logic – The Dog Walks

The Local Psyche Global. (Lacan part 2)

Ok.

The question on the table is two parts:

If The modern world is really the unrecognized embodiment of the reflection of one’s self, which is the the factual state of individual alienation, then what does it even mean that the alienated self-reflection is looking at cars, trees, space, planets, stars, deers, etc….?
What does this have to do with ego development, modernity, and philosophy

Of Firsts.

Philosophy can be said to be involved with a reduction which has already occurred. What I call conventional philosophy sees the effort of philosophy to be the uncovering or discovering of the original reduction. The word we use for this original reduction is ontology.

Philosophers love Lacan and psychoanalysis in general more than the psychologists. I asked my Theories instructor once about Lacan, and she said that she had never even heard of any psychotherapist who uses him, that his theory is very complex. But in fact, Freudian psychotherapists in general are a minority now days, and I suspect mainly on the East Coast of the U.S and in Europe. (There is a comment to be made on this but it will have to appear elsewhere.)

I don’t prescribe to the Freudian lineage for psychotherapy. But I do enjoy Lacan and often via. Zizek’s use of Lacan’s theory. The question above that I pose really concerns how these two worlds might meet, or, how they interact or come together.

The reader should understand that it is always possible to come up with a theory about what the material is we deal with in mental health and how we treat it which will work or produce good mental health outcomes. Though Freud was the first popular psychotherapist in the sense we think of it now, very quickly his theory about ‘what and how’ stopped holding water for the treatment of patients and clients (medical doctors, neurologists and psychologists usually treat patients, while counselors more often treat clients). Freud, and the psychodynamic psychologists who followed him, believe in a very elaborate structure of the mind which functions primarily through various polemical psychic situations and motions involving an invisible energy. Psychic energy was posed without any actual evidence of such energy. We are able to produce electricity, measure it, and put it to use in predictable ways, and Freud was speculating that we would be able to find the same things with psychic energy, but he could not, nor anyone since then. But the system sounded really good; when you get into it, it does appear to have some sensibility to it. But, like Freud, when we take that idea too far and attempt to use the model to fill in more and more evident holes, the more elaborate structural interactions required to account for the new issues simply become so vague and involved that what ever at one time appeared like some sensible dynamic of structure, fails. That is, unless you are really sold on the beauty of the simple beginning theoretical structure.

I would say then that the reason why philosophy like psychoanalysis but Lacan so much is that it begins pretty good. Freud’s theory appears really nice in the beginning and seems to make sense. So without having to actually observe anything beyond the initial evidence, Freudian psychoanalysis is fabulous, and philosophy that likes Lacan is usually about first or reduced things: Ontology is about what things truly are, how they are first; epistemology is about how thought must first be in order for everything else to be able to be thought. So, the Freudian structure of the mind The Super-Ego is the rules or norms; the ID, involves the ‘unbound’ instinctual drive which produces libidinal energy, and the Ego is that which harness both extremities: the philosophical ratio, or the Rational Mind, so to speak; this fits very well into methods that involve first things: 1,2,3…presto! It is simple and it makes a lot of very easy sense without having to think about it too much. It also, quite coincidentally, reflects the philosophy which was arising around the same time as industrial science of the 19th century: Hegel, Marx, Freuerbach and many Enlightenment others basically were already philosophizing around these very same ideas. But as I have said a few times already, when we apply them to any world that we actually encounter, this ‘philosophical mind’ falls quickly short of accounting. And this is to say, like I said above, unless you are really sold on the theory.

The philosophical question here, then, becomes whether or not we are fitting reality into the theory, or developing theory from what is being observed?

Enter modern capitalism.

I submit, that most conventional Western philosophy suffers from the attempt of fitting what is observed into the theory. Hence, the reason(s) why philosophy often enjoys a psychoanalytical involvement with philosophy.

So it is that I came across our question above: Why should alienation have anything do with the world we are coming upon? In what way does the “mirror stage” of Lacan have anything to do with modernity beyond the theorizing?

I submit, that the reason is because if indeed we make an ontological theory of what is observed, actually form or develop a theory upon what is being presented to sense, then the Self no longer appears alienated from the world.

Some may know that Lacan said something like “the mind is structured like a language”. This is because he was making a comment upon what is inherently problematic about modern subjectivity. This is, the subject is always in context, but the nature of the operating psyche is that is does not function as though it arises in context, but rather as though it arises indeed from nothing. This is to say that the modern subject understands and thus operates itself as not a true subject (arising always in context) but as indeed a subject only in a thoughtful reflection of itself, as though the thinker itself exists outside of the world and as indeed the essential nature of Being is dichotomy: object and subject.

So, the next question (#1), is what this has to do with the presence of the parents for the development of the ego, and why does this have anything to do with actually being in the world?

1655-ego-depletion-an-influential-theory-in-psychology-640

A common and modern belief is that the ego is not a modern ideal but a human one.

Another stab at: What is Philosophy? A non-philosophical concise definition.

Finally a Concise Definition of Philosophy.

Cedric Nathaniel

Regis University

{KEYWORDS: concise, definition, non-philosophy, orientation, philosophy, reality, route}

Finally a Concise Definition of Philosophy.

Continental philosophy has become a caricature of itself. Its intensions found lacking, every definition philosophers have given over the decades have left many of us in a virtual state of trauma. We wonder; does philosophy require such a verbose and convoluted definition which basically becomes a philosophical enigma itself? While many of us thought we had come across the answer in the book length definitions, upon a second look, we now realize that it was really smoke and mirrors, and in the end, a religious fantasy of philosophical fiction.

Philosophy is, at root, the application of reason upon a field of data. Reason is understood here not to be a stable category, not so much grounded in an immanent knowledge of intuited transcendental truths, but is indeed the field that is defined by the philosophical process itself. Logic is a tool; the human being is a conditional state, and reality is a particular coupling of logic and reason toward ontological certainty. What this says then, is that philosophy is involved in an orientation upon reality. The two possible routes of philosophy are thus toward ontological certainty, or a conditional state. These routes are mutually exclusive, since to reduce certainty to a condition results in a certain state that we call ideology in one instance, and religion in another. We thus are speaking of coming to terms with what philosophy is able to do. The definition of philosophy thus refers what is commonly understood as ontological certainty to the conditional state; or more precisely, philosophy as a method reduces conditions to real ontological certainties, and as a practice destabilizes ontological certainty towards a realization of it’s conditional state.

published on Academia.edu

december 2018

Another argument against the existence of white privilege: The postmodern “no exit“.

There will be a few opinions expressed in this post. My main critique is that Jordan Peterson does not understand the issues that he is condemning, and so what sounds like intelligence is really just small minded opinion based upon an ignorance.

white-privilege-th

Here is a post worth reposting:

Originally posted on Cadell Last: Synthesis! Video: Slavoj Žižek or Jordan Peterson? Both Please! So it seems like Žižek heard the criticisms regarding his approach to the political phenomenon of Jordan Peterson and has responded quite clearly. In this response he attempts to remind us of the ways in which the “radical left” or the “identity…

via Slavoj Žižek or Jordan Peterson? Both Please! — AGENT SWARM

In our current situation, I do agree that people should talk about things. But, the unpopular opinion is that this is not always the case, and all too often, no communication occurs in the attempts anyways!

I am making a sweeping judgment when I say that I watched this video of Jordan Peterson and it was enough to understand his view, manner, and basis of opinions. I do not think it is a valuable thing to disseminate at least some of this guy’s “scholarship”; his arguments are just plain incorrect. Answering to his points would be like arguing with a person over why 2+4 does not equal 9; there is no point in hearing information that is just incorrect in so many ways. So, I am not even embedding his lecture so readers are greeted with a nice picture when one opens this post. 😆This guy and his lectures are not really worth reposting. They are worth noting, though, because we should keep tabs on dangerous people an their ideas; they are not worth considering as true, except that they do have an effect upon people. They are valid in as much as there is indeed someone with such an idea, but we should always try to keep in mind the audience. So I am putting the link so you reader can watch his 10 minute piece and hear how scholarship and letters can lead to and support all sorts of ideas. Education, intelligence, and letters after your name does not necessarily denote legitimate substance. It’s often, it seems, really no different than saying I have short hair, often wear flannels and wingtips.

— But nevertheless I will be getting my advanced degree. 🤘🏾starting in August. 👽

The reason why it is not always the case that communication can take place is exemplified by this very lettered dude. He is an example of what is able to be wrong with the world education system: The only thing that makes him valuable is that he did some things to get some letter behind his name that makes him important so that people will think he knows what he is talking about. There are stupid doctors you know; he may indeed be quite knowledgeable about things, but apparently philosophy is not one of them (reflection in thought is often only intensional; but there is also The philosophical divide we know as “analytical” and “continental”, even as I’m not really sure these categories locate anything for us. The plain and simple fact is that I can levy the same claims against him that he does against the “Post-Moderns”. He obviously does not understand the issues by which he stakes his position, despite his “education”. The point of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history” and all those ends, is that philosophy has painted itself into a corner such that no matter what is argued away from the corner it finds itself in the corner. The way that Jordan is arguing, it appears, however he wants to talk about what the “postmoderns” would say, that he does not understand what it means: His reflection upon the issues shows he is not understanding what he is supposed to be reflecting upon.

Now I am not apologist for any “Post-modernity”. In fact, I can agree with him in so far as there are many self claimed Post-Modern school-people (scholars?) who do indeed fall into his category to merit his PM description. I myself have pointed out the lamer PM approach.

Let me see if I can really simply spell out the problems I see with PM and also Jordan . Lets see if I succeed.

I will not be going through his lecture point by point, but in general to those points.

In short, Jordan is a white male reactionary, and traditionally, all that needs to happen for a white male to be correct is to argue the system that the white males erected. What this system is and does is the issue that he doesn’t seem to want to address. Maybe he does elsewhere, but I suspect he will use the discursive sight-of-hand to denounce the aspects that he himself uses to prop his ideas upon, And this because he simply is not understanding the discussion of race and gender relations.

(1) Jordan is puffed up on himself. His letters allow him to be viewed, by himself as well as others, as if he is giving intelligent lectures, lectures that contain intelligence. In fact, we can say that he has intelligence insomuch as we grant credence to the postmodern ideal that intelligence is what we make of it or what we argue of it. Intelligence in this way has dismissed itself from any actual ground: The ground is the “common sense” ground of propaganda. He has no interest in what might be true, only what is real; what is true is so because he is able to use discourse to establish its reality; this is a Post-modern tenant. He is thus caught in the Post-modern condition and is rebelling against this contradiction by outright living in denial. Though he is lettered, its seems he has conveniently missed the one of the basic tenants of white privilege: He will not look at , and is utterly unable to get outside of, his privilege. He is using Post-modern methodologies to argue that the Post-modern methodology is incorrect, then flat out simply asserting that he is correct beyond his contradictory position. In the extent that he is not involved with any irony, such a method asserts propaganda. Did I say that it is obvious that he is not understanding the issue?

(2) Jordan’s definitional categories of Post modern itself is an incorrect assessment; they are insufficient. While they do indicate a certain group who claims PM, the very ideal of PM has been corrupted by the problem that PM opened up. What is now called Post-Modernism is too often a deformity of the meaning of the texts. In short; his assessment is based upon not only upon an incorrect assessment, but he is very sure that his assessment is correct. The tenants he announces to thereby discredit are populist distortions.

The Post-modern method is exactly that which Jordan is using to discredit white privilege and PM, but in reverse; He is taking a representation of assumption of individuals and discrediting it as if it represents the whole of the group. (In this case, the purported group, the PMs, also often fall into a similar category as Jordan. Yay for letters !!) Again, while there is indeed a group who might claim the title of PM, this title is also not worth its letter, except, as Leotard might describe it, the letters themselves have become indicators or privilege and expertise and do not necessarily convey any actual truth. He understand himself with reference to truth due to the fact that he has done x amount of work; he believes his own script and is unable to consider what might not be included in his ‘expertise’. He is an example of someone caught in the the post modern condition as well as white privilege, but also the system that is being exploited by him is subject to the same fault (hence the exploitation and hence the perpetuation of the racist system).

In short; he is a white male who is reacting to a threat upon his identity. His claim that identifiers reduce to an infinity of identifiers (and so why pick ‘just these ones’) and thus have no credence in real social negotiations has, again conveniently, missed the basic fact that communication does not occur across a common category. His assumption is one of white privilege. It is based on a “should be” rather than an “Is”, but he uses his innate offense upon the basis of his identity, what he perceives as an attack upon is Being, to cater to the crowd and use general ideals such as “reality” to argue a position that is common to everyone, as if every one is a equal human being. This is called the argument from the political state; the Idea is a good one, but it doesn’t translate into reality intact. Intersectionality is a critique about overarching idealisms and institutions that enforce such ‘normalcy”. Jordan is not seeing logic as a tool; evidenced by his use of it, he sees Logic as a sort of ‘holy spirit’ by which one may commune with the great Logos God. Again, he conveniently sets aside his use of discursive gymnastics that is usually associated with the PM lineage. He is twisting and confusing academic rigor with intentionality, engendering religious intolerance under a guise of open theoretical validity.

While I tend to agree with his argument about where the ideas of racism and systemic privilege lead, he seems to miss the real issue. His position is concerned with what “should be”, but the actual issue is about what “Is”. He is arguing an ideology of ontology as an identity ( a common) rather than confronting the teleology it supposes and enforces on the ground. As we find in his other addresses, he associates an assault on his identity, on the categories given to him, as an assault on a general “human freedom” and I would guess he extrapolates this over into the freedoms of democracy and the Canadian-United Sates-and others way of life. Well of course it is an assault on your “way of life”, Jordan! Thats the point. But it doesn’t mean that the “free world” is threatened.

Yet this is also what is at root the problem in philosophy and the critical academics is that most are in a race to the finish line, a race to nowhere. And the method that has come about because of this competition to produce valuable intellectual products advocates anticipating ends and creating academic products based in those (speculated) ends. More and more, the extension towards these products ends are creating a “ground vacuum” such that Jean-Francois Lyotard was more correct than he could have known (maybe).

We are indeed still living in the Post-modern condition. Lettered people similar to Jordan only serve to make an argument for why the condition still exists because they are incapable of understanding the significance of the discussion. They end up reifying the condition and moving us in a swirling eddy, offering little constructive input, and plain ideological propaganda of the “we shall be great again” rhetorical type.

Oh and the “you’re next”. OMG. If that isn’t reactionary politics going on the offensive…

Maybe Ill be proven wrong. After all, I only watched one video of his.

Im game.

It’s not so much that we need a new theory, it’s that we need a different type of theoreticians.

Like that is ever going to happen for our culture of popularity and products. 😝

That’s where a philosophical divergence comes in the play.

___

Here is another little bit with Jordan about pronouns and gender issues. In short, he is (begrudgingly, and in denial that he is) a congregant of postmodern intentionality. While I agree he has a point about pronouns, but again, he is concerned with what “should be” more than what “Is”. The consideration is generalized ,just as he argues that we can’t generalize respect; he is generalizing respect in his thinking and granting it to respect for his own.

The person who posted the vid and made the captions obviously lives on a different planet. Of course, the person thinks the captions make sense, but I don’t know what it is. That is called a “failure of communicating across a category”, and in this case there is a category that I am not recognizing that the person believes they are communicating across, but here the category itself has failed.

____

Here is a comment by Zizek.

male-privilege

But after all that: what a boring world it would be without different ideas and opinions. So actually, the academy is working well. It only appears that I’m attacking him personally because he acts and behaves as if he’s got all the information, but it is obvious to me that he’s not understanding the things that he is critiquing.

And finally; I am not convinced that Zizek and Peterson represent a thesis and anti-thesis relationship, and therefore there would really be no synthesis that would occur, except in the most mundane form, from their interaction. This is because Peterson does not represent an antithesis, he actually represents a continuing postmodern thesis.

I wonder if he thinks homosexuality is a mental disease?

Direct Tangent 6.9: A Word on Faith: An Appropriate Rendition of Francois Laruelle’s ‘Sufficient Philosophy’; The True Object, A Moment with Pierre Bourdieu and the Practice of Process.

As a close to the Direct Tangents and segue to the next, this essay is a simple and direct stating of a basic series of the matter at hand. By ‘series’ i mean to refer to the structure of argument: points that must be understood as true in order for there to be an discussion; what are called ‘premises’ usually do not have to be true, but only sufficiently understood for an argument, but then communication may not occur. I would say that it is the insufficiency of premises, and thus argument in general, upon which conventional reality is manifested. A practice of process involving a statement of series is the condition of truth; here, I cannot, that is, am incapable of coming upon a concept already proposed as if it should not be or not have been, as if i were then jealous or offended, against which i would then argue. In the process of truth, there is no exceptions. The issue is not so much about finding truth; it has to do with the situation of terms. What is the object?

We deal in two possibilities. If i am stating my position by my opinion, i can call it an argument, and I can start anywhere I please as long as I develop sufficient premises. Yet, because, here, we deal in truth, I may not approach as if I am speaking within a conversation already developed (considering my whole blog is really one essay). I must start at the beginning, not in the middle, every time. I thus do not ‘disguise’ my target through addressing what then appears to be particular arenas of discourse, though I may use such discursive objects as an occasion for what I have to propose. The tact that is taken by many writers, whether acknowledged by them or not, of opinion, is often deceptive at best, a type of withholding, and derailing for many who would otherwise be interested.

Though Francois Laruelle appears to come very close to being ‘honest’, a reader has to be somewhat informed as to the particular meaning of what terms he presents, cloaked as they are in a type of conventional-institutionalized deception (what I have designated as ‘jargon’), to be able to appreciate what he has to say; indeed, Laruelle produces his own “dictionary” of non-philosophical terms, an effort that i see as unnecessary. It is sufficient to convey his meaning, and necessary in that he could propose it in no other way for himself and be in line with his intent, but it is not necessary by virtue of the insolvency of the true object (see below). In his attempt to be transparent and approachable (I must grant this to every writer, at first), he ‘auto-excludes’ much of his potential audience, and demands of his audience a certain academic effort. In previous posts, I have addressed this by suggesting he is in bad faith by his presentation, since – is he not supposed to be speaking upon ideas that concern everyone? And if not, why not? I, on the other hand exclude all but none in that I approach through an intent to be clear to everyone as well as myself; my exclusivity is found by choice, as there is maybe barely one who would have never chosen to come upon my work. (Nevertheless, one should note: Laruelle’s manner is indeed appropriate, since he is attacking what can be seen as the ‘head of the beast’, the effectively institutional-religio-ideologicracy of conventional method called “philosophy”, the ‘bastion of the sacred method’ by which he is a self-proclaimed “heretic”. Just as Martin Luther, and just as noteworthy, Martin Luther King Junior, among many others, challenged the prevalent institution of their times by advocating and practicing what can be seen as the antithesis of the institution’s pro-motion, Laruelle confronts the similar element of our time, but in a ‘radical’ manner. Reader, please keep this in mind as I occasion Laruelle in this discussion. I am left to wonder if in his assault on the boarder gates he has become a citizen of his own pillaging and continues to build and climb an ever renewing ladder, or whether in his proposition he has thrown away the ladder.)

So, whether or not his intent is to also confront the greater reality, I see that when he says ‘philosophy’, and proceeds to address and direct his activity upon and through a supposed institution or discipline called ‘philosophy’, he is also talking about how people in general may have ‘philosophies of…’ the various aspects and circumstances of life and existence. In contrast, I suspend no presumptions; I am addressing and treating of truth, and nothing less than what it seems a life of experience has lead me to see of how myself and other regular people (including theorists) deal with life. What is ‘rigorous’ is the critical undertaking of experience, and less so, the experience of learning how I might approach an analysis of it and thus so to speak of it. I thus approach from a proposed basis of ignorance, because that is how I came upon the world, through doubt, and through a transparent process that shows frustration and contempt as well as assuredness and askance upon the issues (Constructive Undoing is a process) as most anyone earnestly interested would, attempt to shed light on the significant issues concerning reality and existence. Hence, I hope it helps with this purpose to say that Laruelle and I are parallel in our presentations, but moreso involved in a basic parallax upon the same point of contention.

To this end, a have located a (another) specific occasion. Laruelle’s “sufficient philosophy” suggests that philosophy sees itself sufficient by itself to indicate what is true in-itself, what is true of truth. Where Laruelle has coined this idea, appearing as proposing as he is addressing a specific discipline, as he may or may not be, I coin ‘conventional methodology’ to make explicit that I am indeed taking on truth and reality of the everyday sort, the ‘ordinary method’ of coming upon reality pertaining to agreement with accepted standards, and in this I submit that I step to where Laruelle avoids, as he has been invested in a (slightly) more conservative effort, a conservation of the clause – ironically, at least in appearance.

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Here is an excerpt from Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Logic of Practice” with my clarification comments in brackets, not italicized:

” One has to escape from the realism of the structure {the true object}, to which objectivism…necessarily leads when it hypostatizes {makes, sees, understands or otherwise develops as foundational} these relations {true relations of conventional methodology} by treating them as realities already constituted outside the history of the group {an object ‘in-itself’ or ‘out-there’ as opposed to the individual thinking human being} – without falling back into subjectivism, {the individual thinking human} which is quite incapable of giving an account of the necessity of the social world { in so much as reality or the world can be argued as originating from the individual human being (subjectivism), it fails to account for the apparent arbitrary agency of random events and other conscious subjects}.” [1980 Stanford University Press; English translation, 1990 Polity Press. Pg. 52]

One cannot assume a common understanding. This is why there is discussion. But a discussion must find a common ground before there is true communication. This is the initial problem. The meaning of the terms of the issue have not been sufficiently disclosed, and it seems for our discussion, here, we are up against a very large obstacle: faith.

What I mean when I use this term is also part of the problem; through Constructive Undoing I have been attempting to indicate how faith is to be situated so communication might then occur. In this post I have presented the above excerpt because it describes the situation in a pretty good and clear manner, such that I might be able to elaborate and thus promote and get at a sensible, understandable and productive communication. In short, I turn the conventional meaning of faith, as having to do with belief and choice, on its head, or rather, back upon itself and its proclamations of truth, proposing that the conventional effort itself is based in faith, yet more precisely I propose faith as the containment that allows for the individual and conventional reality due to its ‘having’ choice and belief, but that the truth needs no faith.

Here is a more fluid reading (my rendition appropriate to ‘faith’) of the excerpt above:

One has to escape from objectivism, the idea of the true object, where objects exist ‘out there’ in the world and where the human being is likewise an object among objects of a true universe, the meaning of which allows for and maintains an absolutely true scheme that relates objects and establishes conventional reality. But also, one should not respond by falling into subjectivism, or the idea that reality stems from the individual thinker, or that whatever one believes is thus true, for this idea also fails to account for much of the aspects and activity of a social world.

Please note that Bourdieu is involved with a critique of anthropology and sociology, their theories and practices of approaching and analyzing cultures. Though his presentation is quite profound, I will not go into his particular argument here, except to say that his proposal is that one needs instead to look at practice, hence his book “The Logic of Practice”. At some point in the future I will discuss in more detail the relevance of his and others’ positions and activities. For now, his is a sufficient occasion to talk about faith.

In as much as Bourdieu proposes a solution of ‘practice’, I extract from his proposal and develop ‘faith’. The situation that he describes above, that one must “escape” from, represents how faith is constituted as reality. For my occasion toward meaning and in a manner of speaking, he is suggesting that what is necessary for truth is to relinquish ones faith in objectivism and subjectivism. It is not difficult to understand what a usual or common object is; we see them and interact with them every moment of our lives: the tree, the lamp, the box, the shirt, the person. What is not so easy is to see that these objects are not solute in knowledge, meaning, though they might be presented to knowledge, and may be re-presented by knowledge, such knowledge does not contain or correspond with any true object except that what is ‘true’ is likewise qualified or quantified to a ‘true’ meaning. What this means is that knowledge reflects only knowledge; it also means that what is at issue is where or how truth finds its ground, or its fundamental basis. Knowledge cannot, does not, ‘reach’ some ‘out there’ object, nor does the various qualities of such a true object (what can be known as an object “in-itself”, or what I call an “absolute true object”) influence knowledge or yield up information of itself that knowledge then ‘apprehends’ or ‘gains’ of it. Knowledge is not ‘knowledge of…’ so to speak. Admittedly, though, this concept seems to defy common sense, but it is apparent when one attempts to convey a truth without sensory confirmation, and without faith; hence, what is ‘common’ sense.

What we are dealing with here is a necessarily advocated separation of things in the world; we are dealing with what we see actually occurring in life and ones perception of life and the world. The method of theoretical reduction of reality to some ‘more real’ idea, such as Laruelle’s “Real” or “vision-in-One” as opposed to “reality”, is merely a situating of meaning based upon a presumption of the true object, and this yields nothing but a mythological ideology, as if one mythology might be better or more advanced or progressed than another. How is it possible for there to be a something more or less real? Despite all discursive gymnastics, only through relativity can we have a Real and then a reality, only in a world where terms are able to indicate something better than or worse than, ignorant and enlightened, essential as opposed to mundane: only in a world determined through a conventional methodology. To be more more precise, the issue is not of a discerning or discovering of (true) things based upon phrasing, clause or context, but quite the converse. It is not a mis-definition that gives us the mistake of belief in the true object, it is something infinitely more subtle and insidious: it concerns ones orientation upon the term; the issue has to do with a situating of terms for a designation of the object.

Bourdieu does an absolutely amazing job at putting into words the situation of reality as it pertains to this idea, how theoretical assertions fail, how exactly terms interact meaningfully, and how these issues resolve in, what he proposes, practice. Here, though, I am not so concerned with the particular discursive meanings of practice since we all practice every day. Our ‘inner’ thoughts and ‘outer’ physical activities are the manifestation of existence; so far as I am concerned, the world of practice just “Is”. The contemplations of what I shall do to day as well as how I actually do it as well as the thoughts about all this is commonplace, well worked and though interesting, not very significant. Things get done, I have my attitudes, my opinions, others have theirs – life goes on. But it is how one is oriented upon such ability to “practice” that is significant: it reveals ‘faith’, or how one is oriented upon reality.

Where it is possible for an absolutely true object to be correspondent with, or signify itself as, a person’s thought of it, there is faith, but also conventional reality. The theoretical reduction that would remove the incidence of meaning intended here, that would rebut again to reveal how “there is no absolutely true object”, has not grasped reality, but has asserted it; indeed, in that theoretical move, conventional faith has been restated. Such a faith is not of reflection, it is of direction; conventional faith is of the naive past toward a knowing of truth revealed as such, a superstitious past toward an ‘enlightened’ future. The direction is the conflation of sense and knowledge; the sensation combined with what ‘makes sense’, knowledge, amounts to the true object; so it is also with the ‘sensation’ based upon a ‘proper’ theoretical argument. The reflection that understands that the sensation only confers meaning through knowledge, and not along side of it or conspiratorially with it, is not in play for conventional reality: a TV is a TV, a doll is a doll, a tree a tree, a car a car, cells are cells, bricks bricks, a bird a bird, a dog a dog – a theory a theory – the assemblage or ‘world’ of such true objects, I call ‘conventional reality’, or simply ‘reality’. We should be not so concerned with some fundamental, more real, reality, which is to say concerned with how to describe (the true object called) reality for what it ‘really’ looks like, for this amounts to a metaphysical proposition; rather, our discussion here has to do with what is practical, what emerges as a result of ‘practicing the process’ life.

Absolute true objects rely on and are found by the possibility in equivocation of thought to the thing out there that is sensed and a subsequent negotiation with things out there or other; such objects rely not only on knowledge but on an indication – i say “tree” and i point over there and the person next to me sees the tree or touches it or smells it and nods “yes, i agree, that is a tree” and thereby we know that thing there is a tree in truth absolutely. By the term ‘absolute’ I mean to indicate an orientation one has upon reality, but this is difficult because in our discussion of faith there is no objective referential like a tree to point to; i can only describe situations from the occasioning of objects ( such as this ‘discursive’ object called faith). Again, even as I would argue the position that there are no absolutes, that such ideas gain their meaning as relation, which is to say, in the negotiation of meaning, i am arguing not only a truth, but i am asserting an absolute nature, aspect or thing of the universe, as if the universe has given me some piece of data or information of itself to my knowledge, as if the true one universe has relinquished or revealed itself to my knowledge. The irony of this situation cannot be overdetermined.

Conventional reality that rests upon the possibility of the absolutely true object is not true, but only true in knowledge; the reality that mistakes the ‘object of knowledge’ for the ‘knowledge of the (true) object’ is of faith. Only through knowledge can we know of what may be sense; the sense that orients sensation, as from the physical senses, that would distinguish it (sensation) from thought to show how they involve separate elements of stimuli and process, also uses such ideas to develop and reinforce the incorporated individual who is manifested, a human being, as a result of these elements. The idea is that thoughts can be distinguished from raw physical senses but the sense can influence thoughts and thoughts the senses, but that in fact they are intimately intertwined. The real human being is defined in reality and in this way is real. Hence, what i say is not real of the human being is that none of these situations can be recognized without knowledge, and thus knowledge is the total situation of being human. But, as pointed out, we should not take this to mean that we should look to subjectivity for the truth, as subjectivity usually denotes belief, not so much because, as Boudieu puts it, subjectivity fails to account for and actually avoids social contingencies, but rather because the rhetorical-theorietics of subjectivity is also informed by a particular orientation toward the true object, what I call the subject-object. We are thereby concerned with, and revealed unto, not the real subject, but rather, the true subject.

I coin the phrase “faith makes true” to emphasize the difficulty of overcoming the mistake of (conventional) reality. Reality is qualified as such, as designating the arena of true things, because it is so prevalent and common: it is reality, the relations of things in reality are real. It seems frivolous and presumptuous to make a counter-distinction, as Laruelle does, and call his ‘the Real’, as if it is somehow more real than reality; it seems more consistent and logical to call a counter distinction “not real” – and this sensibility thus also re-emphasizes the difficulty of escaping the “realism of the structure”, as Bourdieu puts it above, since one inherently and apparently is bound to what is real, to reality, because the conventional methodology deems it real and true. Also, the ability to come upon ‘what has been chosen’ informs reality inso much as ‘one chooses’ of what may be come upon. In this the object, inanimate or animate, may behave and be interacted with the human being through the free act. Reality thereby confers upon the individual his situation as real in reference to what he may or may not have chosen of himself; thereby he may have illusions based in the choices he made and be brought back into reality. So it is that the conventional agent of faith is incapable and unwilling to relinquish what (to her or him) is true, because of his faith in the true object. Faith is sufficient for reality, but not for truth, and what is more real is only likewise of faith; nevertheless, the terms of reality are sufficient to convey the truth, but are not sufficient of themselves. The non-philosophical method itself is a sufficient philosophy, and can thereby pose some ‘more real’ reality (the Real), but it is insufficient to reveal the truth.

How can this be so?
What we have is a meaning of basic duality that precipitates from conventional duality, that is found through a simple doubting of everything; a precipitate that I call the conventional bias. The sufficient non-philosophy that would recourse to offer some progressed state of reality is rooted in bias. When what is needed to bring about such progression is needed, there is faith, because the hope is that what is sufficient for logic will be sufficient for the truth of progress; but alas, it is so difficult to relinquish ones faith.