The Imperative to Update Logic
In honor of The Science of Logic Class (Sign up by Jan 15th, 2023)
“Autonomous rationality” is never actually “autonomous,” because that is impossible, and thus “autonomous rationality” ends up pathological and in denial of its own status. But unless we can take “nonrationality” into account as a serious category, we are basically left to choose between “autonomous rationality” and “irrationality,” and so we generally seek an “autonomous state” that leaves us pathological and neurotic. I note in The Conflict of Mind that eventually rationality finds itself unable to avoid a situation where “epistemic responsibility” comes in conflict with “epistemic possibility,” and at this point rationality either starts effacing itself or transitions into honoring and acknowledging the necessity of “nonrationality.” However, this means avoiding effacement requires accepting that rationality isn’t universal but relative to a given “(nonrational) truth,” and that means “the dream of unifying the world with autonomous rationality” is over. And yet Globalization and Global Interconnectedness continue to intensify...
Cadell Last comes from a scientific and anthropological background, and early on he could see how “The Technological Singularity” would radically change the world to such a point where human subjects might prove overwhelmed and existentially broken down. A “Singularity” is a point where all logic breaks down and the capacity for comprehension becomes impossible, and for Cadell we will not begin thinking as we desperately need to think to prepare unless we think “The Singularity.” But this means that real and urgent thinking requires thinking a point at which thinking collapses, and it is equipped with this consideration that Cadell came to explore thinkers like Žižek, Lacan, Freud, Nietzsche, Hegel, and others. What “The Conflict of Mind” did to me and my thinking, “The Singularity” seems to have done for Cadell, and ultimately both of us came to land on Hegel—though I only made that move thanks to Cadell, so I’m in his debt.
Much more can be said, but mainly there is a point where thinking breaks down, and it is that point which thoughts must paradoxically think. I came to feel as if philosophy and theology ignored problems of motivation, while Cadell saw science as ignoring libidinal drives, which is to say we may have identified similar problems from different directions (which perhaps suggests a reason I enjoy speaking with him so much). It also became clear to me that arriving at the point where “thought broke down” was harder to avoid if we took motivation seriously, a sentiment which I believe Cadell would agree with regarding libidinal drives. This in mind, there are many ways to create “plausible deniability” for one’s self that “autonomous rationality” and A/A-thinking are optimal, but if we deconstruct these means, I think we arrive at a place where it becomes very clear that “a new logic” is needed. This is what Hegel calls for in the Introduction of Science of Logic, and it is what I try to refer to when I discuss A/B.
In Hegel, it is shown that the best way to move through A/A is “dialectical reasoning,” but here we see “the dialectic” is only the first step. Next must come “speculative reasoning,” which is where we gain “the B” necessary for us to explore A/B. A reason it can be so problematic to emphasize “Hegel’s dialectic” is because we may engage in dialectics without ever considering “speculative reasoning,” without which I would argue we don’t actually engage in “dialectical reasoning” but simply a movement back and forth in a dichotomy. In my view, a dialectic requires “a dichotomy plus speculation,” and so Hegel’s dialectic is really not that distinct from mere “either/or thinking” unless we consider speculation as essential. No, I don’t mean to say Hegel’s dialectic is by itself identical with a given “discussion dialectic” (as discussed elsewhere in O.G. Rose), but that the deep project and “arch” of Hegel must incorporate “speculative reasoning,” as I believe is necessary for us to incorporate “nonrationality” into our thinking. Furthermore, Hegel’s dialectic is not just epistemological but ontological, so that must be kept in mind.
If “autonomous rationality” is impossible, then rationality can only perhaps avoid self-effacement by “speculating” beyond and outside itself. It can move back and forth between premises and negatives all it wants, and though this is arguably better than “a closed-minded fundamentalism,” it is not enough to escape the pathologies and troubles of “autonomous rationality.” Eventually, encountering “The Conflict of Mind” will get the best of the majority, as is also the case with encountering “The Singularity,” a point which Cadell and I have explored in many of our discussions (such as O.G. Rose Conversation #60). Perhaps we can also say that encountering “Absolute Knowing” likewise effaces us if we do not then speculate about and choose the meaning of “Absolute Knowing” to us (which gets into the topic of what I call “Alterology”), which I think suggests why The Phenomenology of Spirit leads into Science of Logic. We arrive at a place where we realize that A/A is fundamentally incomplete, meaning we must think according to A/B, but that leaves us to speculate why and how. If we do not take this next step, realization of A/B might simply prove to practically be the same as encountering a creature from Lovecraft—we will be reduced to ash. And yet if we don’t raise ourselves up to the place where we risk this mistake, we shall be self-effaced by A/A and “autonomous rationality”—a life without risk is a life that expires.
Emergence, Dialogos, the Cypher, Metamodernity, Postmodernity, Religion, Technology—topics which often entail models which aren’t wrong but contingently right to the degree they help us move (by failures) to the place where we “speculatively reason” into A/B. We discussed the need to think in terms of “overfitting and underfitting” (A/B) versus “right and wrong” (A/A), a point which brings to mind Layman Pascal’s emphasis on “grip,” which aligns with Dr. John Vervaeke’s thinking as well. That shift alone suggests a radical change which taking A/B seriously leads to, for what does it mean to think politics, economics, and family in terms of “overfitting and underfitting” versus “right and wrong?” Yes, there is “right and wrong” in A/B, so we are not arguing for relativism (and I would note that we need A/B for there to be a meaning distinction between “conditionalism” and “relativism,” as I have discussed), but A/B also makes space for “historic becoming” and change.
For centuries the rate of change was so gradual that A/A-thinking “fit” properly in many and most circumstances, so it was not “wrong” to use A/A-thinking. When something “new emerged,” it tended to happen over generations, and so A/A-thinking could be used while also adapting to “the B,” which made it seem as if there was no B at all: it’s introduction was gradual enough so that it could be translated into A/A-thinking without seeming to violate A/A at all. Yes, technically, B was smuggled in, but again this happened so gradually that it didn’t seem like B was involved at all. Today though, faced with Pluralism, the Singularity, etc., change is insanely fast, and so we find ourselves having to do the work of “becoming” and transformation which tended to occur over decades and even lifetimes. This is a profound shift which, again, brings with it great and difficult existential and pathological anxiety, which I think was smoothed over before thanks to the gradualness of the historic process. But now the “waves are jagged” and the rate of change not smooth at all, and to handle it without being effaced we require a new logic of A/B which makes change and “becoming” central to its modeling and consideration. Spirit has indeed elevated to a place where “a new logic” is needed, exactly as Hegel discussed in the Introduction of The Science of Logic.
Emergence is happening, but it is not given we will automatically find “fittingness” in it, which is to say emergence could prove to be an encounter with Lovecraft if we not rightly “conditioned.” The “conditioning” we must do is according to A/B, which I believe will also have us intersect with Nietzsche and consider the problem of “intrinsic motivation.” I also noted that a reason I like focusing on “reformation” versus creating something entirely new is because creating something new is very hard and the likelihood of failure high, and the rate of technological change is remarkably fast: reformation is simply pragmatic to me and more likely to work in time. This doesn’t mean efforts to make “new religions” or “new economic” systems are naïve, but it is to say that I think we need lots of room in the conversation for “reformation” versus “something entirely new.” But “reformation” binds imagination and forces us to think “The Real” of what is, here and now, while “creating something entirely new” is unbound. The mind does not like being restricted—imagination likes to be “autonomous” just as much as does “rationality,” and as such both prove pathological and effacing.
Rationality organized by “the truth” of “The Singularity” and/or “Conflict of Mind” is a rationality of A/B versus A/A, and it is in Hegel we find a systematic treatment of A/B. I believe the entire Counter-Enlightenment tradition can be seen as pointing toward a need for A/B, but we for centuries have ignored them. Now, the time for denial is running out, but it is only while there is still time for denial that we might still have a chance to change. But that change requires courage.
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