gotzendammerung said in #4280 2w ago:
Every living thing has instincts for its way of life. These are not fixed and mechanical reflexes, but a canny sub-conscious intelligence seeking life and power, informed by inborn wisdom. This is as foundational for humans as it is for animals; most of our stated "beliefs" and arguments are rationalizations for what we feel by instinct.
Many take this to mean one or the other of instinct or reason is bullshit, but the correct relationship is more like motivation and formalization. Let's borrow from math: we have instincts about sets. Mostly these work, but because instinct is not strongly coherent, we find paradoxes, and have to construct sometimes counter-intuitive axiom systems to get the math to come out with the instinctively "right" behavior when we subject it to rigorous consistency. The formalization regularizes the instincts, rendering them consistent. The instincts, once they understand the math, will reform around the new formal concepts because they express the same intent with more power.
We do the same outside of math in matters of worldview. A formal worldview is one that attempts to be strongly consistent, disciplined by core principles. For example, you might take as axiomatic that knowledge comes only from accumulation of evidence and argument as governed by laws of reason (eg probability theory, logic, etc), or that life affirming will-to-power is the basis of all other value. Then you would propagate out the implications of such foundational ideas to challenge, reframe, or give grounding to everything else, resulting in the clarity of a determined worldview. This is obviously a lot more complex, uncertain, and messy than mathematics and it's very easy to go wrong, but in principle it is possible to have a rigorous formal worldview.
Different worldviews express different types of instinct. A highly formalized life-affirming rationalism like I alluded to above is my attempt at the formalized instincts of the ideal higher type of civilized life that we feel ourselves aligned with. On the other hand, Nietzsche describes in Genealogy of Morals how the frustrated will to power of the oppressed expresses itself in worldviews of otherworldly, self-flagellating, hierarchy-inverting, superstitious moralism. I believe a more rationalistic and life-affirming worldview is way more consistent and promising as a basis of life, but the reason I care about that is an expression of my own instinctive interests.
If it's just instinct, why formalize? In the absence of formalization, the instincts are chaotic and undisciplined, full of exploitable contradictions. Furthermore, lack of any formal structure makes society impossible, only animalistic relations. Abandoning formal reason thus leads to total defeat in the contest of wills that is human society. On the other hand, the clarity and reproducibility of a formal worldview means huge gains in coordination and ability to distinguish many hostile tricky ideas from helpful ones in ways that the untrained instincts alone are unable to. The coordination in particular is of interest; formal worldviews are the only way states or other political entities are able to rise to a level of existence above raw animalistic interest-coalition. Formality is the source of law, social trust, heroism, civilization, religio, etc. This is why we do it.
However, in practice there are a great many free variables in the construction of formal worldviews, so you need not just philosophers working out how to justify the defense of your particular form of life in rigorous terms, but also some kind of political and epistemic authority structure to decide which axioms and derivations are canonical. Without that, everyone has his own unique ideology and the project of philosophy is relatively pointless. But that works the other way too: in the absence of the intellectuals working out how to structure the collective inner life, political projects cannot find the rigorous footing to come into being.
Many take this to mean one or the other of instinct or reason is bullshit, but the correct relationship is more like motivation and formalization. Let's borrow from math: we have instincts about sets. Mostly these work, but because instinct is not strongly coherent, we find paradoxes, and have to construct sometimes counter-intuitive axiom systems to get the math to come out with the instinctively "right" behavior when we subject it to rigorous consistency. The formalization regularizes the instincts, rendering them consistent. The instincts, once they understand the math, will reform around the new formal concepts because they express the same intent with more power.
We do the same outside of math in matters of worldview. A formal worldview is one that attempts to be strongly consistent, disciplined by core principles. For example, you might take as axiomatic that knowledge comes only from accumulation of evidence and argument as governed by laws of reason (eg probability theory, logic, etc), or that life affirming will-to-power is the basis of all other value. Then you would propagate out the implications of such foundational ideas to challenge, reframe, or give grounding to everything else, resulting in the clarity of a determined worldview. This is obviously a lot more complex, uncertain, and messy than mathematics and it's very easy to go wrong, but in principle it is possible to have a rigorous formal worldview.
Different worldviews express different types of instinct. A highly formalized life-affirming rationalism like I alluded to above is my attempt at the formalized instincts of the ideal higher type of civilized life that we feel ourselves aligned with. On the other hand, Nietzsche describes in Genealogy of Morals how the frustrated will to power of the oppressed expresses itself in worldviews of otherworldly, self-flagellating, hierarchy-inverting, superstitious moralism. I believe a more rationalistic and life-affirming worldview is way more consistent and promising as a basis of life, but the reason I care about that is an expression of my own instinctive interests.
If it's just instinct, why formalize? In the absence of formalization, the instincts are chaotic and undisciplined, full of exploitable contradictions. Furthermore, lack of any formal structure makes society impossible, only animalistic relations. Abandoning formal reason thus leads to total defeat in the contest of wills that is human society. On the other hand, the clarity and reproducibility of a formal worldview means huge gains in coordination and ability to distinguish many hostile tricky ideas from helpful ones in ways that the untrained instincts alone are unable to. The coordination in particular is of interest; formal worldviews are the only way states or other political entities are able to rise to a level of existence above raw animalistic interest-coalition. Formality is the source of law, social trust, heroism, civilization, religio, etc. This is why we do it.
However, in practice there are a great many free variables in the construction of formal worldviews, so you need not just philosophers working out how to justify the defense of your particular form of life in rigorous terms, but also some kind of political and epistemic authority structure to decide which axioms and derivations are canonical. Without that, everyone has his own unique ideology and the project of philosophy is relatively pointless. But that works the other way too: in the absence of the intellectuals working out how to structure the collective inner life, political projects cannot find the rigorous footing to come into being.
referenced by: >>4303
Every living thing h