Exploring the being of knowing

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REPOST of THRE-POUND-BRAIN’s no results for ‘Cognitive Psychology of Philosophy’

and reply and reply, of Baker question, then my answer…
(please check out his full essay and the comments if you are intreated in the whole thing)

sbakker
April 13, 2017 at 9:30 am
“I don’t think I get it. So the racial theories of the Nazi’s were appropriate to the particular kind of being they were interested in?”

REPLY
landzek
April 13, 2017 at 11:00 am
“The issue is not whether there is ethical value. Of course there is.

The issue is involved in the arena where I am not disagreeing with you. Don’t get me wrong; I live for disagreement and argument; I work to be shown where I am incorrect; to me, that is the point of discussion. But the point of contention is how it is that I can agree with what you are saying, yet, somehow, you defend against me having that understanding of you, as if how I am agreeing with you is based on an incorrect appraisal of you.

I am playing with the idea around how Foucault says it in the intro to “The Order of Things”. Basically he says in one of the last point there, that he rejects the idea of some transcendence, some sort of spiritual or consciousness that resides apart somewhere. He thus is one of the first (I think) to actually say that he looks at things as upon a horizontal plane.

I agree with his sentiment, so far a existentialism in the larger sense goes (not necessarily as the academic category goes). Discourse is all we are dealing with; there is nothing outside of discourse that we are able to deal with. OOO and SR and such are good religious apologies, but I get into that elsewhere.

So, if this is the case, if there is no getting outside of discourse, then there is the problem of agreement. We get into the PMs then.

See, I notice that you are and have noticed the same things and issue that I have. and even much of the conclusions you come to are so close, but then I find that you fall into, what I might call, a kind of dogmatism that excludes me from understanding you, that it appears you place as a condition upon your rhetoric so to keep me from you, or to uphold a kind of exclusionism.

I think PeterJ could be onto something with his latest comment.

But I think it is more that meaning itself, discourse itself, does not unfold or present itself upon a inclusive plane. Discourse itself may set upon such a horizon, but then we get into (as you have noted here and there) heuristic problems. But I think it is in this moment, at this juncture that you may be pulling the ‘non-transcedntal’ clause down to blanket and protect your ‘personal heuristic’, so to speak, As if, to use a non-phil idea, in the last instance you deny all that has come to you to bring a certain ‘open-ended’ conclusion, and ‘close’ the meaning.

To me, this is a methodological maxim, a procedural constant of what is ‘philosophy’. It, as Laruelle, ‘relies upon a prior decision’ in order to establish identity.

Perhaps this is why I wonder about your science. Science, as a pure kind of endeavor (never mind Latour right now), just ‘does’. The identities is deals with are not philosophical argued but are grounded in a different kind of ‘substantiating material’ than that of philosophical identity. This is why philosophy is not ‘wrong’, it is merely ‘doing what it does’ and is also why I call for a clearing up of philosophy, its domain, and what problems it is capable of addressing.”

And, yes. The racial theories of the Nazi’s were appropriate to the type of Being they were interested in, which we could say, is the Being of the Spirit which is now destitute in its approximations.

Discourse may function upon a horizontal plane, but it is downright Un-ethical and offensive to understand Hegel in his more blatant presentations.

Enjoying this? The Sunday Same is my biweekly letter: one essay like this, every other Sunday morning, straight to your inbox. Subscribe at lanceamh.substack.com.

A note on how I use AI. I write everything on this blog myself: the ideas, the arguments, the words. I do use AI, but as an editor, not a co-author. It helps me with grammar, formatting, and structure. That use is recent: AI has been part of my process only for roughly the past year’s worth of posts. Everything older was written without it, because there was nothing like it to use. What I have found is that AI most often misinterprets what I write philosophically, so its suggestions are usually wrong, and a good deal of my attention and editing goes into sculpting each post until it reflects the ideas correctly. The ideas are never AI’s.

For transparency, I keep a Word document of my original writing and the full exchanges, back and forth with the AI, that produced each post. If anyone is interested in how a piece came together, that record is available.

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About this blog

Essays in mental health philosophy—less “tips,” more why things work (or don’t). I look at the first principles under therapy, psychiatry, psychology, and everyday life, and occasionally share notes from papers and books-in-progress.

This space stands alongside—not inside—my counseling practice. If you’re seeking therapy in Colorado, there’s a link in the footer.

About the author

Lance Kair, LPC, blends philosophy, mindfulness, and counseling to help clients find agency, meaning, fulfillment, and healing through deep understanding, self-awareness, and compassionate therapeutic collaboration.

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