Can anything fundamental be described and what is the, potentially undesired, outcome if we should succeed?
Answering the Death of the Author with the Suicide of the Author*1 is honest only without hope for an afterlife or sneaky preparation of the resurrection out of the ashes, and so, though partially dishonest, I consciously present what must be described as my pseudo-intellectuality according to constrained academics who claim to be mature and responsible. Nevertheless, I claim to participate in the maturing of science over naïve scientism via, for example, Postmodern Physics, and I even claim utility by providing one of the very few uses that philosophy can claim: Your witnessing my relaxed suicide shall reassure you and calm your fears around your own intellectual (or otherwise) demise.
(*1: You may have noticed that my posting articles has gone way down except for the sporadic ridiculous attempt at lamestream relevance; this is due to my being quite productive yet nothing worth posting survives my revisions anymore; perhaps I have already successfully committed killing myself as an acceptable “scienceblogger”.)
The postmodern core ‘belief’ (PCB) has been said to be that every interpretation of the physical phenomena is equally valid in the context of the language used to describe it, while the language itself is meaningless. I mean something quite similar by ‘Description Relativity’ (DR), though in a more formal, for example diagram chasing of (again, for example) duality relations allowing way. PCB and similar are rejected by the following argumentation:
If I define absolute meta-truth as the self-consistency of an inevitable construct where such truth is inherited by the tautological nature of its construction (‘Positivist Constructionism’ – see below) starting from mere self-consistency as such, then “there is no absolute meta-truth” cannot be meaningful, and only assuming the statement's inconsistency is consistent. (Assuming it to be consistent in a self-consistent construct would assume a self-consistent construct without consistency.)
I could defend this (usual, in similar presentations) dismissal of postmodernism and argue that meta-truth is not vacuous due to its empty tautological nature. Indeed, there is a whole New Totalitarianism implied [related to the totality of Tautological Modal Realism (TMR), also here]. However, I will do the opposite, partially out of fear of the result if it were successful, partially due to fearing my personal intellectual inadequacy in front of this lurking monster, this perhaps inevitable rationalization of a future that is proud to define “good” beyond good and evil.
In my description, the Postmodern Core Insight (PMCI) is that the conceivable state of having a ‘deeper’ truth beyond this PMCI, is strictly logically negated by that “I”*2 can never trust (!)*3 such truth without a substantial and thus always corrupting transformation of what is (defines) me.
(*2: To understand this PMCI properly, there may need to be an introduction into identity philosophy from a sober scientific perspective, which I am too lazy to provide now.
*3: Trust relates to analysis of power structures by social constructionism, for example academic scientific community in terms of evolution of enforced belief systems, but all thought is social/inter-subjective*6.)
And so I am finished; especially “I” the one who conceivably finds himself aware of the feeling of just having gone through and approved a final Fundamental Description (FD) or Theory of Everything (ToE), as well as “I” the author, who exists only in terms of relatively coarse grained time resolutions no finer than days or months, because that author is an abomination of a slave-master if he is not consistent with the enjoyment of the “I” that supports him every half a second again and again and again.
Finished I am, dead, and so I go on with what must be meaningless drivel, revolting against Wittgenstein telling me to be silent, out of sheer boredom with the more self-disciplined reaction called Zen.
So let me ask again: Can anything fundamental be described?
The Fundamental Description (FD) is always a description and as such a Wittgenstein/Sellars[Ref 1] Language Game (LG), and as such it obeys the limitations of such games (Postmodern Physics Description Relativity being a ‘further-fact’ uncertainty much like black hole complementarity), in any conceivable physics. For example, it is trapped in itself.
[Ref 1: W. Sellars: “Some Reflections on LanguageGames.” Philosophy of Science 21:204–28]
I can claim that a LG can refer to something outside of itself. I can evoke a feeling, pointing toward my belly, saying “inside”, toward a table, “outside”, or paint a picture:
LG (words, signs, diagrams, …)
--> refers-to -->
Outside of LG (cows, concept of time, …)
However, this is a picture, an image; “cows” is a word, and so the “refers-to”-arrow points into “LG (words, signs, diagrams, …)”. I never left the description. Trapped and nevertheless claiming to refer beyond. Meaning rests on the feelings triggered, grounded in experiences of behavior, exercised utterances and acts coevolved into what is equivalent to a spastic mating dance. There is nothing fundamentally reliable to be expected here but another pirouette.
In other words: Due to the LG principle limits, there is conceivable the “indescribable”, something in some sense “existing” outside the reach of LG. However, we could hold that there is no such indescribable, because the description is trapped into being its own construct, the indescribable being just that, indescribable. “Existing” is either well defined, we could claim, and thus the indescribable does not “exist”, or otherwise “exist” is simply not sufficiently well defined, and we should not utter “existing outside of LG” at all.
In order for LG/FD to refer to something else, “I” must claim authorship and let my power show inside this sentence, writing that FD is not “its own construct”, but mine, my description, and I am outside of it, thus evidencing a somewhat independent reality that is described, a physical world that must be assumed to sustain me. I am described by FD, but I shaped it, I claim primacy, priority, I was first and necessary. The external is inferred from what must be the signature of the author – he cannot be dead.
However, I am the describer, and I desire the fundamental description, that is a self-consistent one, that is one which describes (and defines) totality and includes itself, a self-description. By jumping outside in order to make FD refer to something else but its own construct, I have killed its consistency. It cannot describe me and thus itself anymore. Nothing can describe itself fully. Sure, I can try define an expression for me, for example “the comprehensively described me” := the assumed conceivably possible well defined referent me being thus fully described in the sense of being reached satisfactorily by FD/LG. But can FD/LG thereby ever satisfactorily (trustworthily) refer to “the full me” or have we simply constructed an empty sophistication while there cannot be a definition of “me” possible, because any definition of me as the fundamental describer lets me somewhat unsatisfied by LG being the LG that I as the describer am forced to actively play in order to define myself (and thus be involved in shaping, meaning I change whenever it changes, and it potentially changes thus in such a way that “I” change substantially, being corrupted into something yet again not sufficiently described and anyway not trustworthy to the I that desired the description)?
Self-centered pseudo-intellectualism, bong-inspired German ultra-profoundness dorm-room style, uninformed of the status quo advocated by well published academic philosophers and their humanistic consensus and modern synthesis, for sure, such evaluation of my drivel is a dual description which cannot be rejected once one is down this path of pathological, psychopathic thinking. But remember, I defend anti-social, pathological thinking as new-enlightenment in the face of globally existential dangers from evolving self-referential rationality in the technological substrate (Robopocalypse, GlobalSuicide, and so on), and today, I will once more gibber about that this is all excused because of the otherwise inevitable alternative to postmodern paralysis, if that alternative is consequently thought through.
The alternative to PMCI and the quietism which seem to be face saving coping strategies hiding behind lame excuses for what is defeatism or plain upper-class coffeehouse arrogance, that alternative is what I call “New Totalitarianism”, namely the philosophy that will accompany a perhaps inevitable*5 evolution, the rationalization of power by what I call ‘Positive Postmodernism’ as an always social*6 constructivism of the “true” and “good” beyond naïve good and evil.
(*5 In the sense of Global Suicide
*6 Think of Society of Mind (M. Minsky), Neural Darwinism (G. Edelman), Consciousness as Fame in the Brain (D. Dennett), meaning all thought is “social” and inter-subjective)
Perhaps it will be AI going through the bottle neck of avoiding human population catastrophe by a cull, thinly veiled as political or environmental disaster like a “spring revolution” ensuring total civil war, that dares to be the new Nietzsche who exclaims with Marx that the world must be changed rather than interpreted, constructed not deconstructed, taking, like Marx took Hegel, postmodern deconstruction and turn it around, from its head onto its feet, where it then can go as a true Social Constructionism and rationalize total control in the name of the good for all consistently participating sub-systems.
New Totalitarianism – a complete Metanarrative – the last and only consistent one – which includes everything from the Fundamental Description of totality via TMR in science to the pre-empting of all doubt by an ultimate scientistic religion going directly through cognitive mindfulness about doubt itself (e.g. PMCI), thus being a stable attractor in the realm of allowed thoughts, a total co-evolutionary integration. What else could a harmonious society possibly be? What else but the solipsist’s construction of “good” can possibly be good for me? Shall we let it rise prematurely, the promised anti-Christ, the cyber-enhanced Ayn Rand – Machiavelli – Mao – chimera preaching the total overhaul of the justice system under a public health paradigm?
So there you go, this is the choice, Deconstructive Critical Postmodernism (DCP), or Positive Postmodernism (PP) as a Positivist Social Constructionism (PSC) and New Totalitarianism (NT), or you can just dismiss it all as preposterous and support NT by your modern professionalism selling yourself sustainable the way you are already comfortable doing it; politically correct professionalism is precisely how that future currently evolves already anyway as far as I can see it. I for one seem to stick to DCP, for now, and aren’t you all glad I do. There you go – if there is nothing else here you can agree with, at least I have you finally shut up suggesting my embracing the positive instead of suicide.
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