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Nico wrote: If there is no such thing as objective thought then there is no such thing as objective reality, since reality is all in our heads anyway. I said: If it's all in our heads, how do I know that you exist? Might you be a mirage or simply a Turing-type computer program? Nico now opines: Could be - you never know. I hope no-one walks too close to your hard drive with a strong magnet... Of course, you never know, magnetism may not work on you. You never know, you may be an immortal computer. Not that immortality matters, since time isn't real but is instead subjective. Of course, how can it be subjective, since nothing really "is." It's all illusion, time, space, everything. Indeed, this message is unreal. You are not reading it. This is the kind of absurdity that radical skepticism (nihilistic epistemology) gets you into. As Justin says, it's a distraction (akin to contemplating one's own navel for more than 5 minutes). I'm going to avoid discussions of epistemology in the future. Anyone who embraces such a view is saying that their statements are simply opinion, a bunch of subjective feelings, with no assertion of possible truth. So there's no reason to respect those opinions. I'll ignore them. If it's all in our heads, why should anyone listen to you? After all, if my opinion is as good as yours, why should I talk to you? Nico writes: Personally, I think that I have a love of communication. I love debating. You don't have to talk to me, but you do. Why do you talk to me anyway? Because I think that looking for the truth of the matter is a good thing to do (even though it's difficult). Clarity of thought (which involves some notion of truth) is necessary to political action, among other things. Besides, I never simply talk to one person in an e-mail discussion. I know that there are third parties who read these things. My comments aren't simply aimed at you, but at them. (This attitude helps avoid flame-wars, by the way.) Also, as a personal matter, I have a weak sense of the reality of the empirical world outside of my immediate experience (because I have a poor memory). So the Bishop Berkeley stuff about "does that door really exist?" is interesting to me. However, after a point, such discussions prove the validity of the principle of diminishing returns. I think that it's important to separate ontology from epistemology. Epistemology is necessarily pluralistic: there will always be different perspectives on the world, since there will always be large numbers of people. But ontologically, there exists only one reality outside of our consciousness of it: the laws of physics, those of chemistry, biology, and other natural sciences exist independent of our knowledge of them, though at this point in time we don't know them as well as we could. Similarly, the problem of scarcity and the importance to humans of avoiding hunger will exist whether we understand these or not. Nico says: What happens when physicists and biologists and chemists don't agree? What happens when they agree but they are still wrong? After the initial part (the reference to epistemological pluralism), I wasn't talking about the physicists biologists' _perception_ and thus their disagreements and inaccuracies. No matter what the physicists' perceptions of the laws of nature (and these perceptions have been wrong in the past), there are laws of physics that exist independent of their perception of them. Even if I think that the Moon rotates around the Earth because the former is in love with the latter, gravitational attraction exists (though we may not understand it completely). This ontological assertion can't be proved as far as I know, but it's the only basis I can see for allowing any agreement rather than the persistence of a welter of discordant opinions. And how can we have opinions unless objective reality exists for us to have opinions in? saith Nico: But throughout time people have disagreed on this reality. For instance, I think it was here on this list that recently there was some debate on overpopulation of the world. Let's say for a moment that in objective reality there is a population of humans on the planet earth. What an assumption! the fact that Nico has to make that assumption is a sign that either she has an untenable position or that she's ribbing me (and the list as a whole). she continues: What else can be objectively said about these humans? Certainly, things like they are mammals, etc., but not whether or not there is overpopulation. Not yet at least. What objective basis do we have for making this claim? None. There are no objective basises. There is only opinion on whether or not the world is overpopulated by humans. If we disagree on this reality so much and so frequently historically then how can we claim an objective reality? I can't say that I personally won't work within this reality: it is the only reality I
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Uh, Jim, I don't want to be a stick in the mud. But let's say you lived to 2060. Would you really be able to say whether it was a super duper neural network hooked up to an big ol' database of human knowledge you were conversing with on the "other side" of your screen or a human person? Could you beat it at chess played via a listserv? Natural Selection ain't done with epistemic abilities yet. So maybe our categories regarding epistemology and ontology will become increasingly problematic as time goes on. This would be grounds for optimism and pessimism in my book. Ian
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At 09:10 AM 9/6/00 -0700, you wrote: Uh, Jim, I don't want to be a stick in the mud. why not? But let's say you lived to 2060. Would you really be able to say whether it was a super duper neural network hooked up to an big ol' database of human knowledge you were conversing with on the "other side" of your screen or a human person? you're right, _if_ I lived in the year 2060. But I'm currently living in 2000. Could you beat it at chess played via a listserv? probably not, since I'm a rank amateur. Peter Dorman, who plays really well, says that Deep Blue and similar computers are beginning to wipe out the grand masters these days. In 60 years, it will be even worse (or better, depending on your perspective). Natural Selection ain't done with epistemic abilities yet. So maybe our categories regarding epistemology and ontology will become increasingly problematic as time goes on. This would be grounds for optimism and pessimism in my book. maybe, but at present we're stuck with what we've got at present. BTW, epistemological realism says that the external world exists independently of our perceptions of it. But our actions -- based partly on our (mis)perceptions (and also on whose got the power) -- change that external world, often for the worse. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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The question of whether objective [*gegenstandliche] truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a quesion of theory but is a *practical* question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and] power, the this-sidedness [*Diesseitigkiet*] of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely *scholastic* question. .. The standpoint of the old materialism is "*civil*" society; the standpoint of the new is *human* society, or socialised humanity. ** The internet is peculiar in that it represents the most perfect reflection of the very skeleton of bourgeois society. On the internet we all begin as isolated individuals coming from nowhere, and strive to create relations where none existed before. This is the perfect environment for the wildest sorts of individualist and skeptical thought to flourish. The banal question of how do "I" know that "you" exist suddenly becomes real. How do "I" sitting here know that there is a "you" behind the marks on the monitor screen? In objective reality g of course we never find ourselves in such abstraction from social relations, which are always already there. We cannot know that we ourselves exist as humans unless we know (and not merely think) that we have social relations with others. So, Jim, you are both right and wrong that we cannot "prove" that others exist. You are right in that to ask the question is to deny ourselves. But unless we can ask the question we cannot answer it. You are wrong because we do ask the question but we could not ask it unless we already *knew* the existence of others. Questions only exist in a web of social relations. Nico -- you are claiming you don't exist. Because to exist as a human is to exist as an aspect of a web of social relations. Don't have time to make this precise. Have to go grocery shopping. Carrol
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I don't want to be a stick in the mud. why not? Because given your next sentence, you're playing that role :-) you're right, _if_ I lived in the year 2060. But I'm currently living in 2000. Thanks for missing my point. maybe, but at present we're stuck with what we've got at present. No we aren't. BTW, epistemological realism says that the external world exists independently of our perceptions of it. But our actions -- based partly on our (mis)perceptions (and also on whose got the power) -- change that external world, often for the worse. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine No, metaphysical realism says that the external world exists independently of our perceptions. Epistemological realism is the claim that idea/theories have causal efficacy in the world of which they are members. To the extent that is true, then the world and our perception of it is malleable. There are multiple ways the world can be. The common world is loaded with redundancy in the physicists and information theorists sense of the term. Redundancy is the way contraints manifest themselves to beings with various cognitive abilities. Beings with better theories can overcome constraints that others may not. As far as we can tell no beings can overcome all constraints. The world is not "transparent" to cognizers. The overcoming of some constraints may simultaneously generate others. Redundancy is also that which allows what consensus we have regarding the world of perceptions and communication. One aspect of these disputes is whether or not the laws of physics and the like are more like tables and chairs or ideas. No one has come up with a satisfactory answer to this yet, hence the debate between idealists and realists continues and is unlikely to go away despite having somewhat outlived it's usefulness. Regarding power and the issue of better and worse, that, as you suggest, is clearly relative; meta-ethical anti-relativists, neoliberals and conservatives notwithstanding. Ian "Reality is theory" John Wheeler
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Very cool Carrol. But *knocking on computer screen* I am here. *waving arms wildly* I am here. -Nico -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Carrol Cox Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 2:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Pomotismo The question of whether objective [*gegenstandliche] truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a quesion of theory but is a *practical* question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and] power, the this-sidedness [*Diesseitigkiet*] of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely *scholastic* question. .. The standpoint of the old materialism is "*civil*" society; the standpoint of the new is *human* society, or socialised humanity. ** The internet is peculiar in that it represents the most perfect reflection of the very skeleton of bourgeois society. On the internet we all begin as isolated individuals coming from nowhere, and strive to create relations where none existed before. This is the perfect environment for the wildest sorts of individualist and skeptical thought to flourish. The banal question of how do "I" know that "you" exist suddenly becomes real. How do "I" sitting here know that there is a "you" behind the marks on the monitor screen? In objective reality g of course we never find ourselves in such abstraction from social relations, which are always already there. We cannot know that we ourselves exist as humans unless we know (and not merely think) that we have social relations with others. So, Jim, you are both right and wrong that we cannot "prove" that others exist. You are right in that to ask the question is to deny ourselves. But unless we can ask the question we cannot answer it. You are wrong because we do ask the question but we could not ask it unless we already *knew* the existence of others. Questions only exist in a web of social relations. Nico -- you are claiming you don't exist. Because to exist as a human is to exist as an aspect of a web of social relations. Don't have time to make this precise. Have to go grocery shopping. Carrol _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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Do you have a reference for your use of "epistemological realism"? The claim you cite defines an interactionist view of the relationship of mind to body. What has it to do with epistemology , the theory of knowledge? I would think that epistemological realism would be the view that what we know is independent of and not altered by our knowledge of "it" or something along those lines. Of course we can often use our knowledge to alter "it". ie. we know that grass is killed by Roundup and use Roundup to kill it. Cheers, Ken Hanly Ian wrote No, metaphysical realism says that the external world exists independently of our perceptions. Epistemological realism is the claim that idea/theories have causal efficacy in the world of which they are members. To the extent that is true, then the world and our perception of it is malleable.
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Hi Rob. I think that outside of academic terminology we are saying the same thing - only coming at the same thing from two different directions. Or, rather, I fail to see the difference between what you and I are saying. You allow for a physical constrictions to ones knowing - I whole heartedly agree. Maybe I should have said, "Some people could care less, some things are as of yet unknowable, we can not fit everything we would like into our brains due to space and time constraints, and this all effects the reality we create for ourselves." ??? I have to do some thinking on this: Sure, it is tenable to argue that our notion of being (ontology) is itself a function of our notion of knowing (epistemology), but I fail to see how one could convince oneself that there aren't knowers or environments within which they do their knowing. 1) I have to head to statistics class now (uggh!) and 2) it sounds odd and I can't figure out why. I think, for me anyway, there is a step missing around the "but." How did the argument get from the first statement (one that I can agree with by the way) to the second statement in such a way that you are not agreeing with exactly what I was saying? Or should I say, of course physical environment effects what a person knows? -Nico -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Rob Schaap Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 10:17 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:1203] Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo G'day Nicole, You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. We have to remember that stuff we don't know can, and does, still influence us, Nicole. I know almost nothing about, say, the electro-magnetic spectrum or my genetic constitution, for instance. And then there's an infinite load of stuff I don't even know I know almost nothing about. In whatever circumstances I've come to disclose my reality to myself, whatever language I speak, however infinite may be the seconday signifiers to which my utterances here may give rise in however many consciousnesses, however decentred my subjectivity may be, and whatever my sex, colour and desires, many of these things do indeed influence me and my apprehensions. That's an ontologically realist claim, but it's a hard one to unseat, I reckon. Remember though, that ontological realism does not logically disallow an epistemological constructivism. Just that there are ever material parameters within which our being does its knowing - affording an ever dynamic scope on the thinkable, speakable and doable. Sure, it is tenable to argue that our notion of being (ontology) is itself a function of our notion of knowing (epistemology), but I fail to see how one could convince oneself that there aren't knowers or environments within which they do their knowing. Can you wear that, or am I still playing the tyrannical WM here? Cheers, Rob. _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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Oh my. Well Ken, I am going to break up your response into four sections if you will. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 5:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:1215] Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo Where do you get the idea that I assume that everyone knows that 2 plus 2 is 4 or that Ottawa is the capital of Canada? I don't. Why should I. It would be a false assumption, as you point out. Not false for you and false for me but just plain ordinary false. What significance has the fact that something is not part of some person's reality to it being true that 2 plus 2 is 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada? Only a limited number of truths are part of any individual's reality. So how does any of that show that truth is individual? Quoted from a previous message from Ken: "That "the truth" is individual seems to imply that there is something called "the truth" which is individual." What I meant by that statement is that if you are to assume that there is something called "the truth" then you might assume that all individuals believe the same thing (religion) or all nations want the same things (IR). If not everyone believes, knows, understands the same things and their reality may be (probably is) different from another persons then what a person believes is true or "the truth" is also different. Incidentally, "the truth" was used euphemistically earlier in another conversation about pomo. My bit about oxymoronic Platonism was a play on "the truth". For Plato the truth would indeed be individual but an individual form or universal certainly not some function of individual "truths" whatever they might be. If you think that what is true is what individuals believe (their reality?) then there is no such thing as "the truth" except as the class of all individual beliefs, a class which will no doubt contain contradictory sets of beliefs. Such a concept of truth seems to me internally incoherent. Exactly! But why does it have to be coherent? The only reason I can think of is so that it is then testable or logical as the case may be. The belief that x is y and the belief that it is not the case that x is y are not inconsistent but if the belief that x is y is equivalent to the truth that x is y and the belief that it is not the case that x is y is equivalent to the truth that it is not the case that x is y, then the truth is that x is y and it is not the case that x is y and that is incoherent. Of course one can avoid this consequence by claiming that we should not say that 2 plus 2 is 4 is true but only that it is true for a,b, c, where these letters represent individuals who believe that 2 plus 2 is 4. However, this is quite counterintiutive and counter to the way that our language and others work. When we claim that 2 plus 2 is 4 we are not just claiming that certain people believe that 2 plus 2 is 4. When a teacher uses number picture cards to teach this truth he or she does not refer to or use in the demonstration anyone's belief that 2 plus 2 is 4. There just is no sensible interpretation of " 2 plus 2 is 4 is true for me" except as a weird way of saying perhaps that I know or believe it is true. We do claim that 2 plus 2 is 4 period. While everyone may not know that I assume you know it and everyone on Pen-L knows it. If we know it then it is true. Period. Cheers, Ken Hanly We could avoid the problem of claiming truths by qualifying the answer, but that doesn't always work. If we assume that everyone knows something then people get left behind. Why don't we find out what people know first? -Nico _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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Hi Jim, If there is no such thing as objective thought then there is no such thing as objective reality, since reality is all in our heads anyway. If the context changes then that is subjective. The context is determined within our reality which again is in our own heads. My reality in the case Barkley is talking about would not change because I have no idea how or why measuring the angles of the earth is important. Nor would I ever have thought to measure the angles of the surface of the earth. Frankly, it is inconceivable to me. Ahhh... it is exactly these different perceptions that make reality contextual. This is not to say that a contextual reality is unknowable either. Just that we have to work a lot harder then they have in the past. For example, if we are to present a different culture we must immerse ourselves in that culture. We must try to learn as many perceptions of events within that culture as we can to fully explain the contextual reality. We can not walk into an African village and assume they follow the Western model for hierarchy and then not understand after giving all the money to the men for farmer equipment why the people are starving. We need to explore who, what, and how the people do their farming in the first place. Then we might have known to give the funds to the women how perform the farming in that particular village. -Nico -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 1:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo Barkley wrote: Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth... this says that the nature of truth depends on the objective context. It doesn't deny the importance of objective context. On the other hand, the pomotista epistemology (as I understand it) says that there is not objective context. It's all in our heads (or in the "text"). Eric notes that with regard to "the 'fact' that 2+2 = 4, 2+2 =11 to someone using base 3." But 2+2=11 in base 3 is simply 2+2=4 in a different language; it's a different representation of the same thing. This is a matter of different perceptions of the same objective reality, not one of objective reality being utterly unknowable. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If you know any one whose reality doesn't include 2 + 2 = 4, I *strongly* recommend that you urge them to trade it in for a better one. Unless, of course, you want their ignorance to be your strength...
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G'day Nicole, You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. We have to remember that stuff we don't know can, and does, still influence us, Nicole. Or, more pithily, "You may not be interested in the Dialectic, but the Dialectic is interested in you..."
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Where do you get the idea that I assume that everyone knows that 2 plus 2 is 4 or that Ottawa is the capital of Canada? I don't. Why should I. It would be a false assumption, as you point out. Not false for you and false for me but just plain ordinary false. What significance has the fact that something is not part of some person's reality to it being true that 2 plus 2 is 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada? Only a limited number of truths are part of any individual's reality. So how does any of that show that truth is individual? My bit about oxymoronic Platonism was a play on "the truth". For Plato the truth would indeed be individual but an individual form or universal certainly not some function of individual "truths" whatever they might be. If you think that what is true is what individuals believe (their reality?) then there is no such thing as "the truth" except as the class of all individual beliefs, a class which will no doubt contain contradictory sets of beliefs. Such a concept of truth seems to me internally incoherent. The belief that x is y and the belief that it is not the case that x is y are not inconsistent but if the belief that x is y is equivalent to the truth that x is y and the belief that it is not the case that x is y is equivalent to the truth that it is not the case that x is y, then the truth is that x is y and it is not the case that x is y and that is incoherent. Of course one can avoid this consequence by claiming that we should not say that 2 plus 2 is 4 is true but only that it is true for a,b, c, where these letters represent individuals who believe that 2 plus 2 is 4. However, this is quite counterintiutive and counter to the way that our language and others work. When we claim that 2 plus 2 is 4 we are not just claiming that certain people believe that 2 plus 2 is 4. When a teacher uses number picture cards to teach this truth he or she does not refer to or use in the demonstration anyone's belief that 2 plus 2 is 4. There just is no sensible interpretation of " 2 plus 2 is 4 is true for me" except as a weird way of saying perhaps that I know or believe it is true. We do claim that 2 plus 2 is 4 period. While everyone may not know that I assume you know it and everyone on Pen-L knows it. If we know it then it is true. Period. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Nicole Seibert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 11:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L:1183] RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 11:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:1152] Re: Re: Pomotismo How is the truth that 2 plus 2 is 4 individual, or that Yoshie sent the reply below, or that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, or millions of other commonplace truths? That "the truth" is individual seems to imply that there is something called "the truth" which is individual. Is this oxymoronic Platonism? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 9:25 PM Subject: [PEN-L:1140] Re: Pomotismo My response is 1) the truth is individual, 2) objectivity is impossible (including in the argument I just created) and 3) accepting our "man-made" god means accepting ourselves and trusting in our own magic. Why do academic work at all: 1) because it is fun, 2) it is the healthiest thing for our magical brains, 3) to help us discover our own "truth" and, 4) we might help someone else discover their own "truth" along the way. For me it is a very Buddhist way at looking at life. What do you think? -Nico It seems that your conclusion boils down to individualism (of the kind that most American undergrads profess without having read any postmodern master). Yoshie _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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RE the 'fact' that 2+2 = 4: 2 + 2 = 11 to someone using base 3. Eric
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Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth... Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, September 04, 2000 2:13 AM Subject: [PEN-L:1208] Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If you know any one whose reality doesn't include 2 + 2 = 4, I *strongly* recommend that you urge them to trade it in for a better one. Unless, of course, you want their ignorance to be your strength...
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Barkley wrote: Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth... this says that the nature of truth depends on the objective context. It doesn't deny the importance of objective context. On the other hand, the pomotista epistemology (as I understand it) says that there is not objective context. It's all in our heads (or in the "text"). Eric notes that with regard to "the 'fact' that 2+2 = 4, 2+2 =11 to someone using base 3." But 2+2=11 in base 3 is simply 2+2=4 in a different language; it's a different representation of the same thing. This is a matter of different perceptions of the same objective reality, not one of objective reality being utterly unknowable. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth... this says that the nature of truth depends on the objective context. It doesn't deny the importance of objective context. On the other hand, the pomotista epistemology (as I understand it) says that there is not objective context. It's all in our heads (or in the "text"). Most "truths" aren't of the 2+2=4 variety, at least the truths of political economy. Is a certain income distribution fair? Is a certain production process efficient? Are men and women equal? Where does nature end and culture begin - and does asking that question already presuppose an answer? Keynes said economics involves introspection and judgments of value. How many economists think that way today? Doug
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Barkley must be a disciple of Mill. For most philosophers 2 plus 2 is 4 does not entail any empirical claim and that would include the claim that a two degree angle and another two degree angle add up to a four degree angle on the surface of the earth--assuming this is what Barkley is talking about. If it did imply this then it would be appropriate to say only that usually 2 plus 2 is 4 or that it is highly probable that 2 plus 2 is 4. If I remember Mill holds something akin to the latter view. 2 drops of water plus 2 more can give you one big drop. Two liters of one liquid plus two liters of another do not necessarily yield 4 liters when the liquids are added. But this is surely irrelevant to the truth of 2 plus 2 is 4. Doug is right of course that "truth" predicated of value judgments or even risk assessments is more problematic, but my point is that pomos do not seem to make guarded statements about truth, rather they engage in a radical relativism that verges on global individualistic goofiness. The angle example may very well show that Euclidean geometry is not the best choice when dealing with geometrical relationship on curved surfaces, but I fail to see how it shows anything about arithmetic. Cheers, Ken Hanly : Barkley wrote: Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth...
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Assuming sameness may work well for political motivation. I can see where this would be a necessary tool for activism. But, without the ability to recognize difference that postmodernism delves into (pomos pointed in this direction theoretically by feminism) then the activism you portend would not be necessary. BTW, ever met anyone who didn't know the capital of Canada? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Carrol Cox Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 4:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:1199] Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo Nicole Seibert wrote: You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. The point of left political discourse is to enable coherent action by thousands of units (of varying size) scattered in place and out of communication with each other. This is a long and torturous process, and capitalist social relations as well as deliberate activity by the capitalist state interfere seriously with the project. It is impossible unless one can assume that shared reality predominate over individual reality (whatever that might mean). "A" reality that is not shared is trivial and, almost by definition, of little interest. Carrol _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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In a message dated 9/4/00 2:37:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Most "truths" aren't of the 2+2=4 variety, at least the truths of political economy. Is a certain income distribution fair? Is a certain production process efficient? Are men and women equal? Where does nature end and culture begin - and does asking that question already presuppose an answer? Keynes said economics involves introspection and judgments of value. How many economists think that way today? * * * Sure, Doug, but first, radical relativism, of the sort perpetrtaed by many pomos (don't ask me who, tell who who doesn't!) faces a challenge with the denial of the "2+2=4" and "grass is green" sort of truth. The sort of things Nicole says invite a request for an explanation, if not mockery and abuse, with respect tpo those sorts of truths. Secondly, it is not clear what stating radical relativist theses adds to the understanding of any sane person that some questions, like ones you mention, are very hard. Every grownup recognizes that these questions have no easy answers, that even if there are right answers they will not necessarily command universal agreement, and not merely because some people are pigheaded, but because reasonable people can differ, and that even where hard questions may get widely accepted answers we might be wrong. What does it add to this common knowledge of every civilized adult to assert, in addition, the daring statements that "truth" is is merely power,a discursive effect, a phallocentric operation of male dominance, etc? All that does, in my view, is to unnecessarily divert us dfrom talking about important substantive questions, like What income distribution is fair, to talk of epistemology and metaphysics--talk which, in my view, while fun and interesting, is not done particularly well by the pomos. I will add that antirealism and relativism are honest and respectable philosophical positions. In a face off between a smart relativist and the best realist, the outcome is likely to be a rather refined tie. To see the way this ought to be done, you can read, e.g., anything by Paul Feyabend, in my view the best relativist in the business. However, arguing with most pomos is like one of those Three Stooges fights, where Moe holds Curley'[s face at the end of his extended arm while Curley windmills futilely. The average pomo hasn't a clue what moves to make, just a lot of jargon to deploy. It's pathetic to see LaClau and Moufee reply to Norman Geras' critiques--they can't lay a glove on him, they are lost. So it's not worth the discussion, except to discredit them for innocents who might be led astray into thinking that these people might be worth paying attention to on those matters. You will notice that Nicole has not tried to answer the questions I have posed her. On other matters, such as sexual politics, the situation may be different--I am just talking metaphysics and epistemology here. The long and sort of it is, metaphysics and epistemology are good clean fun, but only if you know what you are doing, and they should be kept away from the kind of imporatnt hard questions you raise, where everybody knows the questions are hard and the answers are provisional, and that's all that needs to be said, eh? --jks
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Barkley wrote: Except of course there are situations where 2+2 does not equal 4, such as when one is adding angles on the surface of the earth... I wrote: this says that the nature of truth depends on the objective context. It doesn't deny the importance of objective context. On the other hand, the pomotista epistemology (as I understand it) says that there is not objective context. It's all in our heads (or in the "text"). Doug writes: Most "truths" aren't of the 2+2=4 variety, at least the truths of political economy. Is a certain income distribution fair? Is a certain production process efficient? Are men and women equal? Where does nature end and culture begin - and does asking that question already presuppose an answer? all of this is true; the "you are reading this quotation" type of truth is pretty trivial. The truth of most politically relevant propositions is contested. However, from my experience the postmodern way of dealing with this contest seems fundamentally flawed. We can look instead to the answers from folks that Yoshie points us to in her list. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 11:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:1152] Re: Re: Pomotismo How is the truth that 2 plus 2 is 4 individual, or that Yoshie sent the reply below, or that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, or millions of other commonplace truths? That "the truth" is individual seems to imply that there is something called "the truth" which is individual. Is this oxymoronic Platonism? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 9:25 PM Subject: [PEN-L:1140] Re: Pomotismo My response is 1) the truth is individual, 2) objectivity is impossible (including in the argument I just created) and 3) accepting our "man-made" god means accepting ourselves and trusting in our own magic. Why do academic work at all: 1) because it is fun, 2) it is the healthiest thing for our magical brains, 3) to help us discover our own "truth" and, 4) we might help someone else discover their own "truth" along the way. For me it is a very Buddhist way at looking at life. What do you think? -Nico It seems that your conclusion boils down to individualism (of the kind that most American undergrads profess without having read any postmodern master). Yoshie _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 3:53 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:1159] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pomotismo Brad DeLong wrote: I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug No, but you are being pre-post-modernist. Imposing the grid of explicit text-citing on the discursive process privileges a certain concept of "reason," after all. To refuse to "question" whether that particular concept of "reason" is "reasonable" reveals your true colors, after all... Read a text by an actual "postmodernist," and you will find oodles of quotes from such DWEMs as Plato, Hegel, and Kant. Doug Yes, and we can pull things from many dead white men to help make a point. -Nico _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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Nicole, Well, since I'm still here I think Doug is right that narratives are important. I also think that pomo may have served a useful purpose at certain points in helping some people get outside of confining mental structures and perspectives. Where I have a problem with it (and last spring I heard an egregious example of this from a sociology professor who was lecturing to our campus Amnesty International chapter) is when one is encouraged to inaction because one is constantly questioning what one is doing and becomes completely absorbed in this mirror game of solipsism. I understand that there are pomotistas who are not so inactive in their internal contemplations. BTW, I occasionally write poetry. Some of it has even been published Barkley Rosser http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb (Sorry, no poetry on that website.) -Original Message- From: Nicole Seibert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, September 01, 2000 6:43 PM Subject: [PEN-L:1130] RE: Re: Pomotismo Hi Barkley, I must confess that I too got an English degree with a focus in Modernist Women's Literature. I find it strange now to be working on "applying" what I learned from the literature in sociology. (oops... was that pomo to apply the quotes?) Trying to transfer the criticism into action: measuring the effectiveness of international law concerning women... -Nico -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 1:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:1119] Re: Pomotismo It should be kept in mind that our good friend Doug Henwood is somewhat of a dialectical character. On the one hand he is the ultimate data wonk of the lists, the supreme datameister. Just the facts, ma'am. OTOH, it is easy to forget that once upon a time he was a grad student in English lit studying nineteenth century Romantic poety. So, he is a regular scholar- gipsy whose romantic soul must have its fill of literary obscuranta from time to time, :-). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, September 01, 2000 11:55 AM Subject: [PEN-L:1114] Pomotismo Hi, Nicole. As an objectivity groupie myself, I think Baudrillard's a fraud. I don't care if he's a "real" sociologist, in the sense of having a degree in the field or publishing in sociology journals. Lots of idiots have and do. B is not an idiot, but he regularly says foolish and reactionary things without any plausible support. Maybe the pomos you know like class analysis. I know a few who respect it: Iris Young and Nancy Fraser come to mind, and Doug Henwood, but I am not sure if Doug counts as a pomo, since he exhibits none of the symptoms, rather than as just someone who likes pomo work for reasons I accnot understand. He purports to be inspired by Judith Butler, and hard as it is believe, I take his word for it. However, far more of the published pomo work attacks class analysis. The pomo trope of opposing "grand narratives" or "metanarratives" is targeted at historical materialism: see, e.g., LaClau and Mouffe. The opposition to essentialism is directed more often than not at any attempt to appeal to the idea or prospect of objective class relationships. The pomo attack on the unity of the subject is aimed at the notion that class consciousness is a desirable goal. The rejection of objectivity is aimed at materialism, at the idea that there is anything on the other side of ideology. Although I don't care about labels, and I probably don't qualify as a Marxist myself, I don't understand how anyone who accepts a large enough subset of this package of pomo doctrines can be one either--but, as I say, that's not necessarily a failing. Waht might be a failing is rejection of true views, and I think most of the targets of the pomo doctrines I listed are true and should not be abandoned. I find your objection to essentialsim and foundationalsim confused, and not just because you dot say what you mean by these terms. It's rather because you seem to fall into a self-reference problem common to those espouse pomo skepticism or relativism. You say that essentialism and foundationalism, whatever they are, are associated with men, who are, as the pomos say, privileged in history. Is this supposed to be an objectively true claim about how men have been advantaged over women? How does that avoid "foundationalism" and the dream of objectivity? Moreoever, isn't it essentialist to tie the bad notions of objectivity, essentialism, and foundationalsim to "men"? What men? Shouldn't a pomo say that there no men, just black men and white men, etc., and indeed, no black men, but gay Chicagoans three eights of whose ancestors were imported from Africa in antebellum times, and indeed, isn't that essentialist--what do you mean "gay" or indeed "Chicagoans,"
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Hey, we all know that Doug's true identity is to be Sergeant Joe Friday, :-). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, September 02, 2000 12:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L:1142] Re: Re: Re: Re: Pomotismo I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug No, but you are being pre-post-modernist. Imposing the grid of explicit text-citing on the discursive process privileges a certain concept of "reason," after all. To refuse to "question" whether that particular concept of "reason" is "reasonable" reveals your true colors, after all... Brad DeLong
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Rob, Now, now. I kind of still like the pre-pomo if totally currently outre notion of Norman O. Brown that capital is symbolic feces. After all, Martin Luther had his crucial revelation while taking a crap. And we all know about that old Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism! Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, September 02, 2000 1:29 AM Subject: [PEN-L:1145] Re: Re: Re: Re: Pomotismo G'day Doug, No need for you and I to go at it again, mate. Shouldn't really have posted that vehement rant, but I was just back from a wet lunch. Being Friday'n'all. To quote one or two now would look like I'm just picking particularly crappy bits for my own ends ... speaking of which! What about this eye-popper, courtesy of one Calvin Thomas: "The excrementalization of alterity as the site/sight of homelessness, of utter outsideness and unsubiatable dispossession figure(s) in...Hegel's metanarrational conception of Enlightenment modernity as the teleological process of totalization leading to absolute knowing. The anal penis...function(s) within a devalued metonmymic continuity, whereas the notion of the phallomorphic turd functions within the realm of metaphorical substitution. If the bodily in masculinity is encountered in all its rectal gravity, the specular mode by which others become shit is disrupted." Heh, heh. Cheap shot, I know, but I don't want to go over all that Foucault, Derrida and Butler stuff again, either. Peace, eh? Cheers, Rob.
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-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 12:05 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:1181] Re: RE: Pomotismo In a message dated 9/2/00 6:01:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Here's a question: If there are two scholars, one male and one female, who write exceptionally on fundamentalism which would be cited, referenced, quoted and read more often in a classroom? If you can't answer this question off the top of your head then some statistics are in order. I won't go there unless you make me. Are we being objective when we make this decision? Chances are we aren't. So then who becomes the leader in the field? W But how, on your line, can you say there is an objective matter of fact about whether men are cited, promoted, etc., disproportionately with respect to men, merely because of their gender? If I accept your view, why can't I say, well, that's just an interpretation. it''s not mine? And if you cannot say that there is an objective inequality, how can you say that there is an injustice, rather than a clash of views about what is going on? But isn't that the way the world really is: lots of people saying, "that's just an interpretation and it is not mine." Aren't current academic debates nothing but arguments trying to sway one side or another, debating "the truth." I find this particularly true if we take the argument outside of academia. The religious right certainly knows "the truth", but then again so does the liberal left. What if both are right about their own truths? What if the groups really exist as pressure valves? The religious right becomes more active, and attracts more followers when change happens too rapidly in our society? Then society is bored, ready for change the other social organizations within activate themselves. I can say all these things because they make up my "truth." And while we are at it, even if someone were to grant, hypothetically, that in some sense there is a non-objective disproportion of thes ort you are talking about, whatever a non-objective disproproportion might be, how could you say that there was anything wrong with it, rather than just that you didn't like it? Again, this is what we currently do in academia. We just find reasons within our chosen "truth" system to justify our dislike. Or, we could be wanting to impress someone else in the field by using their work, so we use their "truth" system. Or, it could be that it is terrifically fun to debate just as we are doing now. For reasons I explain in the piece Yoshie mentioned (thanks for the plug, Y), I think that antifoundationalism is consistent with truth, objectivity, realism, and a rejection of relativism and skepticism. I think that foundationalism, understood as the thesis that there is a certain and indubitable basis for knowledge, is false, but practically no one maintains this view nowadays. If I thought it were true, however, I would defend it even if I thought it ran the risk of being misused for political purposes. So, how do you understand foundationalism? I myself thought of foundationalism in the way you define it along with the concept that there are building blocks on which knowledge builds itself. A foundation must be laid for further learning in a field so to speak. I think that this foundationalism is false as well. I think I could pick up Habermas and read and understand his writing without knowing Marx, Hegel etc.. I also believe that there are interpretations of Habermas, Marx and Hegel that we totally miss out on because it does not fit within the sociological field. Some might say that this is because we would then not be practicing sociology or building the field - I say we are just missing out. As for essentialism, I don't knwo what you mean by that, but if it is the proposition that human beings have characteristics independently of what characteristics they think they have, I think it is obviously true. If you do not eat, you will die, for example, no matter what is your opinion or anyone else's on the subject. Do humans think they do not have to eat? --jks -Nico _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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Nicole Seibert wrote: You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. The point of left political discourse is to enable coherent action by thousands of units (of varying size) scattered in place and out of communication with each other. This is a long and torturous process, and capitalist social relations as well as deliberate activity by the capitalist state interfere seriously with the project. It is impossible unless one can assume that shared reality predominate over individual reality (whatever that might mean). "A" reality that is not shared is trivial and, almost by definition, of little interest. Carrol
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G'day Nicole, You are assuming that everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4 or Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Some people could care less and it may or may not be a part of what makes up their reality. If something is not part of a person's reality then it can not possibly influence what they think "the truth" is. This is not dualistic Platonism, but dialectic multiplicity. We have to remember that stuff we don't know can, and does, still influence us, Nicole. I know almost nothing about, say, the electro-magnetic spectrum or my genetic constitution, for instance. And then there's an infinite load of stuff I don't even know I know almost nothing about. In whatever circumstances I've come to disclose my reality to myself, whatever language I speak, however infinite may be the seconday signifiers to which my utterances here may give rise in however many consciousnesses, however decentred my subjectivity may be, and whatever my sex, colour and desires, many of these things do indeed influence me and my apprehensions. That's an ontologically realist claim, but it's a hard one to unseat, I reckon. Remember though, that ontological realism does not logically disallow an epistemological constructivism. Just that there are ever material parameters within which our being does its knowing - affording an ever dynamic scope on the thinkable, speakable and doable. Sure, it is tenable to argue that our notion of being (ontology) is itself a function of our notion of knowing (epistemology), but I fail to see how one could convince oneself that there aren't knowers or environments within which they do their knowing. Can you wear that, or am I still playing the tyrannical WM here? Cheers, Rob.
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Brad DeLong wrote: I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug No, but you are being pre-post-modernist. Imposing the grid of explicit text-citing on the discursive process privileges a certain concept of "reason," after all. To refuse to "question" whether that particular concept of "reason" is "reasonable" reveals your true colors, after all... Read a text by an actual "postmodernist," and you will find oodles of quotes from such DWEMs as Plato, Hegel, and Kant. Doug
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Doug Henwood wrote: Carrol Cox wrote: I agree. Butler's almost habitual failure to observe this elementary decency is the reason that I finally decided that she was a fraud. I have made this complaint about her frequently (in specific reference to her article in NLR) on several different maillists but no defender of hers has ever chosen to offer any serious defense. So far as I know she has never cited texts to illustrate her charge of left conservatism. Certainly she has never identified it in any serious Marxist writer of the last 30 years. Does this ex cathedra tone ever embarrass you? Look -- let's not quarrel about tone. I claim that your tentative style is not tentative nor modest but a sort of manipulative dogmatism. You say that my effort to stick my neck out without hiding behind qualifications (that's the purpose of debate: introduce the qualifications) is "ex cathedra." I say your charge is absurd becasue "ex cathedra" means that all responders must accept the proposition even while they attempt to oppose it -- it implies institutional power (of which Butler, incidentally, has rather more than an asst. prof. emeritus from the sticks). Neither objection advances debate -- both are in fact ad hominem and more or less deliberate distracction from the issues. But to answer your question, no, it doesn't empbarass me because it's never embarassed me to be wrong. This is what Butler said at the infamous Left Conservatism conference. If you think there aren't Marxists or other leftists who think that struggles over sex and sexuality, or representation, or Of course there are. One of the features of late-capitalist culture is that any 'position' you can define by throwing dars at the OED has someone who seriously holds it. I know a woman whose husband beat her. That woman's mother's response was, "What did you do to provoke him?" But what has this to do with my charge that Butler consistently cheats, as a scholar, an intellectual, and a political theorist by her refusal to cite specific opponents -- by her consistent refusal to live up to the elementary scholarly principle which you yourself stated in the post I was responding to. other "merely cultural" phenomena are distractions from the real Cite one example of this on Pen-L. And demonstrate it was in a context which made the error significant. struggle, which is class struggle, then you haven't been paying attention to PEN-L. I've been paying close attention, and I think you are wrong. Demonstrate to the contrary. I don't think you can. As to Butler herself, her remarks offer a number of interesting points, but one passage confirms my conviction that she is either a fraud or an incompetent scholar But I think that if that is true, then probably we ought not to be so concerned with the names of those who are exemplary of those concerns. Name-calling runs the risk of collapsing a complex body of scholarship and political work into a symptom, and I don't want to do that. . . . Now if this clumsy identification of "citing sources" with "name calling" came up in a freshman theme, I would probably have scribbled HUH? in the margin and let it go at that. But leaving this blunder aside, Butler merely shows here that she is consistently a fraud, even in what she calls a "cozy workshop." Do you or do you not hold by the standard you set up for critics of postmodernism. (If you look through my posts you will find that it has been about three years since I used the term in any other context than objecting to its use by others.) That's because I haven't read enough "postmoderns" to be ablec to cite texts. I have read quite a bit of Butler, and her NLR piece and this cozy little chat seem to be equally illustratory of her lack of intellectual ethics. Her private discussion with Fraser masquerading as a serious consideration of differences with others is becoming a little tiresome. Carrol
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Carrol Cox wrote:
Butler merely shows here that she is consistently a fraud
Why can't you just say you disagree with her? Why must you repeat
this nasty characterization? You're doing exactly what she was
rightly complaining about, collapsing a complex body of scholarship
into a symptom - or in this case, a crime.
Here's Chris Connery's intro that she was responding to. Disagree if
you like, but it's not criminal.
Doug
Left Conservatism, Introduction
Chris Connery
1. I'm Chris Connery, Director of the Center for Cultural Studies
here at UCSC. On behalf of the center and my fellow co-director Gail
Hershatter, I welcome you to this workshop on LEFT CONSERVATISM.
2. In calling this a workshop, we mean that the speakers do not
share a unified or coordinated position--I don't believe they know what
the others are going to speak about, with a few exceptions, maybe. This
is not structured as a debate between positions, but as an analysis of a
constellation of positions within the historical situation. The format
will be: our speakers will speak, and then there will be a short time
for questions and comments among the panelists themselves.
3. The term, Left Conservatism, I believe originates with Paul Bové
in private conversation. We were referring then to Richard Rorty, who
was at that time emerging as an important and very public intellectual
of the left, and some of the positions that were circulating after the
Sokal affair. It is a term that could also be applied to the editorial
policy of The Nation's poetry editor, and the kind of cultural
conservatism suggested there. In addition, it could also be used to
describe various positions taken in anti-theory or anti-60s circles.
4. In an electronic discussion list, an excerpt of which was
forwarded to me last week, Katha Pollitt writes, "I am not a Left
Conservative." I agree with that. It is my opinion that if Left
Conservatism proves to be a useful concept, it will be primary used to
describe an act, and not an identity. It could be used to describe
positions like this one, one taken by Katha Pollitt in a column she
wrote after the Sokal affair, in June of 1996:
And the biggest misconception of course is that the "academic left," a k
a postmodernist and deconstructionists, is the left, even on campus.
When I think of scholars who are doing important and valuable
intellectual work on the Left, I think of Noam Chomsky and Adolph Reed,
of historians like Linda Gordon and Eric Foner and Ricky Solinger and
Natalie Zimon-Davis; I think of scientists like Richard Lewontin,
Stephen Jay Gould; and feminists like Ann Snitow and Susan Bordo. None
of these people--and the many others like them--dismiss reason, logic,
evidence and other Enlightenment watchwords. All write clearly, some
extremely well. All build carefully on previous scholarly work--the
sociology and history of science, for instance goes back to the 1930s. .
.
How 'the Left' came to be identified as the 'pomo Left' I think would
make an interesting Ph.D. Thesis. I think it has something to do with
the decline of actual left-wing movements outside academia, with the
development in the 1980s of an academic celebrity system that meshes in
funny, glitzy ways with the worlds of art and entertainment, with
careerism--the need for graduate students, in today's miserable job
market, to defer to their advisers' penchant for bad puns and multiple
parentheses, as well as their stranger and less investigated notions. .
.
How else explain how pomo leftists can talk constantly about the need to
democratize knowledge and write in a way that excludes all but the
initiated few? Indeed, the comedy of the Sokal incident is that it
suggests that even the postmodernists don't really understand one
another's writing and make their way through the text by making their
way from one familiar name or notion to the next, like a frog jumping
across a murky pond by way of lily pads. Lacan . . . Performativity . .
. Judith Butler . . . scandal . . . (en)gendering wholeness . . . lunch.
("Pomolatov Cocktail," Subject to Debate, The Nation , V.262, no.23,
(June 10. 1996), 9).
5. Or, Barbara Erenreich, writing June 9, 1997, in The Nation as
well.
It was only with the arrival with the intellectual movements lumped
under the title "postmodernism" that academic anti-biologism began to
sound perniciously like religious creationism. Postmodern perspectives
go beyond a critique of the misuses of biology to offer a critique of
biology itself, extending to all of science and often to the very notion
of rational thought. . . Glibly applied, postmodernism portrays
evolutionary theory as nothing more than a sexist and racist storyline
created by Western white men. ("The New Creationism: Biology Under
Attack," The Nation, V.264, no.22, June 9, 1997, (cover story)).
6. There are important
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Doug Henwood wrote: Carrol Cox wrote: Butler merely shows here that she is consistently a fraud Why can't you just say you disagree with her? Why must you repeat this nasty characterization? Because I'm more sure she is a fraud than that I disagree with her. I am using as my criterion one you proposed. I think it was a *very* good criterion. I think Butler consistently fails to live up to it. And I think that consistent failure can be explained only by serious incompetence (not error, but incompetence not deserving reply) or by fraud. Competent and honest scholars name and cite their opponents. They don't create phantom ideologies which they than proceed to trash, with the implication that those who disagree with them hold those ideologies. Carrol
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I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug
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I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug I have read lots of this stuff myself: Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition Derrida: Grammatology Baudrillard: Mirror of Production Deleuze-Guattari: 1000 Plateaus Callari, Cullenberg, Biewener (editors): Marxism in the Postmodern Age The last item is a collection of papers presented at the 1992 Rethinking Marxism conference. This is a good place to start for those with a morbid curiosity. It has all of the stuff that would expect, from Gayatri Spivak to Doug Kellner. My favorite is Harriet Frad's "Children as an Exploited Class" that talks about "emotional surplus" in pseudo-Marxist terms as if steel or loaves of bread were being discussed. You can't make this stuff up. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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At 02:53 PM 9/1/00 -0400, you wrote: I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. I totally agree. I agree that all theoretical arguments of any sort (going beyond critiques of pomos) should involve as many empirical referents as possible. That's why I mentioned the Amherst school specifically, since it's what I'm familiar with. On the other hand, when I've tried to read other pomo stuff, I've found hard to do research to allow empirical references, since almost all of it is so poorly written. (The Amherst people actually write pretty well.) Maybe there's something deep in there, but I couldn't find it. (Of course, you can't go too far with me on this, since I didn't understand a word of Hegel until pot allowed it.) Until I find that it's absolutely necessary to read pomo material for some specific issue I'm investigating, I have little choice but to trust the experience of others, which suggests that there's no "there" there. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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They are armed, but not dangerous, or maybe it is the other way around. --jks Don't you mean: "They are 'armed', but not 'dangerous'"? Brd DeLong
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Doug Henwood wrote: I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. I agree. Butler's almost habitual failure to observe this elementary decency is the reason that I finally decided that she was a fraud. I have made this complaint about her frequently (in specific reference to her article in NLR) on several different maillists but no defender of hers has ever chosen to offer any serious defense. So far as I know she has never cited texts to illustrate her charge of left conservatism. Certainly she has never identified it in any serious Marxist writer of the last 30 years. Carrol
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Carrol Cox wrote: I agree. Butler's almost habitual failure to observe this elementary decency is the reason that I finally decided that she was a fraud. I have made this complaint about her frequently (in specific reference to her article in NLR) on several different maillists but no defender of hers has ever chosen to offer any serious defense. So far as I know she has never cited texts to illustrate her charge of left conservatism. Certainly she has never identified it in any serious Marxist writer of the last 30 years. Does this ex cathedra tone ever embarrass you? This is what Butler said at the infamous Left Conservatism conference. If you think there aren't Marxists or other leftists who think that struggles over sex and sexuality, or representation, or other "merely cultural" phenomena are distractions from the real struggle, which is class struggle, then you haven't been paying attention to PEN-L. Doug Left Conservatism, II 1. I'm pleased to be here, I had no idea this was a conference, I thought we were coming to a workshop--a small "cozy" workshop--to talk about things. So what I have with me is a paper that I gave at the Rethinking Marxism conference in December, 1992 and which is presently being published by Social Text (52-53) and New Left Review. I'm going to try to talk from it a little bit today. 2. I wanted to say first of all, that I'm not an organizer of this conference. Chris (Connery) organized it. I know that some of the emails have been burning up with distortion. I'm not an organizer of this conference. And if I had organized it--indeed, even if I had been given Chris's pamphlet before signing on, I would have said, "Chris, let's take some of those names out of the conference description," because I object to seeing prominent feminists being targeted as exemplary of left conservatism, feminists I respect, even though some of them, unfortunately, don't return the sentiment. Being put in a list with Jacques Lacan is humbling to me, though not offensive, and I'm not even a Lacanian. 3. I also wanted just briefly to say that I agreed at least with this part of Paul Bové's remarks, that anti-foundationalism cannot secure a politics, that there is no political position that follows necessarily from anti-foundationalism, nor does it necessary destroy a politics. Its relationship to political formations strikes me as very different. It cannot be a foundation. This is an important point. If anti-foundationalism is what secured a politics, it would be taking the place of a foundation. If it is that which destroys a politics, it would still be in the place of that which ought to be a foundation. In other words, the whole debate concerning the politics of anti-foundationalism takes place within a foundationalist imaginary, which I think is the problem. 4. I also want to make just a few remarks about Chris's introduction. He said that Left conservatism was an act and not an identity. I appreciated the citation of queer theory there. But I think that if that is true, then probably we ought not to be so concerned with the names of those who are exemplary of those concerns. Name-calling runs the risk of collapsing a complex body of scholarship and political work into a symptom, and I don't want to do that. On the other hand, it struck me coming in here that whereas I don't particularly like that part of the way in which this event is framed, I also thought that this interesting flyer that we received [from protesters of the workshop] was equally problematic. The flyer implies that if the organizers had their way, those who remain disinclined to accept poststructuralism, or rather, those who remain disinclined to be incorporated within something called "the postmodernist paradigm," would be excommunicated from the left, or denied tenure or job possibilities by those who work within such paradigms. This charge strikes me as off-base, offensive and sad, sad for all of us. If what worries those who wrote the flyer is that certain kinds of premises on the Left are being opened to inquiry, are being questioned, are being called into question, and are thus not being understood as foundational, does that mean that such terms are useless? To call into question the foundational status of such terms is not to claim that they are useless or that we ought not to speak that way, that terms like "objectivity," "rationality," "universality" are so contaminated that they ought not to be uttered any longer. A serious misunderstanding has taken place. Calling the foundational status of a term into question does not censor the use of the term. It seems to me that to call something into question, to call into question its foundational status, is the beginning of the reinvigoration of that term. What can such terms mean, given that there is no consensus on their
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RE I must confess that I too got an English degree ... I can't take the pressure any more... I must confess that I too have a degree in English Lit. Please forgive me. I was young and didn't know what I was doing. Eric
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What about the postmodern texts: Paige: Coffee and Power Castells: The Power of Identity and others in the series Held et al: Global Transformations Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures And don't forget Foucault, Deleuze, Kristeva, Lacan, Hillman and Hegel. -Nico -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 3:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: Re: Re: Re: Pomotismo I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug I have read lots of this stuff myself: Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition Derrida: Grammatology Baudrillard: Mirror of Production Deleuze-Guattari: 1000 Plateaus Callari, Cullenberg, Biewener (editors): Marxism in the Postmodern Age The last item is a collection of papers presented at the 1992 Rethinking Marxism conference. This is a good place to start for those with a morbid curiosity. It has all of the stuff that would expect, from Gayatri Spivak to Doug Kellner. My favorite is Harriet Frad's "Children as an Exploited Class" that talks about "emotional surplus" in pseudo-Marxist terms as if steel or loaves of bread were being discussed. You can't make this stuff up. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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I think people who comment on "pomos" should show some evidence of having read some, and should cite actual texts to make their points instead of impressions. But maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud. Doug No, but you are being pre-post-modernist. Imposing the grid of explicit text-citing on the discursive process privileges a certain concept of "reason," after all. To refuse to "question" whether that particular concept of "reason" is "reasonable" reveals your true colors, after all... Brad DeLong
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G'day Doug, No need for you and I to go at it again, mate. Shouldn't really have posted that vehement rant, but I was just back from a wet lunch. Being Friday'n'all. To quote one or two now would look like I'm just picking particularly crappy bits for my own ends ... speaking of which! What about this eye-popper, courtesy of one Calvin Thomas: "The excrementalization of alterity as the site/sight of homelessness, of utter outsideness and unsubiatable dispossession figure(s) in...Hegel's metanarrational conception of Enlightenment modernity as the teleological process of totalization leading to absolute knowing. The anal penis...function(s) within a devalued metonmymic continuity, whereas the notion of the phallomorphic turd functions within the realm of metaphorical substitution. If the bodily in masculinity is encountered in all its rectal gravity, the specular mode by which others become shit is disrupted." Heh, heh. Cheap shot, I know, but I don't want to go over all that Foucault, Derrida and Butler stuff again, either. Peace, eh? Cheers, Rob.
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Nice one, Eric! This quote fits nicely, too. Apologies to Giddens-haters (I feel your pain; for an anti-pomoista, he can write awful wank, and be politically awfully uncommitted - unless you consider 'The Third Way' a mode of commitment, I s'pose), but here 'tis: "Postmodernism, if it means anything, is best kept to refer to styles or movements within literature, painting, the plastic arts, and architecture. It concerns aspects of aesthetic reflection upon the nature of modernity." Now, being a philistine, I couldn't give a toss whether there are pomoistas or not, but, being, a political animal, it concerns me greatly that these people should be taken seriously where all ends and means are most definitely not merely metaphysically equivalent discourses and/or matters for aesthetic preference. Matters of life, death, physical suffering and human requisites are simply outside the scope of interest of such trendy cultural idealists, and they should be made to stay in their cafes and galleries until they recapture a sense of responsibility to their brothers and sisters. Doug is right (as he so often is) to point to the solid social practice of some ascribed/avowed pomoistas, but I agree with Eric's implication that such practice is not a function of their theorylessness. For them to claim otherwise would be to evince the very intellectual dishonesty with which Eric taxes them. And their specious claim that there are a myriad postmodernisms constitutes meaningless babble. It's all what Jameson called it years ago: the cultural logic of late capitalism. Aesthetic sensibilities reflecting the privileged bastions of an illogical order. An order which survives through its drawn-out dotage only because it feverishly commodifies communication and culture, and rewards selected wankers for meaninglessly essaying the all-pervading meaninglessness that ensues. There's nothing wrong with a default setting of radical scepticism and a respect for the agentic role of 'superstructural' phenomena and developments - but, contrary to the utterances of many a self-glorifying pomoista, 'modernism' never had a problem with that - after all, it authored it and based itself upon it. It just never took these views further than the brutal facticity of our essential and physical being would logically allow, that's all. And neither the hell should it. Yours sweetly, Rob. In the context of Amherst, a pomotista is a Wolf/Resnick postmodernist-Marxist (or Marxist-postmodernist). As I understand their view, it is that (1) there's no way to decide between neoclassical and Marxist theory except via moral commitment (leaning toward epistemological nihilism) and that (2) the Marxian view of the world involves seeing every situation as overdetermined by economics, politics, class, race, gender, etc., with none of the determinations or structures being more important than any of the others. The problem with number 2 above is that if - at the level of theory -- capitalist economic relations are no more important for causing bad stuff than, say, shoe styles than there is no reason to desire to transform economic relations more than there is to alter shoe styles. They do have a non-explanation for why they end up focusing on class relations but it is silly and, possibly, intellectually dishonest. And, by the way, Wolf/Resnick have merely taken the point-of-view of neoclassical general equilibrium theory (everything affects everything else) as their theoretical blueprint for their Marxist theory. Eric
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Jim wrote In the context of Amherst, a pomotista is a Wolf/Resnick postmodernist-Marxist (or Marxist-postmodernist). As I understand their view, it is that (1) there's no way to decide between neoclassical and Marxist theory except via moral commitment (leaning toward epistemological nihilism) and that (2) the Marxian view of the world involves seeing every situation as overdetermined by economics, politics, class, race, gender, etc., with none of the determinations or structures being more important than any of the others. The problem with number 2 above is that if - at the level of theory -- capitalist economic relations are no more important for causing bad stuff than, say, shoe styles than there is no reason to desire to transform economic relations more than there is to alter shoe styles. They do have a non-explanation for why they end up focusing on class relations but it is silly and, possibly, intellectually dishonest. And, by the way, Wolf/Resnick have merely taken the point-of-view of neoclassical general equilibrium theory (everything affects everything else) as their theoretical blueprint for their Marxist theory. Eric
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Jim Devine wrote: it's important to have sense of priority (e.g., that capitalism is more important than the Rotarian International). I should mention that many of these pomotistas continue to be politically engaged in good left-wing causes. Yeah, Rick Wolff ran for city council in New Haven on a platform of, among other things, taxing Yale. He did a fairly detailed analysis of Yale's finances that showed it to be closer to capitalism than to the Rotarian International. Doug
