Allan Siegel via nettime-l on Sat, 16 Sep 2023 20:24:21 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Forget who owns the truth. More talk about the weather... 

Hello,
I've been avidly following this thread that Brian started and wondering if I had something to contribute and finally came up with this: thanks to everyone for the motivating comments. Here goes:
Blue Skies, nothing but blue skies / Gloomy Sunday / don’t rain on my parade / Blowin’ In the Wind
Rather than talk about the weather I would prefer to listen to someone, or some group, sing about the weather. The number of songs are limitless; in infinite genres. How one approaches the weather in song is more or less similar to how one can attempt to decipher ‘the truth’. Science or religion are only two of the vectors along which ‘the truth’ can be approached. Either from the vantage points of science, religion, medicine, philosophy, and so on, it’s possible to find a pathway or methodology that one can follow in a quest for the truth. And, along one of these pathways one might actually arrive at a destination or conclusion; on the other hand maybe the conclusion is not so important; it’s the journey that matters. But my real interest here is Brian’s statement: “How can ordinary people "own" the truth?”
My point is: how can people (individually or collectively) take responsibility for their actions if the context for those actions is illusive or uncertain. Or, alternatively, the context - the ideological framework -  is so authoritarian that one is willing to kill because of the certainty underlying one’s belief in the truth. There are quite a number of political parties, religious sects, paramilitary organisations, and cults who all claim to have access to the truth. And then there are the scientists and theoreticians, etc …
As opposed to a quest for the truth, what I am more concerned with is the disintegration of what Hannah Arendt described as the common world. Mainly because discursive spaces and public platforms have been so fractured and commodified that our sense of a common world is rapidly evaporating; And, accordingly, our capacities to act collectively, around shared social values and political ideals, has been rigorously stymied by all forms of privatization and neo-liberalization.
The common world that I am referring to is not monolithic or one dimensional. It contains a diversity of perspectives and numerous communities of knowledge like ‘nettime’. What is empowering about being able to articulate a common world is that it enables our ability to act collectively - this is the fulcrum that triggers the actions that underlie real social change and that prompt the evolution of transformative social and political movements. Our ability to envision a common world is not a fantasy; the ingredients are staring us in the face; From the MeTooMovement, BlackLivesMatter, environmental activists - the list is numerous - the social consciousness that inspires these numerous social and political communities add to the dimensions of a common world. This is very different than imposed definitions of the truth that often lead into dogmatic dead-ends. 

best
allan



On 2023. 09. 16. 18:26, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:

Christian wrote: " Thus I wonder how you think true criticism and unified
truth together?"

Indeed that's the whole point.

 From my perspective, there is no intrinsic problem with scientific truth
procedures (which I assume is what you're getting at with "true
criticism"). However there has been a huge problem with the separation of
those procedures from the rest of social exchange.

Critical reasoning requires the suspension of judgment in favor of analysis
and hypothesis. This is primarily done in universities, where it has been
made into an ethos, that is, an overarching orientation toward life. The
result is ever-increasing difficulty to share critical truth with others.
That's now an emergency situation, as all manner of beliefs proliferate
(religious, nationalist, identitarian, conspiratorial). Particularly with
regard to climate change - and global ecological change, which is an even
larger issue - the gap is huge and getting larger.

I think the university, and in particular, the doctrine of value-free
science, is at least partially to blame for this. Value-free science rests
on a belief (notice the word) that critical assessments can be presented to
competent authorities in order to produce the right decisions. Although
demonstrably false, the belief allows for a very comfortable exercise of
critique without political engagement. It also absolves scientists from
responsibility for technologies of all sorts.

Respectable scientists are now activists, as indeed they should be, since
the social uses of science are leading to a mass extinction. However this
situation does not absolve other disciplines which have also pursued
versions of the critical ethos. Populism is exactly what you get when the
public has no way to relate to critique. And that is occurring across the
so-called Western countries.

The problems that our societies are facing have become vast. Every
profession manipulates highly complex critical truths which are turned into
technologies (whether machines or organizational techniques). Suspension of
judgment accompanies the application of these technologies ("I'm just doing
my job," etc). The whole situation is very convenient for capitalism, aka
the rule of interest groups. Public curiosity declines in the face of all
these hermetic spheres of knowledge and activity.

I face this dilemma in my own life. The knowledge of the Anthropocene
drives me to intense curiosity about every way in which the human world is
produced, typically to its own long-term detriment and that of all other
creatures. The point is to develop actionable knowledge, in a situation
where the political authority to which science appeals - legitimate
government - is captured by interest groups and fails to do anything
significant. Yet everyone who is motivated in this way finds that few
people are even curious. They are alienated from the procedures of truth.
And we, the practitioners of those procedures, are alienated from whatever
they believe.

I too am a "lurker in philosophy" (wonderful phrase). Therefore I cannot
adequately analyze the way that the Kantian critiques have been built out
into the institutional structure of democratic societies (and more
recently, the EU - which is, um, a democratic society? or what shall we
call it?). My unschooled impression is that we are facing a bureaucratic
division of spheres of knowledge (disciplines) and spheres of action
(professions), which in no way corresponds to regulative principles or
categorical imperatives. It's a machinery that makes no sense, a clockwork
that fails to register now-time. In the face of this failure, charismatic
authority takes over, typically as a proxy for some hidden interest group.

The suggestion, therefore, is to undertake experiments in the combination
of critical truth and true belief. How to find new, but not arbitrary,
motivations for action? How to maintain the many values of critique in
situations where judgment cannot and should not be suspended? I don't think
you can just reiterate the principles  of epistemology and social
organization that brought us to this point. Instead it becomes imperative
to experiment, not "for experimentation's sake," but purposefully.
Otherwise I think we are stuck in that place where it is easier to imagine
the end of the world than the end of, let's say, capitalist democracy.

all the best in difficult times, Brian

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 2:56 AM Christian Swertz via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:


Dear Joseph,

Am 13.09.23 um 20:10 schrieb Joseph Rabie:

I have doubts whether a group of academics in a given university forms
a sufficiently heterogenous sample for drawing general conclusions.

I fully agree. The example does not justify any general conclusions for
sure. And there are certainly people who feel a need in spiritual
content for their lives. This also does not allow the general conclusion
that all people are in need for some spirituality, religion or the like.
So what should we do? As far as I see it's a good idea to let everybody
take a personal decision. A perspective, that renders general arguments
that are based on some sort of spirituality and include consequences for
others useless. In short: Spirituality justifies nothing. In this
respect, there is still some room for improvement in today's world,
isn't it?

I agree with you. The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs spoke of how

different groups (professions, for example) constitute a particular
“world”, which has its particular knowledge, complicity, habitus... and
truths.
Interesting. I got the list of scientific, political, religious etc.
truth spheres from Max Weber and connected it with the idea of different
language cultures from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Didn't know that Halbwachs
argued this too (only read his book on memory). Thank's for the hint!
Can you give me a hint in which of his writings I can find it?

In this way, the idea that there are subjective truths appears to not

contradict the idea that a truth must necessarily be absolute and
objective. I do hesitate, though, because some truths (in physics, for
example) do equate to objective facts.
Can a truth be objective and subjective at the same time? Sounds like a
contradiction, but I think it's possible. With physics as an example: In
this case, the truth does equate to objective facts, but the meaning of
"objective" does not include the claim that it will be true tomorrow.
Even physicists changed their idea of truth occasionally. From an
educational point of view, I would argue that the term "truth" might be
considered as true today - but it needs to be passed on from older to
younger people in time. And in this process, people might change the
idea of truth.


I disagree with this. What you write appears to compartmentalise, in
the way that academia compartmentalises disciplines. For me politics,
religion, art and all other things have everything to do with
everything, and a pluridisciplinary approach is essential.

Indeed. A pluridisciplinary approach is a good idea as far as I see. And
if all things have everything to to with everything, that's a
monodisciplinary perspective. But that's challenging if you consider a
pluridisciplinary perspective as relevant. I would really like to learn
how you integrate a monodisciplinary and a pluridisciplinary perspective
(same question as " Thus I wonder how you think true criticism and
unified truth together?"). Can you give me a hint on that?


Apart from that, I personally find the idea that the meaning of
existence lies in transmission of whatever kind profoundly nihilistic.
It corresponds to the evolutionary idea (that I have come across here
and there) that a species’s ultimate purpose is to assure its
perennity through reproduction. In other words, its meaning comes from
mothering the following generation, and beyond guaranteeing that, it
does not live for itself. And so on, all the way down the line. I find
this sort of utilitarianism profoundly depressing, the antithesis of
the spiritual need I believe exists in many of us.

For some people, spirituality certainly works. I have to admit - I'm to
lazy for it. I've learned that most spiritual ideas are connected with
lots of regulations. Thinking, nutrition, partnership, and the like -
all regulated. And since I've not grown up with the protestant ethic of
hard work, that's to much for me. I thus decided to change my
understanding of "depressing" instead. Solved the problem for me - maybe
since I have no idea what "spiritual needs" might actually be. Never
felt something like that. But others say they do. Personally, I enjoy
this heterogeneity.

--
Liebe Grüße,

Christian Swertz
https://www.swertz.at

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