It's time for Popper

It’s been nearly two weeks since my last post. It’s time. Time to write a lousy quantity-over-quality post about anything, simply in order to get myself back into he habit of posting.

So what’s on my mind today? Popper. Karl Popper. I’m lucky enough to have to write a rather lengthy final paper about him for my epistemology class.

I like Sir Karl. Basically he’s a big deal because he presents a viable solution to Hume’s problem of induction. How can you make empirical predictions -- predictions about the physical world – if it doesn’t follow that, just because something is the case in one case, it will be in all cases? For example, just because every swan we’ve seen is white, how can we know all swans are white until we’ve seen every swan there is. Philosophers had tried to resolve this issue for sometime but had always assumed that by induction was the only way to gain empirical knowledge. Popper agrees with Hume’s observation but disagrees with the latter assumption. He argues that rather than obtain knowledge through induction we should do it instead by deduction. That is to say that, if something is the case or is not the case, rather than seek evidence of the case, we seek evidence of it not being the case. Thus by falsification we can make empirical claims – but never about what is, only about what isn’t. He says a bunch of other important stuff too about demarcation and corroboration, but I don’t feel like getting into them here. Maybe I’ll post part of my paper later. For the record, I don’t particularly agree with his philosophy of ethics, society and social science; I’m not sure that those things can be reduced to the same kind of methods as the physical sciences. He also has many critics.

Understanding not-understanding

Something just occurred to me as I was studying Quine’s "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". I’ll often make sense of things without understanding any of the terms involved; I mean to say that my mind seems to inherently interpret things on a structural or formal level, rather than in a practical, “this and this,” sort of way. Ironically, I’ll often make sense of things I don’t get at all. For example I love visiting physics sights and just reading the jargon: I’ll understand how they got from their premises to their conclusion, and even have a vague idea of what’s being said, but only as a whole; if you asked me to explain one part, I couldn’t. In my mind everything has always been relational -- it’s no wonder I take such a liking to structuralism and post-structuralism. I suppose if I had to attribute this to something, it’s probably the years I spent in French emersion without ever bothering to try and adequately learn French. There were countless words I didn’t understand, but as long as I could grasp the operands, things “made sense.” Meh; maybe everyone’s mind works like this?

Concerning the Bible

If you've ever wondered why types like me have such a hard time taking the bible seriously, read this post on Total Drek. Be sure to click on all the linked words to learn more about how God with a capital 'G' hates niggers and fags, but loves cloning and women's lib. Unfortunately, Drek neglects to mention that each of these factions is well aware of all the 'wrong readings' of their blessed holy text. That's why they've each spent their entire lives rationalizing their decision with claims to divine interpretation, or revelation by prayer and meditation. Yeah you're right. The bible is infallible. It says you're a fuking moron; at least that's what Jesus told me in a dream last night.

“This place is fuct"

“This place is fuct. The social structure is completely broken down.”

Comments by a CBC reporter concerning a community in Africa devastated by aids. Where do we go from here? What the fuck do we do for a people - to a people - after we’ve fuct them up this much? Yes we fuct them up! By conquering them, enslaving them, exploiting them, followed by half a century of righteous grossly misguided west-centric “development projects,” two-decades of half-assed AIDS policy, and committing just about every other nasty thing against them we wouldn’t even wish against our neighbour’s dog. Where the fuck do we go from here?! How the hell do you ‘fix’ a people? How do we re-construct a broken social structure? Fixing people sounds pretty fucking condescending doesn’t it? Can we resolve this? Or should we just fuck’em and leave’em? This is where we’re at folks! These are the questions we need to be answering.

“I didn’t know what my father was suffering from, I just thought it was TB.”

Comments by an African girl on the condition of her father, upon finding out he had aids. JUST TB! How tragic it would be if your neighbour’s dog got TB. Can you fucking imagine how much your world would have to suck in order to say a thing like that! No SUV, no white picket fence, no college education, nothing!!! We should all go to hell for the mere fact that we sleep at night, and knowing how much suffering goes on in the world.

Prose and ideas

The use of prose in philosophy is an attempt at avoiding the unavoidable: the infinite reduction of argumentation. The text is used as a smoke screen to hide the fact that not every premise can have a premise, and thus the normative subtext behind every idea.

For example try and depict an idea in point form. When taken apart and put so plainly it’s obvious that each claim would need support, and so on and so on; your assumptions are those premises you not to explain. In essay format, it’s considerably more difficult to pick out assumptions unless they are stated explicitly: “I am making the assumption that…”

Musing: a special dimension. Imagine any paragraph but in point form with each sentence corresponding to a separate point. It seems to take on a very different and more transparent shape. Is it sentence structure that hides meaning or paragraph structure? A case of the reification of a textual forms – is the paragraph (sentence even) not simply the sum of its parts?

Which brings me to another thought: the cultural dynamic of assumptions. Some claims can be made in light of certain circumstances. I.e. I feel no need to explain that words are abstractions and deferred from signifieds (A hidden and underlying assumption throughout this post.).

What not to do

Read Frederic Jameson and then watch The Wedge on Much Music. Here’s an excerpt from Jameson to illustrate my point:

When the links of the signifying chain snap, then we have schizophrenia in the form of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers. …. If we are unable to unify the past, present and future of the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify the past, present and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life. …. The schizophrenic is reduce to an experience of pure material signifiers, or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelated presents in time.

Jameson kicks the feet out from under the iconoclastic pastiche inspired indie-post-punk-rockers. Music videos that were already void of meaning are exposed as just that: being void of meaning. Fragmented images of androgynous musician-types flash across the screen in sync to monotonous beat-types; the empty vocals and generic instrumentals dissipate into un-meaning slipping further and further into the simulacra abyss. All of a sudden it’s just not good enough to only not be something pop. All the while...

Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existences, but they no longer need to impose their speech; and the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only an absences of any great collective project but also the unavoidability of the national language itself.

The “we’re fuct” that howls perpetually in the back of all our minds impregnates my conscious, but only for a moment; I’m going to an artsy party tonight and I’m excited.

F*ck conservatives

Another conversation doo-dad cause I’m trying to put Dear Infatuation out of business.

Jay and I were out wondering and loitering the other night in the McGill student ghetto, looking for random parties to crash. We eventually stumbled into one that I thought had a pretty cool concept. It was -- drum role please -- “The all parties party.” What does that mean? Well most major political parties have youth wings, and this particular party was a gathering of the McGill branches for each of these wings. Try and imagine a whole whack of wasted poli sci dorks debating the impact of NGOs in contemporary political theatres. Normally I’d have found myself in the thick of this and only not soon enough, however on this particular evening I was completely sober and feeling less inclined to unintelligible dialectics. What did I do instead you ask? The only thing an intelligible male in my predicament could do. I located the most good looking and wasted girl at the party and proceeded to strike up conversation (I’m being cynical here, I can’t stand drunk chicks – especially the pretty ones. In other words, if I was talking to her she wasn’t that drunk.). Jay’s comments on the matter made my night. For the sake of context, I’m an expired-card-carrying member of the NDP (democratic socialist).

**Later on the walk home**

Me: Wow I can’t believe I got her email address; she was hot.

(Walking)

(More walking)

Me: I can’t believe she’s a conservative. (Chuckles) I should go for coffee with her sometime.
Jay: You should fuck her too …you know, do to her what the conservative party is doing to us.

(Righteous laughter all around)

How pomo are you?

Just before philosophy class a couple of guys in the corner of the class are talking about Heidegger. I don’t particularily like Guy 1, but his comment on being pomo made my day.

Guy 1: Heidegger is awsome. His phenomenology.
Guy 2: Yeah, he's only like the king of 20th century philosophy.

(casual consent all around)

Guy 2: But he was a Nazi.
Guy 1: Whatever.

(giggles all around)

Guy 1: Whatever. We’re so pomo we don’t even give a shit.

(righteous laughter all around)

Crappy post on Canadian politics.

Well today was the big day; the first of the two-part Gomery report was released. Basically it told us a bunch of stuff we already new: the monolithic Liberal Party of Canada has people in its upper echelons that are corrupt – they take kick backs, exploit federal funds for their own gain. Such is politics is suppose. Such is politics when the same party stays in power for over a decade. Heck, Bush’s government can’t seem to avoid this and they’ve only been in power for half this time.

What annoys the hell out of me is all the people now saying they’re embarrassed to be Canadian or they’re embarrassed of the Canadian government, or they’re embarrassed of the liberal party, or they’re embarrassed about whatever. The only thing to be embarrassed about in any of this is that we live in a country with four major federal parties of whom none of which seem to have any chance of offering an alternative. Why is this?

We have three alternatives: the NDP, the BQ and the Conservatives. Two of those parties don’t represent anyone except themselves and a small minority of Canadians. In my opinion both have every intention of breaking Canada up – the Conservatives, from the west, seem to lack the cunning to appreciate anyone east of the Ottawa river on anything more than a “we need your votes” level. Not to mention any Canadian household with any ‘Canadian values’ or who’s annual income is less than 80k. The BQ is a lot clearer about their intentions. I’m not really sure what to make of the NDP, from what I can tell they appreciate Canadian values, and they certainly appreciate the majority of Canadians whose incomes are below the Conservative cut off line. But how the hell can they not get a vote in Quebec! They seem to seriously lack something, and I think it’s political savvy a.k.a. the ability to equivocate and bullshit your way into power. Anyways, I doubt they’d want to break up Canada but until they learn to get votes in Quebec they’re not helping anyone.

So who wins every election: the only party that can get votes in all provinces. It’s not the Liberal Party’s responsibility to teach the opposition parties how to represent Canadians. Nope they’re going to have to pull up their socks themselves, and until they do I blame them for the redundancy of Canadian politics.