Name: The order of things
ISBN: 9780203996645

The order of things

When one defines ""order"" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an intellectual giant.

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zztop44Nov 2023

I think this is a really tempting belief, and probably partially true, but I think the real picture is far more complicated.

Previous forms of intellectual inquiry had experiments and tests too. Previous thinkers evaluated their hypotheses against evidence in an effort to approach the truth.

But their epistemic (and ontological) foundations were radically different to ours. And those foundations (that inform what we define as “true”) have shifted profoundly throughout history. And I think it’d be hubris to look at that, as a fish swimming in the proverbial water, and say “yes, but our assumptions are actually true for real this time.”

If you’re interested in this stuff and haven’t read it already I’d recommend The Order of Things by Michel Foucault. There are questions about his scholarship (do all the sources he cites say the things he says they say??) but if you read his work with an open mind, I think you’d agree those kind of criticisms are missing the point.

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sovaApr 2021

MV=PQ suggests that money-supply and price-level could increase in tandem, and V and Quantity-of-goods-produced could be unchanging. However, it seems that there is more subtlety to this equation, a threshold on how much Q can deviate before P must deviate. It's an interesting equation in that it seems to be the "homeostasis" for monetary supply, but the balancing act itself is quite unclear. Do you have any suggestions on where to learn more about how this equation self-rectifies?

Also, if not Foucault, who would you recommend for "economic insight?" Foucault's chapters on "Exchange" in "The Order of Things" are quite insightful, and if you read them and have any particular criticisms or disagreements I would much enjoy reading them.

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grey-areaApr 2015

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - a wonderfully simple explanation of what is truly important in life.

The Order of Things or Madness and Civilisation by Michel Foucault - a look at how our culture and time limit the horizons of our world view.

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy - a complicated set of love stories set in 19C Russia - brilliantly observed.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter - an exhilarating skip through the wonderland of western maths, art, music and philosophy.

Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston - a great insight into the first computer revolution - interviews with a lot of very interesting people.

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halojonesJul 2010

(Your reply brings to mind another book I should have mentioned - The Order of Things (Les Mots et Les Choses) by Michel Foucault.)

If philosophy is the drive to understand the human condition, I don't think any philosopher can or should ignore the Bible. Athens, Rome and Jerusalem are where the Western mind was born it has been said. And there is nothing to stop you approaching the Bible as it were hermeneutically, ie. in the same way you might treat the Greek Myths. I find it fascinating myself - from the "ex nihilo" of Genesis, through the "de profundis" of the Psalms, to Job's "Why?!", not to mention the Christian New Testament - and I think it will be read (by philosophers) long after many books in "The Philosophy Section" have been forgotten.

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f_klemJun 2026

I think the conversation derailed a bit. I see also a common pattern of jumping through different topics at different levels (from theoretical to concrete and back), and that is confusing.

My original comment was that it seems (and it is actually documented in the books I referenced) that the AI research space builds its claims on assumptions, not on facts, and that those assumptions are flawed. So a nice discussion, to begin with, would consider:

1) why I make the claim that the AI research space builds its claims on assumptions instead of facts, why we could say that there are actually no assumptions but facts, or why the assumptions are correct.

2) instead of strictly and directly dismissing readings on philosophy, I would expect intelligent and curious people to embrace new references. Particularly if those references are highly regarded and a solid contribution during the last 120 years

Regarding point 1), I can barely count a single comment in this thread that tries to engage in the idea of the assumptions (except for some comments that agree with the premise).

Then regarding point 2), I can barely count research papers, books or contributions in the space of AI research that references (either to built upon or dismiss) philosophy that is pertinent to AI, pertinent to philosophy of technique or cognitive linguistics. This is strange. It looks like if the space revived during the 2000s with the invention of neural nets (RL, GAN, etc), and then became isolated from contributions about human intelligence, even though it continually tries to explain intelligence in its own terms.

The reference to What Computers Can't Still do is precisely relevant because it narrates exactly this same discussion (false assumptions, claims built upon assumptions instead of facts, dismissal of evidence from psychology, dismissal of frameworks from philosophy, fallacies about progress), but it was written in 1972. Still, you read the book today, and it is totally relevant.

Now, regarding your comments:

> Do LLM experience objectively or not experience at all? How can you say?

The world cannot be experienced 'objectively'. If they experience the world most probably you won't notice. Given that the only way of interacting with an LLM is through a process initiated solely by a human actor, it would be difficult to assess whether an LLM experiences anything at all.

> I can say that they could think. The thought process implies a measurable product. Yes, there are similar situation with it, it can be hard to say sometimes if we observe a product of a thought or something else. But science has some success with this, like claiming that bees can think and solve problems.

The moment you say 'they could think', that implies an assumption about the actual possibility of thinking as a process that can be modeled and executed by a machine. There is, as far as I know, no current evidence that human beings process information the same way a computer does it, nor that though processes necessarily imply a measurable outcome.

> I'm telling you, psychologists (who specialize on mind research) do not know what consciousness is and they do not have a definition of a subjective experience (well, if we treat your proposed definition as a valid definition, then we should say they have plenty). And my claim still stands: until you heard about new science "Subjectology" you can be sure that no one knows what subjective experience is. Including linguists.

Psychology is a very broad field with lights and shadows through its short history. Here, and in my original comment, I am not talking about linguists in general, but specifically about cognitive linguistics. The contributions made be the field are significant and mostly lacking in AI research (for example, the idea of embodiment, the rebuttal of generative grammars, prototype theory, frame semantics, among others). What you mention as 'subjectology', would be just psychology. Foucault explains more or less clearly why this cannot be a science, and that's just fine (in The Order of Things).

> You shouldn't believe that anything can be settled in the philosophy space. Philosophers can think they have settled things, but until science agreed and started empirical studies, it is just philosophers believing that they settled things.

Well... certainly nothing can be 'settled' (not even in science, btw), but my point is: there is already enough convincing arguments in the field of philosophy so as to say that current LLM systems do not posses agency or experience, and that they do not behave like us.

Again, read the sources, what are you people afraid of? Just read the sources, and then engage in the conversation.

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sovaApr 2021

Oh what a splendid question. Currency is simply the means of transfer for wealth but not all wealth needs to nor can be represented by currency. We sometimes talk about the value of clean water or clean air in dollars, but this is not something readily convertible. Likewise, the wealth we inherit via bodies (stomach, intestines, lungs) is not something sell-able or representable by currency [unless we're talking illicit organ sales, but then the benefactor is hardly the person who started with the wealth].

  Currency must represent enough wealth to be able to flow (current -> currency) but it's more akin to red blood cells in a body of organs, it serves the organs via its transit.  We call this "liquid" when we have wealth represented by cash.  I believe the correct answer here is that currency is a (fixed) ratio of actual wealth being generated by a nation-state or planet and therefore the amount of hay grown, the amount of rice harvested, the amount of chips manufactured, the amount of creative output that is captured is measurable, and there is a fixed ratio of that amount that results in "currency."  
  
  This might be easier to understand with a medieval analogy to a castle, we cannot sell our only castle, but we can use the agricultural surplus to trade.  The castle might appear to have some sort of convertible wealth, but not all currency must represent that, because we are not frequently trading castles, but we are frequently trading currency for bread and for sustenance and commodity-goods.  

  I think one would benefit from reading Foucault's "The Order of Things" which explains that trade can only happen when there is a surplus beyond what is locally necessary, and this surplus is what gives rise to currency.

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