According to , an idea is transcendentally stupid if and only if it is trivial, arbitrary and

not motivated by the milieu in which they come to be: — StreetlightX

He implies that the discussion in another thread about the BIV hypothesis is transcendentally stupid:

Let's just say - because I have no desire to talk about brains in vats - that the idea for this thread did not develop in a vaccum. :eyes: — StreetlightX

I deny that the discussion is transcendentally stupid. In that thread, I explain that the technical and admittedly abstract and fantastic discussions about the BIV hypothesis are part of a long historical project to construct a worldview accepting only what there is some good reason to accept. The BIV hypothesis plays a prominent role in that tradition. In fact, I'd say that since Descartes hypotheses of that sort have been a vital part of the methodology of those engaged in such a project. But then, if so, discussions about BIVs are not "arbitrary" and they are "motivated by the milieu in which they came to be". That just leaves the charge that the discussion is trivial. If you think the project of building a worldview that there is good reason to believe is trivial then you will find BIV discussion trivial as well. For my part I don't find it trivial and so I conclude that such discussions are not transcendentally stupid.

This brings us more directly to the issue of transcendental stupidity itself. As has pointed out well, the notion is at least partly subjective. In calling an idea or discussion "stupid" in this sense, Streetlight wants to imply that his target is not worthy of discussion - that it is "trivial". There are two points worth noting here. First, that an idea is being interpreted in a way which is "not motivated by the milieu" which gave rise to the idea does not entail that the new interpretation is trivial and uninteresting. New interpretations can be interesting too, depending on audience. Second, and more importantly, what you find trivial, unimportant or not worth discussing I might find fascinating and vital, and vice versa. You might insist that I am just wrong - that there is an objective fact of the matter about what is worth discussing and my ideas are not. I find such a view quite hard to comprehend. What are the truth-makers of these facts, and how does one discover them? I do not see how calling an idea transcdentally stupid is anything more than a fancy way of saying that you do not like certain topics, and adding the - in my view fantastic - idea that the capacity to discuss topics which you don't like is woven into the nature of human thought itself.

Still, the idea of transcendental stupidity is itself an interesting idea.

PA

According to Alan Turing's mother, his early fascination with numbers had nothing to do with math. Before he could read, he would study the serial numbers on lamp posts.

Turing, incidentally, happens to be Zizek's own example of an idiot - an exemplary idiot, even - although he approaches the whole question with a different lens:

"There are two opposed types of stupidity. The first is the (occasionally) hyperintelligent subject who just doesn't "get it;' who understands a situation logically, but simply misses its hidden contextual rules. For example, when I first visited New York, a waiter at a cafe asked me: "How was your day?" Mistaking the phrase for a genuine question, I answered him truthfully ("l am dead tired, jetlagged, stressed out..." ), and he looked at me as if I were a complete idiot ... and he was right: this kind of stupidity is precisely that of an idiot. Alan Turing was an exemplary idiot: a man of extraordinary intelligence, but a proto-psychotic unable to process implicit contextual rules." (Zizek, Less Than Nothing).

My diagnosis is that Turing couldn't put himself in other people's shoes. He couldnt see the world through their eyes. And the ability to shift focus in that way is the height of irrationality. There's nothing intelligent about it, in fact it's the foundation of superstition.

It's also necessary for determining what proposition is being expressed. If John says: "That is illegal!" I have to put myself in his shoes and see what he sees in order to understand him.

It's a fine point, but it's important: propositions aren't context dependent. They can't be because multitudes can express the same proposition. Grasping what proposition was expressed does necessarily require familiarity with context of utterance.

propositions aren't context dependent — frank

Lol.

What's funny about that? My instinct is to just write you off as beyond help and walk away. But the internet doesn't allow full manifestation of context, so I'll wait a second.

Whereas the OP is criticizing the kind of stupidity that characterises metaphysics - well, I think that's what it's doing - another kind looms large in physics. Sabine Hossenfelder's new book, Lost in Maths, criticizes the tendency in modern physics to incorporate ideas that have no prospect of empirical validation purely because they are mathematically 'beautiful'. (I read elsewhere that those opposing are dismissed as the 'popperazi' :-) ) Review here.

Whereas the OP is criticizing the kind of stupidity that characterises metaphysics - well, I think that's what it's doing — Wayfarer

I thought that was what was going on too, but it seems I was mistaken. @StreetlightX does not think Plato (although "full of shit") was a transcendental idiot, for instance.

Whereas the OP is criticizing the kind of stupidity that characterises metaphysics - well, I think that's what it's doing — Wayfarer

It's not a matter of metaphysics! Metaphysics is awesome - if, as with anything, it is approached with caution and finesse.

Metaphysics is awesome — StreetlightX

Real gold. ;-)

:vomit:

:vomit: (It's catching!)

propositions aren't context dependent — frank

Lol. — StreetlightX

↪StreetlightX
What's funny about that? — frank

Well, you see, ... propositions are usually context-dependent. So much so that it's almost a law. More or less everything is context-dependent. So when you say "propositions aren't context-dependent", the most likely interpretation of what you say is that it's a joke, and so we laugh. That's what's funny. Your joke. :wink:

Metaphysics is awesome — StreetlightX

Real gold. ;-) — Wayfarer

Me too! I have always :heart:-ed metaphysics.

I deny that the discussion is transcendentally stupid. [...] I do not see how calling an idea transcendentally stupid is anything more than a fancy way of saying that you do not like certain topics, and adding the - in my view fantastic - idea that the capacity to discuss topics which you don't like is woven into the nature of human thought itself.

Still, the idea of transcendental stupidity is itself an interesting idea. — PossibleAaran

I have rarely seen such a well-worth-reading post. :up: Thank you.

Well, you see, ... propositions are usually context-dependent. So much so that it's almost a law. More or less everything is context-dependent. So when you say "propositions aren't context-dependent", the most likely interpretation of what you say is that it's a joke, and so we laugh. That's what's funny. Your joke. :wink: — Pattern-chaser

Consider the proposition that two is greater than one. Could you explain in what sense you take that proposition to be context dependent?

Propositions aren't context dependent. Any sort of realist metaphysics and therefore science and its practical arm, engineering, depend on the use of propositions. There's nothing stupid about being captivated by the useless unless one's life has become a complete waste of time. In that case a focus on practicality might be beneficial. Either that or suicide.

Consider the proposition that two is greater than one. Could you explain in what sense you take that proposition to be context dependent? — frank

In this case, the context is mathematics, and the axioms associated with number theory. :roll:

In this case, the context is mathematics, and the axioms associated with number theory. :roll:
15m — Pattern-chaser

"2" referred to the US. "1" referred to Australia. The greatness spoken of was moral fortitude.

Why did you think the context was math? Stick with me. I'll get you straightened out. :wink:

Dewey's writing is rather dense as well, I must say.

It's his views on education I thought of in reading the OP. That and his theory of logic, or inquiry.

As to Stoicism, from what I read Deleuze addresses it extensively. So, again judging only from what I read about him, did Foucault.

I think rather evident that interpreting transcendental stupidity as an indictment of metaphysics by @StreetlightX does not relate correctly to the terms he has used, and the intent stated in his posts. Really, only the term 'transcendental' and the quick example of Plato's metaphysical musings can really push us down this path of interpretation, if we are already on the defensive about the subject at hand.

Let's go back to the space delimited for transcendental stupidity. "One of Deleuze’s most prescient insights was that the major problem of thought is not error - mistakes, untruths, and falsities taken for facts - but triviality and arbitrariness." Would it make sense for StreetlightX to state that that the whole of ancient metaphysics must be condemned in this light? I don't think so, if only because triviality and arbitrariness doesn't come close to qualify properly the underlying attitude behind Plato's works, or really that of any other ancients. I agree that Plato is "full of shit", in the sense that it would very hard for me to find something to which I can give my unreserved assent in his entire body of works. But you couldn't properly qualify those falsehoods as "trivial", they were the first (available) attempts at laying down the grounds that would later allow for empirical knowledge to take over. They weren't trivial if only because they carried an extra weight as point of origin for all further philosophical discussions in the Western world.

If we expand a bit, we can question if any philosophical position, in the current academic curriculum and in their historical development, would fall under the charge. I think the closer we go to "pop philosophy", the closer we get to a point where this charge is effective. Stoicism and Scepticism in their ancient manifestations were serious enterprises, trying to come up with effective means of relating to a reality which had only moments earlier been brought up to consciousness (historically speaking). On the other hand, when we see nowadays young students adopting an affected yet unmotivated stoicism or scepticism, we are closer in my opinion to transcendental stupidity. There is a blindness to context at play here, or even a willful ignorance.

I think rather evident that interpreting transcendental stupidity as an indictment of metaphysics by StreetlightX does not relate correctly to the terms he has used, and the intent stated in his posts. Really, only the term 'transcendental' and the quick example of Plato's metaphysical musings can really push us down this path of interpretation, if we are already on the defensive about the subject at hand. — Akanthinos

Yep, none of this has anything to do with metaphysics in the slightest. That said it's worth reflecting on the specificity of the 'transcendental', which has basically nothing to do with Plato or even the 'transcendent' (despite people constantly and mistakenly mixing up the two entirely unrelated terms), and everything to do with Kant: for Kant the transcendental was that which guaranteed the necessity of thought - that is, the non-arbitrariness of thought; the transcendental was invoked and invented by Kant as a specifically anti-sceptical device which was meant to make sure that thought was always thought of that which could be known, and not just, well, anything whatsoever (figments of imagination, etc, etc).

Now while Kant is full of ambiguity on this point, one essential discovery was that there were experiences where this guarantee could be broken: experiences where thought did not conform of its objects, becoming untethered to them and generating 'transcendental illusions'; these illusions were generated internally by thought itself, precisely to the degree that were not anchored in an object which would lend these thoughts the force of necessity that would relate them to something concrete in the world. The notion of transcendental stupidity is simply an extension and renovation of this Kantian idea, one oriented not toward truth, as in Kant, but toward significance: a question of relating thought less to an 'object' than to a problem. So yeah, the question of metaphysics here is almost entirely irrelevant.

Thanks for the reply,

I'm still having a hard time expressing a proper delimitation for the concept. So, instead of being the negative of Kant's guarantee against the arbitrariness of truth determination, which I guess must translate in a priviledged access to the transcendental object by the philosopher?, we would be talking about the negative of a guarantee against the arbitrariness of meaning creation?

I have a rather base example that I wish to have you examine, if only to help me see if I understand the concept well enough to recognize it in a specific context. Lets say a discussion thread were to emerge on the subject of IQ differences amongst preconceived racial groups, its social impacts or remedies or whatever horrible thing sure to follow such a subject. Even if it were discussed however seriously or factually by standard generic users of TPF. Would it be correct to say that such a discussion, regardless of how it is conducted, would be essentially transcendantally stupid if only because the vast majority of users would not meet the prerequisite experiential baggage to speak meaningfully in that conversation? That we have no access to its object, or only a skewed, arbitrary one?

Did @Pseudonym leave? He's now has a 'guest' status.

We would be talking about the negative of a guarantee against the arbitrariness of meaning creation? — Akanthinos

Yeah, actually, this seems like a good way to put it: there is no guarantee that thought will hew closely to the significance of a problem.

Would it be correct to say that such a discussion, regardless of how it is conducted, would be essentially transcendantally stupid if only because the vast majority of users would not meet the prerequisite experiential baggage to speak meaningfully in that conversation?

I'd hesitate to answer this in the abstract (i.e. without an actual discussion to refer to), but to lay down a basic distinction, if it was just a case that people are not getting the facts right (they are unfamiliar with what the science says with respect to race and IQ, or whatever), then this would not be a case of transcednental stupidity, insofar as what's going wrong is going wrong on an empirical level; a minimally decent discussion would be at the very least getting the facts right (there's a similarly veined thread atm on the disabled and evolution - while I think the thread is pretty abhorrent, it is so largely because of its egregious misunderstanding/mischaracterization of evolution as a science: it's just flat-out stupid!).

On the other hand, there might be a question regarding the conceptual articulation between race and IQ: that is, what kind of concept is race, and what kind of concept is IQ, and what is the right way - if any - to think about their articulation such that one could draw meaningful conclusions about that articulation? Assuming one could draw a correlation between a 'race' and a statistical distribution of IQ, at what level should we pitch our conclusions: historical? biological? social? political? linguistic? Some mixture of these? And within what scope, and under what conditions? I don't know the answers, but I know that whatever they are, they cannot be taken for granted, and they need to be hashed out in order to be spoken about meaningfully at all.

With respect to this particular example, I think that transcendental stupidity would manifest when the presumptions behind however we articulate our concepts are unclear or unexamined; if the (conceptual) ramifications of the distinctions drawn are not properly set out, and contrasted with other sets of distinctions which might yield other insights, or even other, further sets of distinctions (when the differences the differences make cannot be specified). I suppose the key point is that transcendental stupidity operates at the level of concept formation: what concept is in play in such-and-such a discussion, and to what exigency does it respond? So while I don't think a discussion of race and IQ would be a priori 'transcendentally stupid', I suspect that given the general confusion that surrounds these concepts, it's more likely than not to skew that way.

He asked for his account to be disactivated.

Now while Kant is full of ambiguity on this point, one essential discovery was that there were experiences where this guarantee could be broken: experiences where thought did not conform of its objects, becoming untethered to them and generating 'transcendental illusions'; these illusions were generated internally by thought itself, precisely to the degree that were not anchored in an object which would lend these thoughts the force of necessity that would relate them to something concrete in the world. The notion of transcendental stupidity is simply an extension and renovation of this Kantian idea, one oriented not toward truth, as in Kant, but toward significance: a question of relating thought less to an 'object' than to a problem. So yeah, the question of metaphysics here is almost entirely irrelevant. — StreetlightX

It all looks like metaphysics to me. You have described a separation, a distinction between the object of thought and the good ("significance", what is valued in relation to intention)). If this separation is upheld then the object of thought (intelligible object) becomes an illusion, as transcendental stupidity sets in.

I've been reading Daniel Dor's The Instruction of Imagination and one of the things he says about language strikes me as appropriate to thought as well. For Dor, the traditional approach to language has been to treat communicative success as the norm; that is, the success of language is a something of a given, and what needs explaining is instances of failure: when language fails to communicate, we need to look for explanations why such failures occur. For Dor, this is exactly the wrong way to look at things. Instead, what needs to be explained are the instances of communicative success; the coordination of multiple elements that enable communication to take place successfully is both massive and foreboding, and it is communicative failure that is language's 'default setting', as it were. The fact that language can sometimes work is what instead demands explanation.

Thought, I want to say, is the same: the default setting of thought is simply transcendental stupidity; it simply spins out connections and associations, connecting like with unlike, confusing kinds of some types with kinds of another. What needs to be explained is how in the world thought actually sometimes generates results; how it gains traction unto the things it ostensibly talks about. This is what the Miguel de Beistegui quote that I parenthetically included in the OP is about: "It is only by extracting itself from its own torpor that thought can cease to be stupid”; Transcendental stupidity is the native environment of thought, and it takes a great deal of effort to set it aside. The fact that thought sometimes... well, thinks, is a miracle at all.

(This is a kind of inversion of Kant, or at least the account of Kant I sketched previously).

The fact that language can sometimes work is what instead demands explanation. — StreetlightX

What is the criteria for “works” though? Could an output of transcendental stupidity be said to “work”?

Minimally, that it deals with a distinction that makes a difference (or, ideally, makes a distinction that ramifies so as to make cascading series of other 'distinctions that make further differences') : where 'makes a difference' must be defined pragmatically with respect to whatever problem is at hand (if want to fix the car, I need to know what is and is not relevant with respect to what might be causing the car not starting: the color of the car probably doesn't matter; that its drive chain seems to have broken into two does).

So transcendental stupidity is simply that condition in which we cannot or do not make the relevant distinctions, where the color of the car and its broken drive chain are said to belong to the same category of things which must be addressed (in order to make the car work again). TS is the condition under which thought is not subject to, or is not cognizant of, a constraint which would render it effective. Hence Deleuze's constant refrain that all thought only ever takes place under the sign of an encounter which ultimately forces it to think, and that thought, 'in-itself' is fundamentally stupid (or resides in a 'torpor').

Thought, to the degree that it can think anything it wants without motivation, is always in danger of triviality, which cannot simply be corrected for by providing more facts and better resources. It is this internal and intrinsic danger of thought that Deleuze dubbed ‘stupidity’: far from being a lack of intelligence, stupidity is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent: — StreetlightX

I think you're on the right track in shifting the focus to the nature of thought. I'm not fond of the words "stupidity" and "triviality" as they seem to take us back towards the content of thought, but I really like a focus on "conditions inherent to the very structure of all thought".

Moreover, if attention is not properly paid to this inherent structure of thought, much of what we say and think will not merely be wrong, but much worse - transcendentally stupid. — StreetlightX

Yes. Here's an example of how not paying attention to the nature of thought can cause us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

For thousands of years people have been trying to find the philosophy that will bring unity and peace. Some of these philosophies have been religious like Christianity, while others have been secular like Marxism. That is, the search for unity and peace has typically (but not always) taken place within the content of thought.

And it has never worked. As example, both Christianity and Marxism have been plagued with internal division and conflict. In fact, every ideology that's ever been invented seems to inevitably subdivide in to warring internal factions. The universality of this phenomena is a very useful clue trying to tell us that the peace and unity we're looking for can not be found in philosophies, in the content of thought.

If we see that a process of conceptual division is a "condition inherent to the very structure of all thought" it should become clear that we're never going to find unity using a medium that operates by a process of division.

But, if we fail to examine the nature of thought, we will likely continue riding the eternal hamster wheel of philosophy in the pointless search for the "one true way" ideas that will deliver us from conflict.

I would rephrase this statement...

"stupidity is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent"

to this....

"division is a condition inherent to the very structure of all thought, even of the most intelligent"

Imho, the word "stupidity" is too closely tied to the content of thought to be useful here.