> I have asked him about what the word emphatic means, as it
appears to me to have technical philosophical meaning for
Ken that is more than just saying emphasize.
Emphatic rationality is a form of reasoning that incorporates dialectically the is/ought. "Human beings are free." This is an emphatic statement - descriptively it is false (because human beings are not free) and prescriptively it is true (because human beings should be free). this is what i mean - and it isn't too far from emphasis. My use of the term stems from the work of Adorno and Marcuse.
Ken Tuesday, Nov. 3,98 "Definitions": ken, the system is wrong, the whole is false
Doyle This slogan is very vague, for instance what is a whole, but it is clear from the body of the text that Ken rejects the concept of the whole.
In an ironic way, aware that irony has limits and problems.
Ken The demand to 'define' what one is talking about is both careless and thoughtless.
Doyle Since I asked Ken to define a bunch of words, Ken says that impulse is "careless", and "thoughtless". I don't experience those as careless, and thoughtless, myself.
My response was not a personal one - my addressee was the theoretical attempt to provide definitions. I don't have a problem with explanation-towards-understanding but the strict call for definitions, without reciprocity, is a problem. I was trying to indicate that defining a term always leaves one in a catch22 position. damned if you do and damned if you don't. the questions, in this sense, are unfair.
Doyle I will list a series of moral remarks Ken uses toward me
I wasn't attempting to be so personal. Again - my addressee was towards theory. I wasn't identifying *you* as careless, thoughtless, silly, dominating, ignorant, or mastering, rather the analytical attempt to support theory with metaphysical definitions. I should have clarified this.
Doyle To summarize then Ken while not defining anything I asked for admits that he reject the whole. In doing so Ken relies upon a style of speech which is moralizing about what I asked for and verges on incoherent out of principle. I reject this sort of understanding of consciousness.
I'm not gloriying incoherence, simply point out that it might be a structural problem, one that needs to be dealt with as clearly as possible. My focus here in on a kind of praxis - a working things through - rather than attempting to resolve everything on a theoretical level and then applying it to practice. Apologies if my post came across in an offensive way.
ken, undefined