“What happened ??”
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In the event of reading an essay generated by the PMG, we have to think from the perspective of not knowing that it is a fake, keeping in mind that this program is admittedly old and stunted in its potential, but that it would be possible to write a more complex protocol that could generate more lengthy and involved syntactical and contextual structures that would ultimately be very difficult to discern as bogus. Under this presumption that we are indeed reading a piece of legitimate theory, we need only to understand the turn in thought that occurs upon being let into the joke, so to speak, and what that says not only of being human, but more, of thought itself, as well then what history is and means. This is because in this type of upsetting, the ground for our theoretical efforts is not so easily found, for often enough the ground itself is in question by the mode of offering of the theory.
Indeed, from this setting is elicited a mounting frustration resolved not by confronting the situation — the subsequent post-modern thought thought itself to confronting it — but by completely rejecting the whole of the line of thought that brought about the situation in first place (Object Oriented Philosophy, Speculative and the ‘new’ Realisms) loosely defined against history as Cartesian, Copernican or Kantian, and for our present situation as ‘phenominalist’ and its corresponding conventional paradox noticed by Quentin Miessalloux as correlationalism. The problem here in these latest proposals is that they cannot get beyond the problem so they reject it by sublating the problem as the impetus and catalyst by which such ‘new Realist’ positions may arise. In other words, they assert that the method must be applied in moderation and from there we might then be able to find a True basis, a ground, for real discourse. Moderation and mediation is thus the mode where reality is true — but hasn’t this been the maxim of all real conventionality, an assertion of revolutionary action based in a return to the norm, a reactionary move?? Are they really saying that The True Reality should be found through moderation ?? I want to say ‘yes’, but in response to what (really) does this ‘yes’ arise (can we be really honest) ? (Come on; are we allowed to be honest yet ? Well, maybe not yet. ) If indeed the answer is yes, then it is not too difficult a stretch to see the reinstatement of a metaphysical imperative, which is to say, for other terms, a manifest destiny, a providence that has encompassed the whole of humanity throughout history as it continues to do so at this very moment — but set aside in argument, the question of ‘God’ or ‘spirit’ being left now to the opinion of religion, the conventional reality of the pure multiple.
Note that it is absolutely ironic and consistent with the unbiased argument that the question of the philosophical revolution occurs and is answered in the setting aside of the question itself. This is the Speculative move. But the issue left is how and why this move came about, as well as how it continues to be a problem, because until then, we can only hope — but again, what is conventional faith ? This is then how we get to the significant philosophical issue, and the continuance of the status quo methodology is how we get to the necessity of revealing just what is entailed in the conventional reaction (denial).
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These two sites (really, the one just links to the other) can serve as an example of how we react:
Zizuku: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=219
http://alunsalt.com/2008/03/04/like-the-postmodernism-generator-but-funnier/
Consciousness is a funny thing; making meaning is all it does. No matter what one wants to make of it, the very making is meaning made. The question is always whether this meaning has any essential teleology; the stringing along or construing of meaning is the issue here. The conflation or association the site above has made between the PMG and the discourses if Slavoj Zizek is significant. Just as Alan Sokal helped to deflate the Post Modern bubble (a bubble, I might say, created by many accredited people who had no clue), the process of revealing how consciousness works, as opposed to merely riding upon reactionary theoretical tropes in the attempt to assert a more real reality and thereby create an identity, must evoke uncomfortable meanings, confronting and even breaching the fashionable trend of the day.
For what we are dealing with here is the maxim of operational consciousness: In the effort for the True Object (which is really itself) the individual takes True Objects as essentially separate universal entities as problematic items for the purpose of asserting the Truth of such entities to establish itself, the individual. This maxim is responsible for reality, as this phenomenon enacts a strange force that is the power of itself; the power of reality is that it allows for and or creates an arena in which real elements may interact in a real way. This is so true that it hardly need be stated, and when it is stated people roll their eyes because it sounds so ridiculous. Yet if it isn’t stated then people do not roll their eyes and can continue in plausible denial; it is after it is stated that real progress may occur, for until that point, it was only as an illusion of progress, as reality is never an illusion. For we are really dealing with me and you, and the object that allows for real determination of this distinction.
As to the blogger that came up with ‘Zizuku’ (so great!): In reality, therefore, an intelligent person may read Zizek and see a pattern to his rhetoric. Just as the PMG’s products are discounted against actual human agency, Zizek’s mode is discounted as a ridiculous game, but both which are seen to be included for ‘good’ human production of theory given that the limitations of their modes are identified, made into a real-true object, and now can be moved upon to actually yield ‘better’ theoretical productions. As I have said, the issue concerns how we distinguish between an essay that is basically a random assemblage of syntax that appears to make sense, and an actual researched and thought out humanly constructed meaningful assemblage of contextual significance? How do we reconcile ‘random’ through an ‘ordering’ of method, since the essays are generated along a specific path of commands (a program), using a specific pool of terms that are assembled based upon no apparent consideration of the various individual terms’ meanings? And as to Zizek in this regard; what does it mean that Zizek’s discursive performances can be discerned to a scheme (Zizuku)? How are these presentations related, what is being apprehended and comprehended, and how is this assessment a reaction?
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First, the PMG. So to back up a little bit, the point here is the ‘better’ productions. The problem the PMG revealed was that where discourse was at issue, deconstruction, the questioning of discursive authority, and hermeneutical analysis being operative, the post-modern ideal itself was taken in a mistaken mode, as indication of a further True Object that might be gained through such methods. The fact of the ability to program such a generator, nevermind Sokal’s ability to write a fake paper that was taken as legitimate post-modern theory, shows that the ‘program’ of human meaning itself taken as a route by which to construct and or reveal more meaning yields nonsense, but that the result of the nonsense, taken as a further product of its own method for meaning, yields the sense that such ‘low level’ meaning making is nonsense: This is thus the sense that comes from nonsense that makes the nonsense sensible. By a reduction of discourse to its own operational bases as a means to analyze its productions (deconstruction; hermeneutics) against the result of this process as an analysis, we get at a real outline of the situation handed to us: A real nonsensical meaning is essentially a baseline from which all other meaningful discourses may arise; this is what we can justifiably call ‘void’. Then the production of meaning that notices the nonsensical result: The real event that begins the count of the pure multiple. Hence, the PMG is the instrumental manifestation of the baseline for making meaning, and thus while it does show that the meaning we make might just as well be just as nonsensical, that we are also merely ordering machines without a basis where we can find the ‘order of the order’, the more significant meaning we get from this temporal marking of the parameters of knowledge is out of a type of Sartean revolt: We revolt from this abyss of free syntax back into the contextual limit. But more; once we fall back into the imperative for context, we see the contextual world as deriving from a necessary order that gives significantly meaningful order, or, orderly meaning: purpose, teleology. This is not a critique of the situation, as post-modern ideals would usually advocate (Zizek: the example somehow undermines the veracity of itself), but merely a stating of the fact of the matter.
In other words, the ideal that discourse is all there is yields (or has yielded) a Kantian intuited world where the products of the PM method arose due to the True Object that is the discourse and method, such that this True base thus necessarily yields a better more real Truth of the universe: This is the mark of conventional faith. The PM discourse itself as an arena arisen from the efforts of individuals attempting to establish their identity in a true reality ironically yielded a theoretical reality that came to be called out for its nonsensical rhetoric. The discursive arena itself supported a Truth that functioned to further a real theoretical validity. But this validity was soon revealed to be just that: theoretical but basically nonsense. Structurally sound and justified within a particular discursive cohortive arena by the fact of its placement within institutions of ‘higher learning’ (pun absolutely intended).
Thus our question that comes to bare on the situation: What grounds theory? The answer is ironic, but the irony is missed in most cases, typically, as evidenced by the past 200+/- years of philosophy. I need not rehash the essays of Constructive Undoing, but enough to say that language is supposed material of its own objective analysis, the object that is language as well as the object of its clausal reference, of its intent meaning; the irony being of a particularly Kantian problematic (extrapolated conventionally in the 200 year span) in so much as every object of this discursive case is taken to be or have been intuitively apprehended, which is to say, from the assumed transcendent affection. In this case, it is of no matter what ones logic or personal belief is because there is no theory that does not operate within knowledge and discourse.
So the question comes to be pivotal to how philosophical effort should proceed, and it is in response to this problem that Realist philosophies such a s Harman’s OOO arise; though i would hesitate to lump this ‘new’ effort into a common theme, the effort does arise in a common thread to the Significant Event as well to reflect upon the issue of this essay here, which is how consciousness functions when confronted with its own limit, and what that likewise means in (the production of) reality.
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Thus next up in part 3: What is the relationship between the products of the PMG and the rhetoric of Zizek?
The Veritable Counsel 
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