.” At stake is whether a definition of the word is deserving of the word itself.
• When it is about some work of art, the question becomes “is it Art?” in the sense of whether it deserves to be called ’Art’.

“Art” becomes a noble, sacred, high-spheres word that shall not be tainted by things one doesn’t like. The word finally becomes a thing in itself that predates its definition. Relate this to the word “good.” To mean anything concrete, the word “good” would have to amount to something like a recommendation. If I say “this thing is good,” and mean it as “I recommend it to you,” and if someone hears it as such, then the word would be at least useful. But today, this meaning is reversed: the word becomes the justification of the recommendation—“I recommend it because it is good”—thus losing all substance. “It is good” doesn’t mean anything unless one can elaborate. In fact, only the elaboration means anything objective. The word “good” has as much substance in itself as the statement “It is good because it is good.” The emptiness of the word brings to mind parents who insist on teaching their kids that “this is not a good thing to do” until the kids don’t listen anymore, because, well, if there is nothing to back it up (e.g., a punishment or a convincing reason), then it is the echo of an empty threat.

As for the content, most art talks gravitate toward some mosaic of external factors: taste, comparisons, historical context, effort, merit, etc. In short, they beat around the bush, always in movement throughout the entire space of ideas but as though steered away from the content by centrifugal force. The discussed artworks are as valuable as what the reviewer puts into them, however bland the work. As Théophile Gautier said of Mona Lisa: “an open text into which one could read what one wanted; probably because she was not a religious image; and, probably, because the literary gazers were mainly men who subjected her to an endless stream of male fantasies.” I’d even argue that people get so bored by what is arguably as interesting as a selfie, that they feel the need to conduct infrared scans to see what’s behind the surface.

Reconnecting the word “Art” to the content appears all the more interesting and serious when one has bought into the magic of the word. With “Art” believed to be an autonomous entity, it looks like a non-trivial but interesting exercise, although one’s “good“ will ultimately dictate what is “art,” and one’s “bad” what is “non-art.” For example, the Anus.com Heavy Metal FAQ makes an objective distinction between Art and non-Art, then makes a case for the strict righteousness of Art by relying on the consensus among “metal fans.”

❝ One asks, what is art?, because art seems different from other forms of media, or works of communication. It does not tell you what it is telling you to think; it tells you what it is thinking, and requires you meet it half way. It is the high abstract, and functions by metaphor: jarring as if through drunkenness windows of physical confinement to reveal similarity in event, object, and ideal.

Understanding the related nature of structure brings an understanding of the function of nature, and in doing so, can address the pain and suffering and more importantly, the fear thereof that cripples before the disease hits, and bring a calm and peace to human existence.

The varied reactions people have to art confirms this. Despite a storm of protest, the only coherent comments are usually those who originate from the people who have identified with the art - who find ideas in the art or metaphorically similar ideas in the art that are constructive to their own.

Don’t get us wrong - the tools of art are always abused. Advertising, as an industry of convincing people to give up their own free will, uses artistry to convey simple messages. Political propaganda does the same, wrapping a bundle of thoughts around a single spindle and firing them off wildly in an emotional reaction. But art does not stoop this low.

And what is amazing? Metal fans at least can tell the difference. Consistently the albums that are pure cheese are popular for a few years, and fade, where the creations of the distinctive and bold and intelligent stand forth as classics for years. The ones that fade have a material significance: at that time they were new, and fulfilled a need for music with something plausible.

(…)

What Separates Art from Non-Art?

(…)

Art has no material objective. It is about abstract communication and nothing more. Propaganda is always directing different interests in a linear path to a physical world accomplishment.

 ❞

Vijay Prozak

Anus.com Heavy Metal F.A.Q.

“Art” never “stoops” to “having a material objective”: instead it is the “tools of art,” “artistry.”

❝ We are lucky that art generally does not have a material objective, except when it’s sold out, of course (Yes, argue with me all day - to your loss. Metallica’s first three albums have a quality what came after did _not_ in common observation: a passion from an emergent conception of existence and a fluidity of acceptance of its darkness).  ❞

Vijay Prozak

Anus.com Heavy Metal F.A.Q.

But why would there be now an argument among “the metal fans,” they who “at least can tell the difference?” This is of course because Metallica’s … And Justice for All, and any other album for that matter, are subjected to taste. And when discussions about what is Art are infused with taste, the word “Art” consequently enters into a blurry zone where arguments about who’s got better taste are posed as “deep” arguments. That’s why we might be better off with a “what is good art?” debate than a “what is art?” debate, since the former is at least honest about its subjectivity.

Now, not just “Art,” but “science,” “reason,” “nature,” “reality,” “truth,” “beauty,” and so on are all magic or big words, too.

Science

The “scientifically proven” or “clinically proven” tagline is ubiquitous nowadays. So is the tendency to explain things away by switching to a scientific rephrasing of the same thing. For example, one might explain the sky’s blue color by the scattering of the shorter wavelength light as it passes through atmospheric gas. But, to the layman, until they know why the scattering doesn’t yield green or red, this is just rephrasing the terms of the question in technical jargon—i.e., the blue color is defined by “the scattering of the shorter wavelength light.” It’s also kind of obvious that the scattering has to do with the sky, which is, by definition, atmospheric gas. Also, the answer just begs another question: why is the shorter wavelength light scattered? To demonstrate why this is just rephrasing to the person who accepts the answer, I would argue this person couldn’t do anything with it. Could they, for example, explain why the sun doesn’t look blue, too? In fact, one could re-purpose the previous answer, and say the sun looks yellow because of the scattering of shorter wavelength light when it passes through the atmospheric gas. Most people who accept this kind of answer cannot do anything with it. Actually, the people providing the answers are usually as incapacitated, meaning their answers are pedantic. The only way then to arrive at a non-cosmetic understanding is to continue asking why, as children (rightfully) do. If people stop asking, it’s because the answers use “big enough words.”

Much of the big words phenomenon can be attributed to the idea of science as an authoritative thing. But experiments made in the name of science are not equal just because they’re “scientific.” From one formulation of the problem and hypotheses to another, from one experimental protocol to another, there are fundamental differences in the believability and practical applicability of the conclusions. These differences do not depend on what one puts into the word “science.” This leaves the definition of “science” and what is science or not, to magic debate. Of course, not all classification attempts can be reduced to magic debate. When Popper says “psychoanalysis is not falsifiable,” he doesn’t do magic. Falsifiability is a well-defined term that has practical implications. On the other hand, the claim that “psychoanalysis is not science” is likely referring to science as a big word, and is typically aimed at discrediting psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis itself is both a big word (which is why it is being attacked) and a magic word. When one would naively believe that psychoanalysis is, by definition, what the psychoanalysts make of it, others are willing to take the reverse approach:

❝ I however am not fully convinced by Popper’s objections. While on the surface it may seem like a very convincing objection towards psychoanalysis, I actually feel like Popper isn’t attacking psychoanalysis as much as he is attacking it by proxy through the medium of psychoanalysts. It doesn’t seem clear to me that Popper is attacking the claim ‘Psychoanalysis is a science’ as much as he is attacking a claim along the lines of ‘Psychoanalysts are good scientists’. This problem goes all the way back to Freud, who despite sometimes providing and examining counterexamples such as fairytales in his idea of dream interpretation, he did not always do this. There seems to be no reason why psychoanalysts couldn’t contemplate a different hypothesis or perhaps more rigorously defining the patterns they infer from their data, if this is done successfully then you fulfill Popper’s scientific requirements. It also should be made aware that there have actually been many cases of psychoanalytic claims that have actually been falsified. One of the best examples is that of Freud’s etiology of paranoia/hysteria, where the psychoanalytic theory stated that this was caused by suppressed homosexual desires. Freud found a case of a lady with paranoia who seemingly had no evidence of homosexuality, thus falsifying the theory. Freud acknowledges this has consequences for his theory but does not change his beliefs but instead he merely finds a workaround. This seems to support my earlier claim that actually, Popper can criticise psychoanalysts for doing bad science but not the psychoanalytic model.  ❞

Steve Farrant

Is psychoanalysis ‘scientific’? — An attempted defence.

So, according to Steve Farrant, it’s not only the psychoanalysts that are doing bad science, but the inventor of psychoanalysis himself. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, is science. Oh well.

Beauty

Despite being subjective, “beauty” is often appropriated and accessorized by claiming a scientific foundation which, of course, is “a good thing” because “science” is the Big Thing. Take a propaganda article advocating sexual freedom from patriarchal monogamy:

❝ Though subjective in the details, beauty fulfills universal biological criteria.

• The beautiful female has “feminine” features, harmonious and ample curves (breasts for feeding, hips for delivery). These are signs of fertility, health and survival ability, thanks to the right concentration of sexual hormones.
• The beautiful male has a prominent jaw, large shoulders, a certain hairiness, a manly body… These are signs of fertitily, health and survival ability, thanks to the right concentration of sexual hormones.

Therefore, beauty is a general sign of genetic health. Males are instinctively programmed to impregnate as many females as possible, by choosing the most beautiful ones, therefore the ones with the better genes. Females are instinctively programmed to pass down the better genes, therefore to accept the semen of the more beautiful males. Through this natural aesthetic selection, the genetically healthiest males and females reproduce. The genetic health of a population is thus maintained. Sexual freedom (multiple and unconditional relationships) is therefore necessary in order to preserve the genetic health of a population.

 ❞

matricien.org

Beauty

But as much as features, curves, fertility, etc. are objective characteristics, the concept of “beautiful female” encompasses more, and possibly subjective, details. The only way to define a perfectly objective beauty is to define the beautiful female as the female having “feminine features, harmonious and ample curves,” and nothing more. But then, rewriting the text with this definition of the word “beauty” in place of the word alone immediately shows how tautological the discourse becomes:

❝ 

• The female with “feminine” features, harmonious and ample curves has “feminine” features, harmonious and ample curves (breasts for feeding, hips for delivery). These are signs of fertility, health and survival ability, thanks to the right concentration of sexual hormones.
• The male with a prominent jaw, large shoulders, a certain hairiness, a manly body has a prominent jaw, large shoulders, a certain hairiness, a manly body… These are signs of fertitily, health and survival ability, thanks to the right concentration of sexual hormones.

Therefore, having signs of fertility, health, and survival ability is a general sign of genetic health.

 ❞

matricien.org

Beauty (rewritten)

The text only tells something non-tautological if the word “beauty” is used with other connotations which contradict the claimed scientific foundation.

Another example: beauty implies a “right concentration of sexual hormones.” What is the definition of “being right?” It is susceptible to the rewriting technique: the concentration of hormones is “right” if and only if it entails fertility, health, and survival ability. Rewriting the text, we get that beautiful people show “signs of fertility, health and survival ability, thanks to the concentration of sexual hormones that entails fertility, health and survival ability,” which is tautological. The evocation of “hormones” brings nothing but a scientific coloration to the discussion.

As a result of the claims to scientificity and its reliance on “scientific” beauty, sexual freedom gains an objective, scientific foothold, as a “sign of genetic health.” But scientificity only stands if beauty is entirely objectivized; i.e., if sexual freedom is exactly about pursuing fertility, health, and survival ability. If that was the case, the statement that “sexual freedom is therefore necessary in order to preserve the genetic health of a population” would be a tautology rather than the deduction ostentated by the adverb “therefore.” It would be the same as saying that the freedom to pursue genetic health is necessary in order to preserve the genetic health of a population.

How scientifically moralized sexual freedom effectively applies to real life is something else altogether, but revealing. Those adhering to this sexual freedom are not always saying to themselves, “I want to have the most genetically healthy babies” when they are dating. A beautiful woman with small breasts and a narrow waist, even sterile, will perfectly do as a mate for many advocates of sexual freedom. Tellingly, the article I quoted begins with 2 photographs, one of a classy-looking woman, and the other of a nerdy-looking woman wearing glasses and braces. Of course, the reader is supposed to know that the classy-looking woman is obviously the beautiful mate any man would prefer to date, and thus to side with the article’s political statement. But to say that the first woman is more beautiful, and therefore has more chances to be fertile (more fertility genes, in pseudoscientific jargon) than the second, would be as unscientific as the claims of physiognomy to “detect male homosexuality by looking at hair whorls in the scalp” (English Wikipedia, Physiognomy). It makes one wonder what the article would be worth to a Westerner, if the photo of the beautiful woman were of one of those very fertile, big-breasted, very fat African women, who had at least 10 children, but whose beauty strays far from the Western ideal. Add to this that it is quite possible for the nerdy-looking woman to have a voluptuous body more ready for childbearing than the skinny classy-looking woman, and you get the idea that the big word “beauty” is big precisely in how it seduces the theoretician into confusing the scientific concept with the subjective concept.

As in many other fields, when the theory becomes practice, the scientific justification will be forgotten, and the only thing that will be retained from the article is that “beauty” is an essential criterion to build society around, without retaining the explicit context of “beauty” that was leveraged in the article. Later, if the associated political movement ever gains traction, the concept of beauty will likely fall back to its more common definition. The main message is: marriage, monogamy, and patriarchy are bad, so we remove them. Now you can sleep with multiple partners. They don’t say, “sleep only with the most genetically healthy.” Who spoke about genes, hormones, fertility, genetic health, or survival ability?

Myriad variations of this big-word discourse exist. An ecologist will say that a green Earth is beautiful, and that beauty has a scientific justification. Another will defend against racial interbreeding, saying that racial and cultural diversity are beautiful and natural, while others will claim the exact opposite: racial interbreeding is beautiful and natural because it benefits from a wider gene pool with more combinatorial opportunities, meaning a better chance for survival. In general, value judgments shape the words to the argumentator’s liking. Going natural is the way to go when it is about diet, health, etc., but magically becomes a negative when one farts or when the law of survival of the fittest is too cruel to accept.

Some magic debates

Like the interpretation of the average value, debates about magic words are built on an amnesic foundation. Curiously enough, amnesia can be recognized in the text of the debate itself, just as you can identify the mosaic of the interpretation of the average value as you read it. The only prerequisite is to use your memory while reading. This suggests that a non-amnesic style of interpretation will equally address both works of art and non-fiction content such as philosophy and science papers.

The debates about what the unconscious is (or should be)

Any object can always be considered under two aspects: as a finished product, or as something constantly being produced. For example, a pen can be seen as forces constantly exerting themselves to hold the atoms of the pen together. In a way, it is “constantly being produced” by forces. The same kind of consideration applies to the unconscious. However, psychoanalysts and philosophers made a point of talking of the unconscious as the one and only “unconscious,” which doesn’t go well with Deleuze and Guattari:

❝ The great discovery of psychoanalysis was the discovery of desiring production, the productions of the unconscious. But, with Œdipus, this discovery was quickly overshadowed by a new idealism: the unconscious as a factory was replaced by an ancient theater; the production units of the unconscious were replaced by representation; the productive unconscious was replaced by an unconscious that could only express itself (myth, tragedy, dream…).  ❞

❝ La grande découverte de la psychanalyse fut celle de la production désirante, des productions de l’inconscient. Mais, avec Œdipe, cette découverte fut vite occultée par un nouvel idéalisme : à l’incons­cient comme usine, on a substitué un théâtre antique ; aux unités de production de l’inconscient, on a substitué la représentation ; à l’inconscient productif, on a substitué un inconscient qui ne pouvait plus que s’exprimer (le mythe, la tragédie, le rêve…).  ❞

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

The desiring machines

So the unconscious is being equated to its productions rather than to its representations. The “replacement” of the productions with the representations is the object of the authors’ criticism. But in the same text, one can read that (œdipian) representations, as part of “social repression,” can also be unconscious:

❝ The fact that repression distinguishes itself from social repression through the unconscious character of the operation and its result (“even the inhibition of the revolt has become unconscious”), this expresses the difference of nature. But one cannot infer any real independence. Repression is such that social repression becomes desired, ceasing to be conscious; and it induces a consequential desire, a fake image of what it is about, that gives it an appearance of independence. (…) It is in the same movement that the repressive social production is replaced by the repressive family, and that the latter gives of the desiring production a displaced image which represents the repressed as incestuous familial impulses.  ❞

❝ Que le refoulement se distingue de la répression par le caractère inconscient de l’opération et de son résultat (“même l’inhibition de la révolte est devenue inconsciente”), cette distinction exprime bien la différence de nature. Mais on ne peut en conclure à aucune indépendance réelle. Le refoulement est tel que la répression devient désirée, cessant d’être consciente ; et il induit un désir de conséquence, une image truquée de ce sur quoi il porte, qui lui donne une apparence d’indépendance. (…) C’est dans un même mouvement que la production sociale répressive se fait remplacer par la famille refoulante, et que celle-ci donne de la production désirante une image déplacée qui représente le refoulé comme pulsions familiales incestueuses.  ❞

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Psychoanalysis and familialism: the holy family

Even if it is “fake” or lacks “independence,” the representation “ceases to be conscious.” So the representative unconscious that “can only express itself” coexists with the productive unconscious, but this relation of coexistence is overshadowed by a relation of replacement subject to multiple value judgments sprinkled throughout the book: “The great discovery of psychoanalysis,” “unconscious that could only express itself,” “fake image,” knowing that the latter expression is a pleonasm, since all images and representations are fake by definition in the Deleuzian universe.

As a result, the whole book is oriented toward the thesis that “unconscious” should be designated as the “unconscious as factory” rather than the “unconscious as theater.” The whole edge of this magic debate would evaporate if the book only posited that there is an unconscious production that is about production itself rather than what is being produced—which is about as interesting as criticizing the word “pen” because it designates more the object itself than the atomic forces that solidify it. The reasoning is only saying something insofar as it creates an edge from nothing, in the sense that the authors take the expression “unconscious as…” to mean “unconscious should be considered as…” Not only is the claim supported by value judgments, but it can always be made independently of any clinical material, including material that validates Œdipus, to the authors’ own admission: “True, it is not psychoanalysis that makes us believe: Œdipus and castration, we ask for it, again and again, and these needs come from elsewhere and from deep within.”

❝ The thesis of schizo-analysis is simple, desire is machine, synthesis of machines, machine-like assembly—desiring machines. Desire is about production, all production is desiring and social at the same time. We therefore criticize psychoanalysis for having crushed this instance of production, for having refactored it into representation. Far from being the audacity of psychoanalysis, the idea of unconscious representation establishes from the start its failure or its renunciation: an unconscious which doesn’t produce anymore, but is content with believing… The unconscious believes in Œdipus, it believes in castration, in law (…) True, it is not psychoanalysis that makes us believe: Œdipus and castration, we ask for it, again and again, and these needs come from elsewhere and from deep within. But psychoanalysis has discovered the following means, and accomplishes the following function: save these beliefs even after repudiation! make those believe, who don’t believe in anything anymore,…  ❞

❝ La thèse de la schizo-analyse est simple, le désir est machine, synthèse de machines, agencement machinique — machines désirantes. Le désir est de l’ordre de la production, toute production est à la fois désirante et sociale. Nous reprochons donc à la psychanalyse d’avoir écrasé cet ordre de la production, de l’avoir reversé dans la représentation. Loin d’être l’audace de la psychanalyse, l’idée de représentation inconsciente marque dès le début sa faillite ou son renoncement : un inconscient qui ne produit plus, mais qui se contente de croire… L’inconscient croit à Œdipe, il croit à la castration, à la loi (…) Et certes ce n’est pas la psychanalyse qui nous fait croire : Œdipe et la castration, on en demande, on en redemande, et ces demandes viennent d’ailleurs et de plus profond. Mais la psychanalyse a trouvé le moyen suivant, et remplit la fonction suivante : faire survivre les croyances même après répudiation ! faire croire encore à ceux qui ne croient plus à rien,… ❞

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Introduction to schizo-analysis

The magic debate of empirical science: the epistemological “problem” of induction and the so-called “direct” opposition between inductivism and falsificationism

As David Hume argues in his Treatise of Human Nature, “even after the observation of the frequent constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.” Or, as Karl Popper puts it:

❝ It is usual to call an inference ‘inductive’ if it passes from singular statements (sometimes also called ‘particular’ statements), such as accounts of the results of observations or experiments, to universal statements, such as hypotheses or theories.

Now it is far from obvious, from a logical point of view, that we are justified in inferring universal statements from singular ones, no matter how numerous; for any conclusion drawn in this way may always turn out to be false: no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

The question whether inductive inferences are justified, or under what conditions, is known as the problem of induction. The problem of induction may also be formulated as the question of the validity or the truth of universal statements which are based on experience, such as the hypotheses and theoretical systems of the empirical sciences. ❞

Karl Popper

The problem of induction

Since it is indeed impossible to logically justify universal statements, induction cannot demarcate science from metaphysics. Instead, Popper identifies falsifiability/testability as the criterion of demarcation of science. He “directly opposes” his “deductivist” theory to induction:

❝ The theory to be developed in the following pages stands directly opposed to all attempts to operate with the ideas of inductive logic. It might be described as the theory of the deductive method of testing, or as the view that a hypothesis can only be empirically tested—and only after it has been advanced. ❞

Karl Popper

The problem of induction

But empirical testability is not at all incompatible with inductive science. As I already quoted: “It is usual to call an inference ‘inductive’ if it passes from singular statements (sometimes also called ‘particular’ statements), such as accounts of the results of observations or experiments, to universal statements, such as hypotheses or theories.” Of course, “observations” and “experiments” are forms of testing, and obviously, testing implies testability and falsifiability, unless the scientist cheats—whether themselves or their audience. So Popper’s proposal amounts to little else than insisting that one should only test what is testable, which is kind of a given. The so-called “direct opposition” actually shows the deductive method doesn’t remove the problem of induction in practice. Despite that, Popper never acknowledges that induction is haunting his characterization of empirical science, at least as ubiquitously as the principle of causality. Let’s see what he makes of the latter:

❝ Whether philosophers will regard these methodological investigations as belonging to philosophy is, I fear, very doubtful, but this does not really matter much. Yet it may be worth mentioning in this connection that not a few doctrines which are metaphysical, and thus certainly philosophical, could be interpreted as typical hypostatizations of methodological rules. An example of this, in the shape of what is called ‘the principle of causality’, will be discussed in the next section. Another example which we have already encountered is the problem of objectivity. For the requirement of scientific objectivity can also be interpreted as a methodological rule: the rule that only such statements may be introduced in science as are inter-subjectively testable. It might indeed be said that the majority of the problems of theoretical philosophy, and the most interesting ones, can be re-interpreted in this way as problems of method. ❞

Karl Popper

Methodological rules as conventions

He further develops his stance on the principle of causality as a method:

❝ The ‘principle of causality’ is the assertion that any event whatsoever can be causally explained—that it can be deductively predicted. According to the way in which one interprets the word ‘can’ in this assertion, it will be either tautological (analytic), or else an assertion about reality (synthetic). For if ‘can’ means that it is always logically possible to construct a causal explanation, then the assertion is tautological, since for any prediction whatsoever we can always find universal statements and initial conditions from which the prediction is derivable. (Whether these universal statements have been tested and corroborated in other cases is of course quite a different question.) If, however, ‘can’ is meant to signify that the world is governed by strict laws, that it is so constructed that every specific event is an instance of a universal regularity or law, then the assertion is admittedly synthetic. But in this case it is not falsifiable, as will be seen later, in section 78. I shall, therefore, neither adopt nor reject the ‘principle of causality’; I shall be content simply to exclude it, as ‘metaphysical’, from the sphere of science. I shall, however, propose a methodological rule which corresponds so closely to the ‘principle of causality’ that the latter might be regarded as its metaphysical version. It is the simple rule that we are not to abandon the search for universal laws and for a coherent theoretical system, nor ever give up our attempts to explain causally any kind of event we can describe. ❞

Karl Popper

Causality, explanations, and the deduction of predictions

He has “excluded [the principle of causality], as ‘metaphysical’, from the sphere of science.” But in his own words:

❝ ‘Experience’, on this view, appears as a distinctive method whereby one theoretical system may be distinguished from others; so that empirical science seems to be characterized not only by its logical form but, in addition, by its distinctive method. ❞

Karl Popper

Experience as a method

So methodology “characterizes” empirical science, and so does the proposed methodological version of the principle of causality, although he “excluded [the latter] from the sphere of science.” So we moved from “excluding A from B” to “characterizing B with the methodological version of A.”

Now, just as the principle of causality is metaphysical, so is induction, leading us to the fact that it “can be re-interpreted as a problem of method:”

❝ One attempt to replace metaphysical statements of this kind by principles of method leads to the ‘principle of induction’, supposed to govern the method of induction, and hence that of the verification of theories. But this attempt fails, for the principle of induction is itself metaphysical in character. As I have pointed out in section 1, the assumption that the principle of induction is empirical leads to an infinite regress. It could therefore only be introduced as a primitive proposition (or a postulate, or an axiom). This would perhaps not matter so much, were it not that the principle of induction would have in any case to be treated as a non-falsifiable statement. (…) Thus if we try to turn our metaphysical faith in the uniformity of nature and in the verifiability of theories into a theory of knowledge based on inductive logic, we are left only with the choice between an infinite regress and apriorism. ❞

Karl Popper

Concerning the so-called verification of hypotheses

The method representing the principle of causality is “the simple rule that we are not to (…) ever give up our attempts to explain causally any kind of event we can describe.” Analogously, the method representing induction would be the simple rule that we are not to abandon the search for universal statements. And—surprise!—the search for universal statements, of the kind induction is enamored with, is precisely what helps science for Popper:

❝ In any case, the question whether the laws of science are strictly or numerically universal cannot be settled by argument. It is one of those questions which can be settled only by an agreement or a convention. And in view of the methodological situation just referred to, I consider it both useful and fruitful to regard natural laws as synthetic and strictly universal statements (‘all-statements’). This is to regard them as non-verifiable statements which can be put in the form: ‘Of all points in space and time (or in all regions of space and time) it is true that…’. By contrast, statements which relate only to certain finite regions of space and time I call ‘specific’ or ‘singular’ statements. ❞

Karl Popper

Strict and numerical universality

But although universal statements, the search for which is induction as method, are “both useful and fruitful,” Popper thinks induction “does not help us:”

❝ I believe that questions of this kind should be treated in a different way. For example, we may consider and compare two different systems of methodological rules; one with, and one without, a principle of induction. And we may then examine whether such a principle, once introduced, can be applied without giving rise to inconsistencies; whether it helps us; and whether we really need it. It is this type of inquiry which leads me to dispense with the principle of induction: not because such a principle is as a matter of fact never used in science, but because I think that it is not needed; that it does not help us; and that it even gives rise to inconsistencies. ❞

Karl Popper

The naturalistic approach to the theory of method

I noted that Popper criticizes the impossibility of positive corroboration through induction (the logical justification of universal statements). This means that the inductivist makes sure his theories must be “justified,” “valid,” “verified,” “established as true,” and/or “conclusively decidable.” By contrast, the deductivist scientist make sure his theories are “tested,” “corroborated,” “able to stand up to the demands of practice,” “accepted,” and so on. How similar. And if Popper claims that his insistence on falsification rather than logical justification—a theory cannot be conclusively proved, but only conclusively disproved—saves him from dogmatism, it doesn’t, by his own admission.

❝ The basic statements at which we stop, which we decide to accept as satisfactory, and as sufficiently tested, have admittedly the character of dogmas, but only in so far as we may desist from justifying them by further arguments (or by further tests). But this kind of dogmatism is innocuous since, should the need arise, these statements can easily be tested further. I admit that this too makes the chain of deduction in principle infinite. But this kind of ‘infinite regress’ is also innocuous since in our theory there is no question of trying to prove any statements by means of it. And finally, as to psychologism: I admit, again, that the decision to accept a basic statement, and to be satisfied with it, is causally connected with our experiences—especially with our perceptual experiences. But we do not attempt to justify basic statements by these experiences. Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a rejection of a statement, but a basic statement cannot be justified by them—no more than by thumping the table. ❞

Karl Popper

The relativity of basic statements. Resolution of Fries’s trilemma

Note the precision in “but only in so far as we may desist from justifying them by further arguments (or by further tests),” which perfectly applies to the dogmatism of induction. But what is interesting is that Popper claims that there is “no question of trying to prove any statements by means of it.” Yet the act of falsifying is already to try to prove (positively corroborate) a “falsifying hypothesis:”

❝ We say that a theory is falsified only if we have accepted basic statements which contradict it. This condition is necessary, but not sufficient; for we have seen that non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science. Thus a few stray basic statements contradicting a theory will hardly induce us to reject it as falsified. We shall take it as falsified only if we discover a reproducible effect which refutes the theory. In other words, we only accept the falsification if a low-level empirical hypothesis which describes such an effect is proposed and corroborated. This kind of hypothesis may be called a falsifying hypothesis. ❞

Karl Popper

Falsifiability and falsification

So the scientist must, if not “prove” or “logically justify,” at least “reproducibly” “corroborate” a universal statement, as, says a footnote, a falsifying hypothesis is universal: “the falsifying hypothesis can be of a very low level of universality (obtained, as it were, by generalising the individual co-ordinates of a result of observation (…)).” This is as challenging as practical induction, which is arguably as legitimate as Popper’s “practical falsification.”

Even if inductionists did think highly and dogmatically of their inductive inferences, and did believe that induction was truly “logically possible”—e.g., they would say all swans are white if an awful lot of observations confirmed it—they necessarily did it non-logically, since it is not logically possible! And thus, they somehow had to do as Popper prescribes. In fact, Popper often derives his definitions from what the physicist necessarily does in reality. But, for the sake of exposing the magic in his discourse, let us ask what would happen if the principle of induction was taken at face value by scientists. That is, if they threw caution to the wind, denying that their conclusions must have the status of “provisional conjecture” that Popper is so quick to cloak his “appraisals” with:

❝ The appraisal of hypotheses which indeed I am compelled to make use of, and which describes them as ‘provisional conjectures’ (or something of the sort) has the status of a tautology. Thus it does not give rise to difficulties of the type to which inductive logic gives rise. For this description only paraphrases or interprets the assertion (to which it is equivalent by definition) that strictly universal statements, i.e. theories, cannot be derived from singular statements. ❞

Karl Popper

The positive theory of corroboration: how a hypothesis may ‘prove its mettle’

Suppose that we appraise the theory that “all swans are white.” All swans were white, up until now. A few black swans suddenly appear and falsify the theory. What happens? Obviously, as Popper says, a conventionalist could say that “swan” actually means a kind of swan with a certain beak shape. Suppose that, in fact, all the black swans that have been observed don’t fit the description. Now the conventionalist’s theory is safe, but it is not really the same theory as before: it has to be regarded as a new theory, the older theory being now falsified. The older theory actually meant: “all swans, regardless of beak shape, are white.” And the new: “All swans with this particular beak shape are white.” Inductivist or deductivist, conventionalist or not, the theory is testable and falsifiable, provided that all honestly agree on the terms used. As to potential problems about the principle of induction in itself, there weren’t any more than there are in Popper’s method. Remember that Popper never so much as elucidated the problem of induction as accepted it as a methodology, with a few rather unexpected interpretations. For example, how does one prove that there are white ravens, so as to falsify the assertion that all ravens are black?

❝ Professor J. H. Woodger, in a personal communication, has raised the question: how often has an effect to be actually reproduced in order to be a ‘reproducible effect’ (or a ‘discovery’)? The answer is: in some cases not even once. If I assert that there is a family of white ravens in the New York zoo, then I assert something which can be tested in principle. If somebody wishes to test it and is informed, upon arrival, that the family has died, or that it has never been heard of, it is left to him to accept or reject my falsifying basic statement. As a rule, he will have means for forming an opinion by examining witnesses, documents, etc.; that is to say, by appealing to other intersubjectively testable and reproducible facts. ❞

Karl Popper

Falsifiability and falsification

To Popper’s criticism that “no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white,” wouldn’t it be nice if the inductivist could also respond with: “in some cases, we don’t need to observe even once” ?

The fact that methodological induction is ever-present in Popper’s science can even be read in Popper’s view of metaphysics as useful:

❝ The fact that value judgments influence my proposals does not mean that I am making the mistake of which I have accused the positivists—that of trying to kill metaphysics by calling it names. I do not even go so far as to assert that metaphysics has no value for empirical science. For it cannot be denied that along with metaphysical ideas which have obstructed the advance of science there have been others—such as speculative atomism—which have aided it. And looking at the matter from the psychological angle, I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science, and which, to that extent, is ‘metaphysical’. ❞

Karl Popper

The problem of demarcation

Methodological induction is also present in the “bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought” to which he credits the advances of science:

❝ The advance of science is not due to the fact that more and more perceptual experiences accumulate in the course of time. Nor is it due to the fact that we are making ever better use of our senses. Out of uninterpreted sense-experiences science cannot be distilled, no matter how industriously we gather and sort them. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game. ❞

Karl Popper

The path of science

Popper’s magic debate comes from the “direct opposition” between actually complementary concepts (inductivism and deductivism), and its presentation as a mutually exclusive choice. And it directly feeds into the part where Popper wishes to identify “empirical science” with the anti-inductivist definition, while admitting to value judgments and to the big word syndrome:

❝ My criterion of demarcation will accordingly have to be regarded as a proposal for an agreement or convention. As to the suitability of any such convention opinions may differ; and a reasonable discussion of these questions is only possible between parties having some purpose in common. The choice of that purpose must, of course, be ultimately a matter of decision, going beyond rational argument.

Thus anyone who envisages a system of absolutely certain, irrevocably true statements as the end and purpose of science will certainly reject the proposals I shall make here. And so will those who see ‘the essence of science… in its dignity’, which they think resides in its ‘wholeness’ and its ‘real truth and essentiality’. They will hardly be ready to grant this dignity to modern theoretical physics in which I and others see the most complete realization to date of what I call ‘empirical science’.

The aims of science which I have in mind are different. I do not try to justify them, however, by representing them as the true or the essential aims of science. This would only distort the issue, and it would mean a relapse into positivist dogmatism. There is only one way, as far as I can see, of arguing rationally in support of my proposals. This is to analyse their logical consequences: to point out their fertility—their power to elucidate the problems of the theory of knowledge. Thus I freely admit that in arriving at my proposals I have been guided, in the last analysis, by value judgments and predilections. But I hope that my proposals may be acceptable to those who value not only logical rigour but also freedom from dogmatism; who seek practical applicability, but are even more attracted by the adventure of science, and by discoveries which again and again confront us with new and unexpected questions, challenging us to try out new and hitherto undreamed-of answers.

 ❞

Karl Popper

The problem of demarcation

How can endowing the big words “empirical science” with a certain definition help anything? Independently of the accepted definition of science, scientists can always agree on their own “choice of purpose” and put it into practice. It’s not an accepted definition that would change the level of critical predisposition that “people who value logical rigour” should maintain toward any self-proclaimed scientific paper anyway, not the least ironically in the field of “modern theoretical physics in which I and others see the most complete realization to date of what I call ‘empirical science’.”

Sure, one may prefer to claim: “the Bogdanov papers are not science,” rather than just “the Bogdanov papers are not logically rigorous.” Sure, there may be a heightened sense of nobility and tradition involved when one claims to do “science” rather than “severely tested science”—or not, if “science” is associated with inductive logic. But it’s just for the sake of talking with big words.

The ubiquity of big words may be a real problem, insofar as words, like insults, do indeed cause real problems, even though they are “just” words. But a “solution” that consists of agreeing upon defining a word will always be as sterile as the blind confidence one accords to any person because they wear a white lab coat.

Absolute/relative space

In The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Newton treats his readers to an “absolute space [which], in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” But one can only move relatively to something. This is context amnesia leading to the magic of absolute space. Tellingly, Newton writes the following contorted demonstration:

❝ As the order of the parts of time is immutable, so also is the order of the parts of space. Suppose those parts to be moved out of their places, and they will be moved (if the expression may be allowed) out of themselves. For times and spaces are, as it were, the places as well of themselves as of all other things. ❞

Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

But even Newton concedes that absolute space is untenable for human purposes:

❝ But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them. For from the positions and distances of things from any body considered as immovable, we define all places; and then with respect to such places, we estimate all motions, considering bodies as transferred from some of those places into others. And so, instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them. For it may be that there is no body really at rest, to which the places and motions of others may be referred. ❞

Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

The intrinsic flaw of the absolute space concept is contained in the impossibility when Newton first writes: “But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them,” and then later: “in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them.” So, if I try to piece things together, from being unable to see things, we use sensible measures of them, but then we ought to get rid of them to get to the things themselves…

And even though Newton has the tactfulness to warn that « it may be that there is no body really at rest, » it doesn’t prevent him from forgetting one in his famous bucket experiment designed to showcase absolute motion. If a bucket containing water is hung by a twisted cord and the cord is released, the bucket rotates and communicates its motion to the water, until the water is at rest relative to the bucket. However, although the water does not move relative to the bucket, how does one explain the concavity of the surface of the water while the bucket rotates? For Newton, “the true and absolute circular motion of the water, which is here directly contrary to the relative, discovers itself, and may be measured by this endeavour.” For Ernst Mach and most careful observers, « Newton's experiment with the rotating vessel of water simply informs us that the relative rotation of the water with respect to the sides of the vessel produces no noticeable centrifugal forces, but that such forces are produced by its relative rotations with respect to the mass of the earth and other celestial bodies. » Of course, Newton knew that, but he somehow had a fit of context amnesia. As already quoted from him: « For from the positions and distances of things from any body considered as immovable, we define all places; and then with respect to such places, we estimate all motions, considering bodies as transferred from some of those places into others. »

Phenomenon/noumenon

An object always occurs in a context—i.e., it takes up space. Even in the wildest imagination, it must be differentiated from surroundings, however empty, and it must include the observer. When this context is lost in thought, we suddenly recover the concept of external world/reality, e.g., Kant’s noumenon, or “the thing we can never know [with our senses],” although, strangely enough, we have a word for it, and some philosophers even managed to tell what it was, e.g., Schopenhauer’s “Will.” Nietzsche describes the evolution of the idea of “true world:”

❝ 1. The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.

(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, “I, Plato, am the truth.”)

2. The true world — unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man (“for the sinner who repents”).

(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible — it becomes female, it becomes Christian. )

3. The true world — unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it — a consolation, an obligation, an imperative.

(At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian.)

4. The true world — unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us?

(Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)

5. The “true” world — an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating — an idea which has become useless and superfluous — consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it!

(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato’s embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6. The true world — we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)

 ❞

Friedrich Nietzsche

HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” FINALLY BECAME A FABLE. The History of an Error, in Twilight of the Idols

However, this philosophical progress is not parallel to science, and the same error persists in one form or another (e.g., Newton’s absolute space), which is why philosophy can sometimes be useful to scientists.

The race between big words

Classical oppositions (of which we just saw a small sample, e.g., absolute/relative space, or phenomenon/noumenon) often end up furthering the hegemony of the big word. In Of Grammotology, Derrida did as much while exploring oppositions such as nature/culture, source/supplement, southern language/northern language, in order to rehabilitate “writing” w.r.t. “spoken language,” as the former fell out of favor in Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages. Derrida criticizes phonocentric “writing” as “vulgar:”

❝ Finally, if one were to accept all the phonologist argumentation presented hitherto, one would have to acknowledge that it opposes a “scientific” concept of speech to a vulgar concept of writing. What we would like to show, is that one cannot separate writing from the general experience of the “structural relations of the lines.” Which, of course, equates to reforming the concept of writing.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

The Outside is the Inside, in Of Grammatology

Schematically, Derrida criticizes a “vulgar concept of writing,” leading him to reform the plain “concept of writing.” This can be seen in a quiet shift from “writing” to “archi-writing” in the following passage:

❝ We’d rather want to suggest that the so-called derivation of writing, as real ard massive as it may be, was only possible under one condition: that the “original,” “natural” language never existed, was never intact, uncontaminated by writing, that itself was always a writing. Archi-writing of which we want to indicate the necessity and sketch the new concept; and which we only go on calling writing because it essentially relates to the vulgar concept of writing. The latter has only been able to stand out historically through the concealing of archi-writing (…)  ❞

Jacques Derrida

The Outside is the Inside, in Of Grammatology

So “archi-writing” is not exactly “vulgar writing.” But why would Derrida want it to be called “writing” in his desire to “reform” the latter? He says that “archi-writing” is a “language.” So, how about “arch-language,” as archi-writing is actually independent from the graphical:

❝ As original and irreducible as it may be, the “form of expression” correlated to the graphical “substance of expression” remains very circumscribed. It is very dependent and very derived with respect to the archi-writing we speak of. The latter would partake not only in the form and substance of graphical expression, but also in those of non graphical expression. It would constitute not only the scheme uniting the form to every substance, be it graphical or otherwise, but also the sign-function [Derrida quotes Charles Sander Peirce in English] movement linking a content to its expression, whether graphical or not.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

The Outside is the Inside, in Of Grammatology

So we have an “archi-writing,” or “writing” as Derrida likes to call it, that is not graphical. Nonetheless, this doesn’t deter Derrida’s “urgency” to reform the big word “writing:”

❝ By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finally succeeded in being gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to, or at least summarized under, the name of writing. (…) It is as if the Western concept of language (in terms of what, beyond its plurivocity and beyond the strict and problematic opposition of speech and language, attaches it in general to phonematic or glossematic production, to language, to voice, to hearing, to sound and breadth, to speech) were revealed today as the guise or disguise of a primary writing: more fundamental than that which, before this conversion, passed off as the mere “supplement to the spoken word” (Rousseau). Either writing was never a mere “supplement,” or it is urgently necessary to construct a new logic of the “supplement.” It is this urgency which will guide us further in reading Rousseau.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

The program, in Of Grammatology

The magic doesn’t stop at the big word. It also powers the word “man,” with some ethical consequences:

❝ [Grammatology] ought not to be one of the human sciences, because it asks first, as its proper question, the question of the name of man. To free the unity of the concept of man, is probably to relinquish the old idea of people said “without writing” and “without history.” As Leroi-Gourhan shows it well: to revocate the name of man and the ability to write beyond one’s own community, is one and the same. In truth, people said “without writing” never lack a certain type of writing.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

Science and the name of man, in Of Grammatology

So if we now say that “writing” is a “certain type of writing” that is “archi-writing,” then we, the occidental people, may need to treat these primitive people as men, and finally become aware of the fact that they use forks and cook their food. Conversely, if we say that “writing” is Rousseau’s (phonetic writing), then the primitive people who, by this definition lack “writing,” suddenly seem very primitive. That is magic for you.

One might want to cut Derrida some slack, and maybe venture into saying—and ironically disregarding Derrida’s own precepts—that the word “writing” has some sort of intrinsic power that can make definitions more meaningful. The following passage suggests as much:

❝ A science of writing runs the risk of never being established as such and with that name. Of never being able to define the unity of its project or its object. (…) The idea of science and the idea of writing—and therefore of the science of writing—are meaningful for us only in terms of an origin and within a world to which a certain concept of the sign (later I shall call it the concept of sign) and a certain concept of the relationships between speech and writing, have already been assigned.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

Exergue, in Of Grammatology

But even then, Derrida shows how easily one does away with the necessity of a certain “world with a certain concept of the relationships between speech and writing:”

❝ Now from the moment that one considers the totality of determined signs, spoken, and a fortiori written, as unmotivated institutions, one must exclude any relationship of natural subordination, any natural hierarchy among signifiers or orders of signifiers. If “writing” signifies inscription and especially the durable institution of a sign (and that is the only irreducible kernel of the concept of writing), writing in general covers the entire field of linguistic signs.  ❞

Jacques Derrida

The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing, in Of Grammatology

All it takes is a “moment that one considers” and an “if.” Of course, one can do a lot of tricks when one starts to consider taking the “irreducible kernel of the concept” as the whole concept of writing itself. For Derrida, this isn’t a first, and he is notable for his propensity to equalize everything in the high abstract, which Richard Wolin is keen to point out in Derrida’s arguments painting Heidegger as a non-Nazi by abstracting away the distinction between humanism and anti-humanism:

❝ As Derrida himself explains the rationale behind his “spirited” defense of Heidegger: one must preserve the “possibilities of rupture” in a “variegated Heideggerian thought that will remain for a long time provocative, enigmatic, worth reading.” In his Rectoral Address, “Heidegger takes up again the word “spirit,” which he had previously avoided, he dispenses with the inverted commas with which he had surrounded it. He thus limits the movement of deconstruction that he had previously engaged in. He gives a voluntaristic and metaphysical speech [whose terms] he would later treat with suspicion. To the extent that [Heidegger’s discourse] celebrates the freedom of spirit, its exaltation [of spirit] resembles other European discourses (spiritualist, religious, humanist) that in general are opposed to Nazism. [This is] a complex and unstable skein that I try to unravel [in De l’esprit] by recognizing the threads in common between Nazism and anti-Nazism, the law of resemblance, the fatality of perversion. The mirror-effects are at times vertiginous.”

The far-fetched and illogical conclusion we are left to draw from the line of argument pursued by both Lacoue-Labarche and Derrida is that it was a surfeit of metaphysical humanism (later abandoned) that drove Heidegger into the Nazi camp! But in the end, this interpretive tack amounts only to a more sophisticated strategy of denial. The entire specificity of the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and National Socialism is theorized away once the distinction between “humanism” and “anti-humanism” is so readily blurred. The “Volk” for which Heidegger became the spokesman in 1933 is an eminently particularistic entity, unlike the category of “mankind” or “humanitas” with which one associates traditional humanism.

 ❞

Richard Wolin

French Heidegger Wars, in The Heidegger controversy: a critical reader

Force, power, necessary connection

Dating back to Newton and refuted by David Hume, there have been arguments about forces being “real things” and not only mathematical vectors, and this leads to questions as to what the “true nature of force” is. Proponents argue that the force can be perceived, e.g., through muscular sensation. But this line of argumentation is not only unnecessary with regard to Newton’s work; it is also contrived without regard to it. Newton’s “forces” are defined through indeterminate expressions such as “power” and “that by which:”

❝ The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to persevere in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forward in a right line.

(…)

A centripetal force is that by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or any way tend, towards a point as to a centre.

 ❞

Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Later, he makes “forces” a synonym for “measured quantities:”

❝ The absolute quantity of a centripetal force is the measure of the same proportional to the efficacy of the cause that propagates it from the centre, through the spaces round about.

The accelerative quantity of a centripetal force is the measure of the same, proportional to the velocity which it generates in a given time.

The motive quantity of a centripetal force is the measure of the same, proportional to the motion which it generates in a given time.

These quantities of forces, we may, for brevity’s sake, call by the names of motive, accelerative, and absolute forces; and, for distinction’s sake, consider them, with respect to the bodies that tend to the centre; (…)

 ❞

Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Such quantities as “the velocity which the force generates in a given time” are obviously “perceptible”, i.e., “real.” There is no debate there. The fact that “muscular sensation” was brought up as some kind of scientific proof of existence is more a sign of Newton’s definitions being overlooked. As to forces being “things” or a kind of “matter,” let’s just quote Newton:

❝ I likewise call attractions and impulses, in the same sense, accelerative, and motive; and use the words attraction, impulse or propensity of any sort towards a centre, promiscuously, and indifferently, one for another; considering those forces not physically, but mathematically: wherefore, the reader is not to imagine, that by those words, I anywhere take upon me to define the kind, or the manner of any action, the causes or the physical reason thereof, or that I attribute forces, in a true and physical sense, to certain centres (which are only mathematical points); when at any time I happen to speak of centres as attracting, or as endued with attractive powers.  ❞

Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Says Hume about the dilettantism of the “new philosophy” with respect to Newton’s work:

❝ I need not examine at length the vis inertiae which is so much talked of in the new philosophy, and which is ascribed to matter. We find by experience, that a body at rest or in motion continues for ever in its present state, till put from it by some new cause; and that a body impelled takes as much motion from the impelling body as it acquires itself. These are facts. When we call this a vis inertiae, we only mark these facts, without pretending to have any idea of the inert power; in the same manner as, when we talk of gravity, we mean certain effects, without comprehending that active power. It was never the meaning of Sir Isaac Newton to rob second causes of all force or energy; though some of his followers have endeavoured to establish that theory upon his authority. On the contrary, that great philosopher had recourse to an etherial active fluid to explain his universal attraction; though he was so cautious and modest as to allow, that it was a mere hypothesis, not to be insisted on, without more experiments. I must confess, that there is something in the fate of opinions a little extraordinary. Descartes insinuated that doctrine of the universal and sole efficacy of the Deity, without insisting on it. Malebranche and other Cartesians made it the foundation of all their philosophy. It had, however, no authority in England. Locke, Clarke, and Cudworth, never so much as take notice of it, but suppose all along, that matter has a real, though subordinate and derived power. By what means has it become so prevalent among our modern metaphysicians?  ❞

David Hume

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Exchange-value versus use-value as the basis of capitalism

In The Capital, Marx draws a line between capitalism and other economic formations, such as the “patriarchal family,” based on the concept of exchange-value as opposed to the use-value.

❝ It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognised form of over-work.  ❞

Karl Marx

The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard

In use-value–based societies, surplus-labour is “limited by a given set of wants.” What Marx didn’t specify here but later does, is that the use-value is always the use-value for someone:

❝ What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact, that it looks upon every other commodity as but the form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange not only soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the same more repulsive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value, and, consequently, a means of exchange. Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands. But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values. On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before they can be realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange. ❞

Karl Marx

Exchange

So even capitalist exchange-value–based societies need to pay attention to the use-values anyway. They may not be “limited by a given set of wants” as in non-capitalist societies, but they are limited by the “wants of others,” if there’s any difference. Therefore, the amnesic foundation of Marx’s distinction between capitalism and non-capitalism with respect to surplus-labour is basically the virtual difference between “use-value” and “use-value for someone.” But whether intended or not, conscious or not, a virtual difference is not virtual anymore if people believe in it enough to make it count in their life.

Numbers without counting

Numbers are an intuitive representation of the counting act. While it is fundamentally indifferent whether the word “cat” denotes a cat and not a bat, there would certainly be objections if the number system were to be reformed in such a way that “1” is greater than “111 111.” That is because numbers abide by useful rules such that, for example, the magnitude of a number—i.e., how long it takes to count up to that number—can be intuited in the length of its representation.

Now it is easy to forget the counting act. Since a number cannot be talked of without the representation which reflects the counting, Frege’s definition of the number as a concept without observable properties treats us to an awkward philosophical moment akin to someone looking for the glasses he is wearing:

❝ [John Stuart Mill] informs us, in fact, that these definitions [of individual numbers] are not definitions in the logical sense; not only do they fix the meaning of a term, but they also assert along with it an observed matter of fact. But what in the world can be the observed fact, or the physical fact (to use another of Mill’s expressions), which is asserted in the definition of the number 777 864? (…) If the definition of each individual number did really assert a special physical fact, then we should never be able sufficiently to admire, for his knowledge of nature, a man who calculates with nine-figure numbers. Meantime, perhaps Mill does not mean to go so far as to maintain that all these facts would have to be observed severally, but thinks it would be enough if we had derived through induction a general law in which they were all included together. But try to formulate this law, and it will be found impossible. It is not enough to say: “There exist large collections of things which can be split up.” For this does not state that there exist collections of such a size and of such a sort as are required for, say, the number 1 000 000, nor is the manner in which they are to be divided up specified any more precisely. Mill’s theory must necessarily lead to the demand that a fact should be observed specially for each number, for in a general law precisely what is peculiar to the number 1 000 000, which necessarily belongs to its definition, would be lost. On Mill’s view we could actually not put 1 000 000 = 999 999 + 1 unless we had observed a collection of things split up in precisely this peculiar way, different from that characteristic of any and every other number whatsoever. ❞

Gottlob Frege

The Foundations of Arithmetic

But isn’t the representation “777 864” the very “special fact” he is looking for, and a “[large] collection of things which can be split up” as well? More precisely, “777 864” is a collection of decimal digits representing a collection of 777 864 1’s, which obviously one can split up for oneself. Indeed, Frege treats 777 864 like it was an x or α. The quote would be valid if rewritten as follows:

❝ But what in the world can be the observed fact, or the physical fact (to use another of Mill’s expressions), which is asserted in the definition of the number α?  ❞

Gottlob Frege

The Foundations of Arithmetic

A man who calculates with arbitrary letters representing actual physical facts would, indeed, be a thing of wonder.

The intuitive nature of 777 864, or rather the convention that allows it, is the context that Frege forgets. The magic is in the process of making 777 864 independent of its context.

But Frege doesn’t forego the context only for the pleasure of foregoing it. Because Frege only talks of 777 864 in the high abstract, Frege could conceptualize it as something untainted by any “observed” meaning implied by the lowly “mechanical” counting, and could finally argue in his book The Foundations of Arithmetic that numbers appeal to the highest intellectual faculties of mankind, beyond the reach of animals.

Conceptual Reconstructionism: An Initiative for the Interpretation of Medium-specific Narratives

1. Introduction

2. Interpretation of the Average Value

3. Philosophical and Cultural Consequences of Amnesic Knowledge

4. The Medium-Specific Narrative

5. From the Interpretation of the Average Value to Pure Reconstruction

6. Conceptual Reconstructionism and its Social Ecosystem