Zizek’s positivist epistemology

[Knotted]

Regarding his take on the hard scientists being positivist, I think that's more him trolling fuckwit theorists and philosophers whose heads went up their own socially constructive strong textualist arses.*

*that is if we accept the commonly used and socially contingent notion of head within a given symbolic matrix including the correct co-ordinates for the anatomy of an imagined singular body and it's rear and which is laden with a deep rooted contempt for bodily functions and organs that stand in opposition to those privileged with being the seats of cognition and the self.

Why does he talk about quantum mechanics? He does it an awful lot. I keep stumbling across it. I think there is a clear acosmic agenda going on.

Here look:

One should thus get rid of the fear that, once we ascertain that reality is the infinitely divisible, substanceless void within a void, "matter will disappear." What the digital informational revolution, the biogenetic revolution, and the quantum revolution in physics all share is that they mark the reemergence of what, for want of a better term, one is tempted to call a post-metaphysical idealism. It is as if Chesterton's insight into how the materialist struggle for the full assertion of reality, against its subordination to any "higher" metaphysical order, culminates in the loss of reality itself: what began as the assertion of material reality ended up as the realm of pure formulas of quantum physics. Is, however, this really a form of idealism? Since the radical materialist stance asserts that there is no World, that the World in its Whole is Nothing, materialism has nothing to do with the presence of damp, dense matter - its proper figures are, rather, constellations in which matter seems to "disappear," like the pure oscillations of the superstrings or quantum- vibrations. On the contrary, if we see in raw, inert matter more than an imaginary screen, we always secretly endorse some kind of spiritualism, as in Tarkovsky's Solaris, in which the dense plastic matter of the planet directly embodies Mind. This "spectral materialism" has three different forms: in the informational revolution, matter is reduced to the medium of purely digitalized information; in biogenetics, the biological body is reduced to the medium of the reproduction of the genetic code; in quantum physics, reality itself, the density of matter, is reduced to the collapse of the virtuality of wave oscillations (or, in the general theory of relativity, matter is reduced to an effect of space's curvature). Here we encounter ANOTHER crucial aspect of the opposition idealism/materialism: materialism is not the assertion of inert material density in its humid heaviness - SUCH a "materialism" can always serve as a support for gnostic spiritualist obscurantism. In contrast to it, a true materialism joyously assummes the "disappearance of matter," the fact that there is only void.

http://www.lacan.com/zizisolation.html

Is that just trolling? Or has he lost the plot? It's hard to tell. This is perhaps why I prefer watching him to reading him, the non-verbal communication adds something.

 

[revol68]

risking the wrath of my mother I just read that article about "good" Islam and I fail to see a problem with it, it's a bit lightweight and sweeping but there really is nothing there that suggests it is unqualified support for Mousavi, rather it is in support of the spirit of those who took to the steets last year.

Zizek's stuff on Chavez is far worse but then anyone who looks to big name theorists for direction on concrete political events needs a good slap.

 

[Knotted]

risking the wrath of my mother I just read that article about "good" Islam and I fail to see a problem with it, it's a bit lightweight and sweeping but there really is nothing there that suggests it is unqualified support for Mousavi, rather it is in support of the spirit of those who took to the steets last year.

It's a whitewash of Mousavi. More importantly, it's got zero substance. It is just as you say a support of the spirit of those who took to the streets. But was it an expression of Islam? Come on.

Zizek's stuff on Chavez is far worse but then anyone who looks to big name theorists for direction on concrete political events needs a good slap.

But Zizek is in practice anti-theory. That's why his politics are crap. It's just talk about this or that attitude or spirit or whatever.

 

[gorski]

Is it only me who can't see a fucking point in all this?!?

 

[Knotted]

Is it only me who can't see a fucking point in all this?!?

You're surely not alone, just the only one who can see a point in pointing out that they don't see a point in it.

 

[gorski]

risking the wrath of my mother....

....needs a good slap.

Do you ever think of your mum when you are incredibly rude, downright barbaric and even insurmountably aloof when dismissing everybody but your grand self?!? Did she ever teach you not to be soooo aggressive, mindlessly attacking everybody who disagrees with you, hiding behind a screen?!?

Or maybe she slapped you around too much and now you think it's OK to be like that?!?

Which is it?!?

 

[Knotted]

Oh ferchrissake gorski.

 

[gorski]

What?!? It's not "cool" to be "uncool" to the uncool? Since when?!?

 

[Knotted]

Also whilst Lenin does on one level reject a positivist approach his political approach regarding the working class and socialism was still one rooted in objectivism.

This is worse than wrong. It's absurd. How could anyone root any social question in objectivism? Even Ayn Rand fails I think.

What charaterises positivism of Neurath, say, is the compartmentalisation of value laden and value free propositions. So notions of freedom and justice (for example) are framed objectively as subjective values of a particular group. So is positivism objectivist or is it subjectivist? Both, depending on how you look at it. The subject is objectively subjective.

Does this compartmentalisation exist in the Frankfurt school? I'm not sure, I might get back to you on that one. But it certainly exists in Zizek though. Especially when it comes to religion. Zizek compartmentalises his atheism while discussing the theological value of christianity. He says he agrees with the "new atheists" at the level of "stupid facts". But are stupid facts a level and the theological debate another level?

All this talk of dialectics but dialectics have been thrown out of the window.

 

[Knotted]

We live in a positivist world. It's deeply embedded. Take a newspaper. You have news articles and opinion columns. Facts and opinions, no theory, no depth. It's the natural direction for bourgeois philosophy to go.

My problem with the Frankfurt school is I find it very difficult to tell when they are theorising and when they are merely opining. Often it's clearly the latter. See Minimum Moralia or even the bulk of Negative Dialectics. But on reflection I do recognise that there is serious theoretical content, it's just that it's 1) quite idiotic and 2) pessimistic about its ability to explain anything. I'll revise my opinion about the Frankfurt school.

Zizek on the other hand is surely a pure opinion columnist. The perfect companion to a dry positivist sociological account of current state of affairs. That's fine, I even like it, I'm just baffled that anybody sees him as anything more than that. His philosophical positions naturally adapt to his practice. What is the source of his obsession with Hegel? Because 1) Hegel is no theoretician, he is a describer - a phenomenologist - not an explainer and 2) Zizek doesn't like to admit what he is and Hegel isn't tarred with empiricist brush - Hegel offers the hint of something more profound in the world than just the world in the description of the world hence 3) Hegel offers a way to God.

 

[gorski]

I can sense a Po-Mo PhD a-loomin'... Urbanites, brace yerselves for some serious impact in three.... two...

 

[revol68]

Ofcourse there is always going to be a distinction between fact and opinion, it's not simply something deeply rooted in bourgeois thought but in the nature of our knowledge of the world, that somethings are banal facts, matters of truth value and others are to do with meaning. The fact that there is a distinction made in everyday life isn't a problem, it only really becomes at problem at certain intersections. I mean look at that sentence, I refer to something as a fact and then the issue isn't one of it being true or not but whether it should be true or not, whether it is problematic.

There is always a split between fact and value, it's something almost inherent in our way of communicating about the world, I don't have a problem with it, it doesn't mean our facts are eternal platonic forms or our values are reduced to groundless nothing, that is the logic of both the post modern relativist and those who seek to uphold eternal truths, they are nothing but the flipside of each other.

Your complaint about no depth or theory is odd, because you yourself admit you only engage with Zizek on the level of shitty media pieces, soundbites and overcooked metaphors so easily misunderstood outside of the wider context of his overall thought. I have told you half a dozen times now to bother your arse reading one of his actual proper books in which he ties to together his theory and which when grasped allow you to make sense of what superficially seems like incoherent, contradictory cultural brain farting. Infact one problem I have with Zizek is that I can pretty much guess what any article of his is going to be like on any given topical event, right down to the kind of pithy analogy he will bust out for the Guardian or whatever, and this is because once you grasp his underlying theories, his take on Marxism, dialectics, Hegel and the fruity Lacanian stuff it provides a framework not for so much explaining the world and giving answers (which Zizek rejects as the role of theorists) but for problemising the issue and the parameters of the discussion, what is being assumed, unquestioned and what are the politics of these assumptions and silences, he is a funnier, clearer Derrida with a Marxist analysis.

 

[revol68]

also if you don't rate Zizek and the Frankfurt school in terms of theory then who do you rate? I rate Zizek but find the Frankfurt School far to detached, descending into sweeping generalisations about "Instrumental Reason" rather than being engaged in the troughs and peaks of actual class struggle and ideology, instead their distance flattens it all. I rate Bloch because he asserted the role of the subject, imagination, and the fact that ideology is not simply a restrictive domineering matter but constituted, interwoven with peoples dreams, fears and aspirations, rather than simply a false consciousness imposed form above. I like elements of The Situationists but think the concept of the spectacle is overegged wank inferior to Bloch's concept of ideology and which stretches out Marx's concept of commodity fetishism till it lacks depth.

 

[nosos]

he is a describer - a phenomenologist - not an explainer

A quintessentially positivist distinction, surely?

 

[nosos]

problemising the issue and the parameters of the discussion, what is being assumed, unquestioned and what are the politics of these assumptions and silences, he is a funnier, clearer Derrida with a Marxist analysis.

Very much agree with this about his work of the last few years - tried some of his older stuff but it didn't really do much for me . . .

 

[nosos]

Why because he doesn't realise it himself? Because he is the very opposite of positivism?

Because my understanding of his epistemology & ontology place him squarely as a post-positivist.

 

[revol68]

A quintessentially positivist distinction, surely?

Yep.

It seems to me that Knotted is desperate for a social theorist who somehow magically hurdles the issue of value, subjectivism and provides some sort of odd explanation of the social world as 'it is'.
He wants a theorist to provide him answers rather than posing questions and problems. He wants a kind of Marx of the second international.

 

[Knotted]

Ofcourse there is always going to be a distinction between fact and opinion, it's not simply something deeply rooted in bourgeois thought but in the nature of our knowledge of the world, that somethings are banal facts, matters of truth value and others are to do with meaning. The fact that there is a distinction made in everyday life isn't a problem, it only really becomes at problem at certain intersections. I mean look at that sentence, I refer to something as a fact and then the issue isn't one of it being true or not but whether it should be true or not, whether it is problematic.

This'll be why you don't have a problem with positivism, until it's pointed out that it is positivism (positivism being a dirty word). Every fact has meaning, the meaning may not be in dispute, any dispute might not interest us, but that doesn't mean the meaning is not there and there is some pure fact. Every statement of fact assumes a certain common standpoint. Napoleon died on May 5 1821. To understand that you need to be able to make common assumption as to what the entity "Napoleon" was, what it is to die and how calenders work. Do we read meanings straight off from empirical reality? No our meanings are related to what interests us as well. Likewise our values have factual content, if you say someone is mean-spirited it's not just an expression of your values it is also a matter of how you judge that person to be.

Note that this need not be to do with different perspectives and relative opinions. The whole "view from nowhere" problem that relativists like to invoke is only a pseudo-problem that likely derives from seeing knowledge as a psychological phenomenon.

There is always a split between fact and value, it's something almost inherent in our way of communicating about the world, I don't have a problem with it, it doesn't mean our facts are eternal platonic forms or our values are reduced to groundless nothing, that is the logic of both the post modern relativist and those who seek to uphold eternal truths, they are nothing but the flipside of each other.

On the contrary, there are some very boring eternal truths and some groundless values. Only a relativist could deny that!

Your complaint about no depth or theory is odd, because you yourself admit you only engage with Zizek on the level of shitty media pieces, soundbites and overcooked metaphors so easily misunderstood outside of the wider context of his overall thought. I have told you half a dozen times now to bother your arse reading one of his actual proper books in which he ties to together his theory and which when grasped allow you to make sense of what superficially seems like incoherent, contradictory cultural brain farting. Infact one problem I have with Zizek is that I can pretty much guess what any article of his is going to be like on any given topical event, right down to the kind of pithy analogy he will bust out for the Guardian or whatever, and this is because once you grasp his underlying theories, his take on Marxism, dialectics, Hegel and the fruity Lacanian stuff it provides a framework not for so much explaining the world and giving answers (which Zizek rejects as the role of theorists) but for problemising the issue and the parameters of the discussion, what is being assumed, unquestioned and what are the politics of these assumptions and silences, he is a funnier, clearer Derrida with a Marxist analysis.

Well I started reading the Ticklish Subject. I got this far:

Along the same lines, Heidegger also denounces liberal-humanitarian demands for 'capitalism with a human face' as the unwillingness to confront the epochal truth in all its radicality. The parallel with the Bolsheviks is absolutely pertinent: what Heidegger shares with revolutionary Marxists is the notion that the system's truth emerges in its excess - that is to say, for Heidegger, as well as for Marxists, Fascism is not a simple aberration of 'normal' development of capitalism but the necessary outcome of its inner dynamics.

If this were in any sense theoretical then there would be something to warrant such conclusions. Which Marxist said that Fascism is a necessary outcome of capitalism's inner dynamics? Where? Why? What the fuck is he on about? Yes I can understand how the fiction makes sense. But Zizek is just divorced from anything factual. It's just an unwarranted opinion piece. I stopped there. Do I really have to go on? The more I read the more I'll feel the need to vent my fury on urban. Do you really want that?

I can tolerated it in spoken word form. But not written out. The cheaky glint in the eye isn't there. The joke isn't funny. It's just tiresome.

 

[revol68]

Very much agree with this about his work of the last few years - tried some of his older stuff but it didn't really do much for me . . .

Have you tried The Ticklish Subject, I think it's his best especially in terms of it's engagement with Hegel and his elaboration on his idra of the subject as an inherent lack or void.

 

[nosos]

It seems to me that Knotted is desperate for a social theorist who somehow magically hurdles the issue of value, subjectivism and provides some sort of odd explanation of the social world as 'it is'.
He wants a theorist to provide him answers rather than posing questions and problems.

It's almost like he secretly wants to be a positivist himself! I wonder what Zizek would make of this with his psychoanalytical hat on?

 

[nosos]

On the contrary, there are some very boring eternal truths and some groundless values. Only a relativist could deny that!

I don't think it follows from rejecting the notion of 'eternal truths' and 'groundless values' that the only position left is relativism.

But Zizek is just divorced from anything factual. It's just an unwarranted opinion piece.

Another quintessentially positivist distinction!

 

[nosos]

Have you tried The Ticklish Subject, I think it's his best especially in terms of it's engagement with Hegel and his elaboration on his idra of the subject as an inherent lack or void.

No I haven't, thanks - I'll take a look I've been wanting to read more of Zizek on the latter for a while because, picking up on your earlier point, I suspect he's probably going to be quite useful in fleshing out the theory of the subject within critical realism.

 

[Knotted]

A quintessentially positivist distinction, surely?

I think a positivist would recognise that distinction.

What is important to me in this distinction? The describer never sees anything puzzling, the explainer is puzzled when the explanation fails. See Hegel's treatment of force in physics. Everything is wrapped up in Hegel, the system isn't exactly closed but it provokes no drive to find anything new.

 

[Knotted]

Yep.

It seems to me that Knotted is desperate for a social theorist who somehow magically hurdles the issue of value, subjectivism and provides some sort of odd explanation of the social world as 'it is'.
He wants a theorist to provide him answers rather than posing questions and problems. He wants a kind of Marx of the second international.

Oh heavens no! I'm not interested in social theorists at all. I'm interested in philosophy and the degeneration of social theory is an amusing philosophical topic.

 

[nosos]

I think a positivist would recognise that distinction.

I think it's the key positivist distinction, at least in terms of social science methodology: one either describes or one explains with no possibility of reconciliation.

 

[revol68]

This'll be why you don't have a problem with positivism, until it's pointed out that it is positivism (positivism being a dirty word). Every fact has meaning, the meaning may not be in dispute, any dispute might not interest us, but that doesn't mean the meaning is not there and there is some pure fact. Every statement of fact assumes a certain common standpoint. Napoleon died on May 5 1821. To understand that you need to be able to make common assumption as to what the entity "Napoleon" was, what it is to die and how calenders work. Do we read meanings straight off from empirical reality? No our meanings are related to what interests us as well. Likewise our values have factual content, if you say someone is mean-spirited it's not just an expression of your values it is also a matter of how you judge that person to be.

Note that this need not be to do with different perspectives and relative opinions. The whole "view from nowhere" problem that relativists like to invoke is only a pseudo-problem that likely derives from seeing knowledge as a psychological phenomenon.

This is exactly my point and Zizek's, yes the distinction between facts and values are not cut and dry, hard and fast, yes they are socially, symbolically and lingusitically contingent, hence my joke qualifying the statement "head up your arse", the point is that we still communicate and behave as if they are and not simply because we are enslaved by bourgeois thought or some such wank. Even when we are disagreeing about whether something is a fact or a value, we still accept the need or usefulness of such a distinction, rather what is at stake is to which category the thing will fall. So in day to day life, in various levels of political, scientific and even philosophical discussion we inherently accept such distinction, it lies behind our analogies and metaphors, even when we are using them to highlight the contingent nature of facts.


Your comment about boring eternal truths and groundless values sums up your poor absolutist reasoning, just because I say something doesn't make all our values groundless nothings doesn't mean no values are groundless.

His comment about fascism and capitalism are spot on, fascism was the logical outcome of capitalism in deep crisis in Europe, it wasn't some bad corruption by foreign elements.

"The holocaust is the hell of a society whose heaven is a supermarket"

 

[Knotted]

I don't think it follows from rejecting the notion of 'eternal truths' and 'groundless values' that the only position left is relativism.

But who their right mind could possibly deny the existence of eternal truths or groundless values? I'm not sure what position is left if you don't. In fact if truth isn't eternal, what sort of truth is it? Remember that a precise statement of some event will include the time it occured - all truths are eternal when stated carefully. And a groundless value is just a value that you can't give a ground for.

Another quintessentially positivist distinction!

The distinction between eternal facts and facts? Probably. 'Twas revol who the distinction.

 

[revol68]

Oh heavens no! I'm not interested in social theorists at all. I'm interested in philosophy and the degeneration of social theory is an amusing philosophical topic.

philosophy that isn't social theory is useless wank, it's to knowledge what a book of grammar is to english literature.

 

[Knotted]

This is exactly my point and Zizek's, yes the distinction between facts and values are not cut and dry, hard and fast, yes they are socially, symbolically and lingusitically contingent, hence my joke qualifying the statement "head up your arse", the point is that we still communicate and behave as if they are and not simply because we are enslaved by bourgeois thought or some such wank. Even when we are disagreeing about whether something is a fact or a value, we still accept the need or usefulness of such a distinction, rather what is at stake is to which category the thing will fall. So in day to day life, in various levels of political, scientific and even philosophical discussion we inherently accept such distinction, it lies behind our analogies and metaphors, even when we are using them to highlight the contingent nature of facts.

Yes we can indeed talk about facts and values. Yes there is a distinction. Have I said otherwise? Give it a moment's thought.

Your comment about boring eternal truths and groundless values sums up your poor absolutist reasoning, just because I say something doesn't make all our values groundless nothings doesn't mean no values are groundless.

I didn't say that all values are groudless. I just said that some values are groundless. All and some. A positivist distinction is suppose...

His comment about fascism and capitalism are spot on, fascism was the logical outcome of capitalism in deep crisis in Europe, it wasn't some bad corruption by foreign elements.

I don't care if his comment is spot on or not. How does he justify it? How does he justify speaking on behalf of "marxists"? Which marxists? Where? Why? What the fuck is he on about? Pithy comment hinding behind non-existent "marxists" to give it weight. Do I have to do his theorising for him? Am I supposed to be writing his book for him? You've just written this bit for him. He doesn't mention crisis. He says "necessary outcome of its inner dynamics". Note that there is no element of history in this statement. It is a purely ahistorical mixing and matching of various concepts apparently at random and attributed to "Marxists". How am I suppose to tolerate a book this bad?

It's just a stupid, impulsive opinion.

edit:Would it make sense to talk in historical terms or even vaguely Marxist terms? NO! He's talking about Heidegger. There is a reason that he doesn't talk in terms of crises in Europe, he's trying to point out the common ground between Marxists and a fucking Nazi. There is a reason it looks like balderdash. It needs to be gibberish in order to stand. It's supposed to be anti-theoretical.

"The holocaust is the hell of a society whose heaven is a supermarket"

 

[Knotted]

philosophy that isn't social theory is useless wank, it's to knowledge what a book of grammar is to english literature.

Well I've no interest in bourgeois social theory, it's all a bit rubbish compared to Marxism. Still interested in philosophy though. There is more to philosophy than the philosophy of social theories you know.