The Valley of the False Glimmer

[on Ivakhiv’s posts Adrian Ivakhiv has posted reviews of Tool-Being and Prince of Networks.
from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek
Ivakhiv’s point about the river needing the valley to be what it is cuts no ice with me, beautiful though the image may be. The true statement here would be that the “river valley” couldn’t be what it is without the river and the valley. The valley can bring out new flavors in a river just as a friendship, marriage, or job can bring out new flavors in individual people. But that doesn’t mean that people and things only are what they are by virtue of the specific relations in which they are now involved. I’m never even sure why this idea sounds liberating to anyone. Only because something in me is not fully expressed by anything that happens can anything new ever happen to me.]

[(title unknown)
via enowning by enowning on 9/3/09 Simon Critchely explains Meillassoux.
For the English-speaking reader, the force of Meillassoux's polemic against correlationism requires some explanation... But what exactly is the problem with correlationism? Well, it is twofold. First, by denying thought any rational access to primary qualities or things in themselves, correlationism allows that space to be filled by any number of irrational discourses, such as religion. In a powerful critique of the theological turn in French phenomenology, for example in the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Meillassoux shows how the flip side of correlationism is fideism, that is, the rather vague discourse on the numinous that one finds in many followers of Heidegger, but also - it should be added - in Wittgenstein's curious remarks about the mystical towards the end of the Tractatus. Such is what Meillassoux calls "the religionizing of reason".]

[Today I just read something apropos of our discussion. Slavoj Zizek writes in The Parallax View: ‘“anti-philosophy” – it is not surprising that Kierkegaard laid out its most concise formula: “The fact of the matter is that we must acknowledge that in the last resort there is no theory.” In all great “anti-philosophers,” from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to the late work of Wittgenstein, the most radical authentic core of being human is perceived as a concrete practico-ethical engagement and/or choice which precedes (and grounds) every “theory,” every theoretical account of itself, and is, in this radical sense of the term, contingent (“irrational”) – it was Kant who laid the foundation for “anti-philosophy” when he asserted the primacy of practical over theoretical reason; Fichte simply spelled out its consequences when he wrote, apropos of the ultimate choice between Spinozism and the philosophy of subjective freedom: “What philosophy one chooses depends on what kind of man one is.” Thus Kant and Fichte – unexpectedly – would have agreed with Kierkegaard: in the last resort there is not theory, just a fundamental practice-ethical decision about what kind of life one wants to commit oneself to.’So Zizek's suggesting the arational basis of the origins of our worldview.
Posted by Jeff Meyerhoff at 3:40 PM Thursday, September 03, 2009
Arational Origin of Worldviews]

[The present yuga-dharma naturally has its own hegemony dictating “Standards of Validity of Truth/Reality/Objectivity” But, these are decidedly inadequate. It is not the question of assuring an equality on a given single plane of consciousness, but an issue of comparing the most difficult incomparables, residing on the two different planes of a hierarchy of cosmic structure of say the seven levels of consciousness. There are no verification standards available. In this predicament, we have to turn, may be reluctantly or skeptically, to those Visionaries, who were born in the human race and favoured us with their wisdom of realization. Mahayogi Aurobindo observers in his "Essays on the Gita", - “The unconscious or half conscious wresting of fact and word and idea to suit a preconceived notion or the doctrine or principle of one's preference is recognized by Indian logicians as one of the most fruitful sources of fallacy; and it is perhaps the one which it is most difficult for even the most conscientious thinker to avoid”. Re: Objectivity by Lorraine Datson & Peter Galison (Book Review by Norberto Serpente) sane yeshwant Wed 09 Sep 2009 07:52 PM PDT (Yeshwant Sane) e-mail: saneyr@mtnl.net.in 10-9-2009]

SR/OOO is poised dangerously to foist yet another fallacy in philosophy. A thorough reading of The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo can redeem the situation. [TNM]