Category Archives: An Archaeology of the Fall

09/30/24

Looking at Michelle Stiles’s Book (2022) “One Idea to Rule Them All” (Part 1 of 23)

0495 A note on blog protocol.

In the strange world of blogs, the most recent blog appears first, so the first blog in a sequence must be placed last in any given month, in order for the blogs to be read from top to bottom.

0496 A note on timing and points.

The blog for July 2024 examines a book by British sociologist, Steve Fuller.  This examination introduces the interscope for the post-truth condition, along with its embedded interventional sign-relation.

The blog for August 2024 tests the relevance of the post-truth interscope, by applying the purely relational structure to a reading of a book by American entrepreneur and um… politician (?)… Vivek Ramaswamy.  Battles among enlightenment gods shape modern history.

These constitute Part One of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Also, in August, the post-truth interscope is shown to be much older than one would suspect.  The sophists of ancient Greece run the same game as the modern post-truth condition.  That implies that the post-truth condition may trace to the beginning of our current Lebenswelt.  A review of an essay by Josef Pieper is the second examination in Part Two.

Now, in September 2024, the post-truth interscope is applied to a book by a physical therapist with an excellent sense of what is happening, Michelle Stiles.  Decode this book in order to find out the potential of ‘something’ happening.  This review is the first examination in Part Two.

Finally, in October 2024, an encore.  Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) Language vs. Reality constitutes Part Three of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition.

0497 Here is a look at the examination of the post-truth condition and its relation to original sin.

0498 Let me sound my notes once again.

The end of Fuller’s book predicts what happens when a person in the thralls of an empirio-normative judgment2c is sacrificed to an enlightenment deity, such as the one of scientism3c.  The scrappy player3a discovers that the system’s definition of “success2c“ is not what he calls “success2a“. For the scientismist one3c, “success2c” is not the scrappy player’s “getting ahead2a“.  Rather, “success2c” is an exercise of an empirio-normative judgment2c.

0499 Here is a picture of the contemporary post-truth interscope.

0500 Vivek Ramaswamy’s book is a testimony to the character of expert-driven3b psychometric values2b as formalizations1b that distort what people are willing to say2a.

Oh… I did not mean to use the word, “distort”… I meant to use the word, “model”.

Psychometric studies2b demonstrate that what people are willing to say2a can be modeled according to postmodern formulations2b that encourage1c those who “trust the science”3c to render an empirio-normative judgment2c that stands for how what people think and what people say is hurtful and objectionable2b, according to criteria2b established by those3brepresenting the most vulnerable in society1b.

0501 What is a person who thinks that “success2a” means “to get ahead by hard work and an attitude of cooperation2a“supposed to do, when thwarted by the accusation2b that such speech is euro-centric and ethno-supremacist?  Keep working hard and acting agreeably?  A panel of experts3b will formalize1b whatever this scrappy player says2a and does2ainto an accusation2b that stands in the way of getting ahead.

The scrappy player is tempted to say, “Screw it.  The empirio-normative judgment wins.  I am outta here.”

0502 As soon as the scrappy player lays flat and looks up, the sky offers an opportunity, a screen to paint the One who Signifies, without Us Knowing Why.

This implicit abstraction is more primordial than anything that our current Lebenswelt can offer as a perspectivec-level reality2.  The originating source of the interventional sign-relation is a sign-vehicle (SVi) that cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled.  How so?  The interventional sign-vehicle2c (SVi) stands for what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled2a, including the odors of frustration, failure and fear2a (SOi), according to an intellect that recognizes signs3a contextualizing a will that appreciates a gift in what is being encountered1a (SIi).

This is the type of mental behavior that we (humans) evolved to perform.  Humans recognize signs.  Humans appreciate gifts.  After all, both involve triadic relations.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

0503 The trick (SIi) for the interventional sign-relation comes from the fact that we experience the sign-object (SOi) and then must figure out the sign-vehicle (SVi) .  Our experiences of things in the world2a (SOi) testifies to an actuality in the mind of a perspective-level being2c (SVi).

0504 Fuller, at the end of his practical guide, contemplates the SOi of himself [proposing] an account of how the post-truth condition comes to be2a.  Simultaneously, the One Who Signifies3c weaves the notion of original sin2c (SVi) into Fuller’s narrative.

Original sin2c (SVi) stands for Fuller telling an origin story for the post-truth condition2a (SOi) in regards to an interpretant that is within, yet transcending, Fuller’s intellect3a and will1a (SIi).

0505 Here is a picture of the interventional sign-relation residing within chapter fourteen of Fuller’s text, following Fuller’s definition of metalepsis.

0506 Does Fuller merely relate a historical account of how the post-truth condition comes to be?

Or, is he also is making a discovery?

Or, should I say… revealing an insight?

0507 On January 2, 2024, in his blog, Razie Mah proposes that the doctrine of original sin needs to be reformulated in light of a fact.  The science of genetics disproves Saint Augustine’s claim that Adam’s transgression passes from Adam to all humans through direct descent, without modification.  Genetics establishes, beyond doubt, that there is no bottleneck in human evolution that would correspond to an original human pair, unless that pair exists hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Consider Looking at William Lane Craig’s Book (2021) “In Quest of the Historical Adam” and Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) “The Origin of Humanity and Evolution”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in September, 2022, and November, 2023, respectively.  These examinations show the futility of regarding Adam and Eve as the originators of our species, Homo sapiens.

0508 Mah’s proposal launches a strange and serious enterprise.

At this moment in history, psychometric experts3b testify that their analysis2b of what people say2a shows no need for the doctrine of original sin, except for the problem that people do not understand how the system works2c.  “Religion”, once attributed to “Christian factions”, no longer has relevance compared to bureaucratic rationalizations2b that narrow formal knowledge1b into two tranches, one capitalist and one socialist, which combine into a mystery, an intersection, that is far more salient to modern society than so-called “religion”.  Value2b is a single actuality constituted by the actualities of financial transaction2H and organizational objective2V.  Or, shall I say, money and politics?

0509 Some of the more intellectually inclined scrappy players go so far as to call America’s government-occupying secular bureaucracy a “religion”.  And, it is.  But, it is not “religion” defined as “a Christian faction”.

Yes, it depends on how one defines the word, “religion”.

0510 Sophistication aside, the one of scientism3c, who rules this “system”, may well be a manifestation of… yes… original sin.  How does one account for scientism3c as a person writ large, possessing the minds of apparently regular people, as institutions writ small, turning them into advocates for the scientismist one3c?

0511 Augustine focuses on disordered desires.  Does a doctrine of disordered desires suffice to account for the disoriented minds that justify the deranged valuations2b of psychometric experts3b?  Or, are disordered desires and disoriented minds both symptoms of an evolution-twisting cultural trajectory that is portrayed in the Genesis stories of Adam and Eve, all the way to the Tower of Babel?  An affirmative answer to the second question opens the door to a second doctrine of original sin.

0512 If the early chapters of Genesis are fairy tales concerning the instigation of unconstrained social complexity during the Ubaid and the Uruk archaeological periods of southern Mesopotamia, and if the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture to practice speech-alone talk, at a time when all other cultures practice hand-speech talk,then theologians should weave the hypothesis of the first singularity into the fabric of a second doctrine of original sin.

0513 A second doctrine?

Yes, a second doctrine must account for Augustine’s first doctrine as a special application, in the same way that quantum mechanics accounts for Newtonian physics as a special application.

Inquiry into the post-truth condition may open the portal to a second doctrine of original sin.

So, I begin.

The book before me is by Michelle Stiles, the full title is One Idea to Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda.  The book is copyrighted in 2022 and published by the author.

0514 The cover photo depicts a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Yes, experts3b are human, just like scrappy players3a.

So, they could be the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It is the scientismist one3c that I am not sure about.

09/4/24

Looking at Michelle Stiles’s Book (2022) “One Idea to Rule Them All” (Part 23 of 23)

0749 What about domination?

Chapters eleven and twelve conclude the book with suggestions for how to proceed, now that Stiles’s own manuscript testifies to the necessity for operation spider web to engage in as many operation sheepskins as possible.  The scrappy players are becoming aware that what they regard as reason3a,1a is actually an interventional sign-interpretant (SIi) declaring that an operation sheepskin2c executed by the scientismist one3c (SVi) stands for what people are thinking [and] what people are saying2a (SOi).  Experts3b cannot reduce this awareness to capitalist and socialist ideations2b and remain intelligible.

More research is required.

One of the operation sheepskins has got to dominate the scrappy players that deny the post-truth interscope.

0750 The scrappy player needs only to watch corporate broadcast media for the latest operation.

The money and power required to sustain operation spider web is enormous.

After the system3c burns through its cash, then it3c will ask the oligarchs and the federal government to appropriate more funds for their private-public partnerships.

The laboratory of expertise strives for an effective formulation.

Will they configure a final solution?

0751 Meanwhile, scrappy playersa are coming to terms with the nature of domination by the ones of scientism3c.

The scientismist one’s3c interventional sign-objects2a (SOi) trigger the scrappy player to imagine2a a perspective-level interventional sign-vehicle (SVi), a hidden agenda2c, that can only be recognized when the intellect3a contextualizes a potential greater than the will1a (SIi).

In order to do so, the scrappy player must recognize that what he has been thinking2a and what he has been expected to say2a are no longer intellectually3a satisfying.

Something greater than “our” intellect3a is required.  

Then, what the scrappy player discovers2a is that humans are adapted to recognize interventional sign-relations.  

The ones of scientism3c use that adaptation against the scrappy players2a.

The ones of scientism3c dominate by pretending to be the divine source of interventional sign-vehicles (SVi).  

They do so by limiting reason3a,1a to the intellect3a contextualizing the will1a, as if the will1a does not seek perfection (completion) in transcendentals, such a truth.

Yes, they are using a human adaptation against us.  But, they are triggering the adaptation as well.

0752 Hence, there is a practical conundrum facing the scrappy player.

To speak of a hidden agenda2a is counterproductive, because to posit that events2a are scripted by operation-sheepskin empirio-normative judgments2c is to talk in terms of formal and final causalities, which are the very statements-phenomena2a that cannot regarded as worthy of observation and measurement by psychometric experts3c.   Psychometric experts3b base their models2b on truncated material and efficient causalities (shorn of formal and final causation).

Speech about hidden agendas2a cannot be regarded as phenomena2a worth attending to.

Therefore, it must be ignored.

0753 The impasse is palpable, because (look at the third row).

0754 The crisis is about to begin.

0755 My thanks to Michelle Stiles for daring to publish a manuscript worthy of examination in regards to the post-truth condition.

08/31/24

Looking at Vivek Ramaswamy’s Book (2021) “Woke, Inc.” (Part 1 of 20)

0255 The full title of the book before me is Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam (Center Street Press: Nashville and New York).  The book consists of an introduction, followed by fifteen chapters.

0256 Why am I numbering the start of this examination with the number that follows the end of Professor Steve Fuller’s 2020 book, A Player’s Guide to The Post-Truth Condition?

Well, I have a question.

Is Fuller on target?

0257 One way to address this question is an examination of an author who is a player in the current theo-political dramaof the Fourth Battle of the Enlightenment Gods (1989-present).

Vivek Ramaswamy offers a book that suits the purpose.  Take a look at the table of contents.  The title of the introductionis “The Woke-Industrial Complex”.  The title of the final chapter is “Who are We?”

0258 Are “we” the ones who have substituted the broadcasts of the empirio-normative judgment for our own thoughts, so what we say can be objectified as phenomena for the psychometric sciences?

Or are “we” the ones who read the previous sentence and ask, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The choice is clear.

0259 We are in the fourth world war.  I call it The Fourth Battle of the Enlightenment Gods: Empirio-Normative Domination in the Post-Truth Condition.

Here is a list of all four wars.

0260 Of course, those who are certified in modern history will classify this list as “revisionist”.

But, reflect on the titles of the introduction and chapter fifteen of Ramaswamy’s book and ask, “Just who is acting as a revisionist?”

Woke, Inc.?

Or, the confounded subject of domination.

0261 In the introduction, Ramaswamy claims that two characteristics define America as a nation.  

The first is the American Dream, where “success” is regarded in terms of “getting ahead”.  To many, “getting ahead” is associated with capitalism.

The second is the Latin slogan, e pluribus unum, out of many, one.  Pluralism celebrates a variety of views and the challenges of convincing others of the relevance of one’s own view.  We all have this in common.  Everyone has an opinion.  Ramaswamy associates this to democracy.

0262 Here are the associations.

0263 But, how do these slogans associate to the interscope for the post-truth condition?

Yes, I must go there.

The following interscope is typical for the many interscopes that appear in the examination of Fuller’s guide.

0264 For the content-level, the normal context of my intellect3a brings the dyadic actuality of what I think [cannot be objectified as] what I am willing to say2a into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘my will’1a

What is the nature of this dyadic actuality2a?

It has to do with science.

What I think is like a noumenon, a thing itself.

What I say is like its phenomena, the observable and measurable facets of a thing.

According to Kant’s slogan, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.

Therefore, what I think [cannot be objectified as] what I say.

0265 Kant’s slogan figures in what is in the Positivist’s judgment. 

Here is a diagram.

0266 Clearly, the content-level actuality2a corresponds to what is of the Positivist’s judgment.

If logical positivists had their way, they would dismiss the noumenon as a stumbling block for scientific inquiry into phenomena.  This is precisely why Kant insists on the realness of the noumenon, in addition to its phenomena.   Scientific models are not the same as the thing itself, even though triumphalist scientists would have models replace their noumena.

Nevertheless, for most sciences, the noumenon is merely a book-keeping entry corresponding to what is responsible for observable and measurable phenomena.

So, I repeat.

What I think is a book-keeping entry.

What I say corresponds to what the psychometric sciences observe and measure.

08/9/24

Looking at Vivek Ramaswamy’s Book (2021) “Woke, Inc.” (Part 20 of 20)

0487 Here is a picture of the interscope for the post-truth condition.

0488 In the Fourth Battle of the Enlightenment Gods: Empirio-Normative Domination of Citizen Populations (1989-present), the scientismist one3c endeavors to first, bring a judgment2c into relation with the potential of an opportunity1c.

In this judgment, the disciplinary languages of the psychometric sciences (relation, thirdness) brings a normative narrative, expressing real intelligibility (what ought to be, secondness), into relation with something universal in what people say (what is, firstness).

Second, this judgment2c may serve as an interventional sign-vehicle (SVi) triggering people’s reason3a,1a (SIi) and creating a dyad where what I think coincides with the broadcast normative narrative [and is objectified as] what I am willing to say (SOi).

0489 Submission to the one of scientism takes the same character as when triumphalist science situates empirio-schematic research by placing a model over its noumenon, as discussed in Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues) as well as Razie Mah’s blogs in April, May and June 2024.

Here is a comparison.

0490 The interscope for the post-truth condition allows the inquirer to step back from the conditions of submission, in order to explore the nature of the Woke World War.  The actuality of the scrappy player, who is yet to submit, but cannot ignore the broadcasts, perfectly mimics a thing that is the ‘what is’ of the Positivist’s judgment.  That is to say, the scrappy player is the subject of a scientific inquiry and is trapped, like a rat, in the laboratory of the psychometric sciences.

Here is a comparison of the scrappy player’s actuality versus what is of the Positivist’s judgment.

0491 Standing against these two comparisons is a proposition that has been proclaimed by Christianity for centuries and has been rejected over and over again, because it forces the person to stand before God.

This actuality implies a fatal weakness of the post-truth condition.

Reason3a,1a is more than the intellect3a operating on the will1a.

0492 Ramaswamy knows this.

He knows that the sociopaths who run woke corporations and non-governmental organizations know this.  Reason is more than the intellect operating on the will.  But, this is the post-truth condition that bigilibs have grown to love, for fun (virtue-signaling) and for profit (financial benefits accruing through sovereign-imposed organizational objectives).

Deception thrives in the post-truth condition.

0493 Woke, Inc. tells a story that runs deep.

The beginning writes the end.

0494 My thanks to Vivek Ramaswamy for his engaging text.

08/8/24

Artistic Concordism.  Harmony between Genesis and Evolution?

0001 On August 14, 2024, Razie Mah, the blogger and author of The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion, releases an e-book, titled “Exercises in Artistic Concordism“.

Concordism is harmony between religion and science, particulary, the biblical origin stories and evolutionary history.  Concordism attempts to build a bridge.  But there is always a problem.

0002 According to current interpretations of these matters, either religion or science has to give.

Enter semiotics. Semiotics is the study of sign-relations. Sign-relations are triadic relations.  Triadic relations?  Thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts) brings secondness (the dyadic realm of actuality) into relation with firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).

0003 What if Genesis One is a sign of the evolutionary record?  

If one reads the Creation Story through the lens of Charles Peirce’s typology of natural signs, then each day of creation offers icons, indexes and symbols of a corresponding epoch. The days, like pearls, string perfectly onto the evolutionary record. The aesthetic correspondence is beautiful to behold.

0004 What has to give?

The interpretation that the Creation Story is itself the revelation? Perhaps, Genesis One records a revelation. That means there is a visionary, which brings up the question. How do we (as the ones who will hear the words of the vision) evolve to be who we are created to be? We are created to recognize the signs of God. What does this mean?

And, what if the stance that the Creation Story is a vision gives us ways to answer these questions?

0005 What else has to give?

Our theoretical formulation of human evolution?  Yes, there is more to our evolution than fossils and genetics. What if, as the Genesis text indicates, our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?  What if there is a cultural twist in recent prehistory?

0006 If one reads the awkward textual transition between the Creation Story and the stories of Adam and Eve as discontinuity, then one may wonder why all the written origins stories of the ancient Near East portray the origin of humans as a recent event. Humans are created, de novo, by differentiated gods. 

Why can’t any of the civilizations of the ancient Near East see past a time horizon that an anthropologist may place, say, at the start of the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia?

Why can’t these ancient civilizations see the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

These queries lead to a much more inflammatory question. Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Imagine the answer to that one!

0007 Today, civilized folk are abuzz about the coming singularity. What if it is not the first?

Uh oh, the first singularity is a scientific hypothesis that harmonizes a cultural twist in human evolution with the stories of Adam and Eve.

0008 Both religious appreciations of the text and scientific blind-spots must transform if there is to be concord.

Plus, that concord will be neither religious nor scientific.

It will be artistic.

08/8/24

Looking at Josef Pieper’s Book (1974) “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” (Part 1 of 8)

0756 The essay is originally published in German by Kosef-Verlag, Munich.  In 1988, the essay is translated by Lothar Krauth, in an edition by Schuabenverlag AG, Osterfindern bei Stuttgart.  The essay before me is published in 1992 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Why should I examine this essay?

Is the post-truth condition a manifestation of original sin?

0757 If the answer is “yes” to the latter question, then the answer to the former is partially unveiled.

Obviously, there is no direct path from the post-truth condition to a reincarnation of the doctrine of original sin, but both can enter the cognitive space carved out by Pieper’s title.  The stories of Adam and Eve portray an abuse of language similar to the type that we see today.  

0758 The post-truth interscope is formulated in Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “The Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” and applied in Looking at Vivek Ramaswamy’s Book (2021) “Woke, Inc.”.

The post-truth interscope has three levels.

Here is a picture.

0759 The content level is labeled “scrappy player”.  This is a level of under contention.  How so?  The actuality does not look like the scrappy player’s own self-impression.  Typically, people feel that what I think [accords with] what I say,rather than a dyad that has the characteristics of what is of the Positivist’s judgment.  So, the content-level actuality for the post-truth condition comes across as weirdly familiar, yet unnatural.  The same goes with the normal context3a and potential1a of reason3a,1a.  Reason3a,1a is the intellect3a contextualizing the will1a.  Plus, the interscope is not clear as to who engages reason3a,1a.  Is reason3a,1a the sign-interpretant (SIi) for the scientismist one3c‘s sign-vehicle (SVi)?  Or is reason3a,1a a feature of the scrappy player’s cognition?  Or both?

0760 The situation level is labeled “expert”.  Psychometric scientistsb situate what the scrappy player is willing to say2aas phenomena that may be formalized as observations and measurements1b.  Also, psychometric experts3b bring models of value2b into relation with the potential of ‘formalized knowledge’1b.

0761 The perspective level is labeled “relativist one”.  This is a level that is difficult to grasp.  The current relativist one3cis called, “the one of scientism3c“, because science has become the common style for expert3b expressions of value2b, where value2b is the intersection of capitalist and socialist nested forms.  So, the scientismist one3c may be regarded as “the system” or “the style” (or even, “the hive”) for the current interscope of the post-truth condition.

Fuller notes that there is an absolute character to the relativist one3c.  In order to truly operate as a relativist, one must be outside of all relativized jurisdictions.  That observation indicates that the relativist one3c should occupy the perspective-level normal context of the post-truth interscope.  Plus, that observation indicates that relativized jurisdictions should belong to the situation level.  So, all sciences and experts3b are relative from the point of view of the scientismist one3c.

0762 So, let me make a prediction as to how Josef Pieper’s argument will play out.

08/1/24

Looking at Josef Pieper’s Book (1974) “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” (Part 8 of 8)

0826 Needless to say, the trader with refined reason3c belongs to one of the finest families in Athens.

The ancients have a saying, “The best, corrupted, become the worst.”

Abuse of power goes hand in hand with abuse of language.

Abuse of language manifests in the realm of possibility1.

Abuse of power develops in the realm of normal contexts3.

0827 Here is a picture.

0828 The actualities2 of the sophist interscope are topics of gossip and conversation.

0829 Does the sophist really believe what he says?

Is the idea that Athens should economically sanction Syracuse not the same as “war”?

Well, it is and it isn’t.

What is the definition of the word, “war”?

And finally, what about the enforcement of the sanctions?

Of course, Athenian troops can stop ships from Syracuse from docking, but is that enough?

I hear rumors that ships are now simply bypassing Athens and going to Thebes.

0830 In the forum, the bought-off… er… well-paid sophist hears what people are saying.  He has a ready reply, “Thebes is causing a problem.  We should think about going to war with Thebes.  Not, this weak-kneed sanction business, but full-fledged conquest.”

0831 It’s like selling candy to a baby.

This is what Plato sees.

0832 What is there to stop the sophists3b and their behind-the-scenes sponsors3c?

If a reasonable person3a,1a adopts the sophist terminology, then the reasonable person3a,1a buys into the way that the sophist3b has framed the citizen’s reality and understanding.

Consequently, even the reasonable person’s thoughts are tainted, because what he says (using a word whose meaning, presence and message has been tweaked by the sophist) cannot correspond to what he thinks (because he thinks in terms of the traditional meaning, presence and message of the spoken word).

0833 A citizen may ask, “Would sending a delegation to Thebes asking what is going on be a way to avoid war?”

The sophist replies, “No, Athena forbid!  Sending a delegation would be an act of war.  Obviously, the traders in Thebesalready are trying to take advantage of our conflict with Syracuse.  We all know that ships from Syracuse are docking in Thebes.  Sending a delegation would only tip them off, so they would attack us, with the assistance of Syracuse, before we can attack them.”

0834 The sophist interscope supports ruinous political decisions. 

But, does the sweetness of refined reason3c turn to bitterness?

Or does the fish rot from the head, down?

0835 The one who pays to support refined reason3c no longer believes that refined reason3c is right reason.  Instead, it is a way to gain advantage1c by promoting political decisions2c that favor the elite, rather than all citizens.  Without a doubt, the most advantageous political decision2c is the one2c where public citizens bear the risks and costs and private elites gain the benefits. 

0836 Today, experts2b call these arrangements, “public-private partnerships”.  The arrangement sounds attractive, “the public” (that is, a government bureaucracy) works with “private” citizens (that is, very wealthy operators) in order to accomplish goals that neither can achieve alone, such as an active war with Thebes while engaging in sanctions with Syracuse.

Finally, the citizen becomes confused and starts saying what the sophist says as if it is his own thought.  Sanctions are war.  Diplomacy is war.  Thebes and Syracuse must be defeated.  No one quite knows why, because reason3a,1a itself has fallen into sophistry2b.

0837 Tyranny is near when reason3a,1a falls into sophistry2b, because a dictator and his allies may declare what one can say, as if that is the gateway to what one can think.  Citizens who have fallen into sophistry have no defense and end up blaming those who speak against sophistry.

0838 Weirdly, this is the topic is covered from a completely different approach, in the ninth and tenth primers of the series, How To Define the Word “Religion” and Related Primers, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  The titles are A Primer on Classical Political Philosophy and A Primer on Another Infrasovereign Religion.

0840 So, what was Plato’s problem?

We all know what happened to Socrates.

His admirers and compatriots, including Plato, were devastated.

Plato could only stop, and lay flat, and look into the empty sky.

And, an interventional sign-relation comes to be.

07/31/24

Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” (Part 1 of 26)

0023 The full title of the book before me is A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition: The Name of the Game (Anthem Press: London and New York). The book seems brief, but it packs a lot of material in sixteen short chapters… well… technically, an introduction, fourteen chapters and a conclusion.

0024 Professor Steve Fuller introduces the topic with the headline, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Post-Truth Condition”.  The headline is a tongue in cheek reference to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 intellectually pleasing masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove”.

Yet, one has only to trace Kubrick’s career trajectory to envision a conclusion beyond worry and love.  Kubrick dies in 1999 after wrapping up a homage to the will, titled “Eyes Wide Shut”.

0025 What matters is not whether something is true or false.

What matters is how something is decided.

The first statement concerns the intellect.  The second statement concerns the will.

0026 So, how is a matter to be decided?

Shall we call upon the experts?

Consider the issues of anxiety and affection.  An expert may reduce diverse and unsettling experiences to phenomena that can be observed and measured.  Then, the expert may build a model, using a specialized disciplinary language.  Next, with that model in hand, the expert will consider avenues to control the phenomena.

0027 For example, in a casual academic encounter at a university, I meet a needy and uncertain scholar who constantly nags her compatriot and (most likely) lover about the importance of managing her anxiety.  Of course, the university setting is full of people making odd demands, so I think nothing of it.  Later, I find out that her “husband” is a pharmaceutical salesman.

Indeed, she learned how to stop worrying about her field of inquiry and to love her husband with his briefcase full of Valium samples.

0028 So, is there a problem?

Fuller suggests that the “distance” between the layperson and the expert shrinks, because a layperson can become acquainted with the disciplinary language of any field of expertise well enough as to ask apparently intelligent questions. Yes, a question may be posed to the pharmaceutical salesman that goes like this, “I can see that your lover is addicted to Valium.  Could you tell me exactly the mechanism for how this drug operates on the love-centers of the brain?”

To which the expert in marketing scoffs, “The human brain has frontal, parietal and occipital lobes.  The human brain has a cerebellum.  These anatomical structures perform various specialized neurological functions.  Okay?  The human brain does not have a ‘love-center’.  What an ignorant question.”

0029 Indeed, the salesman goes on to testify before a legislative committee on the need to monitor and reduce the amount of medical disinformation on the internet.  When laypeople read books on the neurological underpinnings of sexual attraction and drug addiction, they think that they’ve learned something.  They think that they can ask revealing questions. So, they stupidly ask about “cerebral love centers”.

A law must be passed to deter this conduct.

0030 What does Fuller predict?

Just as during the Reformation, when Bibles printed in the layperson’s language opened the opportunity for any layperson to interpret sacred text, the current internet allows anyone who can read to become familiar with the language of any specialized discipline.  Then, that layperson may publish a podcast that asks… um… revealing questions about what experts are supposed to know best.

The cost of entry into the market is astonishing low. So, many experts argue that it is the responsibility of the state to increase that cost through regulation and censorship.

07/3/24

Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” (Part 26 of 26)

0238 Original sin?

0239 Francis Bacon (1561-1626 AD) lives at the start of the current Age of Ideas. He is a lawyer.  He accepts that lying is part of everyday life, especially in the courtroom.  He discovers that inquisitional modes of investigation force people to report in public what privately they do not hold.  In short, the inquisitorial mode of testing and observing and measuring produces what I call “phenomena”.  Courtroom phenomena do not reveal what a subject “privately” thinks.  Courtroom phenomena reveal what the subject is openly willing to disclose under inquisition.

What I privately think associates to the noumenon.

What I am willing to say associates to phenomena.

0240 What does this imply?

Just as a triumphalist scientist wants to replace the noumenon with a mathematical or mechanical model, the scientismist one wants to replace what I privately think with what the Positivist’s judgment ought to be, that is, an empirio-normative narrative.

0241 Okay, then does that mean, once I am properly credentialed, that I have bought into a lie?

Yes and no.

Yes, phenomena cannot objectify their noumenon.  If I do not testify to what I think, then I must be lying.  So, the very idea of phenomena entails, not necessarily a falsehood, but a deception.

No, phenomena can objectify a model substituting for the noumenon.  If I have successfully substituted an empirio-normative narrative for what I think, then I am always engaging in deception, even to myself.  Either that, or I am always telling the “truth” (that is, the narrative) that can be objectified as what I say.

Did I write that correctly?

0242 The Christian doctrine of Original Sin derives from a mythic account of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve are fashioned by God in a paradise near the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  They disobey God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Okay, let me tweak the tree’s label to “the fruit of the tree of formalized knowledge1b“.  Mythically, this tree occupies the center of the Edenic garden.

The problem is not disobedience, per se, but a capitulation to a post-truth condition imposed by… what else?… a speaking snake.  Serpents must speak, because they cannot talk with their hands.

0243 Needless to say, the serpent has a variety of narratives to offer.  The fruit will allow Eve to own its beauty (the capitalist model of value2b) as well as make her wise (the socialist model of value2b).  Eve sees an opportunity1c.  She makes an actionable judgment2c.  And, the relativist one3c notches up two successes2c, since Adam is along for the ride.

So, the Fall in the Garden of Eden has a lot to do with disobedience (to God, but obedience to the serpent) and lying (to oneself by adopting the narrative of the serpent as one’s own).

0244 Saint Augustine associates the Fall to a permanent weakness called “concupiscence”, which transliterates to “con (with) cupi (Cupid) scence (the state of being)”.  The state of being with Cupid is a little more entertaining than the state of being scammed by a speaking snake.  But, the post-truth condition for each is pretty much the same.

0245 Why?

The foundational potential of the post-truth condition is the will1a.

By definition, the foundational potential of the prior condition is the truth1a.

0246 What does this imply?

Well, if Adam and Eve associate to the start of our current Lebenswelt, as proposed in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace (as well as An Archaeology of the Fall, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), then the prior truth condition must associate to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Consequently, Adam and Eve may be historical, in so far as they are fairy tale figures associated with the start of the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia.  The Ubaid marks the start of history (that is, our current Lebenswelt).

0247 Of course, Saint Augustine does not know this.  So, he proposes that all humanity shares in the original sin of Adam and Eve through direct descent.  All humans are subject to original sin2c because Adam and Eve are the first parents.

This turns out to be a scientific proposal.  All humans are related to an original pair of humans.  This hypothesis is debunked by modern genetics.  There is no genetic bottleneck, as would be expected for a single-pair founding our species.

0248 So, Fuller points to a post-Augustine interpretation of our current Lebenswelt as a breeding ground for the post-truth condition.  We are expected, by our inquisitors, to say only what we are publicly willing to disclose, as if that is what we are thinking.  Whenever we live up to that expectation, we deceive ourselves.  At the same time, we notch up successes2c for the relativist one3c.

On top of that, our hard-won academic credentials encourage us to utter statements based on the latest empirio-normative narratives2c, as if they2c are what we are thinking2a.

0249 Razie Mah heartily agrees.  See his blog post for January 2, 2024.

0250 Perhaps, among other things, original sin involves defying the God of Creation by publicly mouthing the normative narratives of lesser deities, relativist ones3c, who put both the human intellect3a and will1a into perspective.

The sacrament of baptism plays a role in washing away that original sin, in so far as it introduces the infant to people who offer the story of the One True God, despite the fact that the story is unbelievable, according to all relativist one-heads.

0251 That said, Fuller’s genealogy of the post-truth condition points back to the very start of our current Lebenswelt.

Here is one vista that Fuller, as a guide to the post-truth condition, allows.

0252 Each person must decide which path to follow in the fourth Enlightenment Battle.

There are two paths.

One turns the person in to a certified mask that utters empirio-normative narratives.

One turns a person into a sign-tracker on a path that leads to a sign-vehicle that does not stand for what the empirio-normative judgment is telling me to think.  This is the path of metalepsis.  If Fuller is on target, the sign-tracker will discover an interventional sign-vehicle containing both a novel doctrine of original sin (for our current Lebenswelt) and a new appreciation of the human as an image of God (for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in).

In order to appreciate original justice, one must first respect original sin.

0253 Razie Mah offers three works that reconfigure the current empirio-schematic narrative of human evolution in a way that may assist sign-trackers.  These works are titled, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion”.  These works address the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the first singularity and our current Lebenswelt.

Indeed, these works begin where Fuller’s excellent guidebook concludes.

0254 My thanks to Steve Fuller for his daring, and brief, exposition of the contemporary post-truth condition.

07/1/24

Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition

0001 On January 2, 2024, Razie Mah posts a blog challenging a Catholic podcast to take up a quest.  Re-articulate the doctrine of original sin for the forthcoming age of triadic relations.

0002 The challenge rests on four points.

0003 Here is the first point.

In the 300s AD, Saint Augustine formulates the doctrine of original sin.  In the process, he inadvertently proposes a scientific hypothesis.  All humans descend from Adam and Eve as the original pair.

Of course, Augustine has no reason to question the Genesis text in this regard.  The Bible is sacred text, a witness to God’s action in our current Lebenswelt.  The science of genetics stands 1600 years in the future.

In the 1900s, geneticists definitively debunk the idea that all humans descend from an original pair, unless that founding pair lives over 500,000 years ago.

0004 This is not the only surprise.

In the 1800s and 1900s, archaeology discovers the historical depth of the ancient Near East.  Now, the stories of Adam and Eve are listed among other origin stories of this age and location.  All these stories (with the exception of the first chapter of Genesis) depict a recent creation of humanity, which does not make sense, since humans have been around for at least 200,000 years.

Why do all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East testify to a recent creation of humans?

0005 Indeed, if Augustine were around today, he would frame the doctrine of original sin within the paradigms of the current scientific age.  Adam and Eve are not the first Homo sapiens, even though the second chapter of Genesis depicts their unique manufacture. The stories of Adam and Eve are ancient Near East mythologies.  The artisanal fashioning of Adam and Eve, as well as the talking serpent, are correspondingly mythic.  Also, the stories recorded in Genesis 2.4 through 10 concern the same start of humanity that is suggested by all other written origin stories of the ancient Near East.

0006 The problem?

What is this business about a recent start to humanity?

Why can’t the origin stories of ancient civilizations envision times significantly earlier than their civilizational foundings?

The social and biological sciences have done their utmost to portray human evolution in a way that excludes the witness of the earliest civilizations.

Does human evolution come with a twist?

Of course, it does.

0007 Why does Augustine claim that Adam and Eve are the first humans?  The book of Genesis says so.  But, once one realizes that all the origin stories of the ancient Near East point to an event horizon beyond which civilization cannot see,and that this event horizon is recent (rather than in deep evolutionary time), then the stories of Adam and Eve turn into fairy tales that address the coming-to-be of our current Lebenswelt.

0008 Before our current Lebenswelt, there are no civilizations.  There is no unconstrained social complexity.  There are no experts, or sophists, or relativist ones, or post-graduate ones.

Before our current Lebenswelt, humans live in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, which is unquestionably different than our own civilized condition.  Social complexity is always constrained.  Social hierarchies seldom contain more levels than grand-parents, parents and children.  Maybe there are specialists, like a midwife or a shaman, but there are no institutions for education in “nursing” or “medicine”.

0009 What does this imply?

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

All the origin stories of the ancient Near East (except for Genesis One) testify to the beginning of our current Lebenswelt as the start of all humanity.  The Lebenswelt that we evolved in cannot be remembered.

The history of the ancient Near East runs deep.  Archaeologists point to the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, as the time and the place where the earliest unconstrained social complexity manifests.  Civilization is further potentiated during the Uruk archaeological period, when urbanism starts and social stratification becomes obvious.  Plus, uncanny inventions are made, such as the wheel and the use of the donkey for long-distance caravans.  Civilization is obvious at the start of the Sumerian Dynastic archaeological period.

0010 So, what do the stories of Adam and Eve depict?

In the 300s, Augustine gives a premodern answer and formulates the first doctrine of original sin.  Adam and Eve are the parents of all humans.  The taint of original sin passes from one generation to the next.

In the 2000s, Augustine’s followers will give a postmodern answer and formulate the second doctrine of original sin.  The stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales about the start of our current Lebenswelt.  Our current Lebenswelt begins with the first singularity.

0011 Here is the second point.

If Augustine’s hypothesis that Adam and Eve are the first humans fails, then is there another relevant scenario suggested before the modern age of ideas?

Thomas Aquinas offers one, when he reflects on the state of (the literal) Adam before the Fall.  Before the incident involving the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve live in a world of original justice.  Then, after the Fall, they live in a state of original sin.

Does the state of original justice correspond to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

What was life like during the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Did hominins live up to a recent slogan offered by the expert-driven, science-oriented and empirio-normative-dominated World Economic Forum, “You will own nothing and be happy?”

Our Paleolithic ancestors own nothing (compared to anyone in any civilization) and they are happy (in ways that we currently cannot imagine).

0012 For example, our hominin ancestors adapt to the transcendentals that are extolled by religious intellectuals and ridiculed by secular sophists.  It is as if the transcendentals are sign-vehicles that elicit adaptive sign-objects in the hominin mind, so our brains and bodies express a phenotype that serves as a sign-interpretant for those adaptive sign-objects.

Yes, our ancestors cannot label the transcendentals with spoken words.  Instead, they experience the transcendentals as adaptations.  Truth, beauty, nobility, temperance, strength, wisdom, and prudence do not have spoken labels.  They have moments of perfection in the hominin body and mind.

0013 Aquinas knows nothing about the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  So, he depicts Adam as something of a Greek philosopher, rather than someone who modern anthropologists might recognize: a hominin who owns nothing, works in teams, belongs to community, suffers ailments and danger, yet is unimaginably happy.  After all, our ancestors are who we evolved to be.

We are not so lucky.  

0014 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in holds secrets that contemporary evolutionary anthropologists cannot articulate using the disciplinary languages of the social sciences. (See Razie Mah’s blog for January through March, 2024, as well as Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), available at smashwords and other e-book venues).  Tomasello’s technical term, “joint attention”, is an explicit abstraction that describes hominins, working in teams, being productive and having fun.  It is a mystery how they do it.  Yet, that is what hominins evolve to do.

0015 Another big secret about the Lebenswelt that we evolved in is that, unlike modern anthropologists, our hominin ancestors cannot conduct explicit abstractions.  Our hominin ancestors cannot explicitly label things or events with spoken words.  Why?  They talk with their hands.  Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species, Homo sapiens.  Then, Homo sapiens practices a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk, for over 200,000 years before the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia appears, nominally 7,800 years ago, as the world’s first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

0016 Hand talk and hand-speech talk facilitate implicit abstraction.

Even when hand-talk becomes fully linguistic, explicit abstraction not possible.  Manual-brachial gesture-words are holistic.  The referent exists before the word.  The gestural-word pictures or points to its referent.

Speech-alone talk permits implicit abstraction.  It also facilitates explicit abstraction.

Spoken words label parts, distinct from the whole.  For example, the rotational motion that goes into making clay pots is explicitly abstracted with the invention of the pottery wheel.  Then, the pottery wheel is explicitly re-oriented to become the wheel of a cart.  

Spoken words exist before the referent.  Spoken words cannot picture or point to anything.  That is why the referents for spoken words exist as meanings, presences and messages in the realm of possibility.  How often do we create artifacts that validate the meaning, presence and message underlying spoken words?  How long do such validations last?

0017 The differences in the semiotics of hand talk and speech-alone talk are discussed in the opening chapters of the fictional drama, An Archaeology of the Fall.

0018 Point three follows points one and two, in so far as the mythic, as well as the historical, Adam and Eve stand at the event horizon beyond which the origin stories of the ancient Near East cannot see.  The stand at the very start of our current Lebenswelt.  They signify the first singularity.

See The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0019 The fourth and final point is this fool’s errand.  Razie Mah’s blogs for July through October 2024 offer a stumbling yet ambitious start to the quest posted on January 2, 2024.  

The sequence of presentation in the three-part e-book, Original Sin and The Post-Truth Condition, is not quite the same as the sequence of appearance in the blogs.  The blogs are sequenced for space and convenience.

The numbering of the points follows the list presented here.

0020 Fuller’s account of the post-truth condition is examined first.  This examination is foundational.

The results are applied to a book by American entrepreneur and politician, Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as a monograph on American propaganda by Michelle Stiles.

An essay by Josef Pieper on the abuse of language, reconceptualizes the application and serves starting point for a second formulation of the doctrine of original sin.  In the blog, the examination of Pieper appears between the examinations for Ramaswamy and Stiles.

By the end of Pieper’s work, a connection between the post-truth condition and original sin, deepens.

0021 But, that is not all.

An examination of a book on language and cognitive psychology shows that, in 2022, secular academics are yet to confront the hypothesis of the first singularity.  This examination stands as a warning that this hypothesis challenges both theology and science.  Theologians need to devise a post-Augustine formulation of the doctrine of original sin.  Scientists need to consider that (1) the human niche is the potential of triadic relations, as proposed in Razie Mah’s e-book The Human Niche, (2) our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, as dramatized in An Archaeology of the Fall, and (3) the semiotics of speech-alone talk is radically different than hand and hand-speech talk, as discussed in How To Define The Word “Religion”.

0022 The post-truth condition is a product of the semiotics of speech-alone talk.

The post-truth condition manifests original sin.

The end writes the beginning.