Category Archives: Reverberations of the Fall

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.