- 10 Jul 2021 13:09
#15180368
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/determinism.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/foucaul1.htm
Even though consciousness can only be directly experienced subjectively, subjective experience cannot be scientific. The science of consciousness, not unlike the sciences of history and geology, relies on surmising the subject matter from objective traces given to the researcher in the observation of behavior. But these traces are not themselves the subject matter of the science. The intelligible explanation of historical processes entails surmising what can never be observed, and first-person reports of historical events are no more than evidence which the historian places alongside other evidence. Nonetheless, historiography relies on the plausibility of intelligible explanations of great historical changes in terms of mundane conversations and concrete events and seeks evidence of such events wherever possible. Likewise, the psychologist places the reports of subjective experience (including their own) alongside other evidence which is objective and verifiable.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/foucaul1.htm
Now, just as Mach played a "confusing but necessary" role in the 1890s, preparatory to the natural scientific revolutions of the turn-of-the-century, Foucault's war on "naïve structuralism", his insistence on halting at the presumption of what lies behind the trace, of all those categories like "influence", "author" and geographical, temporal or social continuity, is a "necessary but confusing" obstacle.
What lies behind the trace is materiality. One cannot go beyond that without slipping into dogmatism. One cannot deny that and avoid scepticism.
For example, the victim of a murder-rape is silent, their violator is articulate. Maybe we never hear the words of the victim, hear her testimony or even see her body. But what kind of science is it that asks use to confine ourselves to the traces, if (in this example) they be only the testimony of the rapist? Perhaps we are forced to return an open verdict in this case. Who knows - but something happened! I cannot presume to speak for the silent, but I must hear the silence.
This example is extreme, and perhaps for that reason unfortunate. It is well-known that the dominant ruling classes of any society write the history, they leave their traces on every monument, every document and their names live forever. Must we not surmise what lay behind? whose hands built the monument to Kubla Khan?
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics