/lit/ - Literature

>>5036649
More than anything it's a term that responds to the recent rise of a strange sort of logical positivism in the nu-atheism movement. Scientism is a cultural phenomenon more than anything, with the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and ND Tyson riding on the back of it. The recent spats between Degrasse Tyson and Massimo Pigliucci are indicative of a greater split between the scientific and philosophical communities on a pop-cultural level.

In terms of mass culture, scientism, reason and atheism are now little bitsize tidbits of feel good information that can be swallowed without chewing. Hell, look at how reddit operates.

Scientism, as seen on this board, is the modern version of the teenage angsty crisis, crystallized into a community due to the mediating powers of the internet.

Rarely does it affect scientific work, but something must be said about the political nature of science as a whole.

A quick little observation.

Lit is filled with generic science vs philosophy threads.

The people defending science, or rather attacking philosophy usually proclaim
>obscurantism
>meaningless intellectual wankery
>does not empirically exist
>u cannot no nuffin

Very rarely are scientists, philosophers or anyone else referenced. These individuals rely on their own definitions and their own assumptions.

On the other hand, those defending philosophy
>never attack science, but rather seek to limit its autonomy
>present proper, logical arguments
>defy the easy, materialist solutions

There are frequent references to both scientists and philosophers, along with well thought out and well-argued points.

Now, this thread is an observation of the anon's themselves rather than the argument.

There is a correlation between dismissive, self-entitled and ignorant anons on the side of 'scientism,' - (for they truly believe science to be the only worthwhile form of knowledge)

whilst those who are well versed in both philosophy and science are more polite, open to different arguments and knowledgable about the philosophy and history of science.

This doesn't add weight to either side's argument but merely notes that pop-culture's residue on the populus has created a group of people grounded in paradox. Not only do most of these anons know very little about science, but they hold that this knowledge, of which they know nothing, is the highest and only true form of knowledge.

I find it fascinating that the anti-intellectual culture that was born out of capitalism and consumerism has absorbed science into it's mainframe of support. A truly awful situation.

Have there been any truly radical critiques of reason? Modern critiques of reason only really say 'Yeah it's bad but it can be good.'

What are the damning critiques of reason that remove all this a priori, idealist bullshit from something that is clearly and irredeemably defective?

God of philosophy, i.e as the transcendental signifier died with the advent of science, modernity and enlightenment ideals.

Society is now decentred. Once enlightenment ideals are relinquished (it's all utopian nonsense anyway) and science reclaims its rightful place, then god may come back and with him we'll usher in a new era of human thinking and a transformation of metaphysics.

Capitalist modernity is certain to die though.

>>4511301
This guys a lecturer of mine. I have to say, his lectures are great but that book is not.

>>4511201
Pentti Linkola - Can Life Prevail
Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger / Men Among the Ruins
Martin Heidegger - Question Concerning Technology / Poetry Language Thought / Off the Beaten Path / The Essence of Truth :Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Thaetus
Lautremont - Les Chants de Maldoror


Fiction though I'm not sure. I've been reading fiction only in relation to my psychoanalysis work, whereas I've been looking at philosophy of modernity for a while. I suppose most Kafka, Borges, wait, Ill get back to you in a bit.

>>4511193
yeah he was actually really engaging, I would have loved to see the argument progress.

>>4511190
mods are pseudo-intellectual fedora atheists who got repeatedly called on their bs interest in philosophy and literature

AS USUAL

best start making some GoT and Catcher in the Rye threads.

Any of u guys red 1984 lol xD?

>>4511186
aye

>>4510934
Morality has to rest on the basis of a transcendent realm or signifier.

>>4510921
Yeah, moral relativism is really the most watered down, insipid concept I have ever seen.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to have morality without the idea of the transcendent. That's why I say that modern science is simply the autistic child of Christianity rather than a grand change away from the same schema of history.

Reason and rationality have become a power discourse and dialogue unto themselves which is founded on false principles and refuses to acknowledge the collision course with misery that they are on.

Truth as correctness (i.e, empericism) is GROUNDED in truth as the unhiddenness of beings. We have become like Plato's prisoners in the cave, entranced by shadows (scientific study) - we fail to see the ideas, concepts and truth that lie transcendent to these elements.

Those who cannot or will not think abstractly continue staring at the shadows laughing at the man who has left the cave and experienced true Being.

>>4510822
Starvation is still a problem for a HUGE portion of the world today, as are a large number of preventable diseases. Scientific progress is just astounding, thank you so much technology, I have an iphone 7 now.

Undergrad stemfags and engineers think they're so helpful and progressive only to realise that the 5% of the world they actually effect means nothing.

>>4510788
Philosophy never defines itself in opposition to science.

Science as you know it was born out of philosophy in the increasingly secularised enlightenment period. Birthed alongside capitalism, modern Science is a way of objectifying and subjugating the world and nature. This has not led to happiness, but misery. Science is the natural progression of the christian concept of history, and has become a utopian (read: apocalyptic, eshatological) dream.

Technology = objectification of the world.

Technology is the manifestation of the mistakes of metaphysics (i.e ontotheology and truth as the correctness of propositions rather than the unhiddenness of beings)

Technology has reduced the world to a measurable object (The Age of the World Picture)

Technology has inherited the faith we once gave to the gods, who have fled just like Being has fled.

There is no transcendental aspect to technology, we hope that it can deliver us from our condition but it won't. It is a stagnant 'progress,' that creates an illusion rather than letting us think.

Technology is utopian death and false liberation.

Look at technology. Only a small percentage of the world is even able to use technology, and of that group most use technology for convenience. We have more and more items to give us free time to do what? To fossilise.

Technology becomes an externalised, objectified representation of the world.

Also I applaud OP. We need more threads like this. Sophisticated people on /sci/ who have read philosophy of science are as downhearted about their discipline as jealous philosophy majors who can't get any money.

It's all the fault of europeans and capitalism.

We need the gods to come back.

>>4510600
'pedantic waste of humanity.'

I love all the STEMfags who need to believe in some sort of superiority that their subject bestows on them.

Science is the natural progression of christianity. The sheep that it attracts right now are the same sheep who would have been bellowing in church yards years ago.

Both religious and atheist communities have their great thinkers. But the modern atheist movement, the one championed by the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett is completely retarded. They are responding to christian fundamentalism, which no sophisticated religious person takes seriously. Clearly Americanism has infected science and philosophy and left it as a hollowed out carcass.

Progress is an eschatological myth.

>>4508794
You can't just write Heidegger off as paranoid and bitter. Heidegger held hope in the fact that ''As long as man understands himself as the rational animal, metaphysics belongs, as Kant said, to the nature of man. But if our thinking should succeed in its efforts to go back into the ground of metaphysics, it might well help to bring about a change in human nature, accompanied by a transformation of metaphysics,'' (Existence and Being 1949)

One can be pessimistic about existing conditions and seek to change the very thinking that we engage in. It's a lot nobler than the incessant march of scientific progress that we've tacked onto capitalism to make us feel better that 10% of the worlds population gets to experience the benefits of convenience technology (an objectifying experience) whilst the rest live in squalor and poverty.

Heidegger was not an 'every man for himself' sort of philosopher either. Heidegger sought to look at poetry as a way of messaging or calling back the gods that have fled us, the Being that has fled us.

He saw that is was necessary to overcome metaphysics by going into the ground of the discipline but didn't know or evaluate the proper steps.

My only criticism of Heidegger is that, like Nietzsche, he was a great prophet who was still too humanistic..

>>4508641
You're going to be lying in bed one night in the next few weeks and cringe at your conduct in this thread and then vow the next day to shape up your life, but it won't happen, it'll never happen.

You're a loser.

I've lost interest in this at this stage, justify whatever you like. Just try not to spoil stuff in the future because no one really wins.

>>4508634
You're just justifying being a douche at this stage yet managing to be more whiny and pathetic than the original anon complaining.

Just turn off your computer m8 and try again tomorrow.

captcha : was buttsmach

>>4508616
Doesn't make any of them any less pathetic.

Regardless... it doesn't matter anyway.

>>4508602
Here is a very easy and helpful lecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YqDU1W1jk4

>>4508602
If you start with Heidegger's critiques of metaphysics then the rest comes with that. It's not easy but its worthwhile.

>>4508596
I'm not worried about the spoilers. And the anon wasn't talking about them he was just spoiling them.

Some people...