quote:

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Certainly mainstream or centrist intellectuals thought there was a lot to worry about. They agreed with Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, who complained that the ideas coming out of France amounted to a “rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment” even to the point of regarding “science as nothing more than a ‘narration’ or a ‘myth’ or a social construction among many others.”

This is not quite right; what was involved was less the rejection of the rationalist tradition than an interrogation of its key components: an independent, free-standing, knowing subject, the “I” facing an independent, free-standing world. The problem was how to get the “I” and the world together, how to bridge the gap that separated them ever since the older picture of a universe everywhere filled with the meanings God originates and guarantees had ceased to be compelling to many.
[...]
The Cartesian trick of starting from the beginning and thinking things down to the ground can’t be managed because the engine of thought, consciousness itself, is inscribed (written) by discursive forms which “it” (in quotation marks because consciousness absent inscription is empty and therefore non-existent) did not originate and cannot step to the side of no matter how minimalist it goes. In short (and this is the kind of formulation that drives the enemies of French theory crazy), what we think with thinks us.

It also thinks the world. This is not say that the world apart from the devices of human conception and perception doesn’t exist “out there”; just that what we know of that world follows from what we can say about it rather than from any unmediated encounter with it in and of itself. This is what Thomas Kuhn meant in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions when he said that after a paradigm shift — after one scientific vocabulary, with its attendant experimental and evidentiary apparatus, has replaced another — scientists are living in a different world; which again is not to say (what it would be silly to say) that the world has been altered by our descriptions of it; just that only through our descriptive machineries do we have access to something called the world.

---

quote:

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This is drivel about drivel — “metadrivel” as some stucturalist, post-structuralist or deconstructionist might say. Literary theory (not to be confused with literature) is more worthless and deluded than alchemy or astrology ever were. It should be banished from our educational system. Failing that, any student who takes a course in literary theory should be required to take three in mathematics, a discipline which has actually manages to cogently connect words and names with perceptions and actions.

---

A few of the comments underneath it were insightful.

ETA: I'm not quite sure what was your goal in posting it here.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

I certainly expected people to object to Fish's position (even gleefully violently, as for some reason I cannot tell, the mention of deconstruction seems to incur) but I was hoping that they would rise above the tired and pedestrian canards of "absurd!" and "incomprehensible!" Especially since this article--both clear and articulate--is neither.

quote:

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Originally posted by Catchfire:

I also wonder, incidentally, about the political implications of wanting complicated ideas explained in "plain English." It's the same kind of thinking that votes in George W. Bush. Would you rather trade in "lower taxes!" or "alterglobalization"? I know the answer I'd pick...

---

Thanks for the link, Catchfire. I'll read it this evening.

If you want a reason why I think this deconstructionist stuff is totally overdone: It's because it doesn't matter.

Prominent scientists have for many years wondered aloud whether the nature of the universe may impose constraints that prevent us from ever truly understanding it. But if there's something that is true but is impossible for us to know, then that's that. Let's move on, because there's no point in dwelling on it. We'll probably never know if that's true anyway.

Fish talks about scientists moving from one epistemology to the next as if science is wandering between equal but different ways of thinking. Of course this is nonsense. When there is a revolution, or paradigm shift, it is because we have discovered a new way of looking at things that allows us to explain everything we have observed before, and more. Thus, the new epistemology is demonstrably superior to the old one. While it's impossible to know if and when we can ever reach truth in our understanding, we can see that we move closer to it over time.

The trouble with all attempts to lump rationalism in with religion is that they ultimately reduce to the silly 'can we really know anything?' question. The easy answer is: if not, we'll never know that. Sure, science makes some basic assumptions in that we assume the universe is consistent on some level, and that our perception of it is in some way reflective of its nature. If you choose not to make those assumptions, though, then pursuit of natural knowledge becomes entirely pointless.

So we attempt to understand the world under the minimal assumption that understanding is possible. Science follows. Religion, on the other hand, adds all sorts of other assumptions -- like there is an invisible man in the sky who sets you on fire forever if you have sex with the wrong person -- that are neither verifiable, necessary, or in any way useful. This is why a scientific view of the world is defensible from a strictly rational point of view, while a religious view is not.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

Interesting to be dismissive of philosophy of science while paraphasing Thomas Kuhn.

It actually empasizes how certain discourses are centralized and privileged, without the process by which such discourses gain status being acknowledged.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

quote:

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Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:
Interesting to be dismissive of philosophy of science while paraphasing Thomas Kuhn.

---

My post was not generally dismissive of the philosophy of science.

quote:

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It actually empasizes how certain discourses are centralized and privileged, without the process by which such discourses gain status being acknowledged.

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quote:

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Certainly mainstream or centrist intellectuals thought there was a lot to worry about. They agreed with Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, who complained that the ideas coming out of France amounted to a “rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment” even to the point of regarding “science as nothing more than a ‘narration’ or a ‘myth’ or a social construction among many others.”
This is not quite right; what was involved was less the rejection of the rationalist tradition than an interrogation of its key components: an independent, free-standing, knowing subject, the “I” facing an independent, free-standing world.

---

It sounds very nice that the "rationalist tradition" is not being rejected, but only "interrogated".

But without answers to the interrogatories, we are simply being presented with clouds of cleverly-phrased doubt.

Doubt is a useful thing, but ULTIMATELY it makes action meaningless. Why try to overcome poverty when we're not really sure about anything, including whether a poor person is "a free-standing, knowing subject?" or not?

The consequence is either political quiescence, or the-will-to-power, meaning the exaltation of individual subjectivity as a complete justification for action. If there can be NO real knowledge, then one point of view is just as good as any other.

What we have from the so called rationalists, amounts to Spector applauding an Archie Bunker diatribe, Proaxiom commenting on "style", and Jeff House once again authorizing his view by demonstrating his ability to build straw men while spelling German names with facility.

No, Jeff, no one is saying that there is "no real knowldege" or that "one point of view is a good as another". You made that up.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Still, it has nothing to do with spelling German names. The people I mentioned are the intellectual fathers of this "French" tradition, and almost everything in that tradition is foreshadowed in their works.

I am persuaded that empiricism (not rationalism) provides an adequate basis for action; even if its conclusions are not certain, they are probable and plausible.

quote:

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So we attempt to understand the world under the minimal assumption that understanding is possible. Science follows. Religion, on the other hand, adds all sorts of other assumptions -- like there is an invisible man in the sky who sets you on fire forever if you have sex with the wrong person -- that are neither verifiable, necessary, or in any way useful. This is why a scientific view of the world is defensible from a strictly rational point of view, while a religious view is not.

---

I think N.R. Kissed was referring to the OP, not to you. I haven't read Kuhn so I can't say for sure. He might be pointing out, quite rightly, as has bell hooks, that it is curious politically that deconstruction has emerged as a dominant philosophy in liberal academics just as marginalized voices are beginning to assert themselves. That is, deconstruction is becoming "privileged and centralized" without being interrogated as its own relativist worldview.

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
This "French tradition" is really Nietszche as modified by Heidegger. The undertow of these theorists flows toward the far right. One can be a progressive Nietszchean (Gianni Vattimo) but it takes a lot of effort and special pleading.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Sorry that my critique of the article isn't to your taste.

Still, it has nothing to do with spelling German names. The people I mentioned are the intellectual fathers of this "French" tradition, and almost everything in that tradition is foreshadowed in their works.

I am persuaded that empiricism (not rationalism) provides an adequate basis for action; even if its conclusions are not certain, they are probable and plausible.

Deconstruction is a kind of radical skepticism. While useful to combat naive foundationalism (Spector), it has eventually to be discarded, or it will lead you to self-satisfied abstention from any movement for social change.

---

Then you haven't understood what is being said. I know that it is common for people who don't understand things to reject them. "Fear of the unknown"? Fear of having your authority disabled by a change in discourse... perhaps?

No, Jeff, no one is saying that there is "no real knowldege" or that "one point of view is a good as another". You made that up.

Neils Bhor.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Could someone give an example in which this sort of stuff actually increased our understanding of something?

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[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I know that's an inadequate response. But I just have this little box to type in and it's almost suppertime! Maybe I'll expand later....

(SG, you sound like a follower of A.J. Ayer!)

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

But I'll give it a go: your question is loaded, and illustrative of the problems deconstruction reveals. You asked for "understanding." I gave you three seminal books that revolutionized (not an exaggeration) how we look at gender, race and sexuality. They allowed us to parse these constructs (yes, now they are constructs) with greater acumen and imagination. To me, this means we can now understand them better than we could before.

You said "understanding" and meant something completely different. I'm not sure how "predictability" enters into my "understanding." How can I predict gender? Predict justice? But your worldview is built on different things than mine. Perhaps to you, this means that mine is stupid. Irrelevant. Academic backpatting. I don't know. But to a deconstructionist it would be a question of pragmatism. What view is more useful to what we want to achieve? One that values the ability to predict behaviour, or one that values examining how that behaviour is constructed? Can they be reconciled? What is at stake in these questions?

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Yay. A meaningless reply. My bad for expecting anything better.

---

Well for one thing, if Pentagon planners, and the people in the Chenney administration had actually read Orientalism and understood it, it is very likely that they would not have invaded Iraq, and had they understood their own misconceptions about the nature of Arab society, and the Middle East, rather than going ahead with game plan entirely infused with common-place western preconception, your economy would not be as fucked up today as it is.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
That quotation from Neils Bohr is probably wildly out of context. Bohr was in the middle of arguments about "the end of matter" at the start of the 20th century, following developments in physics and the discovery of new properties of matter. These arguments had more to do with stamping out philosophical materialism, as a pernicious atheistic abomination, etc., and had bugger all to do with later deconstruction meta-narratives or anti-meta-narrratives. Leave Bohr out of it, Cueball, even if it sounds clever and all.

---

It is not at all out of context, it is entirely dead on. It was a response to Eienstien's insistance that Physics should get back to the hard certitudes charachterized by Newtonian Physics.

So much to say, does the existance of a method of analyzing discourse which more accurately reflects what we can say about human social discourse, discount the usefulness of a purely "rationalist" world view? Does the existance of a Quantum theory, likewise mean that Newtonian physics is entirely without usefulness in terms of the broad strokes of defining the actions and reactions in the common experience of the real world?

Some people seem to be able to accept a certain amount of "uncertainty" and relative relationships, only if such is being espoused by people in lab coats.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
If you're exploring value judgments, then that's fine. Fill your boots.

But the minute you want to actually apply this stuff to anything we observe, then understanding a phenomenon is the same thing as being able to make predictions about observables.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
If you're exploring value judgments, then that's fine. Fill your boots.

But the minute you want to actually apply this stuff to anything we observe, then understanding a phenomenon is the same thing as being able to make predictions about observables.

---

What, like gravity? That's easy to predict. People did it for years before Isaac Newton. Did they understand it as well as he did? Doctors who treated the Black plague in the UK believed it was spread through bad smells. So they stuffed flowers in a ramshackle leather mask and wore long leather jumpsuits to keep the smell from penetrating their skin. Their hypothesis was proved by the evidence: they didn't get the plague. It wasn't until later we figured out that the flowers acted as a makeshift gas-mask and the body coverings prevented infected fleas from transmitting the disease. Who understood the plague better?

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

quote:

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Originally posted by RosaL:
SG, are you really espousing some form of positivism? (I have a weakness for positivism, but had to give it up!)

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Pretty much, until I see something better.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Sure - because that sort of understanding would have been based on verifiable facts, and on a model that makes predictions that can be compared to what actually happens.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Well for one thing, if Pentagon planners, and the people in the Chenney administration had actually read Orientalism and understood it, it is very likely that they would not have invaded Iraq, and had they understood their own misconceptions about the nature of Arab society, and the Middle East, rather than going ahead with game plan entirely infused with common-place western preconception, your economy would not be as fucked up today as it is.

---

Have you read for example, Edward Said's point by point prediction of the demise Oslo "peace process" written practically the day after it was signed? Everything basicly turned out as he predicted.

There is another one you can read, its a collection of his essays called "The End of the Peace Process". If your theory is, and I presume this is where you are going, that "post modernist" critical thinking has no practical application, and that it does not show concrete and verifiable analytic results, and in fact creates muddleheadedness, then it stands to reason that his practical political analysis would be failure as well.

This is not the case. Said was right. The rest of the left was wrong. Oslo was a bad idea, and a failure.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Cueball: It is not at all out of context, it is entirely dead on. It was a response to Eienstien's insistance that Physics should get back to the hard certitudes charachterized by Newtonian Physics.

---

On the contrary. It is a philosophical statement of capitulation. As far as I'm concerned it's a surrender to religion in the science class.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. There are other interpretations of quantum theory besides the Copenhagen codswallop that Bohr was selling and that you are regurgitating here.

Intelligent Design in the Physics Classroom

quote:

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A dangerous enemy has infiltrated our science classrooms and is infecting our students’ minds. The enemy is a profoundly unscientific theory masquerading as legitimate science. Its presence in the science classroom blurs the distinction between real science and arbitrary dogma and “makes students stupid” by leaving them less able to distinguish reasonable ideas from unreasonable ones – a skill that is surely one of the main goals of teaching science in the first place.

You probably suspect the enemy I'm talking about is Intelligent Design (ID). Yes, ID has infiltrated some science classrooms. Yes, ID is specifically designed to blur the distinction between real science and religious dogma.

---

Furthermore,

quote:

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The enemy I'm worried about is something else – something just as unscientific as ID, but more dangerous because it is not widely recognized as such: the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The Copenhagen interpretation, so named because of the Danish roots of its main author Niels Bohr, grew out of the paradoxical nature of sub-atomic particles revealed by experiments in the 1920s: electrons sometimes acted like particles but sometimes like waves.

---

We have, therefore ...

quote:

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If one wants to achieve a coherent physical understanding of the nature of the electron, however, this is not very satisfying. Bohr's approach was not so much to resolve the paradox as to embrace it. ... According to the Copenhagen view, physicists can never really understand the surprising experimental results or the real nature of the electron. We must simply embrace the paradox and quit looking for a coherent physical picture.

This is clearly all rather weird and philosophical, at least compared to what scientists normally consider scientific. One might think, therefore, that Bohr’s ideas could have had little or no impact on the actual scientific theory of quantum mechanics. This, however, is definitely not the case. Bohr’s ideas were tremendously influential in the development of the theory, and continue to be taught – in all the textbooks and in the overwhelming majority of classrooms – as an essential, ineliminable part of the formal textbook theory.

---

quote:

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Bohr advocates complete surrender: “There is no quantum world... It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.

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Philosophical cowardry. The result? Physicists are told to "shut up and calculate". We all saw what that led to in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fuck that evil shit.

quote:

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But, in fact, this premise is a complete fabrication. The Copenhagen philosophy is not the only possible conceptual framework for quantum theory. There exists a completely normal, scientific, common-sensical alternative – a theory that agrees with all of the experiments but avoids completely the unscientific philosophical baggage and subjectivist implications of the Copenhagen approach. This alternative theory gives no special dynamical role to “measurement,” in no way implies that the world doesn't exist until somebody looks at it, and completely undermines the case for mind-over-matter anti-realism, channeling, the magical healing power of crystals, and all the other nonsense (as expressed, for example, in the bizarre recent movie What the Bleep do We Know?) that draws its lifeblood from the Copenhagen philosophy.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Coyote:
Stephen, my friend, you look suspiciously like a pot sizing up a kettle.

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Yay. A drive-by "I'm SO much smarter than you, but I can't be bothered to explain why."

One would think that if such theories were half-baked, and not applicable to the real world, that he would have been unable to judge and analyze the "real world" events accurately.

This is far from the case, Said pronounced Oslo a failure, the day it was signed, furthermore he accurately predicted the course of events that would follow, almost to the "T".

The theory informs the analysis, can we agree on that?

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:

Yay. A drive-by "I'm SO much smarter than you, but I can't be bothered to explain why."

Can never get enough of those.

---

Easy, Stephen. I only meant a slight dig.

You once told me that an economic model was an "approximation of reality"; I accepted this, and responded that was the role of a novel, as well. I believe this was your response:

quote:

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
And I'm not the only one who thinks so. There are other interpretations of quantum theory besides the Copenhagen codswallop that Bohr was selling and that you are regurgitating here.

---

Before you said it was "out of context." Turns out I was "regurgitating," which I guess is an admission that my charachterization of Bhor's idea was correct and not "out of context."

I am not going to comment on the rest of the debate at this point in time. But on the surface it looks like a typical ad hominem rationalist attack based in "definitions" not "inquisitions".

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
That's right Spector. That is what I was saying.

---

quote:

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By the way have you read Orientalism?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Coyote:
Easy, Stephen. I only meant a slight dig.

You once told me that an economic model was an "approximation of reality";

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Okay.

quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
As a matter of fact I have. Smashing book, but in my opinion, unlikely to cause anyone in the White House or the Pentagon warroom to lose any sleep.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
No really? Not even when he was fucking up their "peace process"?

---

Given that you thought that Orientalism was "smashing," and that it comes from the school of post modernist literary theory, what say you now about this comment you were applauding:

quote:

---

This is drivel about drivel — “metadrivel” as some stucturalist, post-structuralist or deconstructionist might say. Literary theory (not to be confused with literature) is more worthless and deluded than alchemy or astrology ever were. It should be banished from our educational system. Failing that, any student who takes a course in literary theory should be required to take three in mathematics, a discipline which has actually manages to cogently connect words and names with perceptions and actions.

---

By rights it should be drivel, not a "smashing book".

You are as usual confused. One day you will argue forcefully for the generative power of ideas and their impact on human social relations, such as those found in the Qu'ran, and then the next somehow skip the relationship between the foundational philosphic approach applied by Said, directly acting in the discourse, in the real political world, agreeing substantially with his point, but refusing to acknowledge the generative power of the ideas that spawned the analysis.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Of course.

---

What this article attempts to do is highlight how that discourse plays itself out in society. Now, this cannot be measured in the same way that a mathematic formual can, but that is the nature of society.

You are getting pretty far afield here. Neither the Fish article nor the perceptive comment about it that I quoted made any reference to Edward Said or his work.

Said did not write meaningless drivel. He wrote eminently comprehensible and sensible things in plain English like this:

quote:

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So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.

---

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Well, what I'm saying is that Bohr is just plain wrong. Or, at the very least, that there are perfectly good alternatives to his philosophical views on physics. Quoting him proves nothing about the philosophy of physics ... it's just name dropping, is all.

---

No its not name dropping at all. Its recognition of the fact that a certain amount of fuzziness, shaped in part by relative observer/observed relationships and the cognitive limitations of human intelligence, is routinely used in modern scientific theory, and applied, effectively in physics. What I find striking is that this simple concept should be categorically rejected in social theory, when society itself, and any analysys thereof, is almost entirely a product of human intelligence.

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
Cueball:

You are getting pretty far afield here. Neither the Fish article nor the perceptive comment about it that I quoted made any reference to Edward Said or his work.
[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

---

No. You are confused. Said was a literary theorist, of the post-modernist school. He applied this method of thinking to his practical political analysis. You can not explain how the theory he applied produced meaningful results.

I certainly do not subscribe to the idea that every person in this genre of theory is useful, in fact many are not. But, as you yourself have attested, Orientalism is a "smashing book". If "Literary theory (not to be confused with literature) is more worthless and deluded than alchemy or astrology ever were" it should produce no meaningful results, however you agree it has, apparently.

You say, that saying that literary theory is "worthless" is "perceptive" then turn around and say Said is "smashing". Your word. These two statements do not correlate. They are not consistent, at all.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

As the author of the article points out, the point is "to show that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice." You seem to be admitting as much.

These dangerous philosophical views that the world does not exist until we look at it, etc., belong in the trash can, frankly. Unfortunately, they continue to be smuggled, surreptitiously now because ID is often too blatant for importation, into the classroom to harm young minds. It's just wrong to be indifferent to what's going on here.

Bohr isn't the first physicist to be a good physicist but a bad philosopher.
------------------------------------------

complementarity = wave and particle natures were mutually incompatible.

[ 09 April 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

To reiterate:

Its recognition of the fact that a certain amount of fuzziness, shaped in part by relative observer/observed relationships and the cognitive limitations of human intelligence, is routinely used in modern scientific theory, and applied, effectively in physics. What I find striking is that this simple concept should be categorically rejected in social theory, when society itself, and any analysys thereof, is almost entirely a product of human intelligence.

quote:

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Cueball: Its recognition of the fact that a certain amount of fuzziness, shaped in part by relative observer/observed relationships and the cognitive limitations of human intelligence, is routinely used in modern scientific theory, and applied, effectively in physics.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
But we agree now that my original quote was not "out of context" but dead on.

---

Or was your reply directed only at him?

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
Nice bit of bootstrapping, Cueball. You have simply defined Said as being of the same class of writers as the ones that I dislike, and then using your definition to show that I am being contradictory.

Whereas I have demonstrated by means of a concrete quotation from Said that at least some of his writing is nothing at all like the drivel written by many of the po-mo literary theorists to which I and others have taken exception.

---

Nope. That is not what you said. You said that saying the Literary Theory" was "worthelss" was perceptive. A categorical denouciation of the whole field. In fact the field should be "banned". This was "preceptive" according to you. Yet Said is "smashing", you say.

How is that? Said managed some kind of trick of disconnecting his analysis of mid-east politics, and his deconstruction of western cultural understandings of the east, from the philosophical methodolgy he applied?

According to your perceptive internet pundit Said should not be able to "cogently connect words and names with perceptions and actions," because he was a literary theorist of the post-modern school.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

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I think N.R. Kissed was referring to the OP, not to you. I haven't read Kuhn so I can't say for sure. He might be pointing out, quite rightly, as has bell hooks, that it is curious politically that deconstruction has emerged as a dominant philosophy in liberal academics just as marginalized voices are beginning to assert themselves. That is, deconstruction is becoming "privileged and centralized" without being interrogated as its own relativist worldview

---

Actually I was responding to Proaxiam who seemed quite comfortable talking about Kuhn's concept of Paradigm shift in relation to scientific endeavors. To be honest I have only read secondary sources of Kuhn's ideas but his basic concept he introduced in his work Structure of Scientific Revolution contends that science does not operate via a steady collection of facts but understanding advances due to broad conceptual shifts that he refered to as 'paradigm shifts" Now I am not claiming that Kuhn was a post modernist but his ideas are consistent with post-structural ideas in that the way that science is done and conceptualized has a historical and cultural context and it is inseperable from this context.

quote:

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Sure - because that sort of understanding would have been based on verifiable facts, and on a model that makes predictions that can be compared to what actually happens.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:

Now I am not claiming that Kuhn was a post modernist but his ideas are consistent with post-structural ideas in that the way that science is done and conceptualized has a historical and cultural context and it is inseperable from this context.

What I found interesting is that somehow Kuhn's ideas have been accepted( priviledged and centralized) to the extent that people believe that paradigm shift is a natural part of how we view scientific endeavour. I was naturally curious that people who oppose post-structural ideas are willing to embrace a narrative that is consistent with those same ideas.

---

I believe that all our thinking and acting "has a historical and cultural [and political and economic] context and it is inseperable from this context" and I am not a post-structuralist. Some people seem to think there there are only two options: a naive, simple-minded, ahistorical approach and post-structuralism. There are other possibilities! It is entirely possible that someone might accept Kuhn's ideas (and I have read Kuhn) without accepting post-structuralism. As the article points out, these are old questions and they've been asked - and answered - by people other than post-structuralists.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:
What I found interesting is that somehow Kuhn's ideas have been accepted( priviledged and centralized) to the extent that people believe that paradigm shift is a natural part of how we view scientific endeavour. I was naturally curious that people who oppose post-structural ideas are willing to embrace a narrative that is consistent with those same ideas.

---

There used to be a conceit hidden inside evolutionary biology that human beings were the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. People had this picture in their heads of a hierarchy with prokaryotes down at the bottom and us sitting smugly atop it. This conceit led us to a fundamental error: it made us think that evolution had some kind of direction, like lifeforms were on a progressive path from one place to another.

As biologists came to understand that this was the wrong way to look at evolution, we had a paradigm shift. Species adapt as best they can to their ever-changing environments, and from an objective point of view bacteria are just as well-adapted as humans are, in that they are capable of survival.

You might take this as fodder for post-structuralism, because it shows how preconceived biases undermine our understanding of reality.

But a rationalist can hold it up as a triumph. Reason and evidence eventually allowed people to identify and overcome that bias. We got rid of the old way of thinking and moved on to a better, though undoubtedly still imperfect, framework.

What cultural and historical elements still taint our understanding of the natural world? Of course we don't know, but science provides the means to help us shed them over time.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

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I believe that all our thinking and acting "has a historical and cultural [and political and economic] context and it is inseperable from this context" and I am not a post-structuralist. Some people seem to think there there are only two options: a naive, simple-minded, ahistorical approach and post-structuralism. There are other possibilities! It is entirely possible that someone might accept Kuhn's ideas (and I have read Kuhn) without accepting post-structuralism. As the article points out, these are old questions and they've been asked - and answered - by people other than post-structuralists.

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I don't disagree with you. I was just pointing out it is problematic if one accepts the basic premise of Kuhn and then rejects post-structural arguments that state Science has a historical, cultural, political and economic basis.

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You might take this as fodder for post-structuralism, because it shows how preconceived biases undermine our understanding of reality.

But a rationalist can hold it up as a triumph. Reason and evidence eventually allowed people to identify and overcome that bias. We got rid of the old way of thinking and moved on to a better, though undoubtedly still imperfect, framework.

What cultural and historical elements still taint our understanding of the natural world? Of course we don't know, but science provides the means to help us shed them over time.

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Kuhn as I understand does not suggest that science is "tainted" by cultrue or history he argues that it is embedded within and inseperable from that context.

If you'd care to give examples of the "po-mo drivel" you object to, I'd certainly like to listen. I think the publish-or-perish mentality in Academia has done some terrible things to scholarly writing, but I've got news for you: it's not limited to literary scholars. Read some tax case law. It's incomprehensible. Should we thus abolish law? Thing is, I have the hankering suspicion that you haven't read a single goddamn piece of literary theory, but you still think that you are justified in calling for its extermination. What buoyant confidence. What buoyant, terrifying confidence.

In fact, it should also be pointed out that "deconstruction" and "literary theory" are not synonymous in the slightest. Nor is it synonymous with "postmodernism." By now, deconstruction is a useful footnote to a much larger project. Even Derrida shifted it to the sidelines in the latter half of his career (you know, the time he was writing about Marx, Democracy, and Rogue States?)

Anyway, anyone here who keeps sucking on the same "postmodernism is drivel" canard has clearly never read bell hooks.

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Much postmodern engagement with culture emerges from the yearning to do intellectual work that connects with habits of being, forms of artistic expression, and aesthetics that inform the daily life of writers and scholars as well as a mass population. On the terrain of culture, one can participate in critical dialogue with the uneducated poor, the black underclass who are thinking about aesthetics. One can talk about what we are seeing, thinking, or listening to; a space is there for critical exchange. It's exciting to think, write, talk about, and create art that reflects passionate engagement with popular culture, because this may very well be 'the' central future location of resistance struggle, a meeting place where new and radical happenings can occur.

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[ 09 April 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

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Funny, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer made the same argument about rationalism and the Enlightenment project in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). They said Fascism was its direct, inevitable descendant. Besides, these guilt-by-association tactics are as lazy and baseless as they are untrue.

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Of course, ideas have implications. And setting out those implications does not amount to "guilt-by-association".

I guess you think that there is nothing to be said for the Horkheimer/Adorno thesis you have quoted, since it links fascism with previous Enlightenment thought, ie. "guilt-by-association".

In fact, modern historians of political thought don't buy the Horkheimer thesis (which is not argued empirically in the book at all).

Here is Richard Wolin, for example:

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In a much-cited essay Isaiah Berlin contended that one could trace the origins of fascism to Counter-Enlightenment ideologues like Joseph de Maistre and Johann Georg Hamann.3 Indeed, a certain plausibility marks Berlin's claim.

For one of fascism's avowed goals was to put an end to the Enlightenment-derived nineteenth-century worldview: the predominance of science, reason, democracy, socialism, individualism, and the like. As Goebbels pithily observed a few months after Hitler's rise to power, "The year 1789 is hereby erased from history."4

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Originally posted by jeff house:

Of course, ideas have implications. And setting out those implications does not amount to "guilt-by-association".

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Jeff is right, ideas do have implication, and now lets look at what his imply.

No he is not talking about guilt by association or any such comparatively harmless principle. He is talking about the criminalization of ideas. What Orwell called "thought crime". He is generally a proponent, adopting the Stalanist thesis that sharing a set of beliefs, or eschewing those of the elite, amounts to a political act. That one can simply establish an apparent correlation between a set of ideas, and then assert the existance of a direct membership in a political group, even if no such group exists.

He is of course privy to the objective knowledge by which the correlation of these ideas can be defined, and the evolution of a system of ideas whereby definitions are context dependent is a direct threat to his right to "objectively" define these political correlations and his presumed authority to assign persons as "objective" members of groups, regardless of the expressed will of those persons.

House rejects Foucault's challenge to hierarchical structure in discourse, because it limits his authority to denounce people as political criminals, regardless of their expressed intentions, their actual allegiances or their concrete acts.

[ 09 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I promise not to punish anyone.

But pointing out that certain ideas have negative consequences, is the REASON to be discussing them in the first place.

There is no use fulminating about how I am claiming "objective knowledge" or "authority".

Everyone here who argues for a proposition must believe there is a sufficiently-solid basis for the proposition being argued.

As I said, above, I believe that empiricism supplies an ADEQUATE basis for action, because it is based on probabilities.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
A thought "crime" is indeed a Stalinist invention, though the Nazis had them, too. The ideas were "crimes" because the Soviet state PUNISHED people for having them.

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You never heard of the Roman Catholic Church?

And countless other organized religious institutions which murdered people for having the wrong thoughts?

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Originally posted by jeff house:

As I said, above, I believe that empiricism supplies an ADEQUATE basis for action, because it is based on probabilities.

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And again you demonstrate a very sore lack of understanding of the critique you are trying to analyze. The criticism, such as there is in post-modernist thought, is not anti-empirical. Nor is it being said that "there can be NO real knowledge", and that "one point of view is just as good as any other," is total bullshit, on the leve of a highschool philosphy student first essay on Kierkegaard. Post modernism is empirical critique of how ideas are generated in the discourse, and are not seperate from the manner in which they are delivered in the discourse. You repeatedly make this assertion that basicly post-modernist thinking can be summariezed as the lack of existance of "truth".

This is wrong. Truth is not entirely objective, nor subjective, it is defined by its context, but it still operates within the limits of the operable parameters of the what is empirically observable, as a shared truth, which is constructed within the discourse by our shared relationship to the real.

Donald Rumsfeld and Edward Said, might not have agreed on the exact definition of what the "Middle East" is, but they were both definitely talking about the same thing, in general terms. The Middle East as a geographic place may be a social constuctm but it is still an existant social construct being constructed by our mutual attempts to define it through our social relationships.

The falacy you propose is akin to asserting that because Hiesenberg can not exactly define the exact velocity of a particle in a completely objective sense, outside of a set of probabilities, Hiesenberg is saying that the particle does not have a velocity or does not exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are talking about the scope of probability as a "fact."

Incidentally, Hisenberg was a Fascist, and Oppenheimer relied heavily on his ideas. Does this make Oppenheimer a proto-fascist, or an outright fascist? Idea have implications right?

[ 09 April 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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If you start a thread on Foucault, I'll tell you why I think that he was politically naive, which led to embarassing episodes such as his support for the Ayatollah Khomeini or for sex with minors. But he's too complex a figure to be dealt with here.

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Um, unlike say, other French theorists? In a thread on French theorists?

ETA: Actually, I'd love threads on Foucault, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Lacan, Butler, hooks, and even Nietzsche & Heidegger. I know, we'd have to watch out for that right-wing undertow, but maybe I'm still politically naive enough to think that these folks might have something worthwhile to say.

[ 09 April 2008: Message edited by: mersh ]

The primary text:

I tried a thread on D & G and just got scolded. Sayonara. After reading a collection of Guattari's (very cool & slamming stuff ( a link to Ron Sakolksy's essay on pirate radio including Radio Alice..(.LINK!))))), I decided to try to actually Anti-Oedipus and it was pretty excellent and very

dunh dunh dunh

Marxist!

The knee jerk lefty anti-Nietzsche stuff is a waste of time. The dude had TERRIBLE answers, but some of the very very best questions.