Feeling Lost
I’m not quite sure I understood what Crosswhite was saying in Chapters 6 and 7 of The Rhetoric of Reason. I tried engaging with his ideas, but I struggled to ground them in reality, stitch them into something particularly meaningful for me. I definitely feel like there are ideas of value present, but I feel so entangled in the deliberation process that the endgame seems like a distant fantasy. Instead of a particularly organized analysis of the chapters, I instead offer here a sampling of the notes I took while reading through the chapters. Most of these notes are simple direct responses or attempts to puzzle through various aspects of Crosswhite’s claims, and interconnect them with previous statements. I choose to do this particularly because I want to invite commentary. Because I am so unsure that I have processed the chapter properly, I want to directly encourage my readers to provide assessment and counter-claims to my interpretations of Crosswhite’s methods and claims.
Notes
Self-referential loops. Circles of conceptual repetition. Both philosophy and rhetoric are black holes of ideology from which no meaningful concept can escape unscathed. Fallacies do not exist outside of universal audiences. Universal audiences are a a theoretical example. Fallacies are therefore fictional. Everything is valid, presupposing the audience is localized enough. Although there is no universal truth, there exists an infinite number of universal truths in the particular subsets of each arbitrary universal audience. In many cases, when viewed together, they might contradict with each other. In these cases, it doesn't matter what the perceived thoughts and arguments are, as long as each audience accepts a universal truth. All arguments are fallacious. All arguments fail to cover all universalities.
The average lifespan is 75 years. This city has no children and can gain no more people. This city will perish in 75 years.
Our ideas of the individual and the group interact, rather than define each other. In both cases, our definitions remain as shorthand for representations of our arbitrary evaluation processes of observed matter classification.
Our soldiers are strong, but our unit is weak. There is no unity between the troops, and we are all slaughtered. Our claim of individual strength was misleading- our troops possessed vitality, but lacked coherence and willpower. The opposing troops were individually strong and a strong unit. They possessed vitality, coherence and willpower. The week following our battle, their entire unit died from complications related to autoimmune disorders.
All evaluative terminology is ambiguous. All terminology is evaluative.
I feel like a sociopath pretty often. If you pay attention to the web of humanity, it's impossible not to feel like one. The only path that is not overwhelmingly violent and narcissistic is absolute dissolution of the self in the name of the greater good.
This is a chilling concept, insomuch that as beings which are only capable of perceiving the individual, we have no major internal incentive from which we should value the group over the self.
Therefore, all non-narcissistic efforts and beliefs are a result of a particular group making a persuasive argument that overrides the will of the self. However, in these cases, although the individual has disregarded itself in a physical sense, the process of coming into agreement with the group creates an identity extending beyond the individual.
However, even in cases where the individual gives entirely of itself to a group, the group will inevitably only represent an individual particular audience. The system scales upward, but only through an infinite spiral of narcissism. Only total devotion to peak universality represents a negation of sociopathy.
Why must something be rational to be relevant? Rationality is only necessary for policies.
In a movie, a man goes mad from entering the viewpoints of others. I enter the viewpoint of the man in the movie, and retain my sanity. Am I a superior specimen? An übermensch beyond the realm of identity?
If I claim that I have super powers of completely inarticulable dimensions, then I will generally be regarded as madder than any criminal. One cannot be mistaken about the fundamental nature of the world. French Feminist theory argues women have super powers of completely inarticulable dimensions.
Claiming is harder for men because of inarticulable reasons of simple gender differences created by the binary. Questioning is harder for women because of inarticulable reasons of simple gender differences created by the binary. Questions are claims. Claims presuppose questions.
Without full articulation, explorations of feminism, multiculturalism, and other concepts become as oppressive as the systems of reason they choose to redefine. This necessitates the presence of the "etc". At peak articulation, this etc becomes a universal blindness equal to the original articulations of the egotistical "reasons" of those in power.
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