From “How to Deconstruct Anything — My Postmodern Adventure”:
Looking at the field of contemporary literary criticism as a whole also yields some valuable insights. It is a cautionary lesson about the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated and inbred. The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use to describe the mind set of postmodernism is “epistemologically challenged”: a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. The language and idea space of the field have become so convoluted that they have confused even themselves. But the tangle offers a safe refuge for the academics. It erects a wall between them and the rest of the world. It immunizes them against having to confront their own failings, since any genuine criticism can simply be absorbed into the morass and made indistinguishable from all the other verbiage. Intellectual tools that might help prune the thicket are systematically ignored or discredited. This is why, for example, science, psychology and economics are represented in the literary world by theories that were abandoned by practicing scientists, psychologists and economists fifty or a hundred years ago. The field is absorbed in triviality. Deconstruction is an idea that would make a worthy topic for some bright graduate student’s Ph.D. dissertation but has instead spawned an entire subfield. Ideas that would merit a good solid evening or afternoon of argument and debate and perhaps a paper or two instead become the focus of entire careers.
It has of late become fashionable to sneer at literary criticism in general (and the rather trite use of “deconstruction” in particular) — and this piece does an admirable job on both accounts — but the tendency to sneer, while it can certainly feel liberating, is also something of a dodge these days, a kind of reflexive reaction to the “post modern” as it is generally (mis)used and (mis)understood, an affect adopted by conservatives that is not all too different from the kinds of affectations trafficked in by those on the left who, say, might almost reflexively “adore” a “film” simply because it has subtitles.
If anything should be clear from many of my attempts to tackle the way language is regularly misused it is that the faulty ideas about how language functions have become so institutionalized that they reinforce the epistemology they are ostensibly there to describe. And the fact of the matter is, many of those who happen to hold policy positions that track with conservatism nevertheless think in a way that can’t help but to bolster progressivism, because the linguistic assumptions that undergird that thinking are demonstrably leftist inasmuch as their uncritical acceptance can only lead to — dare I say it? — a deconstruction of the principles of classical liberalism, be it the subversion of individual freedom or the inversion of what “tolerance” means in the context of free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
So while it is easy to sit back and take shots at literary critics (many of whom, it’s true, don’t much understand what it is they’re doing or why), it is far more difficult — and yet far more important — that we take a closer look at what it is we believe when it comes to how language functions and how interpretation works.
Otherwise, the joke is on us.
(h/t Lazarus Long)
This put me in mind of a passage in Dennett:
wow…epiphany!
i finally understand why you are a “conservative” Jeff….you are trying to preserve the status quo of language!
but……….language evolves.
The nice thing about Protein Wisdom is that when you think you understand a cultural issue like deconstruction, Jeff will post something like this deconstruction of the deconstruction of deconstruction.
I think of it as literary ego therapy for those who might sometimes be given to thinking that they’re the smartest person in the room.
I’m obviously not talking about me. I am well known to be the veritable soul of humilty and self-effacement. I’m talking about some other pompous, pronouncement spouting ass.
I wouldn’t exactly call a dumb scrunt who hopes to be taken seriously as “Nishi the Kingslayer” a sign that the evolution of language is a positive. Though I make an allowance for using “scrunt” in your case because your kind only exists in the urban dictionary.
And while I was writing, along comes Nishi spouting just the right amount of nonsense to prove my point beautifully.
Thanks Nish’!
I do remember when deconstructivism was all the rage in architecture. While some of its originators definitely have talent, it is interesting how many of them have distanced themselves from the term.
I find it funny that people visiting some of Eisenman’s buildings have actually gotten physically ill from the spaces and the architect actually bragging about it. So we went from this to this. And people wonder why some claim culture is eroding. Often good art is too advanced for its time, but eventually gets understood and beloved. But does anyone really think that will happen with deconstructivism? Inside jokes between a self selected “elite” does not work for academics, but it really does not work for multi million dollar building projects.
language evolves
Good grief, Nishi. If Jeff were insisting that we freeze the lexicon and all grammatical conventions at this moment in time (or one in the past), never to change again, then your criticism would be valid.
The way language actually works is does not change, although a society’s tolerance of the dishonest wielding of same may fluctuate.
Which is another way to say that Nishi lives in a world were you can use words any way you want, as long as the desired power over another is attained.
Also, “deconstruction” originated with the Nazis.
That is all.
Nishit is a genocidal eugenecist, so there is another parallel, dicentra.
In the meantime, The Corner’s Mark Krikorian observes that
Of course, “American” can cover anything in the western hemisphere, but we don’t have a term that corresponds to the Spanish estadounidence: “United Statesan.”
“American” it is.
Well, if language can be said to evolve (although said evolution being imminently teleological – being governed by agreement an all that) then wouldn’t that make deconstruction a form of eugenics?
Oh wait, I’m thinking of eugenics as, you know, bad.
amazing….but the Chomskian “deep grammer” paradigm is losing to Pinker and Jackendorff’s evo cognition model.
oh….i forgot…..”conservatism” is anti-science.
lawl.
BECAUSE OF THE BIOLOGY JEFF!!!!!!!!
Most “postmodern” discourse is deeply cynical and self serving. Postmodern speakers have fooled themselves that they are protected behind an inpenetrable shield of irony. For example, many pointy headed pomo lefties proudly self identify as “Progressives,” while sniggering into their lattes at the very idea of progress. But that’s a pose. They most certainly do hold a deeply felt notion of progress, even though they may not be able to articulate it. No matter, they by God know what’s good for the rest of us, and they’ll shove it down our uncouth throats if that’s what’s necessary. In other words, they’re fascists.
If you want to piss off a lefty, ask him what’s “Progressive” about Obamacare. You’ll get some stammering about children, rights, minorities, women hardest hit. But what you won’t get are rational philosophical underpinning for what are merely deeply felt prejudices and a sense of privileged self righteousness. They can’t explain themselves. They can’t make the argument. In fact it annoys and embarrasses them to be asked to make an argument at all. Note the increasing frustration leaking from the President. He can’t explain how subsidizing the coverage of 40 million uninsureds will lead to budget surpluses, and the people–not the elites–are calling bullshit, which is the natural human response to pomo progressive bullshit.
Thanks, Jeff.
On the contrary, the progressives who claim to be so pro-science are the ones most willing to absolutely subvert and pervert the scientific method in the name of their political ideology; or is AGW officially now a secular religion since, you know, it’s proponents have taken on faith something that they have no actual data to support…
Conservatives believe in real science, with transparency of methodology, data, and results. Just as we like to refer to the actual intent of an author we also like to refer to the source material behind a given scientific theory.
Don’t conflate religious beliefs so cavalierly with the constructs and ideas we use to wrap our minds around the wonder of the cosmos…
“oh….i forgot…..”conservatism” is anti-science.”
Oh, shut the fuck up, you BORING moron.
“oh….i forgot…..”conservatism” is anti-science.”
AGW.
Now, shut the fuck up, you BORING moron.
It may come as no surprise to anyone, but I haven’t the slightest idea what Nishi is talking about.
As I’ve noted on many occasions — including in one of the links in this post — if language was governed by convention (as many on the left would have it), THAT is the very definition of status quo thinking: the rules govern and reinforce the governing rules.
Meanwhile, intentionalism is what has allowed “cat” to mean hepster jazz musician. So if Nishi really must tether “conservatism” to my ideas about language function, she’d be far better served by pointing out that what I believe allows for individualized expression — that is, meaning as determined by the individual and based solely on that individual’s freedom to mean what he means (without the dictates of “convention,” which is just another word for society, circumscribing that potential meaning). If enough people like the new expression — this is language actually evolving — that expression may one day become conventional.
Convention is the lagging indicator of intention. And free minds and free markets prevail.
So yeah, my idea of language reinforces classical liberal ideals, which today’s leftist has recast as “conservative” or “wingnut.”
I love it when she tries to talk all intellectual, and then faceplants on “grammer”.
Perhaps that’s what she has in mind by evolving the language.
Nishi —
You keep using buzzwords like “evolve” because you think embracing those ideas gives you some sort of intellectual heft.
But if you want the heft, it helps to actually understand what “evolve” means and why and how that functions. The fascists have sold you on a notion of evolve that is nearly always reactionary in some ways.
You aren’t who you think you are.
Most eugenics isn’t the sort of thing we ordinarily think of as bad though, is it? That is, where we take eugenics as breeding programs for beeves, dogs, pigeons, soybeans, apples, chrysanthemums and the like.
It’s when we apply the concept to human beings that we run into serious trouble, and even that mostly in the context of politics writ large. For even in a human context, we might wonder whether the o’erweening concern of a mother and father in their interests in their daughter’s betrothed may point — in a narrow sense — in this very direction, that is, in well-begotten grandchildren.
I was following along nicely, avoided a steaming lump of nishi in the thread, then Joe had to link to a picture of that festering pile of dog vomit, bricks, and girders called the Wexner Center for the Arts that disgraces my beloved Ohio State University. I’m totally put off now.
Convention is the lagging indicator of intention.
Pure poetry.
No, really.
World of Warcraft…celebrate the divinity of Jesus!
i indeterminately cease justification you are a “conservative” Jeff….you are scoring to observe the uninteruption of yellow diamonds!
but……….yellow diamonds exercize.
Most eugenics isn’t the sort of thing we ordinarily think of as bad though, is it?
You have the relationship reversed. Eugenics is a specific form of breeding program – the subset applied to humans.
So wait, we’re talking about criticism. Literary criticism.
It’s a field based on opinion about written material. Reviewing (as in “reading”) a written text and giving an opinion as to what the author meant.
Opinions.
I’m missing something here.
Is this anything like making a career out of reviewing movies?
/snark… mostly
/Still loves me some Jeff G.
Folks who are grandly self-yclept tend to have one thing in common: lameness.
TD, I’m aware that the term has taken on the meaning you’ve assigned it. I’m merely suggesting that the meddling has a wider scope. Language, catch the fever!
Endless cites du jour don’t make a Kingslayer? Tomorrow: nuggie drops another quarter and quotes the latest flashing lights in the blinkered arcade, pronouncing them kooler than teh kidz@pw, lulz.
You’d earn immense (relative) respect, nuggie, if instead of gesticulating wildly at the latest outpost on the postmodern frontier, you’d summarize a cause. If you had a clue what you meant, then maybe you’d start laying the first course in a wall of reason, jointed it with integrity.
As it is you’re still entertaining yourself by way of your own sense of intellectual class. And as circular as that always is, naturally nobody’s buying it.
My sister is currently living with me and taking a class in literary criticism at the local university. Being one of the few semi-functioning literates in my family, she wanted to discuss her assignments with me and I got to see firsthand the total waste of time and money it was. I won’t go on about it, but suffice it to say there was no discussion of the author’s intent. When I asked my sister why they weren’t attempting to take that into account, she said the instructor said that was one way to analyze, but then made it seem as if the intent the students wanted to assign to the work was far more brilliant and enlightening. It struck me as feeding their egos to soften them up for outright propaganda since they haven’t even been asked to ascribe their own intent, but rather just analyze the various works through Freud and Marx. I’m guessing that once they’ve been shown the “proper” way to critique literary works, they’ll be allowed to ascribe their own intent, but of course by then it won’t actually be theirs.
“Most eugenics isn’t the sort of thing we ordinarily think of as bad though, is it? ”
Eugenics isn’t necessarily bad, but it is dangerous.
Like dynamite; useful, but damaging if used carelessly or malevolently.
wow…epiphany!
i finally understand why you are a “conservative” Jeff….you are trying to preserve the status quo of language!
but……….language evolves.
Nishi, all you are doing is trying to fool yourself with words. Mission Accomplished!
Btw, in order for you to be saying anything which we can in principle know that anyone else understands – i.e., “is understandable” – your words and their use have to have a fixed, defined, or intended meaning in the first place.
Otherwise, according to your apparent argument, you can’t possibly know that we understand what you just tried to say – if it was indeed anything at all; and we can also say that we can’t possibly understand what you are saying, or that anyone else can understand it.
And, on your “theory”, no one would know the meaning of what I just said, probably even including me.
Sdferr, that’s not the meaning I’ve assigned it, that’s the meaning assigned by the person who coined the term.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics?jss=0
The term was around in Athens, circa 400 BC.
The English language term eugenics existed in ancient Greece?
Or the Greek term eugenes meaning ‘wellborn’ was altered to indicate a form of study, in the same manner that the ancient Greek word ethika was subsequently modified to create the modern term ethics?
If we are having an eugenics program, I have several individuals who have to be excluded.
Oh, of course the English language term Galton posited wasn’t around in ancient Greece, TD, that’s obviously why Galton didn’t get it from there, right? Enough.
I’m out of my depth here, but game…
Jeff, the first quote is what you wrote in the (mis)used link in the post, and I thought I saw a cause and effect that you waved off. Then in the next link you wrote the second quote above, basically saying the same, and I have to ask:
Isn’t the tenet that there is no universal truth, the pillar of postmodernism, responsible for where the practitioners of postmodern thought go with it?
For example, it’s like trying to untether terrorism from Islam. Is the Muslim faith responsible for 9/11? Well, the Koran didn’t tell them to, yet it set the conditions where it’s practitioners are perfectly justified within their faith to do it.
What am I missing?
Lee, don’t we want to simply ask whether “…the tenet that there is no universal truth…” is itself a truth of universal application? Or otherwise, what would a proponent of it be proposing?
The tenet that there is no universal truth is a pillar of postmodernism as it is commonly taught — and leads to the lazy conclusion that all truths are relative. Postmodernism, properly understood, is merely descriptive, however; it describes the linguistic (and so, human) problem of ever adjudicating a universal truth from a stance outside language.
That doesn’t mean universal truths can’t exist outside of language (things as they are); it just means that we can’t ever get outside of language, and so we have to use the tools of language to argue for the truths to which we subscribe.
Doing away with “reason” is one way in which a group can make it more difficult of another group to argue for IT’S idea of what is a truth. Appealing to “consensus” is another way a group can come to support its version of what is a truth.
All truths are not true. Nor is truth relative. Arguing for truths is relative, because we are all constrained by language.
There’s a parallel here to intentionalism and interpretation, if you squint hard.
Jeff G. also attacked in my daughter’s writing class!
In a writing class, one of my daughters was asked to discuss the consideration of America as a “melting pot” vs America as a “tossed salad”, after the class was forced listen to a full-blown loon lecturer on “Immigration” go off on ~”fat male beer swilling rednecks who drive pickup trucks” and who, of course, oppose immigration.
Which kind of reminds us of Jeff G. and the rest of us “conservatives”, right, Nishi?
My daughter’s most basic response was, “Who cares about the melting pot- tossed salad comparison in the first place?”. But then she wrote a clear deconstruction of the question which covered exactly why she didn’t care about the comparison at all, which is functionally irrelevant, concluding with, ~”It seems that one person has a political agenda, and another needs something to teach.”
She was pretty nice to both of them, imo, and also to Nishi! Bringing up their own self hate would have been a bit too “personal”, right?
Like a homeless man mumbling to himself or someone with a bluetooth earpiece, nishi only makes sense when you realize she’s talking to someone not actually present.
No, Sdferr, the question is was the Greek term used in the same manner as the English term. I’m no expert on the Greek language, nor Greek animal husbandry, but do think it likely they bred animals with purpose. Was eugenes used in that context? If so then your point is valid.
But all that I have read on the term eugenics does not point to such an origin. Everything I see says the term, as created, took a Greek term and altered it to represent a study specific to human development.
You may choose to expand the scope of the term to encompass non-humans, and others may agree to accept that usage, but it does appear to represent an alteration of the usage intended by its creator. Beyond that simple issues of authorship, and getting back to the issue of how language works, shouldn’t we also consider that by applying the term to non-humans we potentially diminishes the moral freight of the term?
The iceberg lettuce is oppressing the tomatoes. That much is clear.
See Plato’s Republic TD. There’s a long discussion on the propriety of human breeding by assignment. Too, the Greeks spoke of animals in this sense, of being the result of or due to good breeding programs.
The fate of the black olives is, of course, obvious.
You aren’t who you think you are.
Oooh! Oooh! I know this one!
We are not who we are!
Furthermore, “evolve” does not mean “pro-GRESS” it means “adapt.” I heard from S.J. Gould’s own lips that the notion of evolution of progress is utterly non-scientific, because it’s a value jugdment that assumes a telos.
Which nature most certainly does not do, beyond reproducing itself.
once they’ve been shown the “proper” way to critique literary works, they’ll be allowed to ascribe their own intent,
In a pig’s eye.
the intent the students wanted to assign to the work was far more brilliant and enlightening
It also reinforces the walls of their cocoon, preventing the very foreign ideas of authors from different times and cultures from challenging The Current Orthodoxy.
The profs don’t want those filthy authors’ intents infiltrating THEIR sanctum sanctorum, no sir! What if they’re not actually progressive?
Unclean! Unclean!
I’ve read The Republic, just not in Greek…
So eugenes was synonymous with breeding programs. I did not know that. Thanks for the schooling.
Everything you need to know about progressives:
Al Gore’s house uses 30 times the average house’s electricity.
Bill Clinton rapes women and the NOW says nothing.
Hear anything about Barack’s Afghan civilian casualties? Must not be any.
John Edwards spends more on haircare than charity.
1,536 private jets were chartered to the Copehagen AGW summit.
Foreign policy devolves into farce and crickets from liberal media.
Barbara Streisand suggested hang drying your laundry, but not hers.
Laurie David uses her jet to get pizza.
The Gores gave $300 to charity on an income in the millions.
The core of liberalism is an attempt to enfore a secular morality on people that they themselves do not even pretend to possess.
But postmodernism itself is not responsible for the conditions of its misuse.
I’m sorry, but Postmodernism in practice is the misuse of language- and as such it undermines itself – either for the benefit on those who are unable to make sense out of much of anything but still want to feel or be groupistly affirmed as “making sense”; or for the specific purpose of destroying all meaning, except for that derived from the use some kind of enslaving or purely brute force.
See also Postnormal Science – the ipcc’s Climate Science, for example – which not only intentionally wants to destroy the Scientific Method, but all meaning, as above.
we are all constrained by language
Not utterly. The idea that there is no cognition outside language is part of the problem. My cats have no language, and yet they know that sunbeams are warm and pleasant to sleep in.
Pre-linguistic chilluns also know things, as do severe autistics, who are not so handy with symbols.
And how many times have you related a dream and been unable to articulate 80% of what was going on?
We are constrained by sign systems when we must communicate, becasue we lack brain-to-brain thought transmissions. But our cognition is not constrained by symbols.
“If Chomsky proposes that the field do X, the next day, without skipping a beat, everyone drops what they were doing and picks up X. leader.”
Kinda like Jim Jones, eh, dipshit?
“benefit of” the postmodern infantiles
Thanks Jeff, I get it now…I think. ;-)
I’m sorry, but that’s postmodernism incorrectly put into practice. Which demonstrates what I’ve been saying.
Your cats don’t “know” in the same sense as we “know,” would come the answer. Same for the other examples.
Naturally there are things outside language. But try describing those things without language. Or worse, proving them as propositions.
And anyway, I was just giving the implied postmodern “argument.” Don’t assume I agree with it. As I’ve said many times before, it is a philosophical description that too many people treat as a prescription.
From the first link:
I wonder whether we might not dwell a bit on the multiple senses of the word “content” here, many of which I don’t doubt are not meant by the author of the piece, but which are nevertheless something interesting in themselves?
For instance, another engineer with questions about the content of thought comes to mind, a fellow named Dean E. Wooldridge and his book titled “The Machinery of the Brain”. His drive for content, in contradistinction to the quote above, however, is toward the underlying material content or stuff of both the true things of thought and the fanciful untrue things, that is, what’s the common stuff of it and how is that stuff working?
Your cats don’t “know” in the same sense as we “know,”
We speak of what we know as knowledge. If you cannot describe, or even recall, a time when you did not already know some thing then how could that thing ever be thought of as knowledge? As far as you know it was never gained.
Real inside trading, or a few manipulating the market to make it look like there is movement?
Or worse, proving them as propositions.
“That oven is hot; heat burns the hand; burns hurt” would be communicated by pressing the ignoramus’s hand to the surface, sans explanation.
I’m pretty sure the proposition would be readily accepted without further argument.
You wouldn’t have “proven” “heat” “burns.” You’ve just conditioned someone to avoid touching hot things under certain conditions.
I’ve always considered thought to be the manipulation of internal representations or symbols. We might not define that as language but they’re in the same class, yes?
Take for instance, this stove. You can’t fit a stove in your head, you can only fit a representation of it. Then, to think about stove, your “word” for stove might be a picture or a memory of burning, but it’s not the thing itself. So, it’s an internal representation or symbol, isn’t it? Language-like.
(Not my area of expertise, obviously.)
Shadows, cave walls, some assembly required.
Worst of all is trying to get a David Stove in there. Damn thing displaces all the warm and cuddlies.
I always thought the allegory of the cave was lacking a sudden bear attack. Bear shadows kill over 20 philosophers a year, you know.
True dat.
Lazarus Long?
I thought he died?…
Listening to B-Cast, who in turn are listening to Beck interview Massa, I hear Massa asserting his decision to leave the House is predicated on the interpretation of those who would misinterpret his actions. A kind of B. Kristol analysis of Bennett’s discussion applied to himself (Massa, that is). He plainly cedes the narrative, does Massa, at least so far as his contention here is concerned.
Here is little Rahm Emanuel doing a St. Patrick insprired lobbying push for Obamacare through the halls of Congress. He is quoted telling Axelrod that he can wax his dirty sanchez.
“Take for instance, this stove. You can’t fit a stove in your head, you can only fit a representation of it. Then, to think about stove, your “word” for stove might be a picture or a memory of burning, but it’s not the thing itself.”
Huh. I’m no expert either but I see what your saying, yes. Many thoughts are symbols.
But not all of them. You can’t poke liberty with a stick, it doesn’t exist outside someone’s mind. Nor can you poke a fictional character. Nor love, nor hate. There’s no physical pi (as in 3.14159).
When you think of yourself, are you thinking of yourself or of a symbol of yourself? I have no idea. Can you fit yourself in your own head? Woah. Ever seen the back of a $20 when your high?
Drunk angry midgets – thanks a fucking lot. I will not be sleeping well tonite.
You’ll be happy to note, JD, that there is now apparently video available on youtube of Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf.
The individual with the burnt hand, being a deconsructionist, would claim that you had not proved that heat burns skin. But in his heart, he would be pretty gosh-darn sure.
That’s why Reagan defined a conservative as “A liberal that had their hand held down on a hot stove until they cried like a patient at a Cuban hospital.”
I miss Ronnie like RD misses Bush.
I have been observing the political polarity over the past few years and collecting ideas. This past week i attempted to provide a contrast. Here are a few that seem relevant to the thread. Feedback welcome:
Interpretation vs. Intention:
1. When I listen to others I try to determine meaning by interpreting words and language as intended by the speaker. When words have multiple possible meanings I assume the meaning that I believe the speaker intends and I interpret them in context. I accept responsibility for understanding the communication process well enough to make a sound interpretation of the speaker’s intent.
2. My cultural heritage and life experiences determine what I hear and how I interpret language. I believe that words once spoken stand apart from the speaker and should be interpreted based on convention and common understanding. I hold the speaker responsible for understanding how I may perceive or react to certain words and therefore expect the speaker to chose words with due consideration of my perspective.
Variable vs. Fixed Meaning:
1. Communication is the process of conveying an idea from one person to another. This requires a common understanding and agreement of terms. Clarity requires that words have a fixed and known meaning. It is not important which particular word we choose to convey an idea or what meaning we assign only that we agree on the meaning and stay consistent within the confines of the discourse. For effective communication we should focus on clarity and understanding in lieu of agreement.
2. Communication involves more than reasoning and logic. Words inherently have a radius of meanings shaped by the culture. These meanings go beyond technical interpretations and include historical contexts which carry value judgments. These value judgments affect our emotional response to language and shape our perception of the rightness of the positions taken. It is appropriate to select words that convey these emotions even if they are not the most technically accurate choices available. Effective communication occurs when I am able to persuade others to see the world as if through my eyes.
Reality vs. Truth:
1. “Reality” is the world I perceive in my day to day life. It is personal, interpretive and changes with daily events. “Truth” is how the world really is. It exists outside my mind, is universal and never changes. It is tempting to think the two are the same but we recognize that reality is more akin to perspective and the best we can do is for our reality to approximate truth. We feel and perceive our realty by looking within and rationalizing. We discover and understand the truth by experimentation, logic and reason. “My truth” is an oxymoron since truth stands independent of any person and cannot be claimed.
2. Truth is constructed by social processes and is historically and culturally specific. It is partly shaped through the power struggles within a community. Since there are no transcendent realities all of our knowledge is “constructed”. Perceptions of truth and therefore reality are contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. We believe that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender are socially constructed and are not fundamental qualities. Since I exist within my own reality “My truth” is the only truth that matters.
The Reagan – Obama Debate
So jls, would you align individual members of your three pairs of contrasts with one another, whether this may be done either based on simple observation or done as a matter of logical tie from one to another of the schemes? And if such an alignment is possible or necessary, would we then — having done so — be permitted to see an underlying unity of approach in the alignment once found? Would the principle, if one should be found, have a name? Or is it the case that there is no such unifying principle to be sorted out?
There’s a reason why two computers attempting to communicate undergo a process known, or that used to be known, as “handshake.” They exchange a few basic strings to find a mutually comprehensible mode, and then they can exchange data.
True communication is a two-way thing, but to have your input taken into account in the communication, you have to say something back to the other party.
Reinterpreting the other party’s message to your own liking, without giving him the chance to respond to your interpretation, whether affirmatively or not, is dirty pool — as I believe Jeff has been arguing consistently here and elsewhere.
So it’s man-made, this concept, rendered in language.
Postmodernism vs. Natural rights. That’d be scheduled for 12 rounds, I should think.
Postmodernism goes down in the first after Natural Rights lands a wicked right to the body. It turns out that Postmodernism felt that training was an attempt by the patriarchy to impose their anachronistic ideal of the male form on him/her/the.
I should like to hear an account of the bout written by a member of the Womyn’s Studies dept. at Bryn Mawr.
Ooh. I probably should not have put ‘member’ and ‘womyn’s studies’ in the same sentence. Awkward!
I honestly don’t know what postmodernism is. Reading on the topic hasn’t been particularly informative either.
It seems to mean “you know, this thing we’re talking about”. Problem is, no, I don’t know.
Some smart people don’t dismiss it out of hand though. So, I just figure I don’t get it.
You’re probably ok, Mr. W, as long as you don’t put the member in the womyn’s studies major. (Majorette? Nah, probably not.)
Depends if you’re asking Nishi the Kingslayer or not.
with witty commentary from rosemont and genteel banter from haverford
To reach back just a bit, on the question of the physical π (as opposed to a numeric such a one), there may be one sense in which any such object must be physical or not be at all: that sense is the sense in which thought itself is physical. But see the question at 57.
I sometimes miss those issues because they seem self evident to me, sdferr. The brain’s a machine. If it’s doing something, it’s doing something with matter and physical structure.
Towards my comments above re pomo, I tend to understand what Jeff’s saying about it but find almost all others to be (intentionally?) opaque on the topic.
I so agree bh, yet I understand that there is a huge heap of folk who believe nothing of the kind and so far as my experience goes, cannot be persuaded thus either.
Towards Entropy’s point, I was trying to express my notion that if thinking isn’t done with language (di’s examples) it must still be done with representations or symbols of some sort, thus making it somewhat language-like by the element of requisite abstraction.
“If it’s doing something, it’s doing something with matter and physical structure.”
what do blind people think. is language matter?
Would that mean that animals can’t think?
And if my cat can’t think, why is it looking at me like that?
I don’t think I get the issue of being blind or not, newrouter.
But, language is processed through our brain. Dennet cautions us against being greedy reductionists but at some point thought (whether about language, music or pi) must be mechanical.
We don’t normally talk that way because it’s such a basic level of focus. Like describing a movie with physics. But, again, after going down, level by level, you should be able to describe a movie by physics. It’s just be harder than hell so instead we talk in larger and more complicated chunks.
There has been an ongoing tussle among the students of the subject over the question whether there is a “language of thought”, I think, though I don’t know how the tussle has shifted out, whether the one side (yessers) has persuaded the other (no-wayers) or vice-versa. But it could bear some looking into I guess.
I assume animals can think, B Moe.
The further down you go, the harder it is to determine though. I remember reading a paper about bees being able to model and their ability to break out of positive feedback loops that illuminated the theoretical bare level requirement but I don’t remember it that well. Nor am I particularly nimble mentally on this topic.
Is matter concrete or an abstraction?
If by concrete you mean material, then, yes, matter is material, JHo. Both from the Latin materia. If it isn’t to you then we’re not talking about the same thing.
There was a wasp story Dennett would tell about just such an animal bh, one trapped by its programming and unable to escape.
As I recall it, the critter had to drag a prey victim to a burrow, go down into the burrow to make certain no other critter had taken up residence, return to the prey victim and drag it down in, lay an egg on the victim, leave, seal the burrow and off it would go. If while the critter was down in the hole, you pull the prey-victim a short distance away, the wasp would emerge, drag the prey back to the hole, go down in, whereupon you move the victim again, rinse and repeat ad infinitum or as long as you could take the boredom or the wasp survived.
So, thinking, not so much. It’s gonna depend on the critter and what the critter is fitted out to do.
That rings a bell, sdferr. But, perhaps it was a paper written in response to that as it described breaking out of that loop. This was 15 years ago that I read it. Perhaps it was Dennett’s wasp and I supplied the next level of complexity to break out of the loop when thinking about it. Not sure.
Speaking of trapped by programming and unable to escape:
Too bad stupid isn’t painful, evolution would have a much easier time of it.
I’d assume that the bee story would involve the dance of communication and a flexible interpretation of same, bh. Like some sort of heuristic kicks in for the traveling bee meeting failure maybe?
Just don’t remember well enough, sdferr. The basic thrust was that to solve certain problems you had to be able to create an internal model of them and then manipulate it to get out of a feedback loop or just your basic instinct. So, it was like a Turing test for thought in lower creatures. If they can solve problems of such and such a type, you had to consider them to be thinking at least some level. Cog psych class from long, long ago.
“I don’t think I get the issue of being blind or not, newrouter.”
are vibrations of air material or symbolic?
Sometimes material and sometimes both, newrouter. Depends if there is information encoded.
I think this allows me to understand JHo’s question now. It’s because I described thought as being both material and requiring abstraction, yes? It’s both. In the second instance, I’m describing the non stove representation of a stove as matter because it’s in my physical brain and as an abstraction because it’s not actually a stove.
my problem is that raw information is devoid of meaning. telegraphy means nothing without morse code. so the reagan obama debate above is full of meaning to those who have reagan’s code and also obama’s code.
Speaking cryptically is always a possibility we can suppose, though we would likely suppose in addition that some reason or intent lay behind the coding going on, that is that it hadn’t been done for nothing at all.
I think that’s a definitional issue, newrouter. For me, I don’t think it’s information without meaning. Likewise, it’s not telegraphy without morse code.
Which goes to Jeff’s insistence on intentionalism. If someone didn’t encode something, we can’t speak of it as a message. Problem solved, in my mind.
Interesting as always, fellas. Time to be confused by Lost for awhile.
“Likewise, it’s not telegraphy without morse code.”
please. dot and dashes are conventions for a particular type of communications. a modem calling another modem is a different type. hissssssssssssssss dingdong
Okay, I was answering in the general with that, morse code just meant a method of encoding, newrouter. All I’m saying is that what makes it a message is the encoding. Something intentionally using a pattern in a medium to express meaning.
Perhaps I still don’t understand you. Haven’t had coffee since this afternoon so I wouldn’t doubt it.
Okay, gonna start watching Lost now. Later
yes do listen to the Reagan – Obama debate on youtube. info vs. obfuscation
signal to noise ratio people!
Ah, that’s nothing. My late father in law deconstructed an antique clock. I have the box of leftover parts to prove it.
Gotcha now, newrouter, I didn’t catch that you were speaking metaphorically. Taken literally, a lie is still an encoded message and not noise. Taken metaphorically you’re saying Obama is a full of shit. Agreed.
“So it’s man-made, this concept, rendered in language.
Postmodernism vs. Natural rights.”
Heh. Naw, no reason to veer there. In either case of it’s origin, it has the same nature. No mind, no liberty. It cannot exist without a person to concieve or percieve it (I’m not sure which is the right word). Liberty is not any thing in a forest devoid of any people to think about it. Nature or God, if such is the source, cannot give liberty to a rock because that’s not what liberty is. Not unless it makes the rock something equivalent to a man first.
Copenhagen interpretation vs. Everett’s MWI? 12 rounds. Does liberty exist in parallel dimensions?
“that if thinking isn’t done with language (di’s examples) it must still be done with representations or symbols of some sort, thus making it somewhat language-like by the element of requisite abstraction.”
Here’s what I’m trying to get at – I don’t think so. At least I don’t know. Alot of thinking is subconscious. It’s subconscious, so consciously, I have no idea what it is.
But you ever have a feeling (emotions are thinking… they don’t come from your heart muscle… but not that kind of feeling, a “gut feeling”, and instinctual reasoning, an intuitive understanding)? Sometimes I have an opinion, but I cannot tell you why I have that opinion. It merely seems to me so, and I for whatever reason trust my intuition. I feel it. I cannot articulate it, I cannot in fact, communicate it. Any attempt fails because I have no words for it, I can merely say “that feels wrong somehow” or “cuz” some such. I haven’t rationalized it. It’s intuitive thinking.
Eventually something odd will make some connection and I’ll begin to form words around it, rationalizing it. Or then along comes someone who puts it into words for you and expresses what you couldn’t, gives you the words, rationalizes it, and you realize what you thought without realizing it at the time. What was an indescribable uneasy sensation becomes a full expressable idea.
Rationalized thinking follows the pattern of language. Perhaps all rationalized thought requires such symbolism and lends itself to language.
But not all thought is rationalized thought. Sometimes you have thoughts you cannot express to others, precisely because you lack any symbols for them (they’re perhaps the most abstract thoughts of all), don’t know the word or combination of words or images or acts that could signify what you’re thinking, but still have the thought.
My late father in law deconstructed an antique clock.
He demonstrated that the clock was undermining the concept of time? I’d pay to see that.
So it’s man-made, this concept, rendered in language.
Animals don’t perceive political liberty, to be sure, because they don’t perceive politics. Or religion. Or art. Or blog posts.
Cats also don’t register social rejection, which explains why, when the cat begs for scritchy-scratch on my left side and I shove him away, he simply tries again on my right side, much as I would try first one and then the other of a pair of doors to see which one is locked.
“Would that mean that animals can’t think?”
Against my own point but just because I must – Who said animals can’t communicate? Or don’t have language? If they can communicate, doesn’t that mean they do have language?
Not very advanced langauge, granted. But my dog knows some english. Knows what “sit” or “wanna go out?” means. And vocalizes the latter in her own way if I don’t ask often enough.
When a certain bird always goes ‘squawk squawk’ a specific way when they see a snake climbing the tree, and every other bird takes that to mean “DANGER, GTFO!”, how is that not language?
As for the brain being a machine, I challenge that. We don’t know how the brain works. We know that bio-electrical impulses travel along neurons, but WTF with the chemistry in the synapses? WTF with the joining and associating and specialization?
We can observe the brain in action by seeing which parts are eating up the most energy while performing a task, but we haven’t got the faintest idea how the simplest thing is encoded into the brain.
As for non-linguistic knowledge, how about knowing how to do a particular dance or play the piano or the oboe? You can learn to do those things without reading music: the Suzuki method (IIRC) has you listen, then imitate. No symbols there, just execution.
Once you’ve got the concerto memorized, there’s no symbolic system intervening while you shift into automatic and just let your hands do their thing.
And what about the knowledge that something is hard or soft or cold or warm or wet? Kittehs understand “wet” quite well, but they have no word for it. They just know they don’t like it.
“Animals don’t perceive … politics”
Are you sure social animals don’t perceive social politics? Packs have alphas.
how is that not language?
That’s definitely communication, but there’s a debate over whether it’s actual language or just the use of a symbols to represent something concrete.
Hell, they even debate whether Koko the sign-language gorilla is using language or just associating one symbol with one thing. I guess “they” insist that there be some kind of higher level of abstraction, such as punning, irony, lying, or such.
Are you sure social animals don’t perceive social politics?
They don’t understand political parties and parliamentary procedure. They definitely understand power structures among individuals.
Well, canids do. Felines? Not so much.
Entropy, I should clearly state that the internal representations or symbols I’m speaking of doesn’t necessarily correlate to words. Sometimes yes. They don’t even necessarily correlate to things we’d call ideas. Somehow, we must map the outside world internally. I can’t imagine how the system could work otherwise.
Challenge it with what? Seriously.
When you list your WTFs (more known daily, of course), you’re describing a matter. Chemistry requires matter, it’s the electron valence level interaction between molecules/atoms. And the joining and associating and specialization is another way of describing shape or position, another attribute of matter.
there’s a debate over whether it’s actual language or just the use of a symbols to represent something concrete.
Uh… what is language then?
debate whether Koko the sign-language gorilla is using language
Yes, I’ve heard of that. It kinda blew my mind. Uh…huh?
Are these the same people that say people don’t really have language and you’ve just oppressively conditioned me not to touch the stove under certain circumstance? Cuz I’m really struggling with that.
The understanding of it, that is.
Not the touching the stove part.
Perhaps I’m missing something or using machine too loosely. Di, do you think the brain and cognition can be explained mechanistically using the material found in our nervous system? If not, what do you posit is at work?
Yikes, time to sleep. Later.
There’s a mental phenomenon I’ve experienced a couple of times — at least I think the two cases were related to one another — though the components or constituent elements were somewhat divergent as systems.
On the one hand was my experience operating large hydraulic equipment for long periods, namely a backhoe and a Bobcat, but to make the example I’ll stick to describing the backhoe alone. On the other hand was an experience playing a game, the Japanese board game Go, intensely, repeatedly and for long periods.
So, what was it, this phenomenon? It isn’t easy to describe exactly, but let me take the case of the backhoe first.
At the beginning, operating a machine like that is akin experientially to learning to drive a car, it is strange to the senses, things happen too fast and corrections are poorly processed as mental events, too slowly processed as a step by step reaction clumsily going through an unlearned sequence of control manipulations (and this takes place over the course of hours, generally speaking). As one builds one’s metaphorical mental muscle, one’s responses to control inputs gets to be smoother, one anticipates the behavior of the machine to inputs better and corrections to error in manipulation come more readily as well. After still more time and with the strengthening of mental pathways, we might speak of our operation of the machine as coming to the point of being a “second” nature. And indeed it is, and here is where the weirdness starts.
Digging ditches with a backhoe can get to be like an extension of ones own hand — it is as if one can “sense”, one can actually feel down to the finest grain what is going on at the tip of the bucket teeth. I suppose it is a projection of our body positioning spatial-sense, our proprioception, right out to the end of the bucket, even though there are no sensory feedback nerve endings there at the end of the teeth but only our sense of sight at work, our touch at the control arms and foot pedals, our position in the seat and hearing involved. The brain seems to accommodate itself to the new beast and takes it on as just another part of the body. (I suspect something similar takes place for instrumentalists as well, though the scale and force is much reduced.)
The Go experience was of an apparently different sort, and had I not have happened to have discussed my surprise at it with a friend at the time, who had the same experience himself, I’m not sure I’d even have classed it with the backhoe experience at all. Despite my uncertainty on this score, here goes.
So Go is a board conquering game played by two opponents, each placing stones (one player – black, the other – white), one at a time, in turn, irremovably unless captured, on a grid, forming “walls” and capturing territory and occasionally opponents stones, the object being to capture the larger territory. The game has a geometric aspect, and most definitely demands a careful attention to “shape” — a complex relationship of one’s own stones to each other and to their relationships to the opponents stones — as well as a dynamical counting of territorial probabilities to govern the strategic priorities as the game proceeds. (For an introduction to the beauties of the game, let me suggest the novel “The Master of Go” by Yasunari Kawabata.)
Anyhow, as it passed my friend and I played this game fairly intensely for a time (months), game after game, day after day, right studiously (there almost isn’t any other way to go about it I think) we played, each trying his hardest to best the other. And again, our brains had adapted to the requirements of the game, constantly taking account of the shape of our stones in the context of the board and the strategic demands of the moment. It’s patterns, people, hundreds of them.
Then the weirdness happened: at around the same time we both experienced a projection of the game out into the world, each of us in a number of places and manners, though some of these had a shared overlap. My first jolt came while I was driving in moderately heavy traffic on the Capital Beltway outside DC. My truck, with me in it, became a Go stone on the board, in a struggle for position, space and shape in the flow of traffic. Mike had much the same experience, though on a different road at another time. He recounted to me another example, moving through a crowd on foot in a shopping mall. He found himself to be a Go stone.
Loopy? Maybe. But I don’t think so.
Our brains had taken over. They were merely doing again what they had been doing for lo those many weeks, perceiving shapes and spaces and taking account. That the shapes and spaces weren’t on the board made no matter at all. The patterns were there to be dealt with, and deal they did.
Sdferr,that’s often my response to people that ask how I can be interested in music and accounting. It’s all about recognizing patterns. Groups of notes, division of measures, recognition of common numerical errors, knowing the financial cycle of a particular business. These have a similar way of being processed, to my brain anyway.
One way of addressing the way language is regularly misused is to risk not using it. Take as an example, ahem, my latest pop-up card which clearly expresses congratulations to my brother and his wife on the birth of their first child. It performs that function by coinciding with the event. There are no words, for words will not do. Rather, its meaning is to be understood, and if it’s not understood, then that’s just too bad. At the very least there will be no language to goof up the message.
Jeff G:
Fish’s postmodernism is not about relativism. It’s about materialism. All it says is that there are no metaphysical / universal standards by which to judge one certain narrative superior to another.
Ok, I didn’t read far enough down LBascom’s quote of you in #38 to know – by then following the link LB referred to – that it was “Fish’s postmodernism” I was talking about, when I riffed off on what “Postmodernism is in practice”. To tell the truth, I didn’t even realize I was responding to you, Jeff!
But I still don’t know what else to call what I see being done in the name of Postmodernism, though, so I’ll keep saying that’s what it is in practice.
Fish’s Postmodernism actually sounds strangely like what I thought “relativism” was back in the ’60’s.
People take that material “truism” posited by postmodernism and leap to the lazy conclusion that all truths are relative — and replace the actual truism with that little incorrect nugget. Then those people go teach.
I’ve seen it happen. It’s sad and frustrating.
I love it Jeff, thanks! I just have to throw this in there> So, Glenn beck interviewed Massa a couple of nights ago (they posted the show on foxnews.com) and right in the middle is this fascinating exchange between the two>
“BECK: OK. But there’s a difference between misbehavior and what they’re accusing you of. Here, let me — let me —
MASSA: OK.
BECK: Let me say this: Somebody says I groped male staffers, female staffers. You know, I was fondling a cat — whatever it is, I don’t resign. I stand up and I say —
MASSA: Yes, you do.
BECK: No.
MASSA: And here’s why —
BECK: No, I don’t.
MASSA: I do and here’s why: Because it doesn’t make any difference what my intentions were. It’s how it’s perceived by the individual who receives that action. And we set it up so that it could be completely —
BECK: Your name is at stake here.
MASSA: And that’s —
BECK: No, no, no. Not just your name.
MASSA: Everybody’s name.
BECK: Your children’s name.
MASSA: That’s right.
BECK: OK. So, there are — there’s something called honor. You are a Navy guy.
MASSA: So the only other thing —
BECK: Honor.
MASSA: Glenn, the only thing I can do is slit my wrist and bleed out here.
I’m telling you, I was wrong. I was wrong. It’s why I’ve —
BECK: Wait, wait. No. What you’re saying to me is they took it wrong.
MASSA: No, I’m saying my behavior was wrong. My behavior was wrong. I should have —”
I laughed out loud, then I came over to this site looking for a post about interpretation and here it is! Again, thanks Jeff!
meerkats!
That’s one of those assertions that cannot, by definition, be proved by demonstration.
Massa fell on their sword.
“That’s one of those assertions that cannot, by definition, be proved by demonstration.”
True.
But I’d say the assertion is also tautologous. It’s proof in and of itself.
Merriam Webster’s defines liberty as “The power to do as one pleases”.
To have power to do as one pleases first requires
A) To be
B) To please
A rock cannot do (B), a non-existant person cannot do (A).
So “postmodernism” is similar to the term “liberal”. It’s been taken and applied to something other than what it’s meaning is/was. For the original meaning of the term “liberal” we are now forced into the clumsy term “classical liberal”. What should be done about “postmodernism”? How do we separate the two things which, though different, have the same term applied?
This is not like the case of the word “cat” coming, evolving, to have two different meanings as the “hipster” was not trying to hide himself as a small furry creature who purrs when content. The cases here are more of a hijacking of the term to hide something. Radical New Leftist hiding behind “liberal”. And something, what?, hiding behind “postmodernism”.
The destruction of language, of the ability to even think of certain things seems to be the end game of hijackings like these. YMMV
Sure. But the fact that liberty doesn’t exist without people is freakin’ irrelevant, because once you subtract the people, you subtract the importance of the distinction.
Literally everything else also stops being important, once people are subtracted.
I’m guessing, here, that once people are subtracted, mice and dolphins will become bored and leave.
geoffb, Does the destruction come about as a first objective or is it a secondary effect: Assume the following two speakers.
Variable vs. Fixed Meaning:
1. Communication is the process of conveying an idea from one person to another. This requires a common understanding and agreement of terms. Clarity requires that words have a fixed and known meaning. It is not important which particular word we choose to convey an idea or what meaning we assign only that we agree on the meaning and stay consistent within the confines of the discourse. For effective communication we should focus on clarity and understanding in lieu of agreement.
2. Communication involves more than reasoning and logic. Words inherently have a radius of meanings shaped by the culture. These meanings go beyond technical interpretations and include historical contexts which carry value judgments. These value judgments affect our emotional response to language and shape our perception of the rightness of the positions taken. It is appropriate to select words that convey these emotions even if they are not the most technically accurate choices available. Effective communication occurs when I am able to persuade others to see the world as if through my eyes.
One seeks understanding, the other victory.
I do not know in the case of “postmodernism”. In the case of the term “liberal”, liberals were hated, HATED, by the New Left circa mid 60s. In taking over the Democratic Party the term was adopted as a cloak, a cover.
This I believe was the main reason but I can’t reject that the destruction of the very idea, the original idea, of “liberal” was not also a main objective. Because of that hijack many of the writings that form the basis of America now have their meaning made more difficult to think about and teach.
My thesis is that they hijack words that carry the emotional load/ value judgment (Torture, Lie) that advances their cause. Once they drain all the juice they just get a new word… Liberal>Progressive.
I haven’t read you link yet, so more later…
“Literally everything else also stops being important, once people are subtracted.”
Not so sure. I’m not saying it can’t be important without a concious willful mind capable of encapsulating the concept of it. I’m saying it flat out doesn’t exist (since it exists as a concept – or the practical realization of the concept).
I’m not sure what ‘importance’ means, but we can discuss the application of, existence of, and effects of Newton’s 1st law (or that portion of reality that his first law is a rationalization and a symbol of) in the absence of people to observe it. It acts on a rock whether a mind is there to appreciate it or not. A lightning bolt will kill a bee it strikes whether or not the bee can comprehend the lighting.
A man may enjoy liberty even if he cannot comprehend liberty, but he must be able to comprehend his own desire. Without desires to persue, the freedom (or lack of it) to persue them does not exist. Liberty requires a conscious will to act upon in order to manifest itself (or barring that, a mind that can comprehend it for it to exist as an unmanifested abstract). Either way, it literally cannot exist without a mind. Any more then a “pink elephant” can exist in a universe with no photons. No light, no pink. Such a hypothetical universe is a universe that excludes the existance of a pink elephant.
Without a consciousness you only have half the neccessary components for it’s structure existing in the universe.
Liberty is in this way like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics – the act of observing creates the result, the forcing of a distinction collapses the wave function and creates a distinction. It requires an observer. That reality actually hinges on the perception of reality. Without a reason for a distinction there cannot be a distinction. (IE things must be ‘important’ or else they won’t be).
It’s theory about how the universe works is like how I’m saying liberty works in that if you remove the observer, remove the person who percieves, then you remove the universe. It becomes undone because it’s irrelevant.
Special relativity, or Everett’s Many Worlds intepretation of quantum physics, does not require an observer. These theories assert that what they represent is, and will be, whether you are or not. Like a rock. Important, relevant or not, it is what it is.
Now, I am honestly not sure what the relevance of this is to whether or not our minds think only in symbols. I can see several arguments there. But I offer for consideration that here is a thing, not a symbol of a thing but the thing itself (if that thing is a thing and anything other then an empty symbol), that cannot exist without thought.
I know exactly what you are referring to with #128, sdferr. If I mentioned half of them you’d think I was crazy.
Went through a phase where I’d suddenly realize how phone numbers (555-1234) were true statements if I substituted the “-” for a “=” and added the relevant notation between numbers. Would just start dialing an old familiar phone number and, bam, suddenly see it.
“…he must be able to comprehend his own desire. Without desires to pursue…”
I’m not clear on the connection here Entropy. It seems that you are suggesting the lack of comprehension is sufficient to remove the possibility of desire? Have I got that right? If so, somehow the idea doesn’t sort. I think I’m failing to get one of the steps, so apologies in advance to the extent I’m just flubbing.
In general, would you say this is boiling down to a question of causation? That is, does the behavior cause the description or is the phenomenon built in the reverse, the description is the behavior?
jls,
What we are discussing it short term vs long term and whether or not the planning takes one, the other or both into the plan. I can argue this either way as examples are there for both propositions. Also one person’s short term gain or loss may be another person’s long term. I remember during the 90’s when prominent people would throw away a lifetime’s respectability to give President Clinton a few days win on the news cycle.
Life is now intruding so I am backing away here.
God, I hate being this longwinded, but I cannot compress it without feeling like I’m losing clarity. My struggling to express it is archaic enough already.
“It seems that you are suggesting the lack of comprehension is sufficient to remove the possibility of desire?”
No. You can have liberty without comprehending what you have. You can perhaps desire without comprehending desire.
I’m saying the lack of desire is sufficient to remove the possibility of freedom to persue desire, (the most bare, reduced form of liberty) tautologically.
And to have desire, you must have will. Conscious. Now I’m not totally ruling out animals here. It needn’t necessarily be a man. But it must be a mind possessing a will.
Desire is a function of will. Libery requires desire. Liberty is a function of will.
“That is, does the behavior cause the description or is the phenomenon built in the reverse, the description is the behavior?”
If I follow that at all, I don’t see that it matters – the word describing it is a symbol of the thing, but the thing which the word describes requires a will in order to be, before it can be described.
If the behavior simply exists, and later, causes a mind to describe it with a symbol, it existed, and I’m saying it’s creation was predicated on the existance of a will – whether or not that will could or ever did actually describe it with a symbol.
If it’s behavior is created by it’s conception and description, well then certainly it was predicated by a will capable of describing it, which goes even a step further and may rule out some critters.
Either way, the behavior is predicated on a will.
I am saying simply, there can be no such thing as liberty without thought. If you shoot someone in the head with a shotgun and turn them into a vegetable, they no longer have will, and they no longer have desire, then they may not have liberty thereafter.
If you shoot everything ever capable of having it with a shotgun, then it no longer exists, either as a thought describing a behavior or as a behavior begging description by thought.
In other words, I think, to the question of whether people can think without symbolism, I am saying yes : A primitive desire, an impulse to action (of which liberty is a state), is a thought, but is not a symbol. A will, a conciousness, is not a symbol of anything save itself. The word “I” may be a symbol for the thing I, but the thing I is what assigns the word “I” it’s meaning.
So a self-consciousness is either an empty meaningless symbol, a popular delusion, the ‘myth’ of the mind, something you ate for dinner that caused a bad chemical reaction, or it is an actual thing in the external world produced first by thinking, not merely an internal representation of that external thing that first existed, and then was rendered in thought (a symbol). The copy in your head is not a copy, it is the original.
In the former case, what conditions have allowed it’s existance truly is irrelevant, because neither it nor you actually does exist. This discussion hinges on what has become a false premise. We’re simply wind-up toys doing what we’ve been wound to do – or words have or require no meaning, we will type them regardless because we have had our springs wounds and this is what we do. It merely seems like we meant something because we’ve been wound to have that absurd impression.
Meaning is another thing that requires conscious – not the word but the concept of meaning, what can it be a symbol of, apart from itself? It cannot exist outside our minds for our minds to internalize representations of, if it first does not exist inside our minds as an original thing, that gets copied out. It’s something that only exists in our heads that we project symbols of onto the external.
To this end, you may suggest that IT may not exist outside our heads, but the pieces that form it do, and we’ve formed it merely by rearranging the symbols of the pieces, making it symbolic in the sense that it’s an amalgam of symbols.
And that is what I am responding to – the conscious will, thought in the mind, is actually a piece of it required for it’s assembly, and that conscious cannot be an internally reflected symbol of an external thing unless it is a mistake, and wrong. In which case, “you” do not really exist as you think you do. Your impression of yourself is only a reflection of the sack of jelly that exists externally. Your thoughts do not dictate your actions, your actions dictate your thoughts.
And in that event, there is no such thing as liberty.
Your thoughts do not dictate your actions, your actions dictate your thoughts.
We’ve covered much of this in previous discussions.
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=16207
That statement closely resembles the famous William James formulation that ‘we do not run from the bear because we fear it, we fear the bear because we run from it.’
James also postulated that free will existed, and his proof and first expression of this will was his choosing to believe he was free.
Liberty surely stems from the same impulse.
Don’t hate being longwinded Entropy, so long as you arrive at the clarity you seek. This stuff is hard — otherwise it ought to have been a settled question long ago, and the simple truth is, it is far from settled — so, take this as thanks for the efforts you make on your own behalf as potentially benefiting everyone else, even when some confusions arise, as these confusions may prove to be spurs to further useful clarifications.
Is this the wrong time to mention I don’t think there is free will?
I’m sure we could hash that out fairly quickly, right?
Buullll shit!
Would you suggest that what seems to be free will is really the entropy (Information Theory usage) caused by Chaos Theory within the complex dynamic system of the human psyche? ;)
Maybe.
You just had to say it, didn’t you?
Free will, regulated by reality, is a necessary component of self-awareness.
I just made that up…I could be wrong.
Oops, not Davy.
Hehs.
Do I love to golf because I am a golfer, or am I a golfer because I love to golf?
You could be a golfer ‘cuz you likes you some ho’s…
I think, therefore I have thunk.
Well, here’s what I take to be a pretty good summary of our our both sad and happy situation as alive and thinking beings:
“For after all the great religions have been preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in fine books and embellished in fine language with finer covers, man — all man — is still confronted with the Great Mystery” — Chief Luther Standing Bear, Ota Kte, Oglala Sioux.
Just think about it for a second: The Universe has brought forth a being who wants to understand the Universe. But the essential quality of our wondering is that we are always confroned with Mystery.
And maybe even “confronted” with the Great Mystery. No, that’s just the way it is. I’m going to back it up with another American Indian comment on our situation: ~ “Why would a Virgin Birth be more miraculous than a regular birth?”