The cogency of absurdity

Karlo invited me to go with him to some obscure place, to meet some obscure people, to talk about some obscure topic, that is, Blogging. Quite curiously enough, we were preoccupied with other things besides the lady in front saying some things about the 2010 election and blogging,  and that is, Dostoevksy, political orientation and PoMo(God knows why he finds it hard to embrace the PoMo Condition, its the hip thing to do today). Yes, PoMo surrounded us, from the chairs, to the architecture that stands before us, which for Karlo looks like an airconditioner and for me a Pillbox(we are of course referring to the CDU building).

When asked about my insight to the subject matter, an amateur blogger that i am compared to the people around me, karlo included, I mentioned that there is an advantage in blogging about political issues, that it makes bloggers less apathetic, a portion of society less apathethic, about the current state of the Philippine condition, but it also, paves way to a "democratization of information" where so many people are enjoying the freedom to say something to the point that factual information may become blurred from Opinions.

When others where asked for their points on the topic, I could not help but notice, well actually it was karlo who noticed first, that these people seem to impose moderation in blogging with the pretense of being unbiased and non-manipulative with the use of web logs.
 
But Could there be a disintered point of view? Could we detach the cogito from the cogitatum,  the subject that inquires to the object  of  inquiry?  A medieval neo-thomist,  Jean Poinsot considered this, and is said to be the pioneers in subject-object epistemology. And  definitely, a little later on, Edmund Husserl with his Bewusstein von Etwas (consciousness-of-something) cemented phenomenonlogy in the face of Human thought. But for Husserl, one is still able to reach a presuppositionless point of view, a pure consciousness, out from what he termed transcedental epoche or bracketing.

But his student, Martin Heidegger, did not share the same view that a subject, with the use of transcendental epoche or any other tool, could reach a presuppositionless self. He considered that the subject has a fore-sight to objects, a Vorstruktur (fore-structure of consciousness), that is, a subject imposes upon the object his presuppositions and biases, consciously or unconsciously. Freud himself would agree to this.

This idea was pursued by Hans-georg Gadamer, the person who revived the term, Hermeneutics (The art of interpretation) and added with what he calls a "historically effected consciousness" that is, a consciousness that evolves in the subject's history as it comes into reaches of the Other.

And not even the Spirit of PoMo would support the notion of an unbiased, disinterested point of view. Deconstruction itself when uttered, totally wrecks the idea since conventions (the standards of value; in this case, moderation, journalism ethics, what is important, etc) so latent in the Structure is demolished to the ground.

So How did we fared after a night with dogmatic modernists? I dont know with him, for me, I'm glad we are living in what Confucius would say: "interesting times." Now i have said my piece on this regard, and i am done with my tea.

n.b being distinterested is not the same with being uninterested. just to clarify lest i be misinterpreted.

17 CommentsChronological   Reverse   Threaded
Comment deleted at the request of the author.
britzy wrote on Feb 8
i liked that u tagged it under tea.
lilredbook wrote on Feb 8
Hi Da, my own comments are found here:
http://postcardheadlines.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/km271
lilredbook wrote on Feb 8
a "democratization of information" where so many people are enjoying the freedom to say something to the point that factual information may become blurred from Opinions.
Blogging widens the potential for delivering, interpretation and access to information. That is its democratizing potential. In that blog entry, I pointed out that the production of all those heaps of gibberish nonesense around the Internet and the blogosphere is reflective of poor educational and social outcomes around the world. It does not reflect negatively of the Internet and blogs. Because you see, if all people had been accorded the liberating effect of a truly accessible and quality education, they won't be blurring opinions and facts and publishing all the mush and fluff online.
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 8
ah, but there is also the all-pervading reaches of Capital. If you asked what social conditions that brought about PoMo, well i could say that one of them is the liberation of Capital from being merely encapsulated in the Political economy. Capital is now present everywhere, this is the high point of Capitalism. Remember Marx? he gave a prophecy that the entire world would be commodified? Gyorgi Lukacs also pointed out with what he calls "reification." THis liberation of Capital paves way for Media Spectacles, a social conditioning of sorts, so perhaps this is it. And it is this condition, i believe, that brings about the current zeitgeist, where people are driven to create fakes, in order to satiate the lose of the real. Education? maybe, but even education is a sub-structure whose underpinnings is dependent on the entire Matrix.
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 8
quite fragmented. sorry.
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 8
I was having tea. so i tagged tea.
lilredbook wrote on Feb 9
But of course, your proposition presupposes that I accept postmodernist formulations that rejects more than three hundred years of progressive thinking associated with the consistent rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment. It rejects the attempt to think scientifically about society as well as nature – and all systematic thought based on this endeavour. It rejects human thought’s ability to comprehend objective truth and corollary to this view is the rejection of the ability of language to represent reality. I still believe in science, rationality, and the idea of an objective and knowable world, Da.

Notes: A 1997 LRCI pamphlet
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 9
hahaha. *taking time with that last statement :-)

But how objective is Objectivity?

though language may represent reality it does so with the present prevailing Structure. And this structure is anything but unbiased. It has been formulated and continually formulated by History-Man-History-Man ala Marx.

So when Descartes demolished the monopoly of classical Metaphysics, predominantly Aristotelian, he did so in order to create a structure that start from an indubitable point. PoMo is like ths, one way or the other, only that it continues to deconstruct in its endeavor to find a primal fount. :-)

You start to sound like Rand. :-)
lilredbook wrote on Feb 9
But how objective is Objectivity?
I despise Rand! =) Unlike postmodernism in general, Marx and those who followed him "shares with all consistent scientific method and rationalism the belief in the concreteness of truth, and the provisional hypothetical nature of scientific theory. The revelation – through scientific research – that one theory is inadequate; its replacement by another; even a period of generalized scientific uncertainty such as our own; all of this does not add up to a case for rejecting the possibility of scientific truth."

Notes: 1997 LRCI Pamphlet
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 9
Lenin's theory of Knowledge from his Materialism and Empiriocriticism
Gilson's and Radical Neo-Thomism
Or Rand's Objectivism
take you pick. :-)

Scientific truth is an ideal. It continually changes, scientific revolutions, or famously known as "paradigm shifts."
There is a scientific truth, but it is, in my opinion, an ideal. What we have, what we mere mortals attempt to reach is just an approximation of scientific truth - that which works. The three epistemology i mentioned, does not subsume scientific truths, rather the other way around. :-)

i know you despise rand. :-)
lilredbook wrote on Feb 9
Of course I do. =) You can add Bukharin's Philosophical Arabesque in the list. He wrote it in prison during the year before he was executed by Stalin in a show trial. It was recently translated into English. Sadly, I only got to read a few excerpts...
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 9
Too modern. hahaha. ;-)
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 9
joke.
ysipalindogan wrote on Feb 9
yes. would have been great if there was an ebook somewhere. free that is.
lilredbook wrote on Feb 9
Yeah, I agree with you. =)
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