/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18692839]

The readers and thinkers who are obsessed with epistemology claim that epistemology is the foundation of all knowledge, to the point that (according to them) you can’t have a legitimate opinion if you haven’t laid your own epistemological ground beforehand. For the Greeks it was “You can’t dislike or ignore philosophy because you would need philosophy to justify such position”. For the moderns it is “You can’t dislike or ignore epistemology because you would need epistemology to justify ANY position”. The question is: w-h-y? One can not have an opinion, say, on morals, religion, aesthetics, if he doesn’t care about how the validity of his knowledge is determined? All the infinite debates on the dichotomies such as subject/object, spirit/matter, thought/nature, phenomenon/noumenon and so on, seem to be so unsolvable and double-faced that it is quite simplistic to affirm that you have to position yourself on one of the two sides if you want to start philosophizing. Let’s assume you decide that free thought is inherently impossible and that all knowledge is predetermined, or that empirical observation has no validity at all, or any other trite epistemological position that we have already heard a hundred times: so what? Does that decision change the opinions you’re going to express in your next book? Does not-taking-that-decision impede you from writing it? It seems to me that epistemology is rather pointless once you realize that all epistemological theories have their own reasons and that there isn’t one more true than the others.

Please, notice that this thread, despite being about philosophy and therefore literature, does not consist in a request for book suggestions. Please abstain from dropping names and titles without further insight.

[kafkeine !!Cyef12kMnIb No.18692956]

To answer the question posed: You can take the tentative position, a supposition, that every person has an unconscious episteme, and that in discourse one either attests to one's episteme or remain irrevocably subject to its subconscious dimension, and move from there. Because I can find little counter-evidence to this position, it becomes the episteme I attest to, that at the same time applies to me. An episteme is here no more than an organizing principle, the most general condition of the set of sensible abstractions that make up your body of knowledge. Correct are you in pointing out that to invoke this nature in discourse serves to illustrate no purely logical function. Always is it a question of justification. In short, of ethics. Because to know one's episteme and how it conditions your body of knowlede is to be capable of articulating function, and thereby to be capable of being 'right', or functionally correct. This inherently ethical dimension of philosophy is how you can have bodies of knowledge which share features but not episteme. Though, to say that epistemological theories because of their determining nature aren't themselves subject to criteria of logical truth is to miss the crucial point with this ethical dimension. Because bodies of knowledge share features, you get something reminiscent of the Hegelian Aufhebung, wherein seemingly disparate systems organized by differing singularities, by way of analogy or metaphor, are shown to be reflections or manifestations of the same unitary structure. The genesis of newer structure generally puts the derivative philosophies into perspective, seen precisely from the perspective which the new structure itself is. Because the incoherency of the bodies of knowledge gives rise to epistemic novelty, the dialectical position taken here can, if it is to be rationally coherent, only be summarized or articulated in ethical, empirical terms: "While one has no certain knowledge, one at once will and must believe one does,"

[Anonymous No.18693398]

>>18692839
the only achievement of epistemology is showing how irrelevant epistemology at deep levels is

[Anonymous No.18693590]

>>18692956
Thank you for your thoughtful answer. What I get from it is that one’s own episteme can be unconscious and implicit in his discourse, therefore one doesn’t have to express it beforehand – am I right? If so, why do I feel like I don’t have a specific episteme, despite the fact that I so often meditate on these problems? I wouldn’t say that I’m not conscious of my cognitive process – or, better, not conscious that a cognitive process takes place in me – but I am not able to describe it in a unique way, basing it on univocal fixed principles. No theory seems to satisfy me, because the opposite theory will always sound equally right. What does this all mean? Can there be a legitimate position consisting in the deliberate discard of all epistemological positions on the basis of the idea that all of them are equally acceptable?

[Anonymous No.18693781]

>>18692839
You know that epistemology is a part of philosophy right? So people have known this for ages. You will come to that conclusion too, eventually, if you are smart, like you seem to be to me.

[Anonymous No.18693814]

>>18692839
I don't need epistemology because I have knowledge that I can reliably kick your ass while you get upset that your words aren't working.

[Anonymous No.18693826]

>>18692839
Seems like you've independently discovered the Stirner and Nietzsche-pill. And yes, you're ultimately right. Don't fall for the pilpul of academics and "intellectuals" desperate to pull you into the swamp of abstract intellectualism. Instead, live.

[kafkeine !!Cyef12kMnIb No.18693857]

>>18693590
>What I get from it is that one’s own episteme can be unconscious and implicit in his discourse
Yes. By and large this is the point of the post-structuralists, if at their behest I allowed myself to generalize their supposedly ungeneralizable discourses.
>Can there be a legitimate position consisting in the deliberate discard of all epistemological positions on the basis of the idea that all of them are equally acceptable?
With what I've laid out, no. What you at first seem to be asking is whether you can view your incapacity to hold to a single expressed (ie. pre-formulated) episteme as proof that all epistemes are untrue. But crucially, you confess to this as an experience, perhaps an opinion? Isn't it less the case that you're incapable of apprehending an episteme as true and more the case that your episteme consists in the fact of hesitation? From my point of view the elimination of epistemes is impossible (the idea is at bottom as senseless as a ). Indeterminacy as to one's episteme means nothing more than that one doesn't know how to articulate one's position. What would presumably take place in due time, were your indeterminacy to disappear, would not be the adoption of a static arche but a creative operation by means of which you find an evolving organization fitting your body of knowledge. I call it the blind pill; By all means keep reading and thinking, because filling out one's framework is necessary, but realize that being selective in reading a work is an integral part of actualizing a solid philosophical foundation. Just because nobody's written about something doesn't mean this yet-to-come hypothetical thing has to be untrue or unreal. That's only if you accept the judging episteme in question, which is for my part not a necessity. I think by now you should see what I'm getting at.

[Anonymous No.18694454]

>>18693857
Yes, I see what you mean. Thank you.
>What would presumably take place in due time, were your indeterminacy to disappear, would not be the adoption of a static arche but a creative operation by means of which you find an evolving organization fitting your body of knowledge.
Can you just expand on this? I understand its meaning, what it alludes to, but the couple "evolving organization" sounds a little obscure. Why evolving? Why organization?

[Anonymous No.18694526]

It's time. You're ready for the final boss.

[Anonymous No.18694557]

>>18694526
Principles of Non-Philosophy?

[kafkeine !!Cyef12kMnIb No.18694562]

>>18694454
>Why evolving? Why organization?
Sorry for the obtuse langauge. Evolving because the bodies of knowledge more or less always subject the episteme to a tension which it can't reduce without rearticulating itself to account for the constellation to come. Organization because the episteme is (either implicitly or explicitly) the organizing principle of a philosophical work or more generally a body of knowledge. To say one's episteme evolves after its initial articulation isn't to say that the assurance of the episteme's existence is non-final. Indeterminacy as to the articulation is again, not a final determination as to the presence of truth or lack thereof, but a contingent and conditioned affair. That we might always suffer the threat of having insufficient knowledge imposes on the person the necessity to make a choice as regards their beliefs' articulation.

[Anonymous No.18694578]

>>18694557
Future Christ if you want the gnosticism at the bottom of the glass right away, Principles of Non-Philosophy otherwise, yes (with Dictionary of Non-Philosophy)

just have a good grounding or it's just gonna read like mush

[kafkeine !!Cyef12kMnIb No.18694591]

>>18694578
>Future Christ if you want the gnosticism at the bottom of the glass right
Elaborate. The juxtaposition of a french critical philosopher and gnosticism is surprisingly funny

[Anonymous No.18694625]

>>18694591
>he doesn't know

This isn't like one of those poo larpers who think EVERYTHING is a Vedantin because they got it on their minds. Laruelle is a true blue gnostic to the bone. I'm just as baffled and intrigued as you are.

[Anonymous No.18694628]

>>18694578
>search Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy on libgen
>size is 666 Kb

[kafkeine !!Cyef12kMnIb No.18694672]

>>18694625
As hilarious as it is interesting. Thanks for posting, definitely'll check his books out eventually.

[Anonymous No.18694684]

>>18694628
>>18694672
Sorry, Brassier's "Axiomatic Heresy" and "Kant, Quine, Laruelle" would be your best bet. Enjoy.

[Anonymous No.18694690]

>>18694684
If Brassier is not gnostic then I'll pick Laruelle.

[Anonymous No.18694710]

>>18694690
No, Brassier isn't, it's just those two papers give a pretty rigorous bird's eye view of what Laruelle is doing and are fascinating expositions of the kinds of vistas that the exhaustion with epistemic cat wrangling opens