On a Second-Order Pragmatism

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I mean this conversation would not work like this in private - that's relevant

good of you to be so conciliatory🤣🤣😂
I don't know why you go on about capitalism like it's inevitable or desirable? and growth is questionable too
I wonder does money itself automatically drive exploitation?
There seems to be a huge strain between what we, as people, generally tend to value, and what intelligent matter, in as far as we can figure its agency, generally tends to value.

Arguably, one of the reasons exploitation persists is because people can sustain parochial/limited perspectives of their environment/world, without these bubbles being burst at all. Or they can otherwise avoid thinking about it, no?
 

sufi

lala
To be more clear. On a big scale, pragmatism can sometimes be directed positively due to circumstances, but it can create or arise from a crisis, isnt it. not necessarily anyone's individual responsibility, but a critical situation forcing brave actions

sand-grains-under-microscope-gary-greenberg-1.jpg
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
You can't change human nature


Worrying
It would be hubristic to think so.

Just as a component of a system cannot assume/commandeer the ontology of the system - primarily because the system subsumes its components, and evolves at a rate exponentially beyond them.

That said, it sure seems like much of the radical imagination has been either stunted by the weight of our worlds complexity, or otherwise stupefied by commodified narcosis. Can hubris jumpstart it? Perhaps.

While I do agree, in principle and as a rule, that a human cannot change human nature according their will, human nature is subject to change, depending on how you define things. Can a part of the system merely embody the kind of energy that the system will need to embody in order to change? If so, can this energy spread/ramify from the part of the system throughout the whole system? I think that's easier than ever.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
To be more clear. On a big scale, pragmatism can sometimes be directed positively due to circumstances, but it can create or arise from a crisis, isnt it. not necessarily anyone's individual responsibility, but a critical situation forcing brave actions

...


elaborate?
briefly ;)

Part of the goal of a second order pragmatics would be to map out the relation between the pragmatics of the part and the pragmatics of the whole - how the former ramifies/multiplies into the latter. What direction is an individual person moving in, and how does this direction relate to the direction the species is moving in?

Elaboration on the other point: If intelligent matter was as averted to psychic/corporal suffering as we are, there would be little to none of it. This is almost directly inducible from the fact that yachts exist in the same world as sweat shops with suicide nets.

I am sorry for bringing so much to the table, but there is a lot that needs to be digested. What do I mean by intelligent matter? Part of the trouble here is that I don't understand that enough myself. I take it to mean energy/matter that is organized - and right off the bat I'm lost in a language of physics that, again, I don't understand much of. Anyway, intelligent matter can be defined in opposition to entropy, which seems to be the force of disorganization that propels the universe to equilibrium. Intelligent matter exists in a disequilibrium, seeing as organization involves differentiating an otherwise equilibrated material.

In as far as our language of motives and teleology can be applied to something as cosmic as intelligence/intelligent-matter, it seems that intelligent "tends to value" organization - and not only that, but it seems to value an acceleration of organization. Note how our technological developments have accelerated. Note how the physical organization of this planet has accelerated in the brief span that we have occupied it. I no little to nothing about the history of the earth, but this accelerative trend seems to be mirrored in the most radical ways possible.

That said, intelligent matter, as it renders itself into increasingly complex systems, does need to have a conservative ("territorializing") function as well, otherwise it would just explode right off the bat.

We, as individuals, can be seen effectively, as far as I can tell, as microcosms of such agencies. The part is the microcosm of the whole, and so on.

How do our values differ from the values of the system? Well, given our time scale relative to that of even just our species, I think it is safe to say that our motivations fluctuate at more rapid rate? Maybe? If the motivation of an individual over their lifetime could be averaged out into a single function, that function would quite likely mirror, or at least correlate to, the motivation of the species.

A huge part of this problem is that consciousness only seems to make up a part of the agency of the individual human. It is as if the conscious mind is only a department in the corporation, a department of relative privilege. What consciousness values is not necessarily a mirror/correlation of what the individual human values. Part of this is that the concept of values is seemingly exclusive to consciousness, hence the difficulty in ascribing agency/motivation/teleology to something that isn't identifiably conscious.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I don't have anything more to contribute to this discussion as I don't have a clue what you are actually on about, other than the gut-feeling that you are proposing the setting out of some horrific totalitarian project with you at the helm. Have fun playing with your big words.
Well this could prove to be a crackpot science that yields little to no practical service. But at the very least it is forcing us to map huge amounts of information in ways that could lead to helpful understandings.

And you're right - I am drawn to a lot of these exotic and fancy concepts, just because they create bigger waves when they are pieced together. Bigger waves? Maybe not. But much of it is in the spirit of tinkering - and hey, maybe something useful could come of such tinkering. Might be a stretch, but at least it is oriented, on some level, toward increasing our shared understanding of the world. And that's a project that seems to be almost impossible to fail at.
 

susan

Member
I don't have a lot to contribute unfortunately, but all I would say is that this is brilliant constant escape.

It's great to see the intellectual ambition and passion you're imbuing to the forum. It's very inspiring.

From a cursory glance it does appear that some of the things your saying, or possibly some misinterpretations of what you're saying, are rubbing people up the wrong way possibly. If so, don't be dissuaded. You're doing a brilliant job so keep going!

ps. Dematerialisation was one of the forum's most successful intellectual endeavours which was initially met with hostility for a long stretch before becoming an all time favourite. I'm sure this thread will do the same! :)
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Thank you susan, the support is felt.

Part of the reason all the big words are here is because I haven't yet developed an understanding smooth enough to do without them. They could very well prove to be unnecessary. That seems to alienate a lot of people, and understandably so.

But this kind of heat does force elaboration, and for that reason it is worth it. But if it weren't for the occasional expression of support, such as yours, it would tear itself apart.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Also @sufi,

If you are interested in geology and such things, there's a nice series called Ask an Astrobiologist that is sponsored and/or produced by NASA. The article you shared reminded me of it. Every month or so they have on some physicist/chemist/astronomer for questions. A cool way to get acquainted with the various fields, I've found.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
As far as I can tell, both of those would work.

I think part of the reason this is as complicated as it is, is because there might not exist a common strain under all examples. That is, there might not be some generalized manner of thinking about this, across all examples.

I think any "second order pragmatics", which perhaps ought to be called something else, primarily seeks to analyze how something like a swarm agency emerges from a collection of bee agencies, or how a team agency emerges from an alignment of player agencies. There might be something common, albeit it very general and abstract terms, about how this emergence happens.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I use the example of the Invisible Hand because that indicates how, once this methodology is a bit more elaborated, such an analysis can yield really tangible results about important phenomena: how a market agency can emerge from the interplay of agencies of bakers, brewers and butchers.

But again, that depends on how well generalized theories can be elaborated here.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
human nature is a signifier more than it is a concretisation.it can point to all kinds of things, the question is how one interprets that *signifier*
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Whether or not I will stumble upon some golden formula, or theory that can be expressed heuristically as a formula, is one thing. Whether or not one can is another.

“...a fundamental Marxist thesis: the revolution is not a problem of forms of organization. On the contrary, the revolution is a problem of content, a problem of the movement and action of revolutionary forces in an unending process, which cannot be theorized and crystallized in any scheme for an immutable "constitutional doctrine".”
- Bordiga, The Democratic Principle
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I can start to understand that, and I can also start to understand what happens when someone places a transcendental weight on the formulaic and the ideal, such as I often do. As pattycakes pointed out, this is all the talk of someone who lives in their intellect. I'd like to think this realm is a place one goes to, much like a workshop, in the interest of constructing something, something that can prove useful when you return to a more grounded place - but maybe there is an aspect of delusion there.

That said, while I can agree with that point from Bordiga (who I am really not familiar with - anyone have anything to say about him?), I would nonetheless continue toward such schematization. Not to say that the energy driving some revolutionary movement can be pinned down by logos, but that is certainly a worthy horizon, the progress towards which may help bring about new understandings.

I do think that the more familiar you become with a topic, the higher its resolution becomes to you, in terms of subtleties and nuances etc. This might not be conscious, but felt - perhaps the familiar with something you are, the more you can feel it, navigate it.

In the case of what this thread is about, if one takes something as loosely identified as the relation between the behavior of the part and the behavior of the whole, and becomes more and more familiar with this relation, they are almost inevitably going to see it in more and more detail. The question is this: will such an increased familiarity provide anything useful outside this bubble?

And it is far away from any kind of praxis, as far as I'm concerned. Far away, assuming it even can generate anything useful, from proving its usefulness. I do appreciate the reminders of how remote much of this is, because I can very easily loose track of that.

That said, if I didn't think there was potential to this concept, I wouldn't have elaborated upon it this far. Maybe what I think is potentially useful won't prove to be so - in which case, it all will have amounted to an exercise in becoming more familiar with a nebulous topic, exercise that will, to whatever degree, make the next attempt smoother.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
If we take human nature as some essential and more-or-less fixed function, as whatever genetic algorithm - then I'm inclined to stress how the same algorithm, in two situations and by extension two different inputs, can generate two outputs. Moreover, if it is iterative, which it is as far as I can tell, then the algorithm is redefined slightly after every iteration. I think this is a safe reduction to make: human nature reducing to genetic algorithms that are quite conservative in the grand scheme of the cosmos but can nonetheless change.

Unless we posit human nature as some metaphysical absolute, around which all genetic variations orbit, which I am not inclined to do, then we can start to get an image of how human nature changes. Although, the original point persists. Just because human nature can change doesn't necessarily mean it can be changed according to the will of humans. But if we remain with out physical basis for human nature, expressing itself genetically/algorithmically, then human nature can be changed according to the will of humans through, what, genome editing? CRISPR babies? As far as I know, and I haven't really looked into this, not only is it possible but it has been done.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that human nature couldn't be changed according to human will through mere ideas. Well, the gene-editing had to have began as an idea, no? Are we familiar enough with our own genes to play ourselves like puppets? To translate Marxist doctrines into gene sequences? I doubt it. But to say that human nature is fixed beyond our will is an assertion that is beginning to crack, as far as I can tell.

I'm sure there is a vast variety of factors I am not taking into account, and the danger of such theorization is that it can lead you into deeper into caves if a general skepticism isn't preserved. Maybe that is where this line of reasoning is leading, which is why I appreciate aid/support in subjecting it to scrutiny and criticism. Here, the major axiom/foundation, as far as I can tell, is the reduction of human nature to physical, chemical, biological dynamics. In as far as emergence is transcendent, any metaphysical human nature is still nested within these dynamics, if even irreducible to them.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Also, I just realized that a major reason for the confusion here is that I have conflated two distinct projects into the label of "second-order pragmatics"

1 - Which I think is more in line with the original post: If you are to genuinely explore one ideology from the inside, while remaining tether to your own ideology, that involves splitting your subjectivity into two orders, with your personal ideology overseeing the explored ideology. This is what a second-order pragmatics would refer to.

2 - The relation of the behavior/ontology of the part to of the behavior/ontology of the whole. This, now, doesn't seem to be in line with what "second order pragmatics" would be geared toward. If we need a term for it, to make things that much more complicated, it can be called mereontology (Meros as "part", as in part of a whole + onto as "a being, individual; being, existence," + logos as "discourse")

Both of these again, could prove to be a lot of complications with little use, but they do seem to be distinct - I've just been bungling the elaboration of them. Hopefully, the new and complicated words will only prove to be transitional/provisional, because they certainly don't make things easier to understand.
 

sus

Well-known member
Smith's picture of capitalism is a good example because at the end of the day, the thing to reckon with is that humans are selfish, and pursue self-interest; this is definitional to an evolved organism, and applies to every known species. The few hyper-cooperators (insect species, typically) are all genetically related (all ants are brothers), so there's still self-interest at the level of gene.

Humans I believe are the only known organism to pursue widespread cooperation without familial relations, and it's achieved through the prestige economy. This is how the prestige economy works: There are certain coordination problems, certain tragedies of the commons, where no one wants to volunteer to do some terrible self-sacrificing thing for the society. Going to war is a good example. These activities are therefore incentivized (or "subsidized") by the community via prestige allocation—future deference. A warrior goes off, wins glory, comes back and is honored by his community.

Nowadays the prestige economy motivates all kinds of self-sacrificing behavior, it's quite interesting. Sometimes this gets blamed on neoliberalism, but it seems more ancient.

Anyway, the point is—any second-order level, to work, has to involve behavior that is first-order self-interestedly rational for the agents who carry it out. Otherwise it's dead on arrival. Tesla is one lesson here: people don't jump on electric because it's good for the environment. A few drove Priuses because in their very specific liberal upper-middleclass communities, there was a kind of identity capital in it, but in general, you took a major hit for driving an ugly mom car. But if you can make the electric flashy and high-prestige, as Tesla managed, you'll get widespread adoption.
 
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