Simple Thoughts, Quiet Musings

Belief II

2009-04-02T07:16:00.001-07:00

In addition to the interesting responses from Swanditch on the last Belief post, I received an email response from a friend living abroad in a rather homogenous and conservative religious community. She shared her thoughts on the difficulty of maintaining a self-identity in a society where one was not able (or allowed) to continue one's own practices (religious or otherwise). She ended by noting some of her frustration at the closed nature of the society in which she currently lives: "I can't help but wonder what the state of our world is, when such a large religious population cannot conceive of accepting the validity of another person's [beliefs, especially] since [the community's religious] perspective often dictates a whole host of life choices, not simply private religious practices."

Her comments raised a number of issues for me. First, the benefit of a pluralistic society is the ability to find a community with which to practice. Maintaining a distinct sense of self in the absence of such a community (i.e. a community that shares ones language, culture, practices) is difficult, if not impossible. Second, when one considers traditional religious communities in other (even remote) parts of the world, one wonders how they relate, say, to globalization, colonialization, and wester hegemony. That is to say, should we understand their rigidity part of a long-standing faith-tradition or as a distinctly modern response to these factors (i.e. as the foreign homologue of christian fundamentalism in the US).

The most interesting question, however, comes in the last sentence of her response (see above). Different forms of God-Talk are intertwined with "a whole host of life choices." And, in fact, I think it would be incredibly difficult to draw any sort of clean distinction between private and public practices. Even those practices which we might be tempted to treat as private (personal prayer, meditation, alter bows, etc.) are most often anchored in the very public practices of a larger community (corporate prayer, group mediation, ceremonial commemorations, etc). Perhaps one unique feature of modern pluralism is the rise in personal hybridizations that combine forms of practice from various communities. This sort of hybridization further fragments God-talk in that we are unsure of how to locate each individual in relation to various religious traditions. We might even wonder if such private conceptions of god-talk are intelligible at all. (Curiously, we can trace this notion of purely personal or private conceptions of the Divine - at least in the west - directly to the Protestant Reformation.)

Recent Work

2009-03-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post some of my recent stuff online, in case anyone is interested.

Here are two philosophy papers. (Click link and scroll down page.) The first one outlines concerns with Christine Korsgaard's recent work on the relationship between ethics and agency. The second presents an interpretation of the relationship between Classical and Romantic Art in Hegel's Lectures on Fine Art. In the somewhat unlikely event that someone does read either of them, I'd love to have any feedback you'd be willing to offer.

Though unrelated to the standard topics of this blog, I thought I'd include a link to recent pottery that I've thrown.

On Certainty.

2009-03-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

"It is not true that a mistake merely gets more and more improbable as we pass from [knowing about] the planet to my own hand. No: at some point it has ceased to be conceivable. This is already suggested by the following: if it were not so, it would also be conceivable that we should be wrong in every statement about physical objects; that any we ever make are mistaken.// So is the hypothesis possible, that all the things around us don't exist? Would that not be like the hypothesis of our having miscalculated all our calculations?" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §54-55

This makes it look as though the skeptic is really asking:

"Is it possible, right now, that I am not speaking a language? (That my words do not refer.)"

Or, we can connect it with Heidegger's assertion in Being and Time that the skeptic is in the grip of suicide: The skeptic doubts, e.g. that there is such a thing as "calculating," distinct from "miscalculating." He doubts the practices the he must engage in to live his life.

With the skeptic's questions, the wheels come off the cart. If we accept the skeptic's doubts, then we have no valid criteria of meaning. But that would mean that our own words and actions are non-sensical. Does this show that his worries are unfounded? After all, isn't this precisely what he is worried about?

But then we might wonder with Wittgenstein: what is the source of the skeptic's worry? Should we treat it as a philosophical doubt or is his concern based in a psychological disturbance? (i.e. Is there a reason behind the skeptic's question or only a cause?) Is the skeptic's concern really knowledge or is he discontent with the state of affairs more generally? (He doubt is a manifestation of his estrangement from his own language and actions.)

Belief.

2009-03-20T11:16:00.002-07:00

God, it's been a terribly long time since I've written on this thing. Two things have prompted me to write again:
(1) Encouragement from a friend who said she actually enjoys reading my blog postings.
(2) Sheer embarrassment when I girl I like read one of my previous blog posts. Ironic that this would spur me on, but I think there is something important about owning one's thoughts, even when they might be embarrassing. Moreover, how can one correct one's thinking without making them explicit and subjecting them to criticism (both by oneself and others)?

With that, here it goes.

I've been thinking lately about Charles Taylor's recent book, A Secular Age, which tells a story about the decline of religious faith in the west. I think that Taylor leaves out a crucial element in this process: the gradual decline in the intelligibility of God-Talk. We are, it would seem to me, no longer certain what it means to speak about God or a belief in God. At least, there is no definite cultural consensus about what this sort of talk amounts to: what counts as belief in God. Certainly, there are communities that preserve certain understandings of what God-Talk means, but as we've become more self-conscious in the west about our conceptions of God, the number of interpretations has dramatically increased. Unlike in the pre-reformation period, when the Catholic Church provided for the public something like an authoritative interpretation of God-Talk, today there is no such centralized authority. The proliferation of protestant denominations and the presence of non-western and alternative religious traditions has creating a society that is vastly more pluralistic than a hundred years ago (not to mention 500 years ago). This pluralism cannot BUT put strain on the language-usage of particular communities: more than in the past, members of a community must preserve the criteria of correctness that correspond to their particular language-game.

In reading through Wittgenstein's On Certain today I was struck by this passage: "The other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine how one may know something..." (OC, #18) We might replace the word "know" here with "believe." When read that way, the passage seems to point again to a difficulty with modern God-talk. In a pluralistic society, what criteria does one use in order to understand the meaning of another person's belief? That is to say, how can another person's God-talk be intelligible to us in the absence of a consensus about the criteria for belief in God? This becomes particularly poignant when we imagine two people who are member of different religious communities. The question is: what would it mean to make another person's God-talk intelligible, while at the same time holding onto the criteria of correctness that are part of one's own language-game?

Belief.

2009-03-20T11:16:00.001-07:00

Richard Rorty

2008-11-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

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Sorry for the long hiatus in my blogging. As some of you know, I've just started graduate school and that has been consuming a large amount of my time. I'm hoping to begin posting again fairly frequently, but mostly regarding what I'm currently working on. This may make the posts somewhat less accessible - given that they will make reference to particular texts and thinkers - but hopefully they will still be of some interest to folks.
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This is a response to Richard Rorty’s essay “Private Irony, Liberal Hope” in his book “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.” (Many of the thoughts are also related to an unpublished manuscript by another author, though I will not discuss this text explicitly here.)
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Rorty draws a distinction between the metaphysician and the ironist. Metaphysicians search for something like a universal final vocabulary - that is to say, they search for the “most adequate description of reality.” Ironists, on the other hand, reject the idea that our final vocabularies can ever be grounded, that there can ever be something like a “most accurate description of reality” (or, even, that there could ever be criteria for determining what counts as something of this sort). Instead, they hope to expand their repertoire of final vocabularies, such that they can “get inside” as many Weltanschauung (worldviews) as possible. Moreover, these ironists craft their own final vocabulary in light of the diverse vocabularies they encounter as well as their own socially-inherited vocabulary. In what follows, I question the validity of Rorty’s distinction and show that his misreading of the philosophical tradition on which he leans ultimately undercuts the appeal of something like the “ironic viewpoint.”

Let’s begin by examining Rorty’s motivation for drawing a distinction between metaphysicians and ironists. There are, I think, two principle reasons that Rorty wants to draw such a distinction. First, he is impressed with the idea that finite beings are bound by our vocabulary, or to put it in other terms, bound by our perspective. There is, as a result, no ultimate court of appeals that can (authoritatively) resolve conflicts between these competing vocabularies. As such, any criticism is a criticism from yet another perspective. He concludes from this that there is, strictly speaking, nothing like a “most adequate description of reality” or even something like some vocabularies being “better” than others (although he often uses terms that would indicate the contrary). At the end, we have perhaps, only recourse to an aesthetic and a maximization criteria. Thus, we can say that a particular vocabulary is at most a personally appropriate vehicle for self-(re)creation, and provides individuals with the greatest possible freedom to pursue such vocabularies privately. Second, he wants to account for our changing commitments. That is to say, his primary dispute with the metaphysician is that the metaphysician is a blowhard. That is to say, although the metaphysicians conceptions are charging, this change is viewed as a progression towards an ultimately stable end - an accurate conception of the world. Moreover, the metaphysician assumes not only that the telos of his trajectory is Truth, but that his current conception of the world is superior to other competing conceptions. So what Rorty wants to preserve is an openness to genuine change, to a radical shift in our conception of the world. The ironist is supposedly open to such uncanniness.

(To be continued... stay tuned.)

bell hooks, feminism, and Nietzsche

2008-09-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

I should preface this post by saying that I am quite unqualified to be making the sorts of observations that follow. I just finished bell hooks' book, "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center," but have read very little else in the domain of feminist thought. Furthermore, I don't have any great knowledge of Nietzsche. Nevertheless, I thought I'd try to put down some of the thoughts that have been floating around in my head.

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What sort of fruitful interaction could there be between feminist theory and Nietzsche? As I read bell hooks, it was simply impossible for me to get the Genealogy of Morals out of my head. I think Nietzsche's conception of Slave Morality and Ressentiment might have much to offer feminist politics. Of course feminist theory wouldn't hold back it's critique of Nietzsche's revaluation program either.

At first, one might see Nietzsche and Feminist Critique as diametrically opposed. Superficially, the following dialogue points might be laid out:

N: Feminism represents a paradigm case of slave morality. Women are weak and feminists are equivalent to priests. That is to say because women lack the strength to create their own values system, feminists resent the dominant value system and try to force society to feel guilty and ashamed of their strength (and the other warrior characteristics that Nietzsche valorizes). At the extreme, feminists try to make men ashamed of being men. Furthermore, their alternative value system, precisely because it is reactionary in nature and stems from ressentiment , is aesthetically inferior.

FC: Nietzsche represents classic aristocratic chauvinism. His valorization of strength, and lauditory portrayal of warrior characteristics, are justifications for oppression - both historically and now.

However, I think we can move beyond these initial readings towards a more fruitful dialogue. Nietzsche has something important to say to feminist: reactionary value systems are inferior. That is to say, if one's motivation for acting in a certain way is only to be contrarian, to spite the status quo, then such action is of inferior value to an act that drives from an inner motivation, from one's own vital energies. When we boil it down I think this is what Nietzsche means by strength, not simply force, or the ability to dominate others, but the power to create (birth) values that one can affirm oneself - indepent of others in the sense that they are not affirmed simply as a means of responding to the dominate culture. Although I'm sure this is somewhat of a rough sketch (probably wrong, but I could imagine someone saying it), we could say that difference feminism is often reactionary in nature - i.e. "Sexist culture values male characteristics - strength, force, reason; therefore, we must revalue female characteristics - passivity, peace-making, and emotion." I see bell hooks and other types of feminists (post-structuralist feminists?) as advocating a values system more compatible with Nietzsche critique of morality: "We must preform a radical revaluation of values. We cannot simply throw out certain traits as negative, and introduce others as positive, instead we must rebuild a radical new values system based on our foundational goal: to eliminate oppression. And eliminating oppression might call for peace-making in some situations, but require force in others.

Likewise, I think bell hooks, and feminists more generally, play an important role in drawing out some of the more troubling questions that face Nietzsche (especially particularly shallow interpretations that are overly focused on a more literal interpretation of his Slave-Master narrative, and his praise of the warrior values system). His myth-like story about master-slave morality fails to account for protest as a legitimate tool that can be weilded with strength and power. The fact that women have chosen to use protest rather than immediately overturn the established values system is justified historically and strategically. Since women have been historically denied access to education, and the socio-political-commercial sphere, in anything but a limited fashion, their attempts to uproot the dominant values system has come gradually - the more power and education women have gained, the more potential they have to expand their power and overturn the dominant values system. Furthermore, since women are not simply concerned with creating an alternative values system, but rather transforming our current system - even if this means taking it down to the ground. In other words, feminists do not want to create a new, separate, culture (they cannot deny that they are historically part of this culture), they want to transform our shared culture. Thus, far from being reactionary, political protest is a means of transforming the culture from the inside out.

I'd like to make one historical note that I think is important for contextualizing Nietzsche's text and it's relation to feminism. We must note that the master-slave story is polemical. In fact, it is itself a sort of protest. That is to say, in the story Nietzsche portrays the culturally dominant values system of his day (chirstianity) as weak, and contrasts it with an alternative picture (something more like the war-like greeks?). Nietzsche, therefore, in writing this story, is NOT directly applying force to over throw the dominant values system (nor is he simply reacting to it). Instead, he is introducing an alternative picture through writing that he hopes will transform people within the dominant culture from the inside out: not because they feel guilt and shame with regard to who they are (as christians), i.e. the point is not that they should not feel shame bcause they are weak, but instead he hopes that they will be drawn in by the aesthetic appeal of the alternative picture of life that he presents.

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In any case, these are some of the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head. I realize a lot of you readers know leagues more about this stuff than I do, so please do chime in and correct away.

Self-Sufficiency

2008-09-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

Self-sufficiency is the modern ideal for interpersonal interactions: I do not approach others because I lack or need something that they might offer, instead I approach them as an independent individual. I preserve my independence by insisting upon my completeness: my ability to function regardless of the conditions in which I find myself and of the people with whom I interact. This ideal is strengthen by a bio-social parallel: the child is dependent, the adult is not. Those who have fully matured are autonomous persons. Those who depend upon others are immature - they have yet to reach adulthood.

Charles Taylor, in his new tome A Secular Age, identifies the Maturity/Immaturity distinction as a defining mark of the contemporary scene. This guiding ideal is clearly visible in Immanuel Kant's essay "What is enlightenment?" but probably has much earlier roots. (I would place it at least back to Luther, in his insistence on the priesthood of all believers). Though these early thinkers tend to emphasize the autonomy of the individual's intellectual faculties (i.e. "Reason for yourself!"), the ideal of autonomy seems - in our day - to extend into the social sphere, so that signs of interdependence (vs. independence) are considered signs of voluntary submission, and submission a sign of weakness.

The recognition of our interdependence - "no man is an island" - is not a sign of weakness, but a recognition of our finite nature. (And, of course, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways of recognizing this fact.)

Self-exhortation./ Quote of the weekend.

2008-08-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

ὦ φίλε Κρίτων, ἡ προθυμία σου πολλοῦ ἀξία εἰ μετά τινος ὀρθότητος εἴη.

ho phile Kriton, he prothumia sue pollu axios meta tinos orthotaetos ayay.

O dearest Crito, your earnest passion would be quite worthy, if it
should be accompanied by some rightness.

21 Grams

2008-08-13T00:12:00.000-07:00

A brief movie synopsis:

Life is: death, rebirth, death, rebirth. The old still dwells in our chests, but wobbles as it finds a place in our new lives. It is an uneasy incarnation.

When words reflect moods and moods reflect weather; or, In honor of whimsy.

2008-08-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

A quote from Wallace Steven's "Six Significant Landscapes":

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
to right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses-
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon,
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

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Isn't whimsy wonderful?

Further Signs of Civic Bankruptcy

2008-08-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

Re: John McCain's "The One"

I don't write about politics on this blog for a reason, but I would urge you, whatever your political stance may be, to denounce the use of virulent religious propaganda to manipulate public opinion. Tapping into (and encouraging) the worst prejudices and superstitions of the American people is no way to run a campaign and will likewise be no way to lead our country.

(I certainly do not mean by this to imply that Obama's ad campaign is anything like spotless. I wish we could return to substantive political discourse and leave behind these absurd attack ads. If not, this is the message we send: do not reason, hate.)

Buddhism and the Shock Doctrine.

2008-08-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

Another thing that struck me while I was reading about the experiments performed at McGill University was the connection between some of these techniques and Buddhist practices. Some of the principal methods employed by the McGill researchers to disrupt their participants sense of identity have Buddhist homologues. Thus, at McGill participants were often kept in isolation chambers that restricted noise and light, as well as the ability of the subject to touch her/himself (this was achieved by putting cardboard over the subject's arms). Furthermore, the psychiatrists would often change the clocks and mealtimes in order to disrupt the subject's sense of time. The ultimate end goal of these techniques was to destroy the subject's sense of space-time, upon which their identity was found to be heavily dependent.

In Buddhist meditation, and particular during intensive meditation retreats (sesshin), similar techniques are employed although they are far more benign in nature. External sensory stimuli intake is limited in Buddhist meditation by sitting still with one's eyes closed in a relatively calm (silent) environment. This not only limits the meditator's perception of her/his surroundings, but also their sense of self (they sit still, so as not to touch or see their own bodies). During intensive meditation retreats, these techniques are enhanced by eliminating words (either spoken or written) altogether (with the exception of meditation chants used during liturgy. Meditators also refrain from looking at one anothers faces, particularly into eachothers eyes, to further weaken their own sense of identity. Again, all these techinques are (explicitly) designed to weaken the meditator's sense of independence from the world. Coincidentally, I have found that these techniques also increase the frequency of what might be called 'ecstatic' experiences - feelings of pure bliss, felt-pysical dissolution of the body, shimmering sensations, etc - just as sensory deprivation at McGill introduced odd "halucinations" in patients.*

One element that seems particularly important is that mediation periods and entire retreats are very rigidly scheduled in Buddhism. In this way, the meditation, while perhaps personally losing some sense of time, feels secure in the rhythm of the schedule. Although the meditator's sense of space-time is often uneven - time can seem to fly or remain nearly static - this disruption of time is not unpleasant. The rigid schedule of the buddhist retreat may be an extremely important element that creates a positive experience of selflessness rather than a horrible sense of lost personality.

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*I haven't read descriptions of these halucinations, but I imagine that they are quite qualitatively different from those experienced during meditation, which have been [in my experience] generally pleasant. Part of this may be because the meditator in some fashion consents to the lack of control, while this is forced upon the psychiatric subject. It seems to me that forced loss of control would result in great anxiety, claustrophobia, etc. (Meditators can also experience these sensations when "on the edge" of releasing some degree of control.)

The Shock Doctrine

2008-08-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

I am reading Naomi Klein's book, and in the first chapter she talks about the CIA funded experiments at McGill University in the 1960's that were geared towards deconstructing the human mind, and then rebuilding it from the ground up. She concludes that although they succeed in torturing participants to the degree that they reverted to childlike states (sucking their thumbs, assuming the fetal position, treating experimenters as parental figures, etc.) and erasing their memories (one of the long term side effects of electroshock therapy is memory loss), they could not subsequently rebuild the identity of the participants "from the ground up." They had attempted to do this by endless repeating various propositions to the patients while they were in a semiconscious state (e.g. "You are a good mother," "Ghosts are real," etc.)

This entire project seems, in some ways, to run parallel to Cartesian Skepticism. The skeptic want us to deconstruct our entire body of knowledge, then rebuild it from the ground up. One potential reason that these psychiatrists failed to rebuild their victim's personality is that there was no person in whom these ideas could be embedded, since they had aready deconstructed the personal identity that allows an individual to integrate facts about the world with facts about themselves. The psychiatrists could not succeed in introducing new ideas without the framework that personality offers.* Similarly, we cannot take away our body of knowledge, which contains something like a framework in which to place individual facts. Without such a framework, we not only fail to "justify" these facts, but they cannot make much sense to us. (Just as individual words presuppose a language, so too do individual facts suppose a body of knowledge (i.e. a picture of the world)

The other interesting parallel is between these experiments and our recent conversations on conversion. It would seem to me that what the psychiatrists wanted to achieve was something like a "vacuum" of self. However, what they seem to have found is that once the self has been deconstructed, no rational individual remains to which the word "self" adequately applies - instead we are left with a deeply damaged individual whose very self has been destroyed. This disuades me even more thoroughly from viewing conversion as a process in which a person steps back to observe one identity and choose another instead.

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*This leads me to wonder if subliminal messaging might be more effective for this purpose, since it leaves the subject's personality in tact. E.g. "Obama is untrustworthy" - read - "Obama is a secret Muslim." Such techniques obviously leave the personality in tact; however, I have no idea about their effectiveness.

Interpreting Weil (Or: Trying, Usually in Vain, to Understand)

2008-08-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

A friend recently wrote to me after reading Simone Weil and inquired what one is to make of the following passage:

"To have been at the side of Christ and in the same state during the crucifixion seems to me a far more enviable privelege than to be at the right hand of his glory."

I thought I might as well place my attempt to make sense of this quote on the blog.

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First, as another friend recently pointed out to me, Simone Weil does seem to have somewhat of a "fetish" for suffering. I think this is correct: we should, in all likelihood, be quite careful when reading and interpreting what Weil has to say about suffering. The fact that she died of complications related to a self-imposed starvation indicates, perhaps, some degree of psychosis. I say "perhaps" because I want to state clearly that in this domain, particularly within the Christian tradition, the line between psychotic masochism and selfless love is quite narrow. Think of Christ: if we did not see him as exceptionally holy, indeed as divine, then we should say that his crucifixion is the utmost example of masochism. The failure to distinguish between self-sacrificial love [or holiness] and masochism has lead ordinary Christians into all sorts of miserable situations. [Think of the spouse who stays with an abusive partner out of "self-sacrificial" love.]

Nevertheless, I think we can sidebar certain questions about Weil's personal connection to suffering here, and deal directly with her motivation for this perplexing statement.

For Weil, it would seem that Christ demonstrates God's self-imposed weakness. God must make himself weak in order to provide space for our freedom. In fact, Weil seems to entangle the moment of "creation" with the crucifixion itself: The moment of Christ's death is the moment at which God separates himself from himself - he withdraws himself from the universe in order to make room for us. Thus, God's weakness paradoxically becomes a sign of his great love for us. To be with Christ at the moment of his crucifixion is to be in some way in the primeval act from which our very being derives. God makes himself absent in order that we might exist as beings separate from him.

And yet, even more paradoxically, this separation is the only gift we are capable of returning to God. That is to say, the only thing that we can surrender to God is ourselves - our autonomy. If we are in the same state as Christ, we are emulating his act. We withdraw ourselves from our own autonomy, making ourselves empty. Yet this emptiness is simultaneously a participation in the divine act of selfless love, the very act which created and sustains the universe.

As for why this is better than being in paradise, I do not know. Perhaps it is our participation in the divine act that makes the crucifixion more enviable than to stand with God after the fact.

In any case, this is what I gleam from Weil, but I honestly don't have a good idea. Furthermore, I have simply cannot imagine that Weil means any of this to be taken literally (i.e. to take the crucifixion-creation as a sort of historical event that intersects with the eternal). Finally, even if she means it as some sort of existential story about the meaning and motivation of selfless love, I don't know exactly what I myself should make of it (i.e. what does this story mean to me? what would it mean to believe it?).

Buddhism and Belief

2008-07-31T11:17:00.001-07:00

Check out the conversation between Swanditch and myself in the comments section of the last post and join the conversation!

Provocation

2008-07-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

Quote of the Day:

πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει.

Panta rhei kai ouden menei. (Transliteration)

"Everything flows, nothing stands still."

- Ἡράκλειτος, Hairoklitos, Heraclitus

Political Correctness

2008-07-24T10:37:00.001-07:00

Political Correctness:

Mistakes a change in words for a change in deeds.

Mistakes blind obedience for a transformation of character and community.

Provocation

2008-07-21T20:49:00.001-07:00

"It's as if you were blaming your former principles somehow... It's not they which are to blame, but you yourself. You seem to have forgotten that principles in themselves are nothing, the dead letter... You ought to have been doing things."

- Maria Vasilyevna in Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya"

Conversion: Round Two

2008-07-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

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This entry relates to the first conversion post and the comments pertaining to that post. Just to reiterate: I would love to hear from more folks on this topic. In order to keep the conversation going, I wanted to briefly respond to the comments that were made.

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First, I think Jeff is quite right to raise questions about my use of the term "self." My use of this term in the first post was no doubt problematic. So, I'd like to make an attempt to further distinguish between self and identity.

Jeff states that "there is some underlying foundation of self onto which identity is written." I then take him to go on to elaborate on this underlying foundation as a biological phenomenon ("[The self] is the sum of everything that exists in my brain"). I certainly think these observations point us in the right direction, as does Rositsa's understanding of a ever-present self constituted by the bear faculty of cognition. Nevertheless, I think we could fill out the picture a bit more.

I think that the phrase "identity is written" uses an entirely appropriate metaphor. Identity is something of a hermeneutical process. Our identity is an interpretation of certain facts. What facts? Most probably the exact self-facts that Jeff notes: propensities, memories, and so on and so forth.* In so far as we treat these things as facts, they exist on a level field, so to speak. None is more pressing or important than any other. And so here, we might be tempted to say that changing any one of these self-facts is to effect only a small change in identity.

However, when I say that identity is a hermeneutical process, I mean to say that it arranges these facts in a certain way. Namely, it creates something like a hierarchy of facts. That is to say, it draws a distinction between important facts and those which are less important. (E.g. It is essential that I am a Muslim woman, but it is fairly inconsequential that I know that C6H12O6 is the chemical formula Glucose.) And so, because identity is the structure that arranges these facts in terms of value, changing a particularly important self-fact - I change the fact "I am a Muslim" to the fact "I am an agnostic" - or restructuring the importance of certain facts - "I am a Muslim" gives way to other facts, such as "I am a mother" - indicates not simply some insignificant change in a web of facts, but an alteration of my entire identity.

To this, I would add that the existence of "bare" self-facts, independent of any identity - or structured-self - is suspect. Our experience of ourselves and our choices is always mediated by some identity. It is this identity that provides the background against which we are able to make certain existential judgments**: I should go to the grocery store because I am a father with hungry children.

The difficulty underlying changes of identity, is that judgments must be made both against the background of an identity and regarding identity. A parallel here can be drawn to Kuhn's conception of scientific revolutions. In the midst of a revolutionary period, there is some confusion about what criteria of judgment (i.e. theory) is to be used to understand any given set of facts (also theory). Likewise, we can assume that there is some period of identity breakdown around the time of transformation. We do not "decide" to assume one identity over another is not made from some standpoint outside of either identity. Rather, we see one identity begin to wobble, and by the time the other identity "takes over" the "decision" is complete. There is no sense talking about "who" - outside of either identity - makes this decision. To ask this sort of question is sort of like asking "who" is president during an inauguration ceremony.

The distinction between transformation and conversion seems much more difficult to handle. We are tempted to say: you know it when you see it. Since this is obviously an unsatisfying answer I think we definitely have more discussion on that matter. I'd also welcome any and all feedback on this post. I'm studying greek lots lately, so I don't know how cogent it is at this point.

Also a brief response to Swanditch: An interesting psychological point, though I think perhaps Hoffer is brazen to classify religious fervor as a sort of pathology. Although we may want to clasify certain types of religious belief as pathological, I think it would be a grave mistake to place ALL religious belief under the category of pathology. Certainly we must leave room for the possibility of non-pathological religious belief - after all, whatever type of pathology underlies religious belief, I doubt if it differs much in kind from other human neuroses.

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*Whether or not we cash these facts out as biological facts does not interest me here.

** I think, contrary to Rositsa, that there cannot be a bare faculty of cognition that makes judgments "in a vacuum," apart from any particular identity. This faculty always judges against the background of some particular identity.

Re: Conversion Post

2008-07-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't yet noticed the comments on the conversion post: check them out. Thank you Jeff and Rositsa for your excellent contributions to the discussion. I've been thinking a lot about your comments over the last few days, and plan to respond sometime later this week.

In the meantime, I would genuinely love to hear from more readers of this blog on this topic, so please feel free to comment! It would be great to get some specific perspectives on various understandings of conversion in different traditions (Kirsten - Conversion to Islam?; Christopher, Elizabeth - Conversion to Orthodoxy? Ethan - I know you're internet fasting - but any Buddhist perspectives on the Identity/Self distinction? Evan - What would Dostoyevski and Tolstoy say? Kara, Brandon - Any thoughts?)

P.S. In case you're worried about using names on this site: this is a closed blog (i.e. it cannot be found via internet searches).

There Will Be Blood

2008-07-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

Which is more disturbing: the unvarnished lust for money, or the veiled lust for power? Although both lead to ruin, only one razes completely. The first merely signals that the spirit is weaker than the flesh, the other indicates that the soul has been twisted against itself.

I side with Nietzsche. (Genealogy, Book II)

If one is to sin, then at least one should not attempt to cover it. What is more abominable: to eat the fruit or to hide in the brush? I would say the latter. For what is hiding, if not hiding from oneself?

Faith

2008-07-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Never is it so hard to distinguish between courage and persistant ignorance as in the domain of religious belief.

When I meet a man who believes incredible things, I am always torn between admiration and revulsion.

There is something both desirable and unstable about purity. It is the instability that disturbs me. (re: Simone Weil)

Muto.

2008-06-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd pass along this video for those of you who haven't seen it. This artist uniquely blends escher- and dali-like elements into his graffiti - then turns his murals into an animation.

Conversion.

2008-06-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Conversion - at least as the term is commonly used today - implies violence. That is to say, the old self is killed and a new self takes it's place. This implies not a loss of self (selflessness), but a rejection of self. In the process of conversion, we are either active or acted upon. In the former case, we actively (consciously) aspire to escape our past identity, to cut ourselves off from it (usually as the result of some aversion - shame, guilt, embarrassment). The violence results from the power one identity exerts to erase the other.* This type of conversion is a form of self-alienation. In the later case, conversion as being acted upon, power is deployed against my historical identity from an outside agent (culture, missionary, etc.). Here, it is the outside agent who exercises violence against my historically rooted identity. I am converted to the extent that I have been dominated by the agent.

Since both forms of conversion result from violence, neither can functionally establish an authentic form of self-expression - i.e. an authentic identity. We can also state this as follows: since the new identity is ultimately the result of coercion, it takes the form of an obligation. We are trapped in a duty-bound way of life. "I must... (e.g.) be a Christian."

I do not mean to imply that every genuine identity is static. Instead, I wish to say that there can be no such thing as an authentic conversion. The term conversion implies too radical a break with one's former being and this can only be a sign of alienation or domination. When we are speaking of an authentic change of self, we should use the word "transformation." When something is transformed, it does not alienate itself from it's historical embeddedness, nor is it dominated by outside forces. Instead, a new self grows out of the old. This growth is initiated by the being itself, without outside pressures (though, of course, there are conditions - think of the cone becoming a fir tree; the process is internally initiated thought it depends on environmental stimuli as well as rain, sun, etc.)

Finally, the transformation is superior to conversion in that conversion implies that the use of effort, a difficult struggle. Transformation, percisely because it comes naturally from within and grows out of our own past, is effortless. Therefore, we need not struggle to be converted, but should wait patiently to be transformed.

*If we provide a Freudian interpretation, we might insist that even here the identity that attempts to repress my past is in fact an internalized form of the outside agent.

Picture Theory Remix.

2008-06-24T17:48:00.001-07:00

(My thoughts here obviously borrow heavily on Wittgenstein - though since I don't understand his TLP, I couldn't tell you to what extent - but represent my own attempt to think through how something like a pictorial theory might be naturally conceivable. As for the correctness of something like a pictorial theory of representation, I have no judgment at this point. Clearly, later LW, among others, brought the many problems of a pictorial theory to the forefront. Though it does seem tempting, eh?)
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We make pictures of the world.

We use these pictures as frameworks through which to see the world.

Every communicable fact about the world must include a pictorial element.

Some pictures are superior, others inferior. (There can be good maps of a city, and poor maps.)

The quality of the picture depends upon: 1) it's usefullness within a particular context, 2) the breath of these contexts. (E.g. Some contexts are extremely narrow: this map is only useful if I want to explain why the poor map-maker was unable to find the supermarket, that map can be used by anyone familiar with maps to reach the supermarket)

We rely upon different tools (criteria, rules) to apply different types of pictures. (E.g. We have one set of rules for using maps to navigate cities; another set for using myths to (e.g.) understand the events in my life; yet another set for applying a physical law to a particular natural phenomenon.)

Wisdom consists in knowing which picture to use in which context, and then knowing how to apply it.

It may be possible that we can apply multiple pictures correctly in the same context; they present the context from different viewpoints. The trick lies in applying them correctly. We must be careful not to confuse their criteria of application. (For example, we can use both a myth and a physical law to explain our car crash [myth: e.g. human life is fragile, physical: e.g.the car had too much momentum to stop short of the fence], but in doing so, we should not confuse the two types of explanation [ I.e. We could not say something like: I crashed into the fence because human life is fragile])

Empiricism Revisited.

2008-06-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Although this provides no definite conclusion regarding the current double usage of the word 'empirical,' we might want to delineate between meaning 1 (m1: that which can be ascertained through direct experience) and meaning 2 (m2: that which can be ascertained through various scientific methodologies) as other thinkers have done (cf. Heidegger?). That is to say, limit the meaning of 'empirical' strictly to m2, and use the term 'phenomenological' for m1.

This distinction makes good etymological sense. The root of empirical is πεiρα (paera) meaning "trial." Since the word "trial" implies an test performed under controlled conditions, with preestablished standards of judgements, and the possibility of a "retrial," direct experience does not qualify as empirical. We have no control over the conditions in which our direct experience occurs, and therefore no ability to set up repeatable tests that can be judged according to uniform criteria (cf. Private Language Argument). We are better off refering to m2 with the word 'phenomenological' which is derived from the greek word φαινoμενα (phenomena), which means "appearances." The much more acurately describes direct experience, which manifests itself before us without our being able to control it.

Nevertheless, this brings us no closer to answering the question: how should we procede m1 (phenomenological facts) and m2 (empirical facts) contradict one another?

Danger.

2008-06-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

The pursuit of selfless love ( αγάπη ) carries an inherent element of danger. If we are not careful - and our intention and attention are diverted - we can easily succumb to a false sense of martyrdom or a vicious form of masochism.

Propaganda

2008-06-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Propaganda: when the connotation of a word exceeds its denotation.

Knowledge as Object

2008-06-16T22:50:00.001-07:00

I am temped to think of knowledge as an object that can be stored in my mind-brain box. As if I could open the box and see my collection of facts. So, right now, I draw the fact 'My bedroom is painted yellow' to me. But could I really be picking up this fact from some internal box? I am trapped in a spacial metaphor.

Then, I ask, when did I know this fact? After I called it before me? Before? Since the moment I first percieved the room to be yellow? I am trapped in a temporal metaphor. (Note: this is not to say that knowledge is time-independent. Obviously, I know some things now and not others. This will change in the future; I learn.)

Akrasia

2008-06-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

The problem of ἀκρασία * shows:

1) Knowledge is not the sole basis for action.
2) Since action is the most vital criteria for determining the possession of knowledge, the akratic man only thinks he knows, but does not in actual fact.
OR
3) Our conception of knowledge and it's relation to action is problematic.

* Lack of control over one's own actions. In particular, I am talking about when someone claims to know that doing A is best, but does B anyway.

Collected Thoughts and Quotes: May 12- June 1

2008-06-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

(What follows is a collection of journal entries written during my three week stay at Great Vow Zen Monastery. Not suprisingly, a large number of them relate to Buddhism and religion generally.)

"One way that we can view the Buddha's teaching is as a form of training intended to free our attention from being determined by the object(s) of our attention." - Evan, GVZM

The most apt description of the Buddha's teaching I have heard. In other words, most of the time we allow objects to direct our attention: car crash and lights, I look that way; I'm reading, but I can't help letting my attention drift to the conversation being carried on beside me; pretty girl, can't help but look. While it is not inherently detrimental to let object(s) determine our attention, this eventually does result in a loss of our ability to direct our attention - to remain present in the moment, to focus on what's important and sideline the inane anxieties, memories, and general nonsense noise that rumbles through our brain. Buddha is trying to show us that we can free our minds from compulsive mental habits. That is to say, we retain the ability to control the quality and direction of the attention.

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If I were to meet God face to face, or directly experience the interconnectedness of all beings, why should I take THIS experience as the experience of an ultimate reality that is somehow vailed in my ordinary experience of the world? That is to say, why shouldn't I treat this as simply another experience (no different from the others)? What gives it the mark of authority in my life?

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Why is my experience of God absolutely authoritative in the moment and subject to doubt upon reflection? Is it a matter of absorbtive participation in the former case and detached examination in the latter? How do I determine which standpoint to take (participation v. examination)?

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We might say that certain experiences (or beliefs) are given authority in my life because the inform the way I live. They serve as a basis for action. We might want to say that authoritative experiences and beliefs differ from my certainty about various propositions. I may be certain that I have never been far from the surface of the earth, but this proposition has very little to do with my ordinary life (unless I work for NASA). My experience of the divine or belief in a supreme being, on the other hand, has the potential to effect nearly every action I undertake. Furthermore, confusions may arise when we confuse authority with a type of certainty. In the case of many facts about which I am certain, evidence can be mounted. I know I have never been far from the surface of the earth because I have never flown into outer space, nor been abducted by extraterrestrials. We would be mistaken, however, if we called upon evidence to reassure us of the authority of a belief. Authoritative beliefs can only inform my life when I let them. Thus if I step back to examine an authoritative belief, looking for evidence in favor of it's validity, I suspend it's influence upon my way of life and deprive it of any authority it originally possessed for me.

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"God is that all things are possible" - Anti-Climacus, From SK's Sickeness Unto Death

We have faith that all things are possible if we retain the ability to see beyond our paradigm.

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Sitting like a rock

Bluebird sails through on the wind

And stillness returns

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"In this passing moment...all things come to be. I vow to affirm what is:

If there's cost, I choose to pay.
If there's need, I choose to give.
If there's pain, I choose to feel.
If there's sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning, I choose heat.
When calm, I choose peace.
When starving, I choose hunger.
When happy, I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it's my birth, I choose to live.
When it's my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.

Being with what is, I respond to what is."

- Selections from Liberation from All Obstructions, Chant By Hogen Bays, written in honor of Shodo Horada, Roshi

I think this chant gives quite pure expression to one of the most fundamental religious attitudes.

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Two ways to use the word 'empirical': 1) That which can be ascertained through direct experience. 2) That which can be ascertained through various scientific methodologies.

What should we do when two facts, each one discovered via a different empirical process, appear to contradict one another?

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The most conspicious inconsistency in science: the scientist must see herself as exempt from the causally-determined system she is investigating in order for her results to constitute knowledge [rather than as the mere effect of a chain of causally-determined events].

Note: This is the corollary to the problem voiced in the question, "What is the difference between a reason and a cause?"

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"Put aside the intellectual habit of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward." - Zen Chant.

Ouch.

(Orthodox) Easter Special

2008-05-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

How might we understand the crucifixion? Jesus, in coming to earth, represents God's response to Job. The crucifixion is the divine answer to the problem of evil. The death of the God-Man indicates that the divine will either cannot or will not prevent suffering. Although Christ undoubtedly symbolizes God's renunciation of power, we should not interpret Christ's death as an indication of divine impotence. Instead, Christ reveals the conditions for living meaningfully in the world. Christ chooses to share in our suffering because meaningful action in a finite world necessitates the possibilty of pain. Suffering is inherent in the stucture of meaning. That is to say, there can be no meaning without the risk of suffering just as their can be no truth without the possibility of falsity.

What is the existential meaning of the concept "Hell"? Hell, existentially understood, signifies our potential failure both to accept and embody selfless love (agapē). This possibility (indicative of human freedom) is a condition that renders divine love meaningful.

What is the existential meaning of the resurrection? The resurrection indicates the possibilty that selfless love might triumph. In other words, that we have the potential to lose ourselves, then find ourselves transformed.