Equally Ultimate?

A logical analysis of phenomenology. A phenomenology of logical analysis. Two inquiries that are equally ultimate?

While you're aiming at one you're at least taking the other for granted.

Propositions and the Gospel (A Grab-Bag of Musings)

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We're very confused about about propositions.

Consider this proposition: the moon's surface is dusty.

I believe that the moon's surface is dusty.

Is my believing this a matter of bearing this proposition in mind and then assenting to it, or having attitudes about it?

Great Death Scene Or Greatest Death Scene?

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"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."

In Search of a Way, Looking for a Revelation (II)

What if you find yourself already on a way and living by a proclamation?

The first step is to confess the truth about it.

I find myself on the Christian way, living by the Christian proclamation.

The next step is to inquire into this way, this proclamation.

Is it a good way? Is it a true proclamation?

If you think you aren't on a way and aren't living by a proclamation, I think you're probably mistaken. Let's inquire into that, shall we?

In Search of a Way, Looking for a Revelation (I)

Looking back through the ages, heck, even the last 25 years, we seem to encounter a variety of "Christian" ways, a multitude of "Christian" proclamations.

I understand myself to have embarked along the Christian way and to now live by the Christian proclamation. 

But what is the Christian way and what is the Christian proclamation?

What's Propaganda? (Part I)

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"Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda)

First, by its very nature, every assertion is aimed at influencing, because every assertion includes endorsement. You can't assert something without thereby endorsing the assertion. I take this to be a logical point, not a psychological one. Whatever your secret thoughts happen to be, the very act of asserting something includes endorsement. That's just part of what it means to assert something.

You can say/speak/sound-out something without asserting it, in the sense that I can say "Richard Nixon was the greatest president of the 20th century" without asserting that he was. (If my voice is suitably snide, I'll probably be asserting that he was awful.) But I can't assert that Richard Nixon was the greatest president of the 20th century without thereby endorsing that he was.

     To communicate a message (even with the kind of pristine impartiality of which we can only dream) is to assert it. And insofar as you assert it you thereby endorse it. And endorsement is a kind of influence. And so the aim of influencing does not set propaganda apart from other kinds of communication.

Second, all communication requires selectivity. We can't say everything. And even if we could say everything, we can't begin with everything. In this way, selectivity is absolutely inevitable. We must select what to say and what to say first.

     If you want to communicate well, you'd better select carefully! In any case, you must select. And so selectivity does not set propaganda apart from other forms of communication.

Walking home yesterday, a thought struck me.

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Walking home yesterday, a thought struck me in a fresh way: we (i.e. all small 'o' orthodox Christians) proclaim that God is human. Not that God temporarily threw on a "meat suit". God IS NOW human, literally.

A Modern Superstition

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Imagine you have two identical jackknives, but one of them was owned by your grandfather. You decide to sell one of them, but you're careful to keep the one your grandfather owned.

Given that the two knives are ABSOLUTELY the same in terms of their size, weight and material composition, the typical modern person will think your preference is "superstitious" or based on "emotion" rather than "reason" or "facts". They'll say your preference is irrational. Innocuously irrational, perhaps, but irrational nonetheless.

I say this reveals a peculiarly modern superstition: the firm belief that institutional/cultural properties are less real than physical properties. (I bristle at my use of the term "physical". What I mean is size, weight, material composition and such. Physical is too ill defined to be useful here.)

I say being once owned by my grandfather is a very real property of the knife. As real as being composed of stainless steel and being 4 inches long.

Granted, a knife being once owned by my grandfather doesn't change its weight or size or whatever. But that's irrelevant.

Connoisseurship and Social Constructionism

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Connoisseurship is a perfection of one's perceptual skills.

Someone says "Ah, yes, this is a very fine wine. I bet it's from the such and such region in the south of France."

Give the wine to me and I'll have no clue! All I could say is something like

"Well, it's red, and it's wine. It must be red wine!" 

I'm inexperienced with wine. My palate hasn't been trained. My wine tasting skills are... non-existent, really. To be a great wine connoisseur you need to be apprenticed. By apprenticeship you become experienced.

Our basic perceptual skills are honed by natural developmental processes, right? I suppose that the perceptual experiences of infants are hazy and indistinct. But, with time, their perceptual skills develop as they interact with mother and toys and all the rest.

Ordinarily, we don't need special apprenticeship to pick out a moving object from an unmoving background. (Think of a dog running around in your backyard. You don't need specially trained skills to pick the dog out from the background. You don't see a raw, 'uninterpreted' dance of colours, you see an object moving against a stationary background.)

Apprenticeship is kind of building/forming/constructing of skills and habits and sensitivities, etc. The natural development of infants is also a kind of building/forming/constructing. These both happen in a social context: both are kinds of building/forming/constructing that are social.

The problem with social constructionists (about all reality and not just social reality), is that they reason from the social construction of our awareness experiences/skills to the social construction of all reality.

Dawkins and Robertson Spiritual Twins?

"So is it reasonable to believe that the Gospel passages quoted above “speak more clearly” than, say, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to the question of whether Christians should interpret the events in Haiti as God’s punishment for some (spurious) 18th-century sin? I think it is. So do many theologians, ancient as well as modern, Protestant as well as Catholic, And the fact that Richard Dawkins and Pat Robertson both disagree tells us something, important, I think, about the symbiosis between the new atheism and fundamentalism — how deeply the new atheists are invested in the idea that a mad literalism is the truest form of any faith, and how completely they depend on outbursts from fools and fanatics to confirm their view that religion must, of necessity, be cruel, literal-minded, and intellectually embarrassing."

Ross Douthat, New York Times Op Ed

(HT: more than 95 theses)

PS: the problem here, whatever it is, has nothing to do with 'literalism.' The whole rhetoric of 'literal vs. metaphorical' is woefully inadequate and wrongheaded from the start.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

"For, while we must begin with what is known, things are objects of knowledge in two senses- some to us, some without qualification. Presumably, then, we must begin with things known to us. Hence any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just, and generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits. For the fact is the starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him, he will not at the start need the reason as well; and the man who has been well brought up has or can easily get startingpoints." 

Do Tell (Loose Thoughts On My Differences w/ James K.A. Smith)

I say we KNOW more than we can TELL. (And all knowledge is AFFECTIVE.)

James K.A. Smith says we KNOW only what we can TELL, but we can UNDERSTAND more? (And UNDERSTANDING is AFFECTIVE?)

Lots of modern folks say we KNOW only what we can TELL? (And the AFFECTIVE, being entirely irrational, is neither KNOWLEDGE nor UNDERSTANDING?)

"Are you a believer?" - A Dialog

"Are you a believer?"

"In what?"

"No, I mean are you religious?"

"Huh? You asked if I'm a believer?"

"Yes."

"Well, what's that got to do with religion?"

"Religious people just are believers."

"What, other people don't believe things? Scientists don't believe?

"Not in religion."

"Well, maybe not. But that's my point: belief doesn't distinguish the religious from the non-religious."

"Religion and belief go especially well together. Religious people just decide to belief because they want to, while the scientist believes only after they've evaluted the evidence."

"Well, that's what you believe. I think if you looked into my tradition, you'd see things are different."

I Am PoMo, Hear Me Roar

Postmodern art is characterized by the artist's self-consciousness?

Awareness of their own presence as maker? Awareness of the conditions and conventions of the medium? A winky, ironic, cynical meta-awareness of these sorts of awarenesses?

You "get" postmodern art if you're aware of the artist's meta-awareness of these sorts of awarenesses.

My philosophy is postmodern in this sense? The deep logical structure of it is postmodern?

philosophical bad faith

The problem with most all philosophers is they proceed in their philosophizing as if their philosophizing is not happening. Here we encounter philosophical bad faith, on display.

The first impulse of philosophical inquiry oughtn't be "what should I believe?" but "what do I believe even now?" and "what do I take for granted?"