Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Given I've been on a bit of a Full Kirkbride Deep TES Lore bender, to the point of cleaning up some overlap on a C0DA sketch for a profile picture, I thought I'd start a thread about the core concept of the Numidium: "NO". Rather than focusing on the deeper philosophy of the process of relating a statement to a disproving opposite or arcane debates on the possibility of empty worlds (here's the Stanford Encyclopedia on negation if you're interested in digging into such details, I don't have the patience), I'll instead present some small, basic arguments that Science and Critical Theory are both centered on negation, and why Science works far more than Critical Theory.
Science: The core of why I consider science to be negation-based is that it holds falsifiability as a prerequisite. Religions are rejected out-of-hand by science because they have many claims that cannot be shown wrong. In essence, the starting principal of science is "That which is true is what cannot be shown false", taking a further axiom that something must have a mechanism by which it could be shown false to be a valid statement.
Owing to this matter, science has a very long history of ethical problems, as it is generally held to be impossible to go from a statement about the world to imperative actions, the Is-Ought paradox, and there are many phenomena in the human body that fundamentally require torturous processes to truly confirm. Humans, after all, are not the same as any other species on Earth. Model organisms only go so far.
Critical Theory: This one ought not need much explanation. I'm quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia anyway so we have a properly defined basis: "a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from slavery”, acts as a “liberating … influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of” human beings (Horkheimer 1972b [1992, 246])"
The underpinning of Critical Theory is solely deconstructing social norms, rather than itself having much suggestion about establishing the replacement. This is both an effect of its origins in the predominantly Communist Frankfurt School, and a cause for it's attachment to Communism as it gives more sense of particular means than the since-discredited Global Revolution, seeing as how no industrialized country was overthrown by its factory workers.
Science > Critical Theory: In essence, the core failure from negation in Critical Theory is that it solely looks to take down the old, and the new its creators and supporters want doesn't have a road to implementation, nor a well-defined functional end-state. Science's failure is far more open to a variety of external ethical frameworks to answer it, because it doesn't actually pursue damage to those frameworks like Critical Theory does, it is purely a method for discovering observable truths of arbitrarily counterintuitive nature.
Where Science is something specifically built to create knowledge, Critical Theory is specifically built to destroy hierarchy. But humans are not functional as intellectual islands, we simply do not have the capacity for a lone person to manage all the externalities of a comfortable life. Science flat-out recognizes its work is an eternal pursuit down an infinite hole of mystery, while Critical Theory organizes itself solely as "Not That", rather than having a robust framework of "Do This Instead".
Critical Theory is an attempt at means for a utopian ideology, name and on the part of its creators very explicitly Communism, whereas Science simply looks to know for the sake of knowing. That Critical Theory has no end is a damning condemnation, that Science has no end is basic trivia. Science can be applied in nearly any society, as very few are worse off by negating misconceptions of physical reality, while Critical Theory self-admittedly exists solely to remove stability in societies by negating authority.
...Note that this is not a serious essay, because I am an autistic fuckwit of very limited attention span. And the thread isn't just for dunking on the limits of science and the bullshit of Critical Theory, feel free to dig into the aforementioned "Empty Worlds" or any other topic of just how far negation goes and what issues crop up when you start pushing it where it really shouldn't be.
Science: The core of why I consider science to be negation-based is that it holds falsifiability as a prerequisite. Religions are rejected out-of-hand by science because they have many claims that cannot be shown wrong. In essence, the starting principal of science is "That which is true is what cannot be shown false", taking a further axiom that something must have a mechanism by which it could be shown false to be a valid statement.
Owing to this matter, science has a very long history of ethical problems, as it is generally held to be impossible to go from a statement about the world to imperative actions, the Is-Ought paradox, and there are many phenomena in the human body that fundamentally require torturous processes to truly confirm. Humans, after all, are not the same as any other species on Earth. Model organisms only go so far.
Critical Theory: This one ought not need much explanation. I'm quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia anyway so we have a properly defined basis: "a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from slavery”, acts as a “liberating … influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of” human beings (Horkheimer 1972b [1992, 246])"
The underpinning of Critical Theory is solely deconstructing social norms, rather than itself having much suggestion about establishing the replacement. This is both an effect of its origins in the predominantly Communist Frankfurt School, and a cause for it's attachment to Communism as it gives more sense of particular means than the since-discredited Global Revolution, seeing as how no industrialized country was overthrown by its factory workers.
Science > Critical Theory: In essence, the core failure from negation in Critical Theory is that it solely looks to take down the old, and the new its creators and supporters want doesn't have a road to implementation, nor a well-defined functional end-state. Science's failure is far more open to a variety of external ethical frameworks to answer it, because it doesn't actually pursue damage to those frameworks like Critical Theory does, it is purely a method for discovering observable truths of arbitrarily counterintuitive nature.
Where Science is something specifically built to create knowledge, Critical Theory is specifically built to destroy hierarchy. But humans are not functional as intellectual islands, we simply do not have the capacity for a lone person to manage all the externalities of a comfortable life. Science flat-out recognizes its work is an eternal pursuit down an infinite hole of mystery, while Critical Theory organizes itself solely as "Not That", rather than having a robust framework of "Do This Instead".
Critical Theory is an attempt at means for a utopian ideology, name and on the part of its creators very explicitly Communism, whereas Science simply looks to know for the sake of knowing. That Critical Theory has no end is a damning condemnation, that Science has no end is basic trivia. Science can be applied in nearly any society, as very few are worse off by negating misconceptions of physical reality, while Critical Theory self-admittedly exists solely to remove stability in societies by negating authority.
...Note that this is not a serious essay, because I am an autistic fuckwit of very limited attention span. And the thread isn't just for dunking on the limits of science and the bullshit of Critical Theory, feel free to dig into the aforementioned "Empty Worlds" or any other topic of just how far negation goes and what issues crop up when you start pushing it where it really shouldn't be.