The Difficulty of Presentations (& Writing)

A tale of many iterations

Those of you reading this may or may not be aware of the “Monkey Talk.”
For those not in the know, the ‘Monkey Talk’ was a presentation I intended to present for the philosophy department at our weekly meetings. I didn’t complete it, however put it off until our retreat, I didn’t complete it then either. Then, I intended to present it for a philosophy reading group and again did not complete it. There were a few other occasions where I intended to complete it but didn’t. However, this is not the whole story either as each time I intended to complete it, the scope and theme of the presentation changed a little. A bit like Chinese whispers.

So, the original scope and theme was really just a response to a meta ethics question. “Where do ethics come from?” At the time I was a little obsessed with this one particular video of monkeys being experimented on, which involved monkeys being paid in different fruits for their labour. Both prefer grape, but one was given a grape and the other a cucumber. The monkey given the cucumber goes apeshit (hah) indicating that they are aware at least they are being treated unfairly. There’s another experiment similar to this, except it is two monkeys cooperating to get snacks out of a thing. In this experiment, the monkeys are separated, one with the thingie and the other with the means of retrieving the snacks. They have to cooperate to get the snacks out, however the first monkey could easily hoard all the snacks without danger of repercussion from the other. In the end they cooperate and both share the spoils fairly.

The video in question":

Where did I go from here

So what did I intend to do with this information? My idea was something about fairness being a natural starting point for ethics. Obviously humans are different from monkeys, but I thought this was a fun thing to extrapolate on and seems somewhat in line with at least Schopenhauer’s “Loving kindness” which he extrapolates from this idea of recognition of others suffering. He extends this not just to other humans but all animals, as all animals are capable of suffering. Naturally we do not wish to see others suffer, so animals (including humans) are worthy of compassion. This seems a nice view and I quickly attached to it. I suppose there are caveats but this as a basis for morality is not problematic at all.

Solid so far. But I wasn’t happy with just concluding it like this, basis of morality + Monkey video doesn’t really make for that convincing or interesting of a presentation I thought. And it definitely wouldn’t beat ‘The Good System’ in terms of funniness. So I figured adding more stuff to it would be good. Of course this meant I missed the first deadline, unable to complete in time for the student seminar we move to the next stage.

Introducing Rousseau and The Philosophy of Property

At some point I even dipped into Proudhon’s ‘What is Property’ in which he states “Property is Theft” (Kinda true, at least given some context). Anyway, Rousseau I essentially skimmed. I think the work of his I was most consistent with reading was ‘Discourse on Inequality’ which at some point I got a bit lost in my readings because I accidentally started reading his one on Science thinking it was the Inequality one and then thinking “Why isn’t he talking about inequality?” Same for ‘The Social Contract’ where I was hoping for some more fun insights about property or something. Anyway, what he does have to say about property and society more generally is fun and the way he approaches topics like language is very odd. Essentially talking about language to talk about how our view of the world is shaped toward individualism or something. Can’t remember lol.

His view of history is very entertaining, particularly about the first person to claim a piece of land being a piece of shit. Also first people to wear clothes turning clothes into a necessity. And this makes sense, people who started to wear clothes then moved into climates where clothes were necessary to survive causing further necessity to extract resources from the environment for the purpose of clothing themselves. Etc. It’s an interesting view of history that isn’t based on observed things or even doing primary sources and secondary sources searching. It’s history from an armchair and that is so fun. “Here’s how I think history happened” and it more or less being true.

Anyway, this skim of Proudhon and Rousseau led to me thinking about ideology and how it seems as if certain groups take for granted things about property and so on. There was a thought at the time about my the neighbour next door who had lived there most if not all their life. I can’t remember the exact thought but it was something about traditional housing values, that being multi generational homes vs the more transient rental nature of the younger generations. Also I suppose just leading to thoughts about private vs real property.

Anyway at this point the talk was morphing into something more than just fairness but inequality around housing prompted by thoughts about Rousseau and the comparison between my flat and my neighbour.

Call back to The Philosophy House

Another thing happened around this point where Will and I were coming up with analogies for philosophical systems. I think the basis for this discussion at least from my side was the type of Epistemic system that Descartes uses which is called ‘Foundationalism.’ Epistemology or epistemic systems are systems of knowledge, foundationalism is a system of knowlkedge where you have a few foundational beliefs and you grow your knowledge from there. In the case of Descartes, ‘I exist’ is his foundational belief. This is a belief that requires no further reference as it is self evidential, simply by thinking you can know that you exist. Not necessarily your physical body and all that, but you as your mind exist at the very least.

Anyway, I figure this foundation stuff and knowledge webs and whatever else sound like actual objects that exist. I thought the imagery was fun so came up with this idea of a kind of ‘Philosophy House.’ Which obviously is very literal. The example Will provided was instead of a watch, your watch (Philosophy) is meant to be used as a tool to provide insights or intuitions about different things etc.

The Philosophy House, is a house. Each part of this house provides a different function. I thought Epistemology would be good as the foundations of the house, that seemed pretty predictable. I don’t really know any systems off the top of the dome aside from Foundationalism, at least by name anyway lol. I’m not an Epistemologist as you might be able to tell. Next I came up with a bunch of ideas for what constituted the walls, the roof, the front door (lol), the kitchen, the lounge, the bedroom (?), the pot on the stove, and the food.

The kitchen I believe was meta ethics, the pot on the stove was ethics, and the food was political philosophy. As for most of the other things I can’t remember. I think the walls were metaphysics? The lounge was Aesthetics but beyond those examples I can’t quite remember. My idea with the house was just a fun little thing, I can’t remember its purpose aside from being like a colour in book but with philosophy and purely as part of my imagination. Maybe imagination was the roof? Who knows. This was a few years ago now.

This was intended to be part of a presentation, would make for a great pairing with ‘The Good System.’ Two very lighthearted presentations. In any case thoughts like these come and go and become a fun little distraction from other work like my thesis, or the monkey talk. In fact this section itself is a distraction from the current post about the monkey talk.

Upside down dialectics

In addition to trying to write my thesis, trying to complete the monkey talk and the distraction of The Philosophy House; I had started entering the office with a lot of thoughts regarding different things. I would enter the room and whoever was there would probably say “How are you?” To which I would reply whatever conclusion I had come to during my walk to the office such as “Bisexuals don’t exist.” A classic.

Or something else similarly controversial if not provided any premises and not being aware of my own views. If it had been any other group of people I would probably have been in a lot of trouble, not because they agree with the statement but simply because they know I don’t mean it in the same sense others who would say such a thing might. It was really just an opening to a conversation about how no categories exist at all. Which obviously depending on who would say such a thing means different things. I just mean that social categories are a bit ridiculous, and that language is often used for the purpose of legislating against certain behaviors.

I suppose though in a similar way to Rousseau with his idea of the first person claiming land, the first person to name a behaviour has doomed us to a world in which that behaviour can be legislated or acted against. A world without “Sex” would probably have more of it lol. But then at the same time there is obviously a benefit to actions being named, I just don’t see value in social categories unless we are talking about class. In some weird way I suppose I am kinda arguing for social blindness through language. Those categories socially exist and can’t be ignored as they create forms of inequality through various means.

Point of this section is I love getting distracted with funny arguments when I am meant to be doing other things, such as in the office, or even now when I am not writing, reading, or gymming.

The biggest distractions post-thesis

I went through two relationships, started practicing Judo, got serious with the gym, started learning guitar again, started bouldering, went through some jobs and one particularly nasty boss. The biggest distraction now is power-lifting, at least in terms of what takes up most of my energy. Programming for power-lifting actually took a little while to figure out even though it seems like it should be straightforward.

In any case, the great thing about power-lifting is the long rest times between working sets. 3-5 minutes or so gives you plenty of time to read. So that’s what I’ve been doing, which has somewhat prompted this substack post. This kinda turned into a blog-post, anyway here’s some more philosophy

Also a thing on eternal recurrence and some other stuff

Seeing as writing seems to be inherently iterative, I guess a little like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence but instead for ideas and refinement of those ideas. I was thinking of this in an analogy kinda way, an idea can be quite "blunt" the first time it is formed. Blunt in the sense that it is not refined by further knowledge, instead it comes to mind thanks to recognizing patterns and imagining something new that comes from that recognition. It's transformative the first time you have a new idea and changes how you view the world and its relations. This is entirely new and exciting.

However, on return to these new ideas and through further refinement often in the form of later on adding new information and editing out any aspects of the idea which was once loose and instead making them conceptually "tight" the excitement fades and the fun of creating is lost. It is nothing but stale and irritating, even open to the theft of those interested only in self help or corporatising elements. Even Marx has been appropriated by these types, despite his philosophy being inherently opposed. Nietzsche too has been appropriated by the same groups, although for a different purpose, that being ethnic nationalism.

I was thinking about Archimedes in relation to this, creation is exciting. “Eureka!” being perhaps one of the most joyful words to exclaim, not that I ever have but still pretty fun. There’s also an aspect in which learning new things, or creating new concepts in some way expands your soft experience of the world. Instead of being frustrated by lack of skills, preventing you from being able to go through life “smoothly,” although I think this is a bit odd.

A toddler is experiencing life purely through the senses. With a little bit of learning, language is relatively primitive able to name certain objects “mum” “dad” maybe other things like “dog” “cat” and whatever else they frequently engage with like “food” “drink” and so on. These things aren’t necessarily referring to the concept of mum and dad, but often simply how that object makes them feel. It’s more of a “vibe” so to speak. Toddlers sometimes refer to their aunts and other women as “mum” and uncles or other men as “dad.”

Anyway, the point of that little language diversion is that language itself is how we form concepts. Simply by engaging in language in a coherent way, we are unable to experience life purely sensuously. It’s not necessary that we have a purely sensuous experience of the world to have our soft experience of reality go uninterrupted, however the condition on which we can experience life uninterrupted while also creating conceptual models of the world is too great—It would require access to the realm of forms or something analogous to that. Absolute knowledge of reality, which simply is not possible.

In any case, there are reasons to be skeptical of realism. Instead of bothering with this idea, it would be better instead to deal with material reality. In most cases, metaphysics is just veiled morality—Does god exist?—Are morals real?—Do we have a soul?

There are also questions about human nature, and when (generally analytic) philosophers decide to interpret thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, Zhuangzi and others not from their tradition all they can do is put them in categorical boxes without trying to interpret their own words and thoughts. Of course, Nietzsche and Zhuangzi are difficult to interpret which was their intention as they wish to be playful and escape these categorizing, or more accurately for analytic philosophers, pathologizing mode of interpreting philosophy.

I think my task in future is to become less analytic, and instead become more playful in writing. Philosophy, and just about all things are more fun and joyful when they invite play. This includes language, which unfortunately through my analytic university has been turned into nothing but very easy to interpret sentences. I quite like the analogy of sharpening a pencil for refining ideas. You start with a full length pencil, at first it has no clear use but you sharpen it til you get something out of it. Upon further refinements, you are left with nothing but a nub. I view analytic philosophy this way, heavily refined til nothing is left.

There’s ya blogpost.