Regarding a new humanism

[typondis]

What does anyone think of this?

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge216.html#sp

To sum up. A new humanism should begin with a modesty cure, perhaps by abjuring the very arrogant concept of humanism, which places the human animal as the central reference point for all of existence. A new humanism, compatible with the sensitivity of metaphysics, cannot turn its back on science. Naturally, it's not a question of falling into the pseudoscientific obscurantism which Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont denounced in their well-known book, Intellectual Imposters. There's no need to use scientific jargon when it doesn't pertain. Nor is there cause to fall into radical epistemological relativism (which can result from a poor digestion of works by Kuhn and Feyerabend), nor to believe science to be mere narrative or nothing but social construct. Nor should we look for an absurd synthesis between Science and Mysticism. Humanism's received task is more deferential toward the autonomy of science: To truly understand our most fundamental conditionings; to ensure that scientific paradigms truly fertilize philosophical and even literary discourse.

[blobru]

precis:

... A new humanism should... [not place] the human animal [at the center] of existence {a bunch more stuff "a new humanism" shouldn't do} [but instead] truly understand our most fundamental conditionings; to ensure that scientific paradigms truly fertilize philosophical and even literary discourse.

:confused:

He's sure doing a lot of fly-by name-dropping and big picture-framing in the linked op-ed, but not saying very much. (Never a good sign when an intellectual has limited space and still can't expand his thoughts to fill it without recapitulating Western thought in toto.)

Ok, let's see what this egger's on about...

"A new humanism should... [not place] the human animal [at the center] of existence"
-- Interesting. Where should it go then?

"[but instead] truly understand our most fundamental conditionings;"
-- Conditionings? Sounds like behaviorism. You want humanists to study behaviorism. Fine.

"to ensure that scientific paradigms"
-- Scientific 'paradigms'? Ways of thinking. You want humanists to think more like scientists? That's cool.

"truly fertilize philosophical and even literary discourse."
-- Humanists should think more like scientists when they talk about ideas and books. Well, if you say so...

I guess he's saying -- at this stage in humanism -- that Man, no longer the center of existence, must share the stage with Nature (which science reveals); just as Man originally elbowed God out of the way at the start of humanism. I don't know that there aren't humanists who already think this way; he wants it to be a core tenet of the ilk. It's never a bad thing for anyone to learn some science; but redefining something always risks confusing it with something else; I'll leave it to the humanists to weigh in whether he's making sense or much ado about nothing.

[Dancing David]

Humanism is what it is, gosh there sure are a lot of humble psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists all over the world. Slowly eroding the facade of superstition everyday.

[typondis]

Did you two notice the link above the part quoted (quote, I was thinking, being rather obvious by the italics), containing the whole of the article?

[blobru]

Did you two notice the link above the part quoted (quote, I was thinking, being rather obvious by the italics), containing the whole of the article?

Yeah, I read the whole article, but I thought the paragraph you excerpted summed it up nicely; the rest was mostly standard philosophical background; though skimming it again, this proposal for "new humanism" caught my eye:
I believe, therefore, that a new humanism should adopt certain linguistic reforms. Take, for example, the extent to which we are today still conditioned by the old Aristotelian construct of subject, verb and predicate, which also forms the Cartesian model of subject-object cognition. This convention is responsible—and has been denounced by Buddha and David Hume alike—for committing the fallacy of believing in the mind's existence when the only thing we can be certain of is the existence of mental acts.

That's a jot out there, eh? No more I see this, you know that, they believe the other; instead something like Heidegger's this-seeing-here, that-knowing-there, other-believing-everywhere. It's a fun suggestion to toy with maybe, to speculate whether language and its subject/object frame leads us astray, but I can't take it too seriously. Besides, most academics have a hard enough time writing a plain sentence as it is -- isn't encouraging them to abandon classical grammar for "who-knows-what" a bit like sending the ivory tower into outer space!? :p

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think Felix Guattari summed it up nicely:


We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. A machinic assemblage, through its diverse components, extracts its consistency by crossing ontological thresholds, non-linear thresholds of irreversibility, ontological and phylogenetic thresholds, creative thresholds of heterogenesis and autopoiesis. The notion of scale needs to be expanded to consider fractal symmetries in ontological terms.

Sorry, my Postmodern alarm is ringing wildly.

~~ Paul

[Zep]

You just made that up, didn't you, Paul! :boggled:

[Dancing David]

There's no need to use scientific jargon when it doesn't pertain.

That depends on the jargon, if there are silly people who want to use terms like 'unconscious', 'mind', 'consciousness', 'instinct', 'common sense', 'obvious' and 'humanism', then it is crucial that they use clear and unambigous language rather than the vague ribric mentioned above. You can hide a lot of bullflop under those rubrics, it is better to use the language of clarity and science than a bunch of modern day mystical garbage.

Take flower, yes it is useful to call something by it's 'common' name. If the two people involved have agreed upon the common name but if I call something 'echinacea' it is much clearer than if I call it 'coneflower'.