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Monday, October 11, 2004
METAPHYSICS, ETC...
Taking a break from my normal lamentations on life, the universe, and everybody...
How is it that I can sign up for something seemingly innocuous (in this case, a Fundamentals of GIS seminar) and end up having to wrestle with Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity, metaphysics, etc...?
Idealism, as defined by Edward Abbey, is "..the absurd vanity of metaphysicians who like to imagine that they create the world by thinking about it."
Me: Idealism: Nothing could be more ridiculous. Except, of course, for Mormonism. Or Islam. Or Christianity.
The final question on the philosophy final: "Provide an argument, drawing on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, that the the chair in the front of the room exists."
Response: "What chair?"
It is, in practice, impossible to be an idealist, isn't it? Existence is created within the mind, an idealist says. Following that, your hunger, your need for sleep, for water...all inventions of the mind...ignore them, then...they don't really exist. We'll see whose paradigms shift first. I will give you what in my mind seems to be about 4 revolutions of what my mind has termed, The Earth.
Edward Abbey: "Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality. God damn it!"
...Abbey again: "The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality."
...and: "I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace...The rest is only hearsay."
...and: "The very poor are strictly materialistic. It takes money to be a mystic." [or idealist]
..also: "Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime."
..again: "The basic question is this: Why should anything exist? Nothing would be tidier."
..one more: "Beware the writer who always encloses the word reality in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you."
...finally: "It may be true that my desk here is really "nothing but" a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine."
While I'm at it, Edward Abbey on God and guns:
"I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere."
"Fire lookout, 1400 hours, ferocious lightning storm. Me and God. That fucker is trying to get me again, God damn him. But I got me old .357..."
"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues."
Talking about idealism in a paper concerning the foundations of GIS is a non-sequitur...You might as well be working out the square root of -1. Unless we're talking about GIS for psychology. But I don't believe in psychology, anyway.
Sorry to get all empirical. Won't happen again.
-m
Taking a break from my normal lamentations on life, the universe, and everybody...
How is it that I can sign up for something seemingly innocuous (in this case, a Fundamentals of GIS seminar) and end up having to wrestle with Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity, metaphysics, etc...?
Idealism, as defined by Edward Abbey, is "..the absurd vanity of metaphysicians who like to imagine that they create the world by thinking about it."
Me: Idealism: Nothing could be more ridiculous. Except, of course, for Mormonism. Or Islam. Or Christianity.
The final question on the philosophy final: "Provide an argument, drawing on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, that the the chair in the front of the room exists."
Response: "What chair?"
It is, in practice, impossible to be an idealist, isn't it? Existence is created within the mind, an idealist says. Following that, your hunger, your need for sleep, for water...all inventions of the mind...ignore them, then...they don't really exist. We'll see whose paradigms shift first. I will give you what in my mind seems to be about 4 revolutions of what my mind has termed, The Earth.
Edward Abbey: "Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality. God damn it!"
...Abbey again: "The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality."
...and: "I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace...The rest is only hearsay."
...and: "The very poor are strictly materialistic. It takes money to be a mystic." [or idealist]
..also: "Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime."
..again: "The basic question is this: Why should anything exist? Nothing would be tidier."
..one more: "Beware the writer who always encloses the word reality in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you."
...finally: "It may be true that my desk here is really "nothing but" a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine."
While I'm at it, Edward Abbey on God and guns:
"I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere."
"Fire lookout, 1400 hours, ferocious lightning storm. Me and God. That fucker is trying to get me again, God damn him. But I got me old .357..."
"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues."
Talking about idealism in a paper concerning the foundations of GIS is a non-sequitur...You might as well be working out the square root of -1. Unless we're talking about GIS for psychology. But I don't believe in psychology, anyway.
Sorry to get all empirical. Won't happen again.
-m
Comments:
Emperical? You couldn't get more further away from structuralism if you tried on that post! This, my friend, was deconstructionism in an almost pure form. Did you know that Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstructionism died on Saturday? Is that was spawned this. (If you don't know what I am talking about, then the coincidence will freak me out.)
You should try to advance a discussion in your GIS seminar about deconstructing the use of this and other technologies actually causing society to revert, rather than advance.
Then you have to find differANCE, and then trace it or something.
Actually, I have no idea what I am talking about, but neither did Jacques Derrida. He was just making this stuff up.
--gh
You should try to advance a discussion in your GIS seminar about deconstructing the use of this and other technologies actually causing society to revert, rather than advance.
Then you have to find differANCE, and then trace it or something.
Actually, I have no idea what I am talking about, but neither did Jacques Derrida. He was just making this stuff up.
--gh
Maybe I should have said, "Sorry for getting all materialistic." I wasn't attempting any particular style of rejection...mostly just rejecting idealism on the basis that it's stupid and impracticable and/or intractable..and doing it in a childish, derisive manner. But I think empiricism can work...deriving knowledge from experience. See the Abbey quote on his desk...or the guy from The Matrix..."I know this steak isn't real...but I don't care.."
I didn't know Derrida died (feel free to freak out now). For some reason, all of the papers we've read for my Foundations of GIS class so far have contained words like ontology, historical hermeneutics, epistemology, metaphysics, idealism, relativism, and lots of other words I've forgotten since my philosophy class from Dr. Field at NWMSU. The one today was talking about how GIS is typically used in a materialistic metaphysic. Duh! A true idealist doesn't even believe GIS exists...so what's the point? That's like saying location theory doesn't take into account the paradigm suggested by the Flat Earth Society.
My knowledge of philosophic thought is rusty and lacking horsepower. I limp along, as well as possible.
When I finally finish school, maybe I'll have the time to start learning stuff. This site (http://www.iep.utm.edu/) has lots of good stuff on philosophy.
-m
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I didn't know Derrida died (feel free to freak out now). For some reason, all of the papers we've read for my Foundations of GIS class so far have contained words like ontology, historical hermeneutics, epistemology, metaphysics, idealism, relativism, and lots of other words I've forgotten since my philosophy class from Dr. Field at NWMSU. The one today was talking about how GIS is typically used in a materialistic metaphysic. Duh! A true idealist doesn't even believe GIS exists...so what's the point? That's like saying location theory doesn't take into account the paradigm suggested by the Flat Earth Society.
My knowledge of philosophic thought is rusty and lacking horsepower. I limp along, as well as possible.
When I finally finish school, maybe I'll have the time to start learning stuff. This site (http://www.iep.utm.edu/) has lots of good stuff on philosophy.
-m
