False consciousness

[atreestump]

What are your thoughts on false consciousness?

[atreestump]

Maybe I should be clearer about this. The state of alienation implies essentialism - some thinkers like Marx speak of false consciousness, where as Foucault would say 'who knows what's real anyway?'.




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[atreestump]

@"notathoughtgiven"

This thread should be relevant to our discussion on your forum.

[notathoughtgiven]

where as Foucault would say 'who knows what's real anyway?'.

Well that is a good point. We can talk about false consciousness but if we don't what is real then how can we make that judgement that it is false. There is no basis to compare something to what is real and say it is false. I think the best we can do is say "This appears real" and therefore that is false. At the same time realizing we have no idea if what we are saying is true or not. Just the best we know in the moment.

[atreestump]

For sure. We can at least explore alienation, why some are more alienated than others etc. That is the role of philosophy and why it isn't the same as empirical science as we only have reason to try and figure out what there is and how it works. We can also review erronous assumptions made by psychology and possible errorsof thinking from habitual thought we have inheritedfrom other discourses unconsciously, essentialism is a very religious concept when you break it down, like we are oblivious to it, it's like a hang up from Christian thought that seems to stay under the radar.

[notathoughtgiven]

To make sure I am understanding it right. Essentialism is the idea that everything has some kind of form that is unalterable. That it can be seen as religious because something created that form.

[atreestump]

Yes, essences/essentialism is referring to a quality and attributes of things, be they mental or material, that is absolute and irreducible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence?wprov=sfsi1

It can imply a creator, or it can be self-created, either way, the problem carries with it an undeniable quality of a thing. It's religious because it pressuposes layer after layer of foundations, its religious because it can be another word for soul.
It's interesting because the way we explain things can lead to the creation of essences, when in fact, language can refer to itself.

To sum up - an essence is the absolute quality or attributes of a thing, we have inherited this way of thinking from religion. It implies causes that may not actually be anywhere. This can lead us into infinite regress where we constantly have to justify one cause with another cause into infinity.

[Whisper]

Yeah, so on rejecting essentialism I don't know how you feel about ontology. I'm not so sure that I am convinced about your earlier statement of constituent lineages and encounters of a  contingent mass. This is a big question I have right now, which is the question of how you approach the ontological, Ontical.

[atreestump]

Are you asking how do we know if we have an essence or not and how do we find out? I'm trying to formulate the question first and why it is important, before trying to figure out what there is.

It's important to know how our notion of essences influences our thinking and how they differ in certain philosophies and the implications for those differences.

[notathoughtgiven]

It can imply a creator, or it can be self-created, either way, the problem carries with it an undeniable quality of a thing. It's religious because it pressuposes layer after layer of foundations, its religious because it can be another word for soul.

It can be religious because if it is implied there is a creator it begs another question. Why did my creator create me? What is my purpose?

That could be an interesting thread on its own. This whole notion of having a soul and why it came about.

It's interesting because the way we explain things can lead to the creation of essences, when in fact, language can refer to itself.

Circular logic in other words. The way we explain some things leads to the idea of an essence. Then the essence is used to explain the things that explained it.

This can lead us into infinite regress where we constantly have to justify one cause with another cause into infinity.

Maybe not infinity but to our limit of our ability to explain it. From there its either magical or a sign of a creator or higher power. People's way of saying "I give up" without saying that.


Yeah, so on rejecting essentialism I don't know how you feel about ontology.
It's important to know how our notion of essences influences our thinking and how they differ in certain philosophies and the implications for those differences.

How we might be biased by our notion of essences. That in order to think of different ways of thinking we have to examine how one line of thinking is deeply rooted. Otherwise we might end up in the same spot again with essences because that is all we can conceive.