Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

Allow me to wax philosophical for a moment. I am kicking this idea around and I want to illustrate what I've got so far.

Draw a solid shape on a piece of paper, like two parallel jagged lines. Imagine that the borders of this shape represent the whole of human history and experience such that each turn of a line represents a choice made for specific reasons, so that when you look back at how things came to be the way they are you can cite specific causes and effects. These causes and effects include all of our abilities and limitations, hopes and fears, random earthquakes, solar flares, baby dreams and butterfly wings.

In short, if you were trying to develop a mathematical equation or proof to describe the human race and our history, using all the possible variables, this is how it might visualize.

Now. Among the people I habitually argue with there is always some primate who insists that some factoid upon which I have built a point is, in fact, false; and that in order to correct my thinking, I have to go back beyond this factoid, and continue going back until I eliminate all false facts and hit upon something true. From there, I can build up a "true" argument.

I think I first read about this in Descartes, who wanted to clear from his brain all the false or superfluous knowledge that had been programmed in there by society, religion, and so forth. I encountered it later in a much more attractice form at Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Both they and my proto-philosopher friends ask, To what extent are our limitations and the decisions we make programmed by others? Are these limitations and factors in our decisions fabricated, or real? How can we tell them apart?

Of course there are whole realms of psychology and philosophy devoted to this. And, of course, if you were to go through all the facts and ideas cluttering up your brain you would spend your entire life doing it and perhaps get nowhere. What to do...?

I have found that there are some who found the answer in deciding a priori that all of these boundaries are mere fabrications. In other words, the previously brick-hard lines on our little drawing are in fact no more durable than the paper walls of an ancient Japanese house. "There is no reason to believe that any event in history that went one way could not have reasonably gone another way," they proclaim. "Furthermore, since these conditions on our existence are not real, but only imagined, there is no reason to believe that any event in the future could not also go any way at all."

Like many great untruths, there is enough that is true in this to make it convincing. Even the moderns knew all about the fallacies of empiricism--they just chose to ignore them. These faults, which taken together simply state that due to the limitations of our sense it is difficult if not impossible to verify the eternal and ubiquitous nature of some cause or effect by extrapolating from a few experiences with the same. In other words, empirical science doesn't tell you that the things we take for granted will always work; instead it says "We are reasonably sure that if you continue dropping that apple, it will continue to fall to the ground. However, we have no way to predict the future; we merely have no reason to believe any different from our data models."

One would think that the Theory of Non-Specificity would be called into question the moment the believer tried, Matrix-style, to leap from one building to the next (quite literally, I imagine it would be called into question for one very long moment until impact). However, we have an answer to this as well. "Our problem isn't that we can't see how silly and unneccessary our self-built walls are," says the believer. "We're just not able to believe enough! We're still trapped by our own programming. It will take several generations of deprogramming before we will see results."

And thus do the thinkers of these thoughts propose massive social engineering projects. Remember, they're trying to free us all from our own choices. They want to break out of the walls and bounce around unfettered in the free space beyond. They will be "free" from the history and the society that has been forced upon them since birth. Church and state alike are equal targets--as is the school, the family, and any other social structure that stands out apart from the rest.

"Nothing is specific!" they cry. "All religions are the same religion! All ideologies are the same ideology! Every human is the same human!" --and so it goes. Perhaps it is this sort of queer simplifying relativist reductionism that I find most distasteful. I'm reminded of a quote from one of my favorite musicians: "They have no understanding of the fullness; everything is simply 'One.'"

The only reason they do not act in a certain way is because they do not want to--because morality and even enlightened self-interest are delusional constructs. The only reason they have not justified an act we find heinous today (say, eating babies) is that they haven't yet "broken away" from their chains. "It's all a matter of human growth!" they say. "What was taboo yesterday is accepted today. What is murder today will tomorrow be the same as washing your hands--because nothing is specific!"

Obviously I have some problems with this which will be addressed later on.

Next up: Motivations Behind the Theory, and Some Effects in Modern Society.

PS: Tell me what you think so far. It's my first real effort at writing something like this so critique away.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Shreveport, LA
Posts: 3786

quote:

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Originally posted by squee
PS: Tell me what you think so far. It's my first real effort at writing something like this so critique away.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

I don't remember you stomping me at all, no.

Tho you're right about it falling apart at the end. This was pretty much stream of consciousness and I kept losing my train of thought and then staring at the screen biting my pen. I always write so much better when I'm not trying to write.

It's a roughie. Needs reworking. But I'm too tired and sweaty to think about it now, so instead Ima go swimming.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 15124

I hate philosophy.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

I don't accept your analysis of what reletivism is. I am about to leave for work so I cannot reply in full now. I also don;t agree that reletivists say 'all ideologies are the same ideology' this is a misintepretation of reletivism.

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Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 8658

quote:

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Originally posted by Roshigoth
I hate philosophy.

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You're out of the band.




Squee: Interesting!

I'm not going to placate you simply because I'm grateful for the fact that someone on the boards is trying to add some intellectuallism, you actually made some pretty valid and intruiging points.

It was well written, but confusing in the sense that at first you seemed to steer us towards the fallacies of pure determinism, but eventually ended up critiquing non-specificity and ultimately saying, I guess, things are exactly how they seem? Or maybe you didn't, I don't know. Though I could see some emotion shining through, I'm not sure you carried me all the way to your final point. Or maybe you were trying to leave me hanging, I don't know.

In either case, I'd be happy to read future rants.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

Well I don't know exactly what determinism is. And I've only approached relativism from a moral standpoint (I'm studying Peter Kreeft's defenses of moral absolutism), so there is going to be some malapropism with terms I'm trying to use.

And you can be sure whatever I write probably isn't going to match up with the way the different disciplines fit together because to date I haven't taken a philosophy class.

The actual seed of this came from a discussion about religion between oxsan and myself. Or was it mugtoe? All my PMs have been ganked so I can't go back and check.

Anyway, Phil, I don't really mean that relativists are all non-specifists (there must be a better term I can use...), only that nonspecificity is a kind of relativism, or that it is similar to relativism. Generally any time I corner one of these people in debate on a specific point, their argument centers around the idea that any variable of discussion(historical, social, cultural, ethical) may as well be one value as another; there is no meaning or value to any psychological or metaphysical construct other than what they place on it, which is an idea my relativist friends can't let go of. They can evade pretty much anything you throw at them. It's like trying to paint a duck with watercolors.

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