Ideología y fenomenología: unidos por el azar

Mi Ideología? Eso es para el vulgo, demagogia. Los problemas de un gobierno y de un estado no responden a soluciones retóricas. Aunque pensándolo más detenidamente, si bien la ideología tiene poco que decir sobre problemas aislados sí tiene algo que decir sobre el acumulado de estos los cuales exigen un conjunto de soluciones en sinergía y ajustadas a un ideal de sociedad. Curiosamente, problemas que en principio eran aislados ahora tienen soluciones correlacionadas por la simple razón de sus implicaciones ideológicas v.g. republicanos y demócratas tienen diferentes opiniones sobre la solución del tráfico vehicular. Luego la filosofía política (subconjunto este dentro del conjunto de vertientes políticas) no solo responde a la necesidad de solucionar problemas correlacionados sino también termina por correlacionar soluciones a problemas otrora aislados. Se puede decir que la ideología y su praxis tienen como fin dar significado al universo epifenoménico. La naturaleza abierta y por ende absurda del tributo es el mejor ejemplo de esto: cuando el ministro de Hacienda británico Gladstone interrogó a Faraday sobre la utilidad práctica de la energía eléctrica este contestó "Sir, un día podrá usted gravarla con impuestos".

Does all beauty calls for intervention?

If romanticism was a champion of contemplative beauty, modernity and in particular materialism provided its criticism. It showed that it often hides power relations as in the contemplation of god mediated by ecclesiastic rituals. Indeed, the geography of production and consumption, even for beauty, is a geography of power. But are all of these relations preceded by asymmetric power? Does romantic attraction resembles pollen flowers or, instead, carnivorous plants? Biological relations are open to interpretation and evolution; consumption is yet another form of production. If the imperative of materialism is to become god –the ultimate producer–, even god gave away his power over our will in order to contemplate its creation. What is the meaning of production? isn't contemplation? In order to contemplate you have to give away, you have to jump into the pit, you have to give your life or part of it to the others. If all beauty calls for intervention, what is then the intervention for which the dawn is calling upon us? for the mythological believer is god, for the materialist perhaps an hegemonic narrative. But beyond gods and will for power? Does other animals feel contemplative beauty? Is contemplative beauty a recent evolutionary feature? Perhaps contemplative beauty is very tied to the emergence of what we call conscience. Contemplative beauty and contemplative memory (not self-critical memory which is an intervention) might share a common evolutionary origin. They both share this seemingly mysterious absence of intervention call. Let me just give an hypothetical and poetical answer. I believe the call is upon life; to survive to see another dawn, to compensate alienated struggle with epic memories. In the end alienation is the key word, nature has provided us with absurd beauty in order for us to accept an alienated life. It is absurd because it has to be open to the unreachable will and challenges of those systems which produce beauty and consume power.

PD. A bit delusional.

Revisiting faith from cyberspace

We are close to the time when the access to internet will be installed in our brain with no interface at sight. To some extent this is just a superficial step but it illustrates the relation between the virtual and the self. Indeed, we can revisit the notion of faith from the perspective of virtual reality. Faith could be understood as the ability of your brain to access that virtual reality created by mythology. And mythology can now be seen as something as real as the net. Religious battles can be compared to battles between social networks.

Promiscuous positivism

There is not such a thing as symbolic causation. This is important because it poses a hard limitation on Freud's  theory of the psyche. Indeed, the domain of symbols, the realm of culture has its own effective phenomenology just as classical physics with regards to quantum mechanics. Perhaps back In Freud's time, symbolic causation seemed to be the right step to introduce positivism into psychology. But know we know better. The failure was not the use of causalism nor the use of symbolism but their combination. They belong to different realms. Together, both are diminished; symbols are reduced to predictable objects while causalism becomes rhetorics. It is true that the cognitive dualism limits the metaphysical (self)conception of the mind (the psyche and eventually the culture) but the kind of causation which is implied by the physical side of this dualism is not of a symbolic nature. Symbols only belong to the mind; the substantiality of physics know no symbols.

Critical systems: from neurons to leaders

I always wondered why the regenerative process of the brain was not as efficient as for other tissues. There was certainly a mystical feeling about way the most precious and philosophical organ of our body was so vulnerable. I think I might have an hypothesis. This hypothesis might also claim and provide a way to seize the programmed and discriminate value which society assigns to individuals. My starting point is the naive but not totally wrong assertion that disposable components are by definition of low "value". Now at this point it is important to distinguish between transcendent and immanent components. I conceive these kantian categories as comparative adjectives: one emphasizing the opposite condition of the other. I will use the proper name (say George) as an epitome for immanent condition (the condition of being George). And as transcendent condition every adjective which I pose in the proper name (George is an electrical engineer). The fact that these are comparative adjectives can be shown by noting that being an electrical engineer is an immanent condition with respect to the upper category of engineers. Now I shall continue with my discussion about the value of humans and other components inside evolutionary systems (or Complex Adaptive Systems CAS). My naive assertion should then be understood as a claim that CAS have an internal classificatory system where transcendent and immanent are adjectives. Furthermore I would add that although at a global level (in evolutionary space-time) CAS are able to reach the sense of comparative adjectives (the proof is immanent), at a local level the superlative version of the adjective takes place. In between the local and the global I think the CAS has a sort of spectrum where in one pole assigns the components which are highly transcendent and in the other pole those which are highly immanent. But this spectrum (basically a line joining to points which I call "poles") have a dynamic size which varies according to the different subsystems of the CAS (e.g. the spectrum of the muscle tissue should greater than that of the brain). My claim (or rather hermeneutic proposal) is that what I call critical subsystems are characterized by a very short distance between the transcendent and immanent poles. It is precisely for that reason that when we address the problem of cognition there is a difficulty in separating those features which are immanent from those which are transcendent, and this should happen in any other critical subsystem. At this point you, if you have read carefully, you may say my reasoning is tautological. It is, but the whole effort is worth it once we try to connect the other notions of critical systems with the former. In the physical or computer science community the discussion is rather taken in terms of immanent components which are very important in the functioning the whole CAS. Implicitly they are working in the singularity where transcendent (ness) and immanent (ness) are indistinguishable. They also have purely transcendent approaches which they take care of calling abstract theory. But my claim is that there are CAS for which there is an interplay between both categories with concrete dynamical manifestations. This reasoning might seem complicated but the example are rather simple (this might be a warning about the usefulness my extra conceptualization). The discriminate regenerative regime of the body tissue is my favorite, but take for example society.    It is not fortuitous the difficulty in separating the leader ethos from that of the institutions they lead. There are times where some people say that a leader threats to replace an institution while other people say that the leader has become an institution. My reflection doesn't say who is right (but perhaps says who is IN the right), but it provides a broader context to this conflict. The leader can only become an institution to the extent that we pursue a critical system where transcendent and immanent become one. My personal view is that, indeed, critical subsystems are an interesting evolutionary mechanism (the brain is cool!), but I think it is wise for nature to have a minimal robusticity mechanism even for critical systems and this is done not only by creating an external shield but by leaving a small but finite distance between the pole of transcendent an immanent components.

Rationalism in Literature

The seemingly recent in literary circles that can be briefed as an emphasis on the local literature not only as way to reaffirm the local but as a way to achieve true universals, is an achievement of no minor importance. Is not mild conciliation of modernity with postmodernity; it is the epistemological (re)discovery of true universals in the realm of humanities.

Producción de distinción versus producción de universal (Bosquejo)

Se trata de (re)introducir dos clases generales de producción que pueden ser de gran utilidad analítica: la "distinción" y "el universal" como categorías de producción. Desde esta perspectiva, la producción estética y "material" (en su acepción marxista) son solo epítomes de la producción de distinción y universal, respectivamente. En particular podemos distinguir entre el arte estético y el arte clásico; el primero aspira a la distinción mientras que el segundo aspira al valor (belleza?) universal. La noción de universal permite esclarecer la naturaleza de "lo material". Especialmente después de la incursión del marxismo en el lenguaje, "lo material" se convirtió en sinónimo de "lo real" con lo que implicitamente se afirma que todo lo "inmaterial" es irreal. Me permito conjeturar que dentro del criterio marxista, el epítome de lo inmateral lo fueron –y quizás siguen siendo– las categorías clásicas de arte y filosofía. Para el marxismo –acaso existe cosa tal?– es inconcebible la coexistencia de subjetivos y universales dentro del contexto inmaterial. Solo lo material es universal (y viceversa), todo lo demás es un mecanismo de distinción (y no cualquiera sino de clase), un mecanismo hegemónico. Con este movimiento se deja por fuera cualquier posibilidad de universales inmateriales ya sea dentro del campo de la belleza o del conocimiento. De la misma forma en que podemos recuperar la diferencia entre lo bello y lo estético desde la distinción y lo universal, así mismo podemos rescatar la noción de material al servicio de lo universal y al servicio de la distinción. Como ejemplos podríamos citar al alimento y al dinero, respectivamente (no deja pues de ser curioso por no decir trágico que el capitalismo totalitario se empeñe en hacer del alimento un material de distinción).