The Worst Argument in the World

[JustARandomPanda]

Hah!

 

Came across this today. Have never heard of this guy but apparently he published quite a few books in the 80s and early 90s and has his own Wikipedia entry.

 

 

The Worst Argument in the World

 

 

This one zinger from Stove reminded me of TTBs own Nietzschean-Materialist-Taoist Marblehead

 

 

 

Two short passages from Stove's later book, The Plato Cult, deal with people everyone has actually met. Speaking of the typical products of a modern high school, he writes:

 

 

Their intellectual temper is (as everyone remarks) the reverse of dogmatic, in fact pleasingly modest. They are quick to acknowledge that their own opinion, on any matter whatsoever, is only their opinion; and they will candidly tell you, too, the reason why it is only their opinion. This reason is, that it is their opinion. (Stove, 1991, 168).

 

 

and

 

These arguments – or, less euphemistically, dogmas – are versions of Stove's `Worst Argument' because all there is to them as arguments is: our conceptual schemes are our conceptual schemes, so, we cannot get out of them (to know things as they are in themselves). In Alan Olding's telling caricature, `We have eyes, therefore we cannot see.’ (Olding, 1998; further in Olding, unpublished)

 

And here's part of the essay TTB's VMarco should enjoy

 

Stove himself was most concerned with this argument as it occurred in classical idealism. Berkeley argued `the mind … is deluded to think it can and does conceive of bodies existing unthought of, or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in, itself.’ (Berkeley, par 23). That is, `you cannot have trees-without-the mind in mind, without having them in mind. Therefore, you cannot have trees-without-the-mind in mind.’ (Stove, 1991, 139)

 

This argument, which Stove called `the Gem’, is a version of the `Worst Argument’ because it argues from the fact that we can know physical things only under our own mental forms to the impossibility of knowing physical things at all. Stove finds this argument in many later idealists. Fascinating as High Victorian idealism is, its hold over modern thought is not what it was, so let us leave that topic aside — except to mention Stove’s complaints about the extra pomposity added to the argument as each successive stage: `Thus you never say, for example, "things as they are," and still less, "things". You say "things as they are in themselves," or better still, "things and their properties as they exist both in and for themselves."’ Then you can construct a seriously heavyweight argument, like:

 

 

We can eat oysters only insofar as they are brought under the physiological and chemical conditions which are the presuppositions of the possibility of being eaten.

 

Therefore,

>>

 

We cannot eat oysters as they are in themselves. (Stove, 1991, 151, 161)

 

 

[JustARandomPanda]

Love this Wikipedia entry on this guy.

 

Check out this:

 

 

Stove was also a staunch critic of sociobiology, going as far as describing the field as a new religion in which genes play the role of gods

[Vmarco]

Hah!

 

Came across this today. Have never heard of this guy but apparently he published quite a few books in the 80s and early 90s

 

 

 

 

`we cannot know things as they are in themselves’....this is the fundamental premise of Buddhism and Taoism,...because knowledge arises from the 6 senses,...and the 6 senses cannot observe the way things are.

 

Both Buddhism and Taoism promise that we can "gnow" the way things are....the Thusness of things as they are.

 

So it appears, what the argument about the "Worse Argument in the World" points to, is to let go of an attachment to that, which cannot understand the Thusness of things as they are.

 

Buddha, in his 4 Noble Truths, suggested the dukkha is a consequence of the desire for things to be other than they are. Dukkha, which arises from the 6 senses, cannot observe the way things are,...it is IMPOSSIBLE!

 

Lao Tzu said, "Recognize that eveything you see and think (the 6 senses) is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth."

 

René Descartes, concerning the senses, must have considered the impasse of object-ivity when he articulated, "All that I have tried to understand to the present time has been affected by my senses; now I know these senses are deceivers, and it is prudent to be distrustful after one has been deceived once."

[Birch]

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm7.html

 

Read the part on masochism

[Vmarco]

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm7.html

 

Read the part on masochism

 

To me, this reads like another neurotic argument for sciential thinking. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes said, "Many people don’t realize that science basically involves assumptions and faith."

 

I suppose "thinking" can be categorized by positive and negative thinking,...by so what,...thinking will NEVER uncover the Way Things Are.

 

Of course,...Buddhism and Taoism point to Right Thinking as a preparation for Clear Understanding,...but not thinking as "the liberation from metaphysical spectres and meaningless nations" as the article neurotically states.

 

At first, the article was difficult to read, but the gems of insanity piqued my interest, like:

 

positivism is a struggle against all metaphysics, transcendentalisms, and idealisms as obscurantist and regressive modes of thought.

 

This Object-ivist thinking, to me, is more irrational than Christian-Muslim proselytizers. When are these Sciential minded folks going to realize that objects do not exist.

 

"As a man who has devoted his entire life to the most clear-headed science to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: there is no matter as such." Max Planck

 

All thinking, including linguistic analysis, arises from the sense organ of thinking, the brain,...the senses cannot observe the Way Things Are.

 

Lao Tzu said, "the ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle; totally fascinated by the realm of the senses....if anyone threaten it, it actually fears for its life. Let this monkey go. Let the senses go."

[Zhongyongdaoist]

As much as I like humor, there is good humor and bad, by which I mean there is humor that opens the mind and humor that closes it. Stove's work seems to be the rallying flag of a dying way of thinking, one which is scientifically obsolete and for which really there never was much in the way of scientific proof so much as the fossilization of 17^th Century fashions in thought.

 

I don't have time to say much more than that now, but I will provide the following references. First the Wikipedia page of Henry Stapp:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stapp

 

Whose papers archived at the at the Lawrence Berkely Laboratory where he works, can be found here:

 

http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html

 

I recommend reading:

 

Quantum Theory of Mind: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/QTM.doc

 

and

 

Quantum theory in neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind/brain interaction: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/PTRS.pdf

 

as good starting points.

 

Good luck, good reading, goodbye for now.

[Marblehead]

This one zinger from Stove reminded me of TTBs own Nietzschean-Materialist-Taoist Marblehead

 

And don't expect me to be changing much in the very near future.