An act of volition: You can’t argue with fools
If Human Sciences, are not proper sciences, then where will we stop to devalue human thought and its history? Can you even argue with people who can only accept their own ground of discussion? Why the study of philosophy and thus thought, truly is the only science around.
This week a rather interesting and revealing discussion broke out on my Twitter Feed. The initial kick-off was given by a list of ‘The best 100 scientific Twitterers’ and a revised edition as a twitter list published by @terrorzicke (Name ist Programm – her nick is program).
As member of the Human Sciences, obviously, a friend of mine immediately asked why there were no philosophers (or Scientists in the Liberal Arts for that matter) to be found on her ‘scientific’ list. The crude and simple answer that she reinforced through the subsequent (heated) argumentation was, that Human Sciences are not sciences. (Best laughable tweet out of that discussion: “Geisteswissenschaften kreisen im Gegensatz zu den Naturwissenschaften im Grunde um sich selbst.” “Human Sciences revolve – to the contrary of natural sciences – only around themselves”)
I won’t go into the depths of that lion pit. It’s pretty much useless to try and reason with people who allow themselves opinions on things they clearly have no idea of. It would be more interesting to try and reason with a cup of coffee. At least, if there is no response, you get a decent shot of caffeine out of it.
I’ll only put one thought out there and it’s one that becomes quite clear if you’ve ever interested yourself for neurological sciences.
There are a lot of ‘natural’ things out there that we can study and analyse in many different ways. The purely materialistic, descriptive way, being one of them – the purely scientific way in the above cited way of thinking. The analysis of the language in which this is made however would already be a ‘human scientist’ way of looking at things.
Without the ordering and the reflection of philosophy which goes beyond the raw material, all we would have is nothing more than a huge stack of information such as the colour red solicits a neuron fire with such and such intensity taking into account the context and situation. But how it is that we can reference that red, or what it means for a thing to be red (even though scientifically speaking the colour red doesn’t exist) which will then lead us to the problem of accidental properties as opposed to essential ones, the theory of individuation and personal identity and so forth… all these questions are philosophical ones and per the cited definition ‘not scientific’.
It is a common misconception that within the confines of Human Sciences anything goes. People from the outside think that we continuously weave our insignificant web of thoughts around a comfortable glass of wine and a good laugh within our own idiosyncratic language, pleasuring ourselves in our own brain juice.
‘Scientificity’ realises itself within the confines of a method. If the method is faulty, no physicist can work. Neither can a philosopher or a linguist or a literate. Far away is the concept that ‘anything goes’. You might gain great popularity among a certain crowd by being without a method (Derrida for instance), but the fame is temporary. (Not one of Derrida’s direct students is still working with his thought. Parts of his method of deconstruction – which isn’t a method truly – but not the complete version and for the next generation of students Derrida will be a relic, not a school anymore.)
As someone who edits texts that have never before seen a printed edition, texts that remain unheard and inaccessible for the scientific community of Medievalists, I work with quantifiable method and scientific means such as distribution, probability, semantic quantities etc. to near myself as closely as ever possible to the original text which is most cases is lost. If you imagine that for the more popular texts you have between 30 and 50 surviving manuscripts and thus potentially 30 to 50 different versions of a text, it becomes immediately apparent why the claim that this can’t by any means be considered science is laughable. Not only do I have to go through that very materialistic part of my work, but after years of that exploring the material support of the text in question (it’s just the characters and the vellum really), I then proceed to the interpretation of the text itself, trying to explain what it’s all about. And only in a third last step do I examine that theory against the ‘bigger picture’ (does it make sense in itself? does it apply to opponents at the time it was written? what do we learn from it in terms of overall realisation? etc.)
In my particular case, as Historians of Philosophy, we are the badly loved kid of all the departments. For the historians, we’re not really historians; for the philosophers, we’re not really philosophers and for the editors, we know way to much to gain quick money with us. Truth of the matter is: we are everything and nothing. We need to have all the instruments a historian needs, all the knowledge and methods a philosopher does and we need to have a decent technical approach to texts and their transmission through the ages. We do it all, and yet, nobody takes us seriously.
So, it’s been long that I have taken anybody for full who claims that this is not science.
In some definitions ‘science’ is defined by the fact that you open up new grounds or that you create the basis for thought and study. It’s clear that with my work, I do just that. Without text editions, our look on a certain period will always remain limited, because the huge cellars of the major libraries of Europe are filled will texts that have never been read by a larger public after the 16th century.
Interestingly enough of course, none of those arguments which my friend made in said Twitter debate were accepted. Neither were mine. To the question why the person was ignoring me in particular, it was said that ‘who protects their tweets doesn’t want to be heart’.
Now, that brings me to another small truth, this time about our modern means of communication. Today, we’re always supposed to be online, always supposed to be linked to that behemoth internet, and if we don’t reply immediately to an email or a text, something is clearly wrong. And yes, if you are stupid enough to protect your privacy because you want to know who is following you, you do not want to be heard.
Yes, I protect my updates, I also protect my Facebook profile, but because the majority of users have lost all sense of the truth that on the opposite side of them sits a real person in front of that PC screen.
The fact that Terrorzicke didn’t want to see what I had to say to her (it would have been easy enough for her to ask for authorisation, it takes one click after all), just shows what happens to people when they don’t want to be reasoned with: they become a caricature of themselves.
Protecting myself from complete exposure over the internet doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be heard, it rather tells you that when I accept you, I have properly seen you and want to enter into contact without. You’re not just another one of the mass that I don’t care about. And it will tell you that I don’t like to be spammed and have a pretty solid knowledge of spammers, useless twittbots and the like.
It becomes very apparent, that people who cannot even reconstruct an act of volition without error, cannot be asked to qualify what is scientific and what is not. And that is why this whole discussion is pointless. Who doesn’t want to hear, will never hear, not matter how loud we shout it.
Human thought will always be an exhilarating subject of study, while the measures of ‘scientificity’ will always be subject to the last and current fashion of the times in which they are uttered.
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Why do we even care ?
Why do we even have friends? Why do we link ourselves with others when there’s only heartache, abandonment, betrayal and pain to be had from it…?
The question is as old as society itself and probably even as old as language itself. Consequently philosophers, thinkers and good people have produced a varied catalogue of ideas on the subject that range as far as just stating that man is not made to live alone to a completely utilitarian approach: because it serves us.
But even if the simplistic theory that we can have ethical considerations and moral decisions towards our peers and fellow human beings only because we recognise ourselves in them falls short on several accounts, the intellectual approach that we care because we can or must, doesn’t help much more to understand what it is that makes us connect to this person, but not that one.
Quite generally speaking we are brought up with the idea that caring for others is an ideal to aspire to. That stepping out and away from the weight of your own needs and make someone else’s fears imperative for yourself, brings you something more, offers you some kind of insight into your own soul and one step closer to a ‘good life’.
There is no religion and no social system or idea that does not operate on this basic idea either by reinforcing it or by negating it.
But is the abstract idea of some heavenly reward in an afterlife or aspiring to the ideal of a good life or being a good person, really enough to account for the fact that we do against all odds, against adversity, despite rejection, hurt, desolation and frustration reach out, touch others, take up their burdens, listen to their fears, soothe their minds again and again?
Because secretly we hope that the people we care for will do the same for us, for even if I am someone who’s not used to facing the problem of not caring enough, but rather too much even for strangers that cross my path… even I am sort of speechless when in one of my weaker moments I am ignored by my friends.
That fundamental element of ‘shared love and shared burden’ doesn’t make us manipulative or even interested in the way we deal out our affections and our readiness to help, but rather it points to the next even more fundamental characteristics of our human condition: we need care.
We need people taking care of us and our emotions, people noticing us, recognising us for what we are and who we strive to be, listen to what we have to say or teach or even cry about and what makes us passionate. We don’t need it just to feel better or inflate our egos, what I am referring to is much more basic, much more unreflected. It’s not so much different than the impulsive touch towards a pet or a baby and the basic level of need either the animal or the baby feel for that touch and proximity.
Thomas Merton wasn’t the first to use the phrase ‘no man is an island’, but he certainly took the concept to a completely different level. His reaching out seemed to know no boundaries and looking closely at his biography might even suggest that it bore dangerous self-annihilating traits. And yet, his generosity of heart has become an ideal… because, no man is an island.
But what does that mean? Truly? That ultimately we’re flawed and can’t ever be enough on our own, for our own? I shouldn’t think so. I find it much more inspiring to think that our actions, however small they may be cause a light to shine (or ripples across existence, if you prefer that image) that – not unlike a seed – will grow over time, be reinforced by connecting to others and caring for them and it will eventually affect people outside of our immediate range of action… if we cannot believe that our actions influence others around us and our surrounding society, what else keeps us from not shutting down and surfing the ego trip to self destruction?
In times where dehumanisation is something that is so quickly achieved, where the mass of people in our immediate focus has grown exponentially through internet and modern media, where friends can be nothing much more than a few points on a computer screen and a name (maybe just an avatar), the danger of limiting people, shutting them out, casting them off or simply not taking care of them is even bigger than before. Not only does the internet make it much easier to connect with each other, it also makes it much easier for us to lose focus on the most important thing in life: nothing remains. We can’t take anything with us. When we die, all that remains will be the people we’ve loved and the ones that have loved us and the icon of a memory of that love.
So, we better start minding our friends, caring for their hearts, accepting their limits and loving them for what they are. Not because they deserve it or because we might need them one day, but because there is no greater and more effortless gift than love.
Be generous with yourself and someone you haven’t dared to reach out to today. It’ll make their day a brighter one and your heart shine harder.
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Property, Privacy and the Web 2.0 Paradoxon
We all satisfy our exhibitionist tendencies through the internet web 2.0, the social web. We give up our right to privacy in doing so, but the horror is great and the tears particularly bitter when someone takes us up on it.
The latest tornado of protest and rightful indignation that swept over the internet, the blogosphere and the entire western hemisphere (but thankfully didn’t manage to drop that proverbial sack of rice) concerning Facebook’s covert annexing of all their user’s datas and content from now on into eternity, is certainly an interesting jurisdictional case example. But apart from the power of the internet, the usergroups, the blogging community that managed to pressure Facebook to revert back to their old Terms of Service and consult their users before forcing their top-down changes, and apart from the usual observations that have after that flooded all the radio and online commentaries on how our society is circling the exibtionistic drain when everyone builds their online personality and streams their babies births online over ustream… apart from all that, there is a general question that begs to be asked here: what is intellectual property?
Through the history of thought there have been various theories on how the idea of personal property changed our view on reality and society as a whole. In Western History, the major change between the celtic tribal organisation where the common property of the clan was indicative of the standing of said clan towards a perception of personal property of land that represented wealth that was introduced by the Romans, hides an intellectual change. In later years, someone like Rousseau will go as far as to state that the introductioon of personal property by the colonisators in Southern America corrupted these societies forwever (cf. the Myth of the Good Savage).
The idea of intellectual property however is a relatively late conception in the history of ideas. It’s something that is completely absent in the Middle Ages for instance where authors copy motifs, characters and texts from one another at liberty since they are considered common property of their circle of culture. With the introduction of printing devices and the explosion of text production things change slightly, but the idea that an author has rights over the texts, ideas or even characters is still far away. As late as the 19th century, an author that had his works printed, sold his works and all rights over to the printer or editor.
The concept of owning something that is immaterial and that you’ve invented is one of the most difficult topics in a time where a simple manipulation of four keys copies text, annexes it, steals it, reproduces it.
Now, we all know that it’s part of our personal rights to chose when and how we want to be taken in pictures and that the gaining of money is an infringement of my rights. We also know that copying content that we haven’t ourselves produced is morally wrong and punishable by law per se, particularly so if we start making money from it.
Facebook thought it opportune to transfer an irrevocable license on all the contents their users upload to their (free) service, being free to reproduce it, sell it and mash it up (taking it out of context). Nothing in this world is for free and internet services that cost server space, hardware and time to set up and maintain are the least likely to be for free, no matter what. The reaction of Facebook users and bloggers is certainly justified and was needed, but ridiculous in it’s proportions of indignation. Not even to speak about the 99% of users that never read any of the TOS of the services they join.
Ridiculous? Like I said, nothing in the world is for free. And certainly not a site that needs to sustain itself to support 175 Million users such as Facebook. The question that needs asking is: what are you paying with? The same thing you’re paying Google for the greatest storage inbox on the net, the best Document storage online and the quickes and best indexing algorithms with: your personality. Your search patterns, your way of using the service, your statistical information constitute a huge flux of intel and exploitable information which makes it possible for services such as Facebook and Google to sell better targeted ads and thus earn their pay and the possiblity to uphold their service to you.
Now, while Facebooks tacit change of TOS certainly was abusive and unreasonable form a jurisdictional point of view – I certainly am not for Facebook having such a license on my artistic photographs or poetry that I’ve put on FB -, but the illusion of billions of internet users that they are entitled to complete privacy when they use free services provided to them is laughable. The second you step on the internet and start displaying your online personality through Twitter, MySpace, Plurk, FriendFeed, Flickr and what not, you willingly give up your right to a complete protection of your data. The advantages of interconnecting with your friends, to find new ones, to create communities… in short partake in the new version of the web, will never be just for free. You give up rights of your own. So, yes, the level of shock and outrage at the current example of Facebook is based on users not knowing what they’re doing. Not only is this a source of ridicule, but presents a paradox of epic proportions: on the one hand people consider their internet trails of insidious binge pictures, senseless tweets, 25 things about me notes and 10 random thoughts, their own property that needs protecting, but on the other hand they’re all too quick to hand over said property to save a few $ and use a free service instead of a paid one, simply because we no longer sign physically with our name such contracts, but with a simple click.
Wake up people. Learn to use the Privacy Settings on your services (Facebook Privacy Settings You Should Know About) , learn to read the Terms of Service before just hitting ‘send’ and get a grip on your own life: Nothing in the world is for free.
And lastly: you are not as important as you think.
NB: Don’t forget the latest trend: tweet your location
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Communication: The Sins of our Fathers
We are how we talk and we talk like our parents have or have not taught us. Would teaching dialectics and discussion in school help with the current non-culture of debate and argumentation?
Prompted by the post on the communication style during the past US Presidential Elections, someone pointed out to me on plurk that they thought that communications, dialectics and the ethics of discourse should be taught in school to kids already and I gathered that for him that would mean a considerable improvement of certain things going wrong at this point in history when partisanship seems to be more important than the political, social et al. issue at hand.
I only half agree with that idea for one general reason: we talk like our parents. Or rather we discuss like our parents.
Let me explain this slightly exaggerated assertion. While I am all for teaching young adults the arts of talking properly, right and for effect on one hand and to analyse arguments and react to them on the other hand, I also believe that such a teaching is next to fruitless if it falls on unprepared ground.
Aren’t we much more influenced by the discussion style and culture going on in our parent’s house while growing up than shaped by what the teacher tells us at say… the age 14?
It is a common and widely accepted ground rule today that our way of talking, expressing ourselves in normal circumstance is shaped by our social upbringing, the surroundings we’ve been exposed to at tender age and the all the other socio-historical stimuli we’ve been subjected to. It’s shaped by what we read, when we read it, what we hear and process and finally who we consider our idols and personal heroes. (I had and still have a huge sympathy for the Roman Senators and it has pushed me at an early age to learn the history and nature of rhetoric making me real pain in discussions… 
)
If that is the case for ‘normal style’ communication, then it isn’t too far fetched to assume that the particular case of discursive discussion is just as influenced by our roots. As kids and adolescents we learn from what we see and if our parents have either a passive agressive discussion and confrontation style, or one that makes the roof blow off the house, as children we will either adopt that or refuse it completely depending our level of auto-evaluation and critical analysis of our actions.
The point I am trying to make here is simple really: an ethos is discussion and argumentation cannot be built by schooling and teaching alone, because these levels already assume a certain meta-level because they aim at teaching something. A good discussion style starts much earlier and parents are important in that process. The effect of an all-mighty father that can say ‘Yes, you’re right and making a good point there. I concede that I was wrong/hasty etc.’ are immense on the psyché of a child that will learn that even though a parent is the measure of all things in their life, conceding to being wrong isn’t the end of the world. This in turn will at a later age tell them that riding an argument even though you know that it’s flawed is a bad thing and that it’s better to learn from others rather than stand on your own viewpoint against all odds and the wrath of the gods.
I’ve seen people with a lot of kids being condescending with people who tried to have a decent discussion with them in the course of these Elections, who were deliberately mean and inflammatory and abrasive only to show how right they thought they were and it made me seriously worry about the example they give to their children, because I don’t believe that in their home environment they discuss differently than online. We are what we say and how we say it after all and if you don’t have a discussion ethos with the big topics, why would you have one in the most fundamental social cell, family?
Neither one of us has proof of the ultimate truth, if they did, the world would look differently and there wouldn’t be any need for discursive analysis and discussion or even so much as a teaching exchange. In such a utopian state of Eden, we all would know and thus wouldn’t need to exchange knowledge or different points of views. The second a person, locked in a discussion, assumes that they have the better point of view, the right way of looking at things, the respect clause has been violated and since at this point only condescension can be had from that person, the discussion dies a sudden death.
Now people will continue on, trying to work with such a person, to make them see other contrasting arguments to their view, or even pull the mother of all arguments: personal experience. (A well known ‘trick’ to try and bring emotion into the discussion and tone down the heat.) But with someone as fundamentally convinced as this, even that will be shot down.
There is no value to be had from such discussions. Not a social interactive value, not a personal one and certainly not a political one. All it serves is giving rhetorical bullies a box on which they can stand on their personal speaker’s corner. All that comes from it is insult.
Kids that grow up under such communication circumstances are bound to have a ‘strike first’ attitude in their discussion style and chances are such an attitude will also spill over into their general conflict resolution attitudes (hitting when no arguments are at hand etc.).
So, truly, as adults, we shape the future generation’s communication style as well as their ability to deal with information, process it and use it in discussion. A detail that often gets lost in the mayhem that can be child upbringing.
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The Word
Our worlds are made of words and meaning. Words that bother and comfort, words that build and veil, words that confuse and break open those windows to our hearts that never get used. We use them everyday to speak, relate and cover up, to dissect and inspect, to see and hear and ultimately listen. Words and the things they represent are what makes a man… or not.
There is a word in all this wordness of the wordlessness. So fine in thought and phonetics, so balanced in reason and it’s labio-dental being, so trustworthy in it’s simplicity. So empty in all it’s glory.
It is moved around the pages of numerous books, moved by unseen hands of unknown placers. Pushed to the side of a line, to the beginning, the line-up of a paragraph, the title, the end, the last, the first, the whatever. Through History, through time, on pages worth a thousand others, thought and written by men and women worthy of the meaning, and so many that never grasped it’s true colour or … future. Slipped and flipped around the edges of an inspiring text, a daring pamphlet, a burning speech, a tearing poem or a heating novel. Thus said word, made its way through the eons and ages that long passed, have made the whole structure of words we live in by the day. An architecture of meaning, of synonimical rigour, building room after room, floor after floor, high into skies that bear no limit to what only lowest spirits call culture.
And our word? Stuck somewhere between the ground floor and apartment block 2A, right beside emptiness and vigour. Moved around the great pieces of human culture, like a forgotten furniture: always there, but not really fitting. Not entirely. So, they strip it down, sand it bland, paint it anew to the current times, make it fit wherever it needs to go, make it wear whatever we need it to convey. (grind it down, construct it completely new)
We move it around between the front room, the salon and the back of the house. Once in the first spot for everyone to see when it might serve a purpose. Only to have it removed and put into storage the next day when all sense has been lost and it doesn’t even have enough substance to bear a vase of flowers on its top.
And while it ages, wastes and dies away, this word’s carapace and empty shell is still being used as a ghost, a placeholder in our minds and thoughts. By people that greater and smaller than you or me who rip it apart, move it around, walk over it, tear it apart, defile it, crush it and rape it, while the word all by itself sits in a long forgotten room in some wonderful speech that tells us of a glorious future, whips us in line behind another empty hull of another mighty word that has lost all meaning.
A long forgotten room, in a house full of lost and deconsidered words that have lost reality or reference, that simply have lost being.
There is a word in all this dusty lostness and we used to call it truth. It used to be the making and the destruction of kings, princes and worlds. It used to be the greatest things of all, one of the greatest words with power.
Truth dies easy in the whispers of a thousand liars.
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Decisions and moral responsibility
When is egoism permitted and when is it not? What is egoism in a relationship? And do we need to save ourselves before we can save someone else?
I am somehow not quite happy with Carry Tennis’ advice to Negotiating (a woman married to an alcoholic who has not accepted his problem as of yet) on Salon.com.
The major question is whether Negotiating should just leave or give her husband an ultimatum to get sober. Her problem is that she doesn’t know whether she can stay with him even if he gets sober:
Somehow, announcing that I am leaving unless he gets sober, then leaving even if he does, seems wrong. However, if I just announce that I am leaving because of his drinking, I don’t think he’ll have any motivation to quit. He is still the father of my children and still someone I care about even if I am having serious doubts about the marriage at this point.
Tennis advises:
The effect of your escape on this man is not something we can predict in advance. So do not premise your escape on any agreements with this man or any expectations about his future. He is not a person you can make agreements with. He is not a person whose future is predictable. He is, for the moment, a hopeless alcoholic. All you can do is save yourself.
It is a general rule that we cannot help anyone as long as they do not accept our help. In the case of addicts (psychos etc.) this means that, if the person in question has not accepted their problem and actually wants to change something, there is simply no way for external help to have any effect. In most cases it can be counter-productive even.
But isn’t it normal for a responsible person to reflect their own decisions and deliberate on the effects their actions might have on the people around them: their family, their friends? For all we know the fact of Negotiating leaving her husband and taking the kids with her, might be another notch in her husbands addiction. This does not imply any responsibility on her part. But its a fact that social isolation makes addiction even more hard to beat.
It’s normal for her not to know how she will feel about her marriage once he would be sober. How could she? If there are other doubts about the marriage and anger involved, they are clouded over by the most important problem: the addiction.
Why do people expect themselves to have it all figured out all the time? Leaving to reconsider and then after reconsidering would be a perfectly possible solution for Negotiating. But Tennis simply tells her to leave, be egoistic and save herself. This advice is perfectly fine for the acute problem. But is it the best way from a moral point of view?
I very much doubt that. To shed people because of their problems, their weaknesses or their ‘incompatibility’ is the easy way out. It is much harder to stick with them, love them anyway, fight with them and for them.
Analysing one’s actions and their impact on others is not simply a way to avoid a decision, it is also a way to appreciate the people around us. But everybody has their own free will to decide what to do or not to do. So even if I am concerned by somebody else’s decision, I can decide to have it affect me or not. And if my decision could affect someone else negatively, it does not imply any responsibility per se. Of course this is only valuable in ‘normal’ cases of decisions or actions, meaning: cases where the basic principle of benevolence for another person are satisfied. If I want to hurt someone, the hurtful act is surely my responsibility.
But we choose by what we are affected.It can be painful or rewarding. Being reflective about it doesn’t make us egoists, but concerned individuals.
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Social Media
