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The original post is below. But let me add this preface. It's not my intention to offend anyone, but only to point out what I consider an important trend in human self-conception.

I've said again and again that epistemology must acknowledge motive, that reason is subordinate to life. In my view, there's a part of us all that remains a magical-thinking status-seeking predator. I don't see how the pursuit of objectivity can legitimately make a criticism of objectivity its enemy. Also, if logic is sure of itself, why shouldn't it expose it's foundation?
I don't attack fundamentalism because it's too easy a target, and a fundamentalist would simply ignore my attack.
Those who pride themselves on rationality and objectivity, however, should tolerate a little criticism, a checking of their motives.
This isn't a personal attack. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear. Be cool. Laugh it off. An ad hominem response addressed to me personally in response to these slightly satirical caricatures is not appropriate.

It's all about in-groups and out-groups. Pro and contra.

1. The logic club wants to pretend that language is simpler than it is. Their god is a limited method that they take on faith to be a pipeline to uncut truth.

2. The bible-thumpers club. This club is so out of date it's almost cool again. To choose them for an enemy shows a lack of ambition. But they are out there still. They have the primitive concept of God as a man in the sky who will toss us into the appropriate bin when the time is right.

3. The objectivity club. This only applies to those who see nothing but the objective. We're all objective to the degree that we want to survive. This club is for those who make a religion of objectivity, who get their spiritual rocks off contemplating how very very objective they are. They are no by their distaste for the idiosyncratic and any mention of values invisible to microscopes or telescopes.

4. The depth-psychology club. Hell, I'm in this club myself. The sniff out motives and tackle the always questionable task of making a mental model of the psyche. Hermeneutics is their bag. They are known by their tendency to look beneath the surface of conversations. They are about as popular as peeping toms.

5. The mystic club. I like this club too. They hint at experiences beyond the kin of the average joe. The average joe wonders if they are lying. The mystic club is always calling attention to that which is invisible for most.

6. The skeptic club. They doubt everything, except the value of such doubt. Their age old target is any sort of belief. They help keep the other clubs on their toes.

7. The fusion club. One of my favorites. This club sees all the other clubs as too limited. It wants to make a soup out of everything.

Additions

8. The above-such-nonsense club. If they don't like a persons theory, they don't argue against it but rather resort to ad hominem attacks. The nonsense so offends them that they don't take time to understand it.

9. The ignorance is wisdom club. For them, the more you think you know, the less you know. They forget that a principle like this is one hell of a claim to knowledge. Sure, there is value in humility, but perhaps more often humility is the bluff of the egotist.

10. The folks who point out elite minorities club. Well, I doubt I'm the founder.

11. The contrarians. It doesn't matter what's being discussed. A contrarian takes the least popular side. I ripped up my membership card. Too many members.

12. The I-am-reading-this-sentence club. These fine people have actually read all the way to number 12. They are all that humans should be.

@Reconstructo,

This reminds me of a horoscope from The Onion...

There are thousands of types of people in the world:
The type that divides the world up into two types of people, and the thousands of other types.

You've left out type 8: The type who thinks all of this stuff in 1-7 is variably cool, but who thinks that anyone who believes they've figured out the world is a self-deluding moron.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111677 wrote:

It's all about in-groups and out-groups. Pro and contra.

1. The logic club wants to pretend that language is simpler than it is. Their god is a limited method that they take on faith to be a pipeline to uncut truth.

2. The bible-thumpers club. This club is so out of date it's almost cool again. To choose them for an enemy shows a lack of ambition. But they are out there still. They have the primitive concept of God as a man in the sky who will toss us into the appropriate bin when the time is right.

3. The objectivity club. This only applies to those who see nothing but the objective. We're all objective to the degree that we want to survive. This club is for those who make a religion of objectivity, who get their spiritual rocks off contemplating how very very objective they are. They are no by their distaste for the idiosyncratic and any mention of values invisible to microscopes or telescopes.

4. The depth-psychology club. Hell, I'm in this club myself. The sniff out motives and tackle the always questionable task of making a mental model of the psyche. Hermeneutics is their bag. They are known by their tendency to look beneath the surface of conversations. They are about as popular as peeping toms.

5. The mystic club. I like this club too. They hint at experiences beyond the kin of the average joe. The average joe wonders if they are lying. The mystic club is always calling attention to that which is invisible for most.

6. The fusion club. One of my favorites. This club sees all the other clubs as too limited. It wants to make a soup out of everything.

7. The skeptic club. They doubt everything, except the value of such doubt. Their age old target is any sort of belief. They help keep the other clubs on their toes.

Fascinating. You left out the adolescent rebellion club. We don't like anyone over the emotional age of 13, and we just rebel for rebellion's sake. We used to be existentialists, and piss in the streets just to show what we think of conventional morality. But existentialism is now passe'. So we'll just yell and scream.

@Aedes,

Aedes;111680 wrote:

This reminds me of a horoscope from The Onion...
You've left out type 8: The type who thinks all of this stuff in 1-7 is variably cool, but who thinks that anyone who believes they've figured out the world is a self-deluding moron.

I didn't expect this anger from you. I don't see how you felt attacked by my post. Not did I imply I had the world figured out. If you weren't trying to insult me, that line is nasty anyhow. It showers hate on every mystic that ever walked the earth, including Spinoza. It sounds like the envious hatred of Ignorance. It has the same sort of arrogance it attacks. Pure certainty. Pure hate. Neither sublime nor objective. A self-justifying sort of conceptual poetry. But perhaps that's what we all do all the time.

@Reconstructo,

Are you talking about pluralism? You may like William James. Highly recommended if you haven't given him a good look already. For example:

Quote:

Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely "external" environment of some sort or amount. Things are "with" one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word "and" trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. "Ever not quite" has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. However much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity.

and 8 and 9 and 10 and...

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;111681 wrote:

Fascinating. You left out the adolescent rebellion club. We don't like anyone over the emotional age of 13, and we just rebel for rebellion's sake. We used to be existentialists, and piss in the streets just to show what we think of conventional morality. But existentialism is now passe'. So we'll just yell and scream.

Put a Depends Undergarment on a stick. It'll make you a fine flag. "So mature and restrained and objective." Assure yourself 3 times daily.

I think critical minds should be less offended. Are you priests? Are you ego-less warriors of truth? That's why so much of philosophy is crap. It dropped the good side of religion and kept the bad side.

And this child-is-bad subtext: it betrays something. As I've joked before, it's as if logic-and-objectivity function emotionally as Big Daddy, a replacement for God. Therefore all this accusation of childishness. To be grown up is to kneel to the universal Daddy. To question Daddy is to be a bad little boy. Alrighty then. I'll play Socrates. You play his accusers. You play the Rabbis. I'll play Teenage Jesus.......

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111702 wrote:

You're such an old wise man. We need to put you in the wise old man club. Everyone's just a teeny-weeny little baby that disagrees with you.

What a little hissy fit you boys are throwing. Get out your holy water. Sprinkle your fetish words. Wave your depends in the air. "So mature and restrained and objective." Repeat that mantra to yourselves.

You took the hook and now you're flopping on it. I think critical minds would be less offended, and admit the possibility that they do associated themselves with some elite majority. Come on, boys. Are you priests? Are you ego-less warriors of truth. That's why so much of philosophy is crap. And this child-is-bad subtext. Allow me to re-assure you how masculine adult and objective both of you are. Whereas us women and children over here should know our place. You big powerful men go save the world now.

Calm down. You clearly attacked others in your OP, even though you may believe it was subtle. It is no surprise that people are going to lash back. And if this thread was really just bait for a flamewar (the hook comment), I don't know why you made the thread in the first place. Certainly this has nothing to do with philosophy.

@Zetherin,

Sometimes losing ones cool is the only logical thing to do. Other times ignorance is the best policy. Maybe if you ignore it, it will go away.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111702 wrote:

You're such an old wise man. We need to put you in the wise old man club. Everyone's just a teeny-weeny little baby that disagrees with you.

What a little hissy fit you boys are throwing. Get out your holy water. Sprinkle your fetish words. Wave your depends in the air. "So mature and restrained and objective." Repeat that mantra to yourselves.

You took the hook and now you're flopping on it. I think critical minds would be less offended, and admit the possibility that they do associated themselves with some elite majority. Come on, boys. Are you priests? Are you ego-less warriors of truth. That's why so much of philosophy is crap. And this child-is-bad subtext. Allow me to re-assure you how masculine adult and objective both of you are. Whereas us women and children over here should know our place. You big powerful men go save the world now.

There is not only the possibility that I belong to an elite minority. I do belong to one. Whatever gave you the idea that I would deny it. I am highly educated, and have published, and used to be an academic. What's it to ya?

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;111705 wrote:

Certainly this has nothing to do with philosophy.

I don't know how much I like that certainty of yours, if we are talking about our visions of philosophy. No, I didn't want a flame war. I just thought the wisemen would grin and shrug. I was obviously playing the gadfly, and criticizing the biases of criticism.:sarcastic:

---------- Post added 12-16-2009 at 03:10 AM ----------

kennethamy;111707 wrote:

There is not only the possibility that I belong to an elite minority. I do belong to one. Whatever gave you the idea that I would deny it. I am highly educated, and have published, and used to be an academic. What's it to ya?

I respect that you at least fess up, finally! But let me give you some news, sir. Everyone belongs! You don't respect their credentials, perhaps, but they may not respect yours. I think it's your faith in those credentials that assures you of your membership in that elite of yours. Enjoy it.

---------- Post added 12-16-2009 at 03:50 AM ----------

Deckard;111698 wrote:

Are you talking about pluralism? You may like William James. Highly recommended if you haven't given him a good look already. For example:

and 8 and 9 and 10 and...

I'm down with pluralism as long as one of the choices you get is monism.....:sarcastic:

---------- Post added 12-16-2009 at 04:56 AM ----------

Deckard;111706 wrote:

Sometimes losing ones cool is the only logical thing to do. Other times ignorance is the best policy. Maybe if you ignore it, it will go away.

Good point. And I don't pretend to be above it. You've got a pretty even temper there. Appreciated.

@Reconstructo,

The very arbitration of the categories themselves in such a particular linear enumeration may themselves form a different category which is precisely that category which neither fuses all the categories together, nor is it the category that is capable of negating any particular category. To be outside the circumference of the categories is to be satanic: there are no categories in this pantheon or in this system of theology compatible for those who are stuck in between; you have made yourself a god, and cast all others who are merely those conforming to those categories as a worshiper, and those who disagree or simply do not feel with the arbitration, a devil.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo wrote:

I don't know how much I like that certainty of yours, if we are talking about our visions of philosophy. No, I didn't want a flame war. I just thought the wisemen would grin and shrug. I was obviously playing the gadfly, and criticizing the biases of criticism.:sarcastic:

Eh, it still seems as though you deliberately instigated. I think kennethamy knows which club you place him in. And, I meant that if that was the only reason you created this thread, this has nothing to do with philosophy (it's just being childish, picking a fight on the playground).

But if you say you want to sincerely discuss philosophical biases, I'm not one to say you are lying. Go for it.

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;111824 wrote:

Eh, it still seems as though you deliberately instigated. I think kennethamy knows which club you place him in. And, I meant that if that was the only reason you created this thread, this has nothing to do with philosophy (it's just being childish, picking a fight on the playground).
But if you say you want to sincerely discuss philosophical biases, I'm not one to say you are lying. Go for it.

Well spoken, and of course K and I have a long history, and have both taken shots at one another. I still think that my original post offered those with enough humor a chance to increase their self-consciousness. I've littered this forum with threads about the relationship between truth and motive. This also touches on relativism.

It was certainly a bit indulgent, but my own impure motives are well addressed by the threads they inspire. I suppose it's a painful subject for some, an ironically humoress subject for others, and something boring to those whose minds are in the clouds of mystic ecstasy, a state of being I respect. Happiness is the goal. So I question any pretension to truth that is not a prop of happiness. But then I also question this theory itself. My method devours itself, but that's no secret to me. That's what transcendental buffoonery is all about. Irony and ecstasy.

@Baal,

Baal;111817 wrote:

To be outside the circumference of the categories is to be satanic: there are no categories in this pantheon or in this system of theology compatible for those who are stuck in between; you have made yourself a god, and cast all others who are merely those conforming to those categories as a worshiper, and those who disagree or simply do not feel with the arbitration, a devil.

Like my little brother Jesus and older brother Lucifer, I am the Truth.

I'm both joking and serious, and this is a paradox and a truism. Some might call it category sideways-8.

@Reconstructo,

When you talk about in-groups and out-groups you seem to be saying that the existence of the mutually exclusive clubs may be more evidence about human group psychology than about the nature of truth.

Here's one hypothesis to explain it

Humans are more inclined to identify with an elite minority than with humanity in its entirety. This is a carry over from millions of evolutionary years lived in small groups and tribes. It just rubs us the wrong way when the group gets to big. Different ideological groups branch off at some point in order to keep the group small. This small group may even invent differences to distinguish themselves from the larger groups especially if those other groups live close by.

Also when a society is under stress there would be a desire to circle the wagons or return to and reconfirm ones tribal identification. This tendency had evolutionary benefits.

As these groups form (naturally?) ideologies necessarily form in order justify existing differences and to further differentiate themselves from the other tribes. So we get many different mutually exclusive philosophies such as the ones Reconstructo has listed. New languages and dialects likely form for the same reason. Ones philosophy, insofar as it differs from the others, at its root is often just a shibboleth.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111989 wrote:

Like my little brother Jesus and older brother Lucifer, I am the Truth.

I'm both joking and serious, and this is a paradox and a truism. Some might call it category sideways-8.

You mean, you are a truth. And that would be true, if you mean it's true you exist.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111677 wrote:

The original post is below. But let me add this preface. It's not my intention to offend anyone, but only to point out what I consider an important trend in human self-conception.

I really like this post. I think it goes well with your signature quote:

Quote:

"Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?" William Blake

I think all the groups posted are things that people find persuasive. And sometimes rightly so, for example the psychology club can correctly explain many issues that have a psychological answer. But it's also easy to be persuasive and yet incorrect with a psychological answer.

Some people find one club that works for them, and stick with it, trying to apply it to everything. That doesn't work. But even if you pick and choose between the groups depending on the situation you can still pick the wrong one.

It's a good thing to be aware of, I sometimes find myself using one type of argument when it really doesn't say much of importance, just because I'm having trouble arguing for my belief.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111727 wrote:

---------- Post added 12-16-2009 at 03:10 AM ----------

I respect that you at least fess up, finally! But let me give you some news, sir. Everyone belongs! You don't respect their credentials, perhaps, but they may not respect yours. I think it's your faith in those credentials that assures you of your membership in that elite of yours. Enjoy it.

---------- Post added 12-16-2009 at 03:50 AM ----------

.

You are right to think that I don't respect the credentials of someone who thinks he belongs to an elite minority because he has an IQ of 65, and he hasn't any education, and he has spent most of his adult life in prison. I am biased that way. I have to admit.

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;112150 wrote:

You mean, you are a truth. And that would be true, if you mean it's true you exist.

Well, it must be understood with a sense of humor. Of course I don't expect the world to gather at my feet. I suspect that a sense of personal courage/faith is the ground of an open mind. A person with a vague faith in themselves rather than in any particular body of dogma can let this body of dogma change. A person who lacks raw personal courage seems more likely to cling to a universal beyond themselves. "I am the truth" could be understood as an individualized humanism. It's also an ironic presentation of the subversion heart (still pumping) implicit in Christianity.

Notice now that you are being the truth, as you try to squeeze my claim under the authority of your claim. "I am the truth" is what everyone implies when arguing against another's opinion. If they had no "faith" in their words, they would presumably remain silent. What is the foundation of authority? Beneath ideology is always a feeling, described well enough, I think, by the word faith.

---------- Post added 12-17-2009 at 06:01 PM ----------

kennethamy;112200 wrote:

You are right to think that I don't respect the credentials of someone who thinks he belongs to an elite minority because he has an IQ of 65, and he hasn't any education, and he has spent most of his adult life in prison. I am biased that way. I have to admit.

No shame in admitting that. We all make distinctions. You are clearly an intelligent person. I wouldn't deny that just because we disagree. To scorn minority elitism is just another way to practice it. It's not my attention to accuse, but only to reveal. The game is an increase of consciousness, the accumulation of perspectives. But that's just a description of the game from one of these perspectives. Closure is impossible because we are never finished inventing ourselves.

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