Reminder that Chomsky won the first part of the discussion by correctly asserting that yes there is so such a thing as...

Reminder that Chomsky won the first part of the discussion by correctly asserting that yes there is so such a thing as human nature, which is amenable to meaningful classification and scientific discovery, while Foucault won the second part of the discussion, by correctly asserting that the primary purpose of making war is to win, and by pointing out that morality is not so important in the world as Chomsky would like it to be. The two thus ended their soccer match in a 1-1 draw.*

This thread is about a thing which also exists as a book. Simply search "the chomsky foucault debate" for the appropriate short book, a transcript plus related matter.

The imagery and televised milleu of this exchange is also extremely interesting to me for one cosmetic reason: orange juice. I can only assume that the drink at the table, captured in color television, is orange juice, which is a very healthy beverage, but perhaps not a "telegenic beverage" for two reasons: nowadays, people on talk shows are expected to drink from mugs or water bottles, both because hot liquid helps your voice, and there is a "seriousness" about the beverages, or at least, a sort of TV-culture acceptance of what you actually are videoed as drinking on the TV. Also quite frankly the yellow is a bit ugly against the rest of it, but I only say that because I'm not used to seeing serious men talk all serious with a caraffe of happy orange juice on standby.

*matching a purely accidental and unintended Veeky Forums post.

I think nobody won, because they were talking at complete cross-purposes. Foucault was arguing from the bog-standard continental axiom that the correspondence theory of truth is platonizing of some external essence (that by which truth is measured, or to which phenomena appeal for their measure of truth), that to be truly self-critical is to be able to countenance the possibility of radically other grounds of truth, and that the "best" truth-seeking stance to take might be a sort of poised openness to altogether other grounds of truth from whatever one is currently inhabiting. Foucault like virtually every continental thinker is just being mindful of the fact that even "bare minimum" essence-establishing (presencing), for example scientistic materialism, is still essence-establishing, still "metaphysics." No essence can ever speak for itself, can justify itself and its worthiness to be the transcendental signified or sole anchor of being.

Chomsky constantly bringing the debate back down to the "...yeah, okay, but justice is still good" level of things was the necessary social-ethical concomitant, but the two never actually entered into dialogue. What would have made the discussion interesting is if Chomsky understood the groundless depth that Foucault was trying to reach, and then still rebutted it with "whence any praxis whatsoever, then?" Or even by championing some kind of materialism (though that probably would have terminated in any number of dead ends pretty fast). Either way, they never got past Foucault's discomfort with simplistically reifying justice, human nature, etc.

>orange juice, which is a very healthy beverage
I love orange juice but isn't it kinda just fucking sugar? Even the pure orange juice that's just made out of oranges. Not that sugar is necessarily the devil. I'm cuckde by mty friend who keeps telling me not to drink the liquid fruit jew...

neckbeard mediation

Chomsky sounds like a fuckin brainlet normie. After the debate he acted so fucking incredulous and said
>“He struck my as completely amoral, I’d never met anyone who was so totally amoral” … “I mean, I liked him personally, it’s just that I couldn’t make sense of him. It’s as if he was from a different species, or something”

>while Foucault won the second part of the discussion, by correctly asserting that the primary purpose of making war is to win
You see this is why Post Modernism is meaningless
It needs big dense complicated discussions and verbiage to assert the obvious
The purpose of making it difficult for outsiders to comprehend isn't hard to see
>and by pointing out that morality is not so important in the world as Chomsky would like it to be
But it is.
>le post modernist jape

You want to see Chomsky in his prime see him debating facts and history and government documents with people
Buckley, Perle, Dershowitz, etc - all have been left ruined in his wake

I correctly voted for Trump and I do cheerfully concede that Chomsky calmly rekt Buckley in that Vietnam exchange, you're quite right to bring that up:

>Buckley: general sentimental popular notion which I can intimate because there is no internet yet
>Chomsky: well acutally no because newspaper articles etc which you won't directly challenge
>Buckley: oh harumph harumph my magazine and you both will be permanently rendered irrelevent in about forty years' times, and though you will predict it, you will do so with exactly the wrong intention and understanding

Chomsky in this debate was concerned very much with the practical, whereas Foucault was concerned with specificity and objectivity at the expense of the practical. It has been awhile since I watched the debate but I think there is one point at the end where Foucault says something along the lines of "your anarchism wouldn't necessarily work" and Chomsky counters with "but you must constantly strive for improvement, a better result is better although it might not work perfectly as intended" or something along those lines. I think there are several similar exchanges throughout the debate.
So you could see it as Chomsky being a normie or Foucault being autistic, or both. It seemed to me like they were talking around each other most of the time, not so much of a debate.

>I correctly voted for Trump
No you didn't

There’s this part (thinking about it makes me LOL) when, I think it was Chomsky, talks about like weirdos or people who are weird or something, and the edit cuts to this weird guy in the audience with a Jew fro! Lol I dunno if anyone else picked up on that but man... editors are funny

The two things that make sugar the boogeyman of the hour are that we consume too much of it and that we do not expend much energy.

Fresh fruit juice is great if you are generally active and generally aware of a sugar budget of some sort.

If you sit on your ass all day, then yes, find something else.

>Hello, greetings and welcome. Welcome to a new beginning, for this tape will serve you as a new beginning. That's right, a new beginning, as we're about ready to begin. On this recording, music specifically created for its pleasurable effects upon your mind, body and emotions is mixed with a warm orange colored liquid. Your body is now a glass container. You can smell the orange colored liquid, for the deeper you go, the deeper you go. And if there's extra saliva there, swallow it and take yourself down deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper, and deeper, and deeper

The two are political and intellectual opposites. This is a macro lesson in what poilitics ARE. Two many internet generation lads are so confused about the very terms and the definitions of words they cant get anywhere.

>morality is not so important in the world as Chomsky would like it to be.
Karma is a truism. Mercy is magic.

>Reminder that Chomsky won the first part of the discussion by correctly asserting that yes there is so such a thing as human nature

at no point was such a thing demonstrated as universal to all humans

>Either way, they never got past Foucault's discomfort with simplistically reifying justice, human nature

his work is almost completely about this stuff, it would be like inviting a QFT theorist to a nautical engineering discussion (yes I'm aware water eventually has properties, but some day we will not be traversing water), the event and Chomsky appear to be completely ignorant of Foucault's scholarship, while Chomsky's scholarship is the default position of that culture anyway, and doesn't generate much discussion

>Foucault like virtually every continental thinker is just being mindful of the fact that even "bare minimum" essence-establishing (presencing), for example scientistic materialism, is still essence-establishing, still "metaphysics." No essence can ever speak for itself, can justify itself and its worthiness to be the transcendental signified or sole anchor of being.
user, i think you have read too much of the French and they have poisoned you with their obfuscating nonsense. You unnecessarily dilute simple notions to the point they become incomprehensible.

Chomsky is a beacon of light in that studio. He exudes common sense

>You unnecessarily dilute simple notions to the point they become incomprehensible.

I'll demonstrate an example of that guys use of the term 'essence-establishing'

say I write some code alongside published research for a computer science department, and that codebase and my papers go on to be used for other projects. Does the code exist as a physical object in real life? No, it's a bunch of linguistic constructs that compile to certain electron arrangements depending on which hardware you run it on. Is there an 'essence' to the ideas expressed in the code? Sure there is, if the research was on computational linguistics the codebase might embody some structures of some sample of language use, or if it was on geology it embody useful parameterizations for hydrocarbon exploration or whatever. But despite whatever utilitarian ties to a real-life problem, and despite the fact that it works correctly for a certain problem, in the end the code is not a physical object in reality.

I'm not at all familiar with how computer code works in a fundamental level. I suppose there is a pre-existing fundamental system that translates the commands of the code into computations by the hardware?The code is the transcript, the sum of my written commands. Of course it is is a physical object in reality.
Am i being trolled here? Who the hell concerns himself with this type of pointless ontological minutiae (except maybe that user and Foucault - not sure about the latter, i dont remember the debate very well)

>I suppose there is a pre-existing fundamental system that translates the commands of the code into computations by the hardware?

computer architectures themselves are designed by Hardware Description Languages, which are themselves programming languages, von Neumann architectures have a common ancestor in his theory and Turing's, but there are also Dataflow architectures, there are Fluidics computers that use fluid particles instead of electrons, all of these systems have only been made understandable and buildable by human-level cognition and proper linguistic constructs

but no there is no a priori system other than popular historical developments of logic, computer science, material science, and most importantly commercial viability and government subsidies: this is similar to why Foucault emphasizes historical reflection when talking about

>Of course it is is a physical object in reality.

It ain't, at no point can you point a single 'source' of its being or find a singular something to physically grasp that is essential to its function and existence

The subject is out of my waters. Is another case of continental relativism? I hate this type of self-indulgent deconstruction. One needs to believe in something, after all.
Foucault is dishonest

>Is another case of continental relativism?

Historical analysis isn't 'continental relativism'.

Read Foucault's 'On the Government of the Living' lectures, it's an analysis of the concepts of justice and societal mechanisms from Rome to medieval Christian authors. It's not very deconstructionist and it reads almost like Theology.

>Foucault is dishonest
?

>One needs to believe in something, after all.
if your belief is based on an unwillingness to understand things it's intellectual laziness, just like a computer isn't a magic brain box, you may not care how it works or the historical reasons for its methods of construction and function, but believing a computer is a magic brain box is a false belief

But i dont deny relativism or historical analysis that indicates everything is subjective and ever-changing.
I'm more interested in the motivation and character structure of the champions of these views. They seem to revel in this vacuum of meaning instead of constructing something they believe in. It is self indulgent, cowardly, and yes, morally dishonest.

(Lets say, in the not-very-fitting computer example, i examine the workings and conclude there is no universal a priori way this thing interprets commands. Very well. I have to make it work though and therefore choose my favorite way of making it work. This is the something i need to believe in. It is a moral imperative stemming from very deep in the self.
What do you believe in? That there is no universal way to make it work so lolz nothing ever matters?)

...

Any great modern debates?


I personally strongly recommend "The Munk Debates"

Excellent selection of debaters and good, general questions.

Also, the host is actually totally objective.

They got people like Zakaria, Kissinger, Dershowitz, Ferguson etc.

>I'm more interested in the motivation and character structure of the champions of these views. They seem to revel in this vacuum of meaning instead of constructing something they believe in. It is self indulgent, cowardly, and yes, morally dishonest.

Foucault worked at a mental hospital, Chomsky never worked a real job in his life

>I have to make it work though and therefore choose my favorite way of making it work. This is the something i need to believe in. It is a moral imperative

morality has nothing to do with it, you're simply choosing whatever You think works well enough (for You)

Btw doesn't Chomsky's work prove the persistent innate nature of some aspects of man?
Sociological historical analysis is all fine and dandy, but there are strong arguments in the other camp as well. The Chomsky camp is positivist, humanistic and connective. The degenerate camp is nihilistic, divisive and cold.

>Btw doesn't Chomsky's work prove the persistent innate nature of some aspects of man

no, Chomsky derived an analytic grammar system that was a general enough to cover all languages, but some linguists contend it's universality, this kind of work was also further extended to show that the genetic makeup of the average human /has been selected for/ linguistic capabilities innate from birth

>The degenerate camp is nihilistic, divisive and cold.

You're not adding to this conversation with meaningless statements like this.

>Sociological historical analysis is all fine and dandy, but there are strong arguments in the other camp as well.

The Chomskyite solution is to stick your fingers in your ears and maintain a neoliberal orthodoxy of humanism. Foucault could has well have been a Fascist Reactionary with goals for human speciation, his techniques work well for any political agenda, but the fact is that they /add something/ rather than parrot existing liberal universalist dogma.

Add something? His general school of thought is the prevailing one for the last 200 years. He is the trite one, a product of our time, not the guy who tries to bring back some sense of unity we last witnessed in the 1600s
If Chomsky is sticking his fingers in his ears then Foucault wears horse blinkers. The conclusions of his social analyses is just what our times permit him to see.

>His general school of thought is the prevailing one for the last 200 years.

I'm not sure you've read Foucault thoroughly at this point

>some sense of unity we last witnessed in the 1600s

you mean during the European wars of religion? What the hell do you think you're talking about

>not the guy who tries to bring back some sense of unity we last witnessed in the 1600s

>Lockean sensationalism
>The birth of probability, "there can literally never be any certainty, only best guesses, so stoic resignation to doubt is vital"
>Newtonian "Don't worry about what phenomena REALLY are, just focus on what they seem to be, to the best of your ability to describes their regularities :^)"
>Humean bundle theory, "there is no self at all!"
>French radical constructivism, "there is no human at all! Only what is constructed by sociability within commercial society!"
>pure mechanism, arch-reductivist arch-determinist arch-epiphenomenalist tryhard adolescent nihilism, in every social science
>"humanism" = "let's create the ideal prisons and police and thought-reforming centers to engineer the ideal humans, because freedom and self-expressivity don't exist, only constructability and malleability and mechanical reflex"
>"All humans are selfish self-serving animals, so let's design the perfect commercial capitalist society to maximize this!"
>von Humboldt visits Paris: "These people have no sense of the human 'self' or 'subject' at all, they are pure mechanism! Pure chaos!"

>let's go back to the Enlightenment

Hey Noam, where's the flood? Lol!

>I have to make it work though and therefore choose my favorite way of making it work. This is the something i need to believe in. It is a moral imperative stemming from very deep in the self.
According to what? It would be intellectually dishonest to arrive at a conclusion of a ‘vacuum’, and then presuppose that actually there is indeed some human drive or responsibility and construct some contrived ideal system of how to live arbitrarily.
Give the false god of common sense a greater degree of skepticism and derision than you currently do. Sometimes it comes in handy, other times it’s a useful tool for false consolation, meaning and barbarism.

You don’t give modern philosophers enough credit. Just because there are intellectual fashions or landscapes doesn’t mean they are all just contributing nothing and refusing to challenge anything on their own. This is a hurdle I overcame. I got very interested in philosophy because of my Christian faith and, because of a sense that Christianity and Christian philosophy had been neglected, I soaked up lots of that shit - which was awesome, but at the same time I was looking for an answer, something to bring moral and intellectual certainty, and I thought I could only find it in ancient Christianity and the Scholastics and so on. I neglected the developments of the past few hundred years out of a prejudice that they could offer nothing fundamentally valuable to me - not dissimilar from the prejudice of my upbringing that lead me to immerse myself in theism in the beginning. When I opened myself up to modern philosophy I found that it dealt in exactly the problems and anxieties that were so strong in me.

Don’t assume bad faith off the bat because the answers don’t satisfy you. Don’t look to any one philosopher, or group of philosophers for absolute knowledge and wisdom.

Do you think that behind modern humanism as proposed by american thinkers hides some form of capitalism?

American humanism conveniently ignored natives and blacks when it was profitable to do so, and conveniently embraced those groups when they could be treated as subjects of mass consumerism; this is the kind of analysis that Foucault examines and but that Chomsky only brings up in the context of political discussions

>and I thought I could only find it in ancient Christianity and the Scholastics and so on
>I neglected the developments of the past few hundred years out of a prejudice that they could offer nothing fundamentally valuable to me - not dissimilar from the prejudice of my upbringing that lead me to immerse myself in theism in the beginning
Shit this rings a very close bell. Were your family college-educated non-religious leftists? Did you reject everything they liked out of spite? Did you overcome your anxieties?

>at no point was such a thing demonstrated as universal to all humans
Trivial: All humans have DNA.
Controversial: All humans have brains.
Even More Controversial: All humans have some basic psychological characteristics in common.

Chomsky argues for the last of these, and there's a lot of literature supporting him, but if we wanted to be pedantic and merely establish some universal trait within humanity, we could fall back on the trivial statement.

Yeah, my family were exactly college educated non-religious leftists. I mean, they’re baby boomers after all. I wouldn’t say I rejected everything out of spite, though there was an element of resentment - equating the dissatisfaction with something I was helplessly born into. Some transgression before my birth that I had to suffer for. Dramatic analogy, I never had any problems relating to my parents because of this. They were quite cheerful and supportive about my turn to Catholicism. More self-aware kind of people, not the kind of boomers that would take a younger person’s interest in, for instance, pre-Vatican II mass personally: as some kind of betrayal.

As for anxieties? I’m not sure at this point. There was a point where I was so thirsty for absolute truth it almost felt like I might die of thirst. Now my passion for knowledge is a little more patient, more healthy. The flame is strong as ever, just not burning out of control. I’m just happy to read and think. It almost goes hand in hand with the trajectory obsessive-compulsive disorder; which develops these unrelenting anxieties because of uncertainty. Did I wash my hands right? Did I leave the gas on? Will not turning the light off and on three times cause me to die tonight? If I don’t count to 5 will the universe false vacuum collapse? Obviously I can never be certain of the answers to these questions. But, bit by bit, I’m learning to live with that uncertainty.

Human nature is a spook

Fellow OCD human wreck here. How can (could?) you read books and concentrate in these circumstances?

Can chomskys idea of universal grammar be compared to Hegels idea of spirit?

More to a biological/emergent cognition version of Kant's transcendental deduction maybe

Compare Chomsky's rejection of tabula rasa language with Kant's rejection of pure empiricism. There has to be an initial ordering, categorial/grounding system.

My OCD has improved a lot since its onset. It’s still bad, and it interferes with my life, but it’s a lot more bearable now. There was a point where it was basically impossible to concentrate on anything except the most mind numbing Netflix YouTube normie shit. I’d be sitting there and these thoughts about horrible things, shit that really hit the trauma zones, would occupy my entire attention. I saw psychologists and psychiatrists and got put on meds, which I’m still taking. The medication reduced the intensity of the anxiety a lot, but at the same time I feel a bit like I’m stuck on them. Haven’t had any particularly bad experience with them, I’m just not sure if I should just be taking them forever.

The hardest thing to do with reading for me nowadays is everything before I actually sit down and start reading words on the page. I feel uncomfortable a lot of the time about reading the “right” book, if I’m reading at the right time, if I’m going the best experience and if not should I wait for the “perfect time” to read etc. once I’m actually reading I don’t have many problems. I don’t read as much as I’d like. Sometimes I only finish one or two books a month. But that doesn’t bother me when I’m enjoying a book. The anxiety and the self-consciousness is the problem, not the shit it makes you worry about out of proportion. Ignore the spooks

I don’t know if any of that will relate to your situation user. Hope I don’t seem like I’m trying to give just pithy advice or consolation.

Oh it relates very much.
I watch the fucking big bang theory. And can't even concentrate on that. I feel like a literal retard
It is indeed so tempting to concern yourself with the manifestations of anxiety. I can't read a difficult passage unless I wash my hands like lady Macbeth first. I dropped out of law school because of hand washing. Fuck me sideways

It is absurd to claim that something is not exist in physical world simply because men concocted them from imagination. Let's say someone imagines that a machine that can do arithmatic calculation, and he finds a way to make it using mechanical levers and gears. Would you claim that the machine by that definition of being "not existing in physical world"? The code in your example can be distilled down into bits in machine level or it can be represent in mathematic symbols if I can find a mathematician who dedicates enough to transcribe it into a mathematical proof. To say that it doesn't exist by applying a strict definition of being is not say much in the same line as proving the existence of a rock in physical realm.

I find it amazing that someone like Foucalt gained such a large admirers in Western thought. His phylosophy is a negation of life. When man being presented with 2 choices, to have or to have not, he will of course chose a former rather than the later. Foucault was trying to distract us from the search for the ultimate truth through muddle languages and complicated symbols. I agree with that user in your conversation that Foucault was being dishonest.

The machine exists. The mathematics you are performing do not exist, not in the same way.
>When man being presented with 2 choices, to have or to have not, he will of course chose a former rather than the later. Foucault was trying to distract us from the search for the ultimate truth through muddle languages and complicated symbols. I agree with that user in your conversation that Foucault was being dishonest.
You talk like the other user... are you not the same person ...

yes exactly, the code is a realization from a non-physical realm object
>are you not the same person
Im not

Im not this guy

*into physical world
sorry lad my thought got ahead of myself

More proof that r/T_D and /pol/ literally only do a thing because they think it pisses off libruls.
Sad!

Cummies and anarkiddies too. Anyone who isn't a fuckin' babby at politics can piss off a banal liberal.

Human nature does not exist. Go back to plebbit please you smelly colonist.

Code is just a particular type of idea whose instantiation in a computer doesn't matter / isn't required, but it's still just an idea like any other.

Example code:
function gcd(a, b) {
if (b = 0) return a;
return gcd(b, a mod b);
}

That bit of code represents the idea that was constructed in the head of a man, Eudoxus maybe, and it was such a cool idea that he told his friends about it, and the idea was physically transferred into their heads, and they told their friends via the same copy-paste mechanism, and so on until it reached me and now you.

Just because a thing is common and psychic doesn't make it non-physical. Silly platonists.

bump