Videocy/Literacy

[Diebert van Rhijn]

As for illusory -- just saying that it would be better if people would stop making up stuff. The goal is elevation, no matter.

Oh? You exclude yourself from the category of "making stuff up"?

You should give it a rest perhaps.

[Leyla Shen]

Thanks for your misguided concern, but I'll be the judge of that.

Insofar as the subject matter in question, and in the context of that last remark of yours that I quoted and agree with, I yet await (though certainly not holding my breath) a position from you on it that isn't one you've made up. Or do you forget this is a philosophy forum?

[Leyla Shen]

Then again, perhaps you still think I'm making a power play?

Lol

[Diebert van Rhijn]

What to make of your remark: "particularly when you like to finish things off with the essential everything is illusory"?

Is that philosophy or even close to being true, demonstrable, referable or negotiable? It's made up as some kind of slur.

My positions on Marxist presuppositions are well researched although might still be disagreed with. You never addressed any of it.

[Leyla Shen]

Researched, my arse.

For all your so-called research, you don't know anything about what the man meant; only the "interpretations" of others. You even go so far as to ignore the clarifications in favour of your "appeal to authority" research that actually doesn't address them. Then what happens is you skip happily along regardless.

Not a care in the world...

Bliss!

[Leyla Shen]

It's pretty simple, really. Your interest is not in the man, and the depth and breadth of thought, it's in "winning" an argument.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

No I meant I spent some time on reading materials with different viewpoints on the matter so I could slowly form my own position which I try to put in my own words. Which I wish you'd do as well before you start responding and clicking submit here and there. You write like an edged in stone ideologist when it comes to this topic. Just the idea that someone might dismiss it at a fundamental level instead of arguing about the level of implementation and detail seems highly uncomfortable to you. Perhaps you'd take my opinion more serious if I had a longer beard?

[Leyla Shen]

One doesn't need "viewpoints" to understand the souls of men, one needs a soul themselves! Otherwise, all you get is your own image looking back at you, whether in a book or a single sentence.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

One doesn't need "viewpoints" to understand the souls of men, one needs a soul themselves! Otherwise, all you get is your own image looking back at you, whether in a book or a single sentence.

Our "soul" is just the totality of all "soul relations". Naturally we'll see our own image looking back in books and sentences. This is how cognition works.

[Leyla Shen]

You like circles, don't you Diebert?

Ring-a-Rosie, like Dennis.

You just do it in paragraphs, rather than sentences.

A plague is still a plague!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Yawn. Dennis is better than this.

[Leyla Shen]

Yes. Never a dull moment with him around, eh?

[Dennis Mahar]

The continuosly residing mind and its labelling proclivity.
source of wonder.
bliss.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

There are always better labels to go around. The goal is elevation.

Wonder & bliss left as opium for the earthworms

[Dennis Mahar]

Merely imputed

[Leyla Shen]

For all your so-called research, you don't know anything about what the man meant; only the "interpretations" of others. You even go so far as to ignore the clarifications in favour of your "appeal to authority" research that actually doesn't address them. Then what happens is you skip happily along regardless.

Not a care in the world...

Bliss!

One such proof:

Diebert says of Marx:

Marx warns for that development [commodification of human labour] in capitalism but in his theory people are defined as nothing but the totality of "social relations" and labor power as "essential quality" of the human being.

Bobo, quoting Marx:

In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form.

This is just one example of why it’s impossible to discuss Marx, and his philosophy, with you—you as nothing more than run-of-the-mill conservative. Here you ascribe to Marx the very opposite of the actuality since you haven't even bothered to ascertain the fundamental distinction between the theory (which was never “his”!) Marx is critiquing and the man’s philosophy.

What's he saying? The commodification of human labour, and with it the estrangement of the producer from the product, results in an abstract form of "individual life"; that is, there is absolutely nothing about the type of "individualism" in capitalist society resulting from the commodification of human labour that in any way resembles human character.

In other words, in all its grand bloody simplicity, "labour power" is not an essential quality of the human being (like his capacity to work and produce is), it's an essential object of exploitation in capitalist theory, and so you get "hollow men"!*

Thus it follows that I will of course know, oh beardless one, when you are actually wanting to seriously discuss Marx's philosophy. Until then, I will treat you with the same contempt you treat it.

[Ed. *Course, if it's "profound, 'productive' philosophical concepts" you want, you could always stick to rambling on and on about the eternally unconscious "Woman", instead.]

[Diebert van Rhijn]

This is just one example of why it’s impossible to discuss Marx, and his philosophy, with you—you as nothing more than run-of-the-mill conservative. Here you ascribe to Marx the very opposite of the actuality since you haven't even bothered to ascertain the fundamental distinction between the theory (which was never “his”!) Marx is critiquing and the man’s philosophy.

You're barking up the wrong tree in your blind rage. Marx his critique as well as the man's philosophy naturally both are grounded in his view on human nature or in his word Gattungswesen. Which was my topic, which was the topic all along.

In other words, in all its grand bloody simplicity, "labour power" is not an essential quality of the human being (like his capacity to work and produce is), it's an essential object of exploitation in capitalist theory, and so you get "hollow men"!*

Perhaps you should parse this for me then:

• By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description." -- Capital I, ch 6

• Labour-power is indeed his property (ever self-renewing, reproductive), not his capital. It is the only commodity which he can and must sell continually in order to live, and which acts as capital (variable) only in the hands of the buyer, the capitalist. -- Capital II, ch 20

How you derive from this and dozens of other instances that he didn't regard labour power as essential to human nature in whole of his thinking and critiquing is beyond me.

[Leyla Shen]

Are you fucking serious?

No, I mean really—do you even have any idea why he called the book, "Das Kapital" and not "Das Fucking Supreme Labour Power"!?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

No, I mean really—do you even have any idea why he called the book, "Das Kapital" and not "Das Fucking Supreme Labour Power"!?

But he talks about human beings and not some abstract entities defined only by capitalism, right?

You wrote by the way "...is not an essential quality of the human being (like his capacity to work and produce is". But Marx wrote "By labour-power or capacity for labour..".

It's quite possible you got this one wrong. Lets put it simply and in bold: Marx never wrote up his philosophical fundamentals behind his theory.

[Dennis Mahar]

Blah blah blah
Linguistics.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Blah blah blah
Linguistics.

You still think consciousness is something different than semiotics?

[Pye]

Leyla writes: For all your so-called research, you don't know anything about what the man meant; only the "interpretations" of others. You even go so far as to ignore the clarifications in favour of your "appeal to authority" research that actually doesn't address them.

Pardon if I take this a little out of context, but I have sort of been thinking about this lately elsewhere, this idea of builders and building inspectors. Builders being those persons who venture forth (here, too) proffered ideas and expressions of their own world-building work (i.e. their assessment of ultimate reality), and those who come forth to inspect those buildings. Now of course to some degree, everybody is inspecting everyone else's building, but there's a difference between inspecting the building and inspecting the inspection.

If we were to think of the builders as 'philosophers' and the building inspectors as not-that, well it provides an interesting lens through which to view contributions here too. There is world-building going on in all words, always. or world-tearing down. or no?

Diebert asks: You still think consciousness is something different than semiotics?

and here it is. The question that itches to be scratched in multiply dispersed exchanges throughout the forum. In all of its categories. In this thread. Yea and nay.

What does the nature of linguistics have to do with raising consciousness? I would mean the whole nature - from syntax to semiotics (which means words and images); from metaphor to logic; hermeneutics to epistemology: what is in dialectic here between consciousness and words? What is the relation between existence and our metaphors for it? What is the relation between knowing and saying? What is the relation between feeling and word? What does "making sense" mean? hah! It seems in my estimation to be the everpresent undercurrent, the default dialectic, the back and forth, and also the entrance to the rabbit hole when we have to remind its words we have to remind with. hah! It's both madness and genius, yes?

What have words (logic, syntax, metaphor, meaning, and all such methods of linguistic reflection) to do with 'enlightenment'? Is it possible to reflect upon i.e. become consciousness of the fullest nature of reality without them? Is enlightenment speakable or ineffable or both? - and if ultimately ineffable, what's logic got to do with it?

O goodness, it's a whole field of rabbit holes . . . :)

[Pam Seeback]

Blah blah blah
Linguistics.

You still think consciousness is something different than semiotics?

There is no language of omniscience. There is, however, a language of consciousness of omniscience, as there is a language of subconsciousness of omniscience. Jesus and the Buddha spoke consciously of omniscience which is why neither involved themselves in political or social issues (ideas of morality and ethics born of subconscious omniscience which reason dictates is in the process of becoming omniscient conscious).

[Diebert van Rhijn]

There is no language of omniscience. There is, however, a language of consciousness of omniscience, as there is a language of subconsciousness of omniscience. Jesus and the Buddha spoke consciously of omniscience which is why neither involved themselves in political or social issues (ideas of morality and ethics born of subconscious omniscience which reason dictates is in the process of becoming omniscient conscious).

It's impossible to know which areas such imagined characters like Jesus and Buddha involved themselves with so it's better not to speculate here like wishful thinking.

And what do you mean there with "omniscience" or "subconsciousness"? Their meanings are not quite universal. It's open for debate in how far things spoken so long ago are still understood as they were meant. It's important to understand that dilemma. You are seeing at best your own image in someone's writings, speech or picture. It doesn't matter in the end which topic it's about although it makes sense to focus on the existential dilemma's. But that topic also has the greatest possibility for distortion or bias - no evidence, no testing, no lab results...

[Diebert van Rhijn]

If we were to think of the builders as 'philosophers' and the building inspectors as not-that, well it provides an interesting lens through which to view contributions here too. There is world-building going on in all words, always. or world-tearing down. or no?

Reminds me of some Nietzsche I once translated: Die Pflugschar.

What have words (logic, syntax, metaphor, meaning, and all such methods of linguistic reflection) to do with 'enlightenment'? Is it possible to reflect upon i.e. become consciousness of the fullest nature of reality without them? Is enlightenment speakable or ineffable or both? - and if ultimately ineffable, what's logic got to do with it?

Well, I did say semiotics but I really mean this whole grain field of signs, analogies, metaphors, symbolism, communication and so on. This is where the question rises, doesn't it? This is where and how we relate to others and self. This is the primal soup where consciousness gestates or if you insist the other way around. But what has logic got to do with it? Building a raft so you don't drown in stupidity or get lost. Building a vessel to get you to some "other side". The Lion Path of Egyptian kings but "all we've got are these barren heaps of limestones".