Universe of Platonic Thought 2020

Seminar “Paideia in Ancient Culture”

Alexander Andreevich Kuraev; Institute of the philosophy of a human, Herzen University (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Student

It could not touch: Contagiousness of Epistemic Noise in/as Information Entropy

The report is dedicated to possible definition of institutional knowledge, ways to find a way out of a cave of information entropy and interpretation of intellectual culture of Ancient Greece, based on phenomena of philia.

Keywords: Knowledge, information noise, meme, friendships, scientific community, politics

The modern definition of institutional knowledge as a derivative of scientific discourse is determined by economic characteristics: effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, as Liotard revealed in his work "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge". As a result, episteme as the very target result of scientific production tends to acquire the features of a meme (as an information virus) and generate a space of white noise in which the name of the scientist is not referential due to the fact that there is no such property in the construction of the "individual" that would not be conceptualized. Epistemic properties are defined in the academic space research institutions which reset previous dividual person as empty individual, as Peter Sloterdijk might say, generating an epistemic agent, who is a mediator of a certain notorious scientific "discourse". With the acquisition of the market value of knowledge, a special kind of information product, the nature of the scientific and philosophical community also changes, if it retains such an institutional place, within which philia is replaced by competition. And the epistemic agent itself is included in the following medial relations, the triad: envy, adoration, and competition. And if it is true that knowledge should lead to movement towards the good and truth, in the interpretation of fragment 183a of "Theaetetus", then knowledge cannot be perceived as a goal, and the scientific community as a specific production, which from time to time sounds like radio. In this regard, the status and current tasks of the Academy are problematic. Which is either aimed at teaching life and ways to find a way out of a cave filled with shadows and sounds, where something concerns us. Or it redirects the desire to know as much as possible and more about what is happening in the cave, where knowledge is not a repulsive place, but attracts and breaks the very cognitive intention.