Adrift…
The Crisis of a Post-Nietzschean Modernity and Post-Modernity
“He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see” …
― Ayn Rand
“There is indeed an essential opposition between the spirit of Greek Science, oriented towards contemplation, and the secular spirit of Modern Science, directed at dominating the world through technology, and thus informed by the spirit of domination and power”…
- Augusto del Noce
“I am critical of modernity giving Science and Technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery”…
— Hustom Smith
Post-Modernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination”…
— Jean Baudrillard
ego
the conscious self
self as it appears to self (Phenomenal)
non-ego
the unconscious self
ego as it is in itself (Noumenal)
Primacy of Human Consciousness
the axiom of the centrality of human consciousness in understanding and shaping reality
Primacy of Existence
the axiom that existence exists — the universe exists independent of consciousness — that things are what they are — that they possess a specific nature, an identity
Seventeenth-century French Philosopher René Descartes’s ideas profoundly shaped the direction of Western Civilisation that, gave birth to Modernism, and provided the burning flame for the Scientific, Industrial and Digital Revolutions that followed.
Yet the Enlightenment Project remained unfinished and once again manifested itself in turbulence and tragedy throughout the 20th Century as the eternal nature of the Human Condition was confronted with the complexity and emergent qualities of the Material World.
It was illuminated by Austrian-born Economist Friedrich Hayek in a series of essays he wrote in 1945 for The American Economic Review in response to Polish Economist Oskar Lange and his endorsement of a planned economy.
It was also illuminated by the deconstruction that was now underway from the arrival of Post-Modernism.
By the early part of the 21st Century, the cognitive dissonance emanating from the collision of Modernity with Post-Modernity had eroded our Sense of Coherence.
The Modern Mind was now in a complete state of disarray — adrift — as the the inner conscious experience of Modernism had collided with the external conscious experience of Phenomenology and Post-Modernism.
“The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism”…
— Albert Camus
It represented the limits of the Primacy of Human Consciousness – the ego (Conscious Self) – a mental structure form of consciousness – in a Material World in which Humanity was entangled.
Increasingly ignoring the Primacy of Being and Existence and the eternal nature of the Human Condition.
Descartes and the Dawn of Modernity
For over three hundred years, Descartes’ ideas had cast a long shadow over Humanity.
Ideas that included the Mathematisation of Reason, Cartesian Dualism, the Primacy of Human Consciousness, Methodological Doubt, and a new World View that increasingly saw the Universe, Mind, and Body as mechanical machines.
Mathematisation of Reason
Descartes stood on the shoulders of intellectual giants — Aristotle’s Metaphysics & Term Logic and Euclid’s Geometry.
Ideas that had been synthesised into the mathematisation of reason (Cartesian Rationalism) were constructed on the spatial structures of thought — The Geometric Mind.
“But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically”…
— Rene Descartes
This led to the emergence of analytical philosophy in the early parts of the 20th Century and manifested itself in the advent of high-dimensional computation and machine & deep learning in the 21st Century.
Cartesianism had not only been universally embraced.
It now had been mechanised and automated.
Cartesian Dualism
Through the application of Leibniz’s Law, Descartes recognised the existence of two different types of substances in the Universe — the Physical (Material World), which extends into Physical space (res extensa) — and — the Mind (Mental World) — Thinking (res cogitans).
This distinction became known as Cartesian Dualism and paved the way for studying the mind and consciousness.
The Primacy of Human Consciousness — Temples of Reason
“Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true and assured I have gotten either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time, I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”…
— Rene Descartes
Descartes re-orientated humanity towards the Primacy of Human Consciousness, Cartesian Rationalism, and Mathematical Logic.
Logical Positivism and a Priori forms of Reasoning.
Reason and knowledge were the foundations of truth, and this could reliably be attained through a mental structure form of consciousness — Abduction* to form a hypothesis, Induction to generalise, Deduction (logical rules), Intuition (mind's awareness of ideas), and Methodological Doubt (open inquiry through questioning of beliefs and assumptions).
Descartes observed that many beliefs people hold are based on ideas anchored in authority, traditions, or experiences, which could be false or unreliable. Hence, the essence of his philosophical inquiry was to address these concerns.
This approach accelerated the development of Modernity and an increasingly secular materialist and nominalist perspective of reality.
An absence of the sacred and substitution with Temples of Reason.
The utility value of modern science and the emergence of a social system called an economy that could objectively allocate resources based on sets of quantitative rules of abstraction to maximise utility.
A Modern Society where natural, financial or human resources represented forms of capital or standing reserves (Bestand).
Both concepts were anchored in the notion of rationalism and, when combined, provided the catalyst that drove a prolonged period of rapid economic expansion and human prosperity.
The creation of Modernity, a Technological Society and a Technological System.
Methodological Doubt, Epistemological Humility and Open Inquiry
“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things”…
— Rene Descartes
He legitimised the idea of methodological doubt, which involved systematically questioning all beliefs and opinions to arrive at specific knowledge. In doing so, it represented a radical departure from the Aristotelian tradition.
The Mechanisation of the World, Mind and Body
“We can look at different levels. One is actually to question authority. One would no longer look up what Aristotle said in order to find out how the world works. Let’s investigate it ourselves. The second is, obviously, the focus on observation. The third, I guess, is to put forward a hypothesis that were tested. Galileo was testing Hypotheses for much of his life, particularly in relation to mechanics. And the fourth was a suspicion that, ultimately, the World was a “kind of machine” or nature was a Machine. When Galileo said the “book of nature” was written in the language of mathematics, that’s very close to a mechanical idea of nature which was developed enormously by Descartes. As far as Descartes was concerned, all of nature was mechanism, including animals and including our bodies, and we were “ghosts in these machines”. And, of course, that climaxed in Newton, the whole idea of the Universe being a great huge clock of intermeshing parts”…
— Raymond Tallis, August 2020 podcast titled Monteverdi & his Constellation — The New Art of Science
Descartes's ideas provide the seed that germinated a new World View — a Mechanistic Universe operating according to mathematical laws.
It inspired the development of modern physics & the study of mechanics and, over time, increasingly extended engineering to all living systems (a Fourth Industrial Revolution) — despite the importance of the Primacy of Existence and the complexity & non-ergodic qualities of our Material World, the embodied nature of being and the eternal nature of the Human Condition.
Bioengineering, Genetic Engineering, Geoengineering and Artificial General Intelligence were the new vernacular of the extension of reason.
But was this extension of engineering and reason to complex non-ergodic emergent living systems an ontological philosophical error ( a category mistake) in how we perceive reality?
“But it is not in Nominalism alone that modern thought has attributed to the human mind the miraculous power of originating a category of thought that has no counterpart at all in Heaven or Earth. Already in that strangely influential hodge-podge, the salad of Cartesianism,the doctrine stands out very emphatically that the only force is the force of impact, which clearly belongs to the category of Reaction; and ever since Newton’s Principia began to affect the general thought of Europe through the sympathetic spirit of Voltaire, there has been a disposition to deny any kind of action except purely mechanical action” …
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Scientific Naturalism — Combining Science and Technology
The legitimacy of Modernity could be traced back to a Cartesian Mental Structure form of Human Consciousness and its Rules of Understanding.
The objectivity of certain patterns of thought (a priori ) from our lived embodied experience and observations & understanding (semiotics) in revealing a Noumenon World.
A Platonism where certain objective and eternal truths could be revealed through reason and contemplation.
It combined theoretical Scientific Discovery (Mental World Abstraction) with practical Technological Creation (Material World Action).
The increasing mechanisation of reason through Mathematics and Rules of Abstraction.
The mathematisation of scientific knowledge & heuristics through semiotic signs of abstraction.
Value could now be measured, abstracted, codified, patented, licensed, and readily re-applied.
The emergent powers of this new form of Reason were so compelling it gave rise to a scientific naturalism where all other forms of knowledge, such as Philosophy and Theology, began to be subordinated.
“in 1952, F.A. Hayek wrote what became The Counter-Revolution of Science. The idea is that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new conception of science was born, which reversed a previous understanding. Science was not a process of discovery by research but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite. This elite would impose its view on everyone else. Hayek called this “the abuse of reason” because genuine reason defers to uncertainty and discovery while scientism as an ideology is arrogant and imagines it knows what is unknown”…
A Post-Nietzschean version of Modernism anchored in the Primacy of Human Consciousness and a Will to Power.
“The appearance of scientism always indicates a crisis of philosophy”…
– Augusto Del Noce
Cracks in the Temples of Reason — The emergence of Continental Philosophy
“Now subjectivism reduces all science to the knowledge of one individual, the Ego — which, as just shown, is no science at all. If its fundamental definition of knowledge means anything or is faithfully adhered to, subjectivism teaches that the intelligent subject has no intelligence save for itself — has no warrant for believing in the existence of anything save itself — knows nothing but the inexplicable order of its own sensations and thoughts. It reduces all existence to an unrelated One, while of an unrelated One no science is possible. In a word, subjectivism if logical, annihilates science at a blow”…
— Francis Ellingwood Abbot
By the 19th and 20th Centuries, a new form of Philosophy emerged in Europe that began to critically challenge and deconstruct the inner mental structure form of Cartesian consciousness.
The certainty of such knowledge (epistemology) and Society’s orientation towards an objective nature of reality.
It increasingly rejected the distinction between abstraction and embodiment that was at the very core of Descartes's dualism.
Themes such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics (meaning, communication and interpretation of texts), and critical theory that began critiquing our understanding of the social, cultural, and economic structures underpinning Society had opened up an entirely new landscape of philosophical inquiry.
Humans are entangled in the World and our lived human experiences matter.
Post-Modernism
“Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals” …
― Jean Baudrillard
Building on the ideas of Continental Philosophy, a new school of philosophy was forming.
The Frankfurt School — associated with the Institute for Social Research — was a collection of philosophers, social theorists, and cultural critics emanating from the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
It was shaped by the turmoil taking place in Europe during the first decades of the 20th Century.
The social, economic, political, and cultural cross-currents of the time, including Marxist thought that was critical of the impact of Modernity — these so-called rational economic systems — on the rights and conditions of workers.
Areas such as the role of mass media, consumer culture, and authoritarianism in Modern Society were all important topics of exploration.
Their works are known for their critical analysis of society and culture, as well as their emphasis on the role of ideology, power, and control in shaping social relations.
Whilst it recognised the embodied nature of being (materialism) and the attempts at unification examined by Kant and Hegel (a Presence ), it was highly critical of the logocentrism and ancient Greek traditions of Western philosophical thought.
A tradition in Western Philosophy and Science that regarded words and languages as fundamental expressions of an external reality (Observer & Observed), whereas writing (given its absence of presence — only an Observer) was viewed as an artificial and derivative representation of speech.
A potentially misleading sign of a sign
Logocentrism was critical of a Western tradition of placing more reliance on certain semiotic signs (words and languages) than the object itself.
It was questioning a Mental Structure form of consciousness that had increasingly shaped Western Philosophy for over 2,300 years.
A Post-Modern deconstruction of the foundations of Modernity which was a critique of metaphysics and a solely quantitative approach to reason.
The assumption that there is a single objective reality that can be accessed through reason and empirical observation.
Postmodernists were presenting an alternative perspective, where reality was shaped by social, cultural, language, and power relations.
The legitimacy of Post-Modernity could be traced back to the emergence of a Phenomenological form of Human Consciousness (Phenomenology) and its Umwelt.
The subjectivity of certain patterns of thought (a posteriori ) from our lived embodied experience and observations & understanding (semiotics) in a Phenomenological World.
A Nominalism that recognises the individuality and uniqueness of particular objects or events experienced through our senses.
The emerging crisis of the Primacy of Human Consciousness — Modernism & Post-Modernism
Modernity and Post Modernity’s reductionism to two different forms of Nominalism both anchored in forms of the Primacy of Human Consciousness were now colliding with our entanglement in a complex Material World — the Primacy of Existence and Being.
“The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists – and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness” …
– Ayn Rand
A zeitgeist captured by early 20th Century surrealist artist — Rene Magritte — in his 1929 painting — Ceci n’est pas une pipe — This is not a pipe.
Was the picture (i.e.the sign — the appearance — the abstraction) the pipe, or was there a Monism — a unity — a Presence and Absence — that ultimately shaped our understanding of Reality?
A Primacy of Being and Primacy of Existence which was more foundational and fundamental to Truth and Reality than the Primacy of Human Consciousness and Beliefs (Ego — Conscious Self).
“In perception, there is a double consciousness of an ego and non-ego”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Clearly, both Modernism and Post-Modernism were a long way from contemplating this question despite an ever-growing cognitive dissonance.
“There is a definite opinion to which the mind of man is, on the whole and in the long run tending. On many questions the final agreement is already reached, on all it will be reached if time enough is given… This final opinion, then, is independent, not indeed of thought, in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I or any number of men think. Everything, therefore, which will be thought to exist in the final opinion is real, and nothing else…
This theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of a thing in itself, — a thing existing independent of all relation to the mind’s conception of it. Yet it would by no means forbid, but rather encourage us, to regard the appearances of sense as only signs of the realities. Only, the realities which they represent, would not be the unknowable cause of sensation, but noumena or intelligible conceptions which are the last products of the mental action which is set in motion by sensation”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
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