Modern Epistemic Pessimism qua Zeitgeist
Consilience of Contemporary Intellectual History - 20th Century to Present - Epistemic Degradation and Pessimism
related:: Intellectual History, 20th Century, 21st Century, Contemporary philosophy, Epistemology, Pessimism, Zeitgeist
contra:: Enlightenment Values, Optimism, Progressivism, Objectivity, Truth
Gist #form/gist: Destabilization and degradation of knowledge, certainty, foundation via numerous failures of intellectual projects
Motivates toward at least a more serious confrontation with Idealism, The extended mind, and full, primary role of the subject, in particular the Psyche qua Dialectic and informed by Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, in particular the Transcendental aesthetic, Semantic externalism, Philosophical Therapy, and Quietism.
- unique in these times, the range, breadth, technology, completeness, ultimateness - human race, earth, titanic
- #v/context 19th Century
- #v/thesis Big 3 early 20th century intellectual developments combine and kick start a crisis of truth/knowledge/foundation
- Godel's Incompleteness Theorems
- Arrow's Impossibility Theorem
- Incommensurability
- incommensurate values
- Incommensurability
- Principle of Relativity
- Albert Einstein
- Non locality
- #v/issue 20th century Philosophy and Science failures
- Failed attempt to reconcile macro and micro Physics
- Quantum Mechanics only applicable at atomic and above level and vice versa
- Wave–particle Duality
- essentially requires Many worlds theory - similarly destabilizing as big 3
- Quantum Mechanics only applicable at atomic and above level and vice versa
- failed attempt to systematize language a la math, proof, logic
- Bertrand Russell
- Wittgenstein
- thus, crisis of semantics, communication, and feasibility of public institutions, even without challenges of multiculturalism
- failed Subject-object distinction resolution
- Transcendental aesthetic and Wittgenstein combine to take it as far as I know it can be taken.
- Requires Quietism which is a non-starter for most. Also a challenge for the socialization of truth, meaning, reality. Also implications for public institutions feasibility
- failed reconciliation of materialism and idealism
- Not unlike macro and micro physics incompatibility
- failed reconciliation of mind, identity, consciousness
- Failed attempt to reconcile macro and micro Physics
- #v/issue Thomas Kuhn, Science's failure to be Evidence-based in practice
- science, and aggregation of knowledge is flawed, at least at the practical level, at best its punctuated equilibrium between Paradigm shifts.
- Thus, resolution of aggregate scientific knowledge is at a much higher level and at a much longer time frame of progress. Ie, generational.
- Implications for feasibility of knowledge at the individual level - unreliable.
- #v/phenomenon Postmodernism
- destruction of Grand Narrative
- Post-structuralism
- Individualism, individual truth, perception is reality
- #v/phenomenon Disenchantment of the world
- Nietzsche
- Re-enchantment
- Fundamentalism religious
- Totalitarianism
- Narcissism
- Romanticism
- Return to nature
- Luddism
- Renouncers
- #v/issue Free Will degraded, which degrades a person and reveals the degree to which external and environmental and social forces affect you
- #v/bad World War II, horror industrialized and institutionalized and technologized
- #v/context Economics
- #v/context Technology
- #v/issue Misinformation
- Social media
- AI
- #v/phenomenon Dehumanization
- #v/issue info and cultural bubble
- #v/phenomenon increased ability of powers that be
- #v/bad Authoritarianism
- #v/bad George Orwellian spying
- #v/bad Surveillance state
- #v/context contra the common perception that kings were ruthless people that sucked to live under. In reality, they were simply limited in their power. No mechanism to know what the peasants are doing. Problems were nature and local social situation. Usually not a tyrant making people miserable by the millions with technology and reach. That is unique to the 20th and 19th centuries.
- Ie, the degree, range, extent, intensity of contemporary authoritarianism and surveillance and power is unprecedented
- #v/context Politics
- #v/phenomenon unholy bargain between Conservatives and religious fundamentalists with Ronald Reagan
- Radio act
- #v/bad Fairness Doctrine rescinded...
- #v/bad Citizens United ruling
- #v/bad Racist reaction to Obama
- #v/bad US Supreme Court shenanigans 21st Century
- postponing nominations until after election
- #v/bad Trumpism
- Furthest extent crisis of truth, reality pushed into public institutions/public
- #v/bad Education eroded
- Civics
- College tuition, cost, loans
- #v/bad Economic Inequality
- #v/bad attraction to Savior figure, strong man, Cult, and movement toward Fascism
- #v/context Ecology
- #v/bad Climate Change
- Flawed Malthusianism in resignation to the end of civilization and its psychological effects
- Don't Look Up
- #v/bad Climate Change
- #v/context Religion
- #v/context Values, ethics, psychology
- #v/context Art
- Post-modern art
- Pablo Picasso
- Franz Kafka
- Fernando Pessoa
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
- Catch-22
- Greek tragedy
- #v/phenomenon increased disaffection loop
- unhappiness, Fear, etc make for ripe targets of conspiracy theory, capitalism consumerism, religion, etc.
- Mental health crisis
- Themes, throughlines, claims
- #v/claim Secondary theme: industrial-techno-scientific-rational world/worldview materially (as in Historical Materialism) unbalances the duality of man and tethers it toward the rational, at the expense of hope, god, emotion, romantic, etc. Disenchantment, God is Dead
- #v/claim Third theme: distribution, dispersion, and non-locality of basic elements of life
- crucial mechanisms of life, society, economy, etc. became distributed. While modernism provided a kind of consolation from the dispersal of local observable forces into a diluted distribution into harder to see and control nations, nationalism allowed a way to see that as acceptable.
- citation - 21st century philosopher has a thesis like this...
- But it wasn't until the 80s, etc. that you had true globalization which disperses the mechanisms much farther. Causes an inherent disaffection due to the inability to even have the possibility of a lever to pull to control your fate. The forces are titanic and anathema to the Western enlightenment and hopeful ideal of progress, etc. It is a tragedy, and a deontogical world of principles and existential perspectives are required.
- crucial mechanisms of life, society, economy, etc. became distributed. While modernism provided a kind of consolation from the dispersal of local observable forces into a diluted distribution into harder to see and control nations, nationalism allowed a way to see that as acceptable.
- #v/claim Fourth theme: feedback loops, debt cycle, race to the bottom, tragedy of the commons, fighting dirty requires dirty response, marble analogy, existential risk, malthuss like scenario. Humans haven't and don't appear capable of global level organization and operatoin, even when the threat is existential. We are frogs boiling. Our only hope, historically, and evidenced presently, is simply that we might be able to endure. That our character is deep, even in the face of extreme challenge and suffering. That we might have a Spartan 300 like fight in us that we might be able to win, like those few hunderd remaining humans on the cape of Africa... Decline, singularity, fatalism, inevitability, rebirth, tragedy, historical consciousness
- In many ways, this development and perspective loops back on Kant capturing the fullest extent and development possible with the The Enlightenment, western civ, socratic spirit (Nietzschean philology). Which eventually required the paradigm shift of continental philosophy, Hegel, dialectic, eventually this 20th century epistemic crisis.
- Idealism, Indirect realism
Modern Epistemic Pessimism qua Zeitgeist
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Modern Epistemic Pessimism qua Zeitgeist