Question about postmodernism
map...@hotmail.com
opposition to totalities? I'm yet to find anyone that can clearly
answer this, and would love an explanation. Thanks!
James Whitehead
number of "routes", "programmes" whilst adorno's is singular? Though i dare
say some group with say critical theorists may hold a fairly common
critique - that is a fairly narrow field within the spectrum of
postmodernity... or is it within such a context that you require your
answer - if so i'd be interested also.
I think within the context of the plastic arts the critique has been seen
both deliberately occurring, and occurring simply out of a rejection of - or
ignoring of - modernist programmes... so each artist and each work can
stand with regard to modernity deliberately or obliquely...
<map...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139485309....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
map...@hotmail.com
in nonacademic language to someone that is interested in philosophy but
not so much up to date with the academy? thanks
James Whitehead
<map...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139502108.4...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I'm sorry, I really don't understand your reply. Could you explain it
> in nonacademic language to someone that is interested in philosophy but
> not so much up to date with the academy? thanks
>
It would be helpful if you could describe your philosophical background in a
little more detail... as from certain Anglo / American philosophical
positions post-modern philosophy is not philosophy at all. Worse Derrida has
at times (at least once) maintained a position outside of philosophy. Post
modern philosophy in academic terms was more centred on departments of
literature than philosophy depts... at the simplest level post-modernity
could be regarded as a critique on multiple levels of the institutions of
the enlightenment and its ideals, these levels ranging from complex
critiques in logical terms, to radical feminisms, post-colonialism and the
general popularisation of enlightenment elitism.
As a metaphor - take the mona lisa (a print) a totem of high art and
western civilization - draw a moustache on it and add the title LHOQQ... and
then present this within the establishment of the said high art /
civilization...
map...@hotmail.com
Thanks. My philisophical background: I started out reading plato
(allegory of the cave), went around asking people if they could prove
things(when i was very young). I soon got into liberalism and
feminism, and dipped into the extremes of various philosophies and
ideologies, having read Malcolm X's autobiography. I then began to
notice flaws in all of these philosophies for several reasons.
Currently, this is my reading list for philosophers(many of which I
read simply so I can understand arguments that oppose my view of life):
* Franz Kafka
* Walter Benjamin
* François Rabelais
* Noam Chomsky
* Aristotle
* Donna Haraway
* Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
* Edward Said
* Samuel P. Huntington
* Eric Hoffer
* Michel de Montaigne
====
On another note, here are some things I'm wondering:
1.Why does postmodernism, in its own tradition, not criticize itself?
2.Does postmodernism ever celebrate any values portrayed in say greek
art or the mona lisa? It seems like a totality in and of itself to
draw a moustache on all these works meant to portray the greatness of
humanity...
3.Why do postmodernists more often quote Derrida and
Boudillard(spelling?) than Adorno and Kant? Isn't it giving too much
credit to itself?
Kater Moggin
> Worse Derrida has at times (at least once) maintained a position
> outside of philosophy.
Golly! Got a better example than last time? All you came
up with before was, "I have attempted more and more
systematically to find a non-site, or a non-philosophical
site, from which to question philosophy" -- less than the claim
you're attributing to him.
-- Moggin
spino...@yahoo.com
In fact, postmodernism does so all the time. Its very verbosity, and
the way in which, for example, Derrida will seem to "ring changes" on a
phrase, occurs because post the late Wittgenstein, postmodernism wishes
to do philosophy without being led into the trap called words as
things.
> 2.Does postmodernism ever celebrate any values portrayed in say greek
> art or the mona lisa? It seems like a totality in and of itself to
> draw a moustache on all these works meant to portray the greatness of
> humanity...
The real obscenity here consists of the mindless people with more money
than sense who troop in front of the Mona Lisa after having read the Da
Vinci code, and seek for premodern, occult meanings in paintings.
Who know nothing either about composition, or the way in which the
expense of colors in Western art resulted in colorism or the ability to
set these expensive pigments apart or even about the mere labor process
of Renaissance painting, a fascinating story in itself,
Because as members of the *petite* and *haute* bourgeoisie they are
work-shy, seeking an ownership/sharecrop society of permanent
injustice, as long as they think they are not what they are
spiritually, which is Losers,
Who seek to CONSUME "meanings" in the way they do their goddamn *haute*
cuisine, and whose fart gas pollutes the earth,
In fine the "obscenity" happened to be a Modernist gesture, Marcel
Duchamp's to be exact. He was stating in art that nothing goes through
the mind worth noting of the bourgeois art spectator.
Adorno would add that aesthetics and art have a lexical relationship
such that no-one can "appreciate" art if he's a jerk,
Therefore, the real obscenity remains not drawing a mustache on what
happened to be a copy of the Mona Mona Lisa but Fred and Wilma, who
have come to Paris "to see some art" and "to drink fine wine" on the
backs of the Wretched of the Earth.
I do hope this clears things up.
> 3.Why do postmodernists more often quote Derrida and
> Boudillard(spelling?) than Adorno and Kant? Isn't it giving too much
> credit to itself?
I do not know whomof you speak and it is NOT Derrida or Baudrillard.
Derrida in particular continually quotes from and acknowledges a debt
to Kant and to Plato. Derrida read Plato's complete works every year of
his professional life. Foucault, who I suppose is another of your
*betes noirs* went to the Bibliotheque National every day of his
professional life.
If you mean a professor at a Community College, this is a comment not
on "postmodernism" but on American edumocation.
Is our children learning?
spino...@yahoo.com
Theodore Adorno wasn't "opposed" to totalities as much as to narratives
that pretended to do justice to totalities.
In saying "the whole is the untrue" Adorno was referring to any text
pretending to do justice to the whole.
At the same time, what Adorno meant by such theological terms as
"redemption" was a completely hollowed-out negative theology in which
these words are more than permitted to remain and to be considered as
meaningful, but neither translatable nor reducible to a theological, or
Marxist-Leninist, assurance or reduction (heaven on earth, the stars
brought down to earth).
A word can mean without having a definition in the sense of being
replaceable and reducible.
For example, the old-fashioned Marxist Leninist sidles up to the
average Joe on the trolley and provides the average Joe with a
REDUCTIVE explanation of his unpaid rent bill and his scrofulous kid
with a case of whooping cough. The Bolshevist tells the average Joe,
hey Buddy, idn't ain't your fault and you don't have to woik no harder
at de office, because Histree, pal, is class struggle between
irreconcilable class interests which is gonna end in the dictatorship
of guys like you 'n me, followed by Communism and da withering away of
the state. Birds and the bees and the cigarette trees: a lake of whisky
and a lake of stew. Too.
In this renarration, there is no longer any need for the word
"redemption" whereas Adorno, sulking in the back of the trolley, would
up and say, not on your tintype, not on your fireless cooker: any
Concept (begriff) is untranslatable and is itself a thing in itself (an
sich). Among such Concepts we find Suffering, and, to use Buddha's
label, the end of suffering, aka Redemption, and these must be
swallowed whole until time itself has a stop.
"Our job" (Adorno would continue, on this Fire Sermon on the trolley in
Newark) "is thus not replacing Redemption, nor is it explaining away
suffering by such reductive phrases as "he deserved it", it is Tikkun,
making the world better, which for me includes blowing off bullshit
including words, like "terror", with the same overall syntax as
Redemption or Suffering, but which systematically blind the soul
because unlike Redemptiion or Suffering, we know not what this
"terrorism" means and it sounds sure as hell convenient to people
terrified by justified resistance."
There is no postmodern critique of meta narrative if meta takes its
ordinary meaning of metalanguage, mere language whose subject matter is
language. You are probably thinking of a variant of American
postmodernism in the American Pragmatic vein which uses some postmodern
tools to "question" "grand" narratives.
These critiques as mounted for example by Rorty and by Fish end up in a
schizophrenic fashion simultaneously (and, at one at the same time too)
denying that grand (not meta) talk IS MEANINGFUL when it reduces
(history for example to class conflict) and that it has a negative
referent, consisting in diremption, and our dissatisfaction with the
facticity of suffering (translation: the horseshit of every day life as
experienced by most of us).
American "postmodernism" denies that suffering which is constituted in
a felt lack which is throwing its inverse, the baby, out with the
bath-water of the surrounding language, and this is something old
Teddie Adorno refused to do.
Now, I fully realize that the above sounds like "if you can't dazzle
them with brilliance then baffle them with bullshit".
Think of reading Adorno and other such gas-bags as if you were Calvin,
as Spaceman Spiff, exploring Saturn, which although a gas giant has an
iron core.
It would be surprising (Spinoza noted at the end of his Ethics, On
Human Freedom) if salvation (including salvation considered as
understanding, as opposed to salvation considered as traveling in first
class) were easy to grok down and dig up on.
No, as it is written up in the Upanishads, salvation is a razor's edge.
But when we hit the iron core we realize that of course, what we MEAN
in ORDINARY LANGUAGE by "redemption", imaged variously as seventy
virgins and as that city in which there are streets of gold, is
absolutely irreducible to and unreconcilable with any other Concept.
Ess muss sein? Muss ess sein.
In Adorno, philosophy converges with theology while retaining its name,
for he returns to Judaic mysticism, that highest thought which says
next year in Jerusalem and which disavows any *ersatz* as not coming
under the sign of Redemption.
map...@hotmail.com
as opposed those who claimed to purely express them through
meta-narrative?
Kater Moggin
> Theodore Adorno wasn't "opposed" to totalities as much as to narratives
> that pretended to do justice to totalities.
> In saying "the whole is the untrue" Adorno was referring to any text
> pretending to do justice to the whole.
You sure? When Adorno writes "the whole is the false," he
doesn't limit himself to ideas _about_ the whole: he says
that the whole is untrue. "Das Ganze ist das Unwahre," _Minima
Moralia_ 29. No restriction to stories pretending to do
justice. Adorno is reversing Hegel's comment, "The true is the
whole" -- "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" -- in the preface to the
_Phenomenology of Spirit_. Does that go a bit further than you
like?
-- Moggin
spino...@yahoo.com
this seriously means that Adorno was NOT saying "it is not the case
that the true is the whole".
His literal words, das Ganze ist das Unwahre, are all we have to go on.
Dialectical logic is not something that a first-rate guy like Hegel or
Adorno imposes from inside an Aristotelean Death Star on a dialectical
planet, renarrating the struggles of ordinary slobs in terms of
propositional and quantificational logic.
No, Adorno (whose friends in Weimar, according to Rolf Wiggershaus were
struck by how naturally and instinctively he would think, and speak, in
dialectical terms: who said famously of the nondialectical logic of
mathematics that as a result of its logic, actions take upon themselves
a stupid quality), unlike some "postmodern" hack in some American cow
college, meant to engage Hegel man to man.
Hegel (crashing down his stein in the Philosopher's Pub): der WHOLE ist
der Treue!
Adorno: ja, but the whole is false, myn heer, in mein experience.
You have to assent to hegel's assertion before you can even begin to
comprehend what the experience of Weimar and Hitler meant to Adorno in
his life-world, for Hitlerism, did it not, arose from the same
*flaneur* matrix as Adorno, in which theoreticians in bars vied
pre-Hitler with each other to attain that wholeness which they thought
would ensure Truth.
Freudianism explained "everything", as did Marxism, and in the
dialectical logic, a marxist Freudian had an even whol-er, cool-er
explanation (I am not making this up).
But when Lenin and Hitler put this drive for wholeness into practice,
and succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the *flaneurs* using Talk
Radio, reflective individuals including Adorno had a new epiphany, the
whole is also the false.
This is paradoxical, of course, but this does not mean we cannot await
a new *aufhebung*. The paradox should keep us thinking and acting for
reconciliation.
It is another paradox that this sort of paradox leads people to
conclude that philosophy is BS, while mathematics generates paradox all
the time, regarded by mathematicians as an incentive to do their
(nondialectical) work of reconciliation.
Oddly, ordinary people
spino...@yahoo.com
map...@hotmail.com wrote:
> So what you're saying is that Adorno didn't oppose totalities so much
> as opposed those who claimed to purely express them through
> meta-narrative?
Discussions of postmodernism in the AngloAmerican context tend to peter
out in confusion precisely because the discussants (in addition to
systematically misusing terms like metanarrative, which again means a
narrative about narrative: the term you are thinking of his Rorty's
"grand" narrative) think that the philosophers have to "oppose" each
other and "win" arguments like clowns and villeins in a modern American
sports bar, or British public house.
They have not the imagination to conceive of a cafe or Tabac in which
the discussants,, while not agreeing with each other, might be content
instead of contradicting their mates, to merely take what they say, and
make a silk purse dialectically out of a pig's ear.
The ideal is not "France", for I am well aware that the battle lines
exist in "France" as well.
Adorno provides TOOLS to criticise horse shit. The late Edward Said
used these tools to battle an enormous and well-funded effort in the US
to present the Israeli government as pure and good despite the fact
that its leaders have always been terrorists and the current government
cannot even draw a map of "Israel" (and, defines israeli citizenship in
direct violation of the terms of its UN membership).
"Terrorism" itself is a grand narrative which summarizes millions of
atomic facts including the facts of daily life into a single word which
conveniently conceals the right of the peoples of the world, enshrined
in the UN declaration of human rights, of rebellion against tyranny.
Only traditionally was "logic" and "critical thinking" all about
"winning". It is also about how to stay in the game and how to avoid
excluding the Other (Lyotard defines terrorism as this exclusion).
AngloAmerican rage to win arguments is Fascism.
James Whitehead
"Kater Moggin" <kimm...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:kimmerian-5B615...@news.verizon.net...
Reading should free itself from the categories of the history of
philosophy...........
James Whitehead
"James Whitehead" <x...@yyy.co.uk> wrote in message
news:dt246j$rsb$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
"Now, the irreality of meaning was discovered by phenomenology as one of
its very own premises. Inversely, no history as self-tradition and no Being
could have meaning without the logos which is the meaning which projects and
proffers itself. Despite all these classical notions, phenomenology does not
abdicate itself for the benefit of a classical metaphysical speculation
which on the contrary, according to Husserl, would have to recognize in
phenomenology the clarified energy of its own intentions. Which amounts to
saying that in criticizing classical metaphysics, phenomenology accomplishes
the most profound project of metaphysics. Husserl acknowledges or rather
claims this himself, particularly in the Cartesian Meditations. The results
of phenomenology are "metaphysical, if it be true that ultimate cognitions
of being should be called metaphysical. On the other hand, what we have here
is anything but metaphysics, in the customary sense with which metaphysics,
as `first philosophy,' was instituted originally." "Phenomenology indeed
excludes every naive metaphysics... but does not exclude metaphysics as
such." For within the most universal eidos of mental historicity, the
conversion of philosophy into phenomenology would be the final degree of
differentiation (stage, that is, Stufe, structural level or genetic stage)."
The two previous degrees would be, first, that of a pretheoretical culture,
and next, that of the theoretical or philosophical project (the
GrecoEuropean moment)."
James Whitehead
<map...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139851281.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
JW:
If there is no criticism within P.M. then this can be seen as a criticism of
modernity - where it certainly existed- and the reason for its being
missing in P.M.
2.Does postmodernism ever celebrate any values portrayed in say greek
art or the mona lisa? It seems like a totality in and of itself to
draw a moustache on all these works meant to portray the greatness of
humanity...
JW:
The victim here is the "idea", and so P.M. is both very moral and humanist,
very much concerned with the experience of the individual. We can only
survive - as we are doing- by ignoring the greatness of humanity - in which
we would be just a cog, one of the slaves, and so it frees not only
ourselves but the whole of history of such.
3.Why do postmodernists more often quote Derrida and
Boudillard(spelling?) than Adorno and Kant? Isn't it giving too much
credit to itself?
JW:
It isnt an it, being or "Being" is a philosophical thing/problem - I quote
(or miss quote) Derrida because i think his writing offers the potential for
liberation, whereas i think Adorno and Kant were more concerned with
theory...
"All philosophy is intellectual fascism!"
James Whitehead
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1139993754.8...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
[..]
> On another note, here are some things I'm wondering:
> 1.Why does postmodernism, in its own tradition, not criticize itself?
In fact, postmodernism does so all the time. Its very verbosity, and
the way in which, for example, Derrida will seem to "ring changes" on a
phrase, occurs because post the late Wittgenstein, postmodernism wishes
to do philosophy without being led into the trap called words as
things.
> 2.Does postmodernism ever celebrate any values portrayed in say greek
> art or the mona lisa? It seems like a totality in and of itself to
> draw a moustache on all these works meant to portray the greatness of
> humanity...
The real obscenity here consists of the mindless people with more money
than sense who troop in front of the Mona Lisa after having read the Da
Vinci code, and seek for premodern, occult meanings in paintings.
-I dont think they take the Da Vinci code - or the Mona Lisa that
seriously.... or Adolf Hitler...
Who know nothing either about composition, or the way in which the
expense of colors in Western art resulted in colorism or the ability to
set these expensive pigments apart or even about the mere labor process
of Renaissance painting, a fascinating story in itself,
-maybe not - although they might read the guidebook
Because as members of the *petite* and *haute* bourgeoisie they are
work-shy, seeking an ownership/sharecrop society of permanent
injustice, as long as they think they are not what they are
spiritually, which is Losers,
-i'm not sure who you are actually talking about but the vast majority of
such tourists either have or are working very hard- from my experience..
Who seek to CONSUME "meanings" in the way they do their goddamn *haute*
cuisine, and whose fart gas pollutes the earth,
- the triumph of consumerism and mass production - is a triumph
In fine the "obscenity" happened to be a Modernist gesture, Marcel
Duchamp's to be exact. He was stating in art that nothing goes through
the mind worth noting of the bourgeois art spectator.
-Or rather he was attacking the high art interlectual/academic who seeks
higher meanings in favour of the commonality of the individual working
classess,
Adorno would add that aesthetics and art have a lexical relationship
such that no-one can "appreciate" art if he's a jerk,
- and those who do appreciate art, an art which buttresses the elite -
monetary or intellectual are shits of the first order- this is the lesson of
the first and second world wars - in and through which the jerks
triumphed...
Therefore, the real obscenity remains not drawing a mustache on what
happened to be a copy of the Mona Mona Lisa but Fred and Wilma, who
have come to Paris "to see some art" and "to drink fine wine" on the
backs of the Wretched of the Earth.
- Fred and Wilma want to enjoy the same things that the Princes, popes and
Kings of the previous 2,000 years did, not through lies but out of their own
hard earnt cash...
I do hope this clears things up.
- Adorno needs to learn from Las Vegas
Kater Moggin
> His literal words, das Ganze ist das Unwahre, are all we have to go on.
Exactly. Adorno doesn't elaborate his meaning or make any
qualifications. So to say that "the whole is the false"
concerns only narratives pretending they're all-encompassing is
needlessly restrictive.
Related thing: radical messianism goes far beyond _tikkun_
-- repair -- looking forward to the forgetting or the
destruction of the cosmos, for instance in Isaiah 65:17 and the
synoptic apocalypse.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > Reading should free itself from the categories of the history of
> > philosophy...........
> "Now, the irreality of meaning was discovered by phenomenology as one of
> its very own premises. Inversely, no history as self-tradition and no Being
> could have meaning without the logos which is the meaning which projects and
> proffers itself. Despite all these classical notions, phenomenology does not
> abdicate itself for the benefit of a classical metaphysical speculation
> which on the contrary, according to Husserl, would have to recognize in
> phenomenology the clarified energy of its own intentions. Which amounts to
> saying that in criticizing classical metaphysics, phenomenology accomplishes
> the most profound project of metaphysics. Husserl acknowledges or rather
> claims this himself, particularly in the Cartesian Meditations. The results
> of phenomenology are "metaphysical, if it be true that ultimate cognitions
> of being should be called metaphysical. On the other hand, what we have here
> is anything but metaphysics, in the customary sense with which metaphysics,
> as `first philosophy,' was instituted originally." "Phenomenology indeed
> excludes every naive metaphysics... but does not exclude metaphysics as
> such." For within the most universal eidos of mental historicity, the
> conversion of philosophy into phenomenology would be the final degree of
> differentiation (stage, that is, Stufe, structural level or genetic stage)."
> The two previous degrees would be, first, that of a pretheoretical culture,
> and next, that of the theoretical or philosophical project (the
> GrecoEuropean moment)."
So then the answer is no: you can't even give a
referenced quote, let alone show Derrida "maintained a position
outside of philosophy," as you claimed.
-- Moggin
spino...@yahoo.com
Kater Moggin wrote:
> spino...@yahoo.com:
>
> > His literal words, das Ganze ist das Unwahre, are all we have to go on.
>
> Exactly. Adorno doesn't elaborate his meaning or make any
> qualifications. So to say that "the whole is the false"
> concerns only narratives pretending they're all-encompassing is
> needlessly restrictive.
Nonsense. Adorno isn't the early Wittgenstein. He never produced texts
that could be read in isolation, texts like stones. Each text has to be
read in terms of the (false) whole.
It is beyond absurdity to be an Adorno fundamentalist.
At best one can construct an Adorno machine: a simulacrum of what he
would have said had he been brought back from the dead.
"Say something!" "Something!" - Pulp Fiction
You have to reconcile "the whole is the false" with the simple fact
that redemption as a word is used as if it has a referent in Adorno.
I conclude that "der Ganze is das Unwahre" refers to the text.
Furthermore, Adorno happened to use words accurately. How could the
referent of a word which is not a word be "false"?
Kater Moggin
> > ... To say that "the whole is the false"
> > concerns only narratives pretending they're all-encompassing is
> > needlessly restrictive.
> Nonsense.
Not even a little. You've added a limitation missing from
Adorno's remark "The whole is the false," confining it to
"narratives that pretended to do justice to totalities." Guess
you wanted to slam on the brakes.
> You have to reconcile "the whole is the false" with the simple fact
> that redemption as a word is used as if it has a referent in Adorno.
Easy enough: if the whole is the false, then it damn well
needs redeeming!
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
"I wished to reach the point of a certain exteriority... " " my choice is
in fact *exorbitant*"
Kater Moggin
James Whitehead
yes-
" my choice is in fact *exorbitant*"
ignore at your will............
Kater Moggin
> yes-
Doesn't seem so, no. You claimed that Derrida "maintained
a position outside of philosophy," but you haven't given a
single cited quote, nevermind one showing that he does what you
said.
-- Moggin
Michael
You sure? When Adorno writes "the whole is the false," he
doesn't limit himself to ideas _about_ the whole: he says
that the whole is untrue. "Das Ganze ist das Unwahre," _Minima
Moralia_ 29. No restriction to stories pretending to do
justice. Adorno is reversing Hegel's comment, "The true is the
whole" -- "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" -- in the preface to the
_Phenomenology of Spirit_. Does that go a bit further than you
like?
******************
Your explanation of Adorno's comment well summarizes the
postmodern stance, which, to me, seems to resolve itself into
an ontological scepticism of reality. It represents a system
whereby just about everything can be denied, or deconstructed.
Deconstruction is useful in the same way as Alice in Wonderland
is. An inversion of viewpoint may be nonsensical, but the process
of decentering the norm and examining it from a different perspective
can be a valuable exercise.
The great strength of postmodernism is also its greatest failure:
the ability to reject everything.
Michael
spino...@yahoo.com
Michael wrote:
> Moggin wrote:
>
> You sure? When Adorno writes "the whole is the false," he
> doesn't limit himself to ideas _about_ the whole: he says
> that the whole is untrue. "Das Ganze ist das Unwahre," _Minima
> Moralia_ 29. No restriction to stories pretending to do
> justice. Adorno is reversing Hegel's comment, "The true is the
> whole" -- "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" -- in the preface to the
> _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Does that go a bit further than you
> like?
>
> ******************
> Your explanation of Adorno's comment well summarizes the
> postmodern stance, which, to me, seems to resolve itself into
> an ontological scepticism of reality. It represents a system
Harnh? What is an "ontological" skepticism? Skepticism remains
epistemological, and reality marches on whether or not it is
Kantian-unknowable "an sich".
> whereby just about everything can be denied, or deconstructed.
This Pop view is bullshit. It is merely a species of half-education
that has prevailed at least since the Sophists, which is more about the
demotic representation of philosophy than philosophy.
The ordinary slob's brain is filled with reifications and unexamined
concepts which he uses to conduct his sordid daily business of drying
fish or stock jobbing. When at university his Yi Number One son and
heir apparent learns to doubt, the ordinary slob generalizes this to a
universal doubt and re-presents philosophy as corrosive and a form of
intellectual hydrochloric acid.
News fa-lash. By "doubting" something which the ordinary bourgeois slob
jest "knows", eg., that the concept of incarceration, do not pass Go,
do not collect 200.00, has always been thus and so, Michel Foucault
created new knowledge which he knew, and stuff.
Underneath the knowledge of the unreflective non-doubting Thomas lies
in fact not doubt but cynicism.
>
> Deconstruction is useful in the same way as Alice in Wonderland
> is. An inversion of viewpoint may be nonsensical, but the process
> of decentering the norm and examining it from a different perspective
> can be a valuable exercise.
This defense of deconstruction I am afraid makes it sound as
worth-while to the Seeker as Train Spotting or collecting stamps. No,
what Derrida was engaged in was not Train spotting, it was the search
for knowledge and wisdom. Gee, it's hard and the way is filled with
doubt. But as Spinoza pointed out, were it not then we would not do
philosophy.
>
> The great strength of postmodernism is also its greatest failure:
> the ability to reject everything.
Nobody, assuredly not members of French academies, reject everything:
why, many of them cannot even stop smoking.
They simply demur from accepting large and unexamined concepts which
happen to be the gelitanious if not muciliganeous ground of the Sunday
paper: words like "terrorism", "capitalism", "free markets" which it is
in the interests of advertisers and pundits for us to take as given.
Spinoza and most other Major League philosophers were re-presented in
their time as lewd fellows who persuaded young and innocent females to
allow them in their bed-chambers by way of having them doubt the local
curate whilst engaged to teach them, not philosophy, but arts useful
and proper for young maidens of good family. Socrates hisself was
re-presented by the grave and learned of Athens as a lewd fellow with a
penchant for young boys.
So how is this demotic ancient critique in ANY WAY different from the
way hack journos and others re-present deconstruction?
>
> Michael
James Whitehead
> James Whitehead <x...@yyy.co.uk>:
>
> > yes-
>
> Doesn't seem so, no. You claimed that Derrida "maintained
> a position outside of philosophy,"
This is poor even for you -
>but you haven't given a
> single cited quote,
I have given three or more - you have had to delete them..
>nevermind one showing that he does what you
> said.
>
And showing that he does just this! "The first part of this departure and
this deconstruction"-
**deconstruction** - does that have nothing to do with Derrida?
as for uncertaintiy? do you mean undecidability?
> -- Moggin
James Whitehead
just where these come in to Deconstruction etc... though a de-centred,
position - is outside of the logo centrerism of western metaphysics.. one
which escapes the internal contradictions of scepticism.... the use of such
below seems
a little inappropriate.
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140239136.4...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Kater Moggin
> And showing that he does just this!
False. You claimed Derrida "maintained a position outside
of philosophy," but you've failed to show anywhere -- any
particular place in his work -- that he does what you contended.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> The great strength of postmodernism is also its greatest failure:
> the ability to reject everything.
Are you feeling nostalgic for the historical inevitability
of the triumph of the proletariat?
-- Moggin
spino...@yahoo.com
James Whitehead wrote:
> "Uncertainty" and "doubt"? "Nihilism" even - i'm a little confused as to
> just where these come in to Deconstruction etc... though a de-centred,
> position - is outside of the logo centrerism of western metaphysics.. one
> which escapes the internal contradictions of scepticism.... the use of such
> below seems
> a little inappropriate.
What I claimed was less philosophical than sociological. I said that it
is common to claim that postmodernists "deconstruct" (viz., doubt)
everything as skeptical fellows who do this to get girls, but that this
accusation has been made of philosophy since Socrates, who was accused
of corrupting the young.
And, Derrida's claim that the west was logocentric doesn't mean that we
should all boogie down and stop using them stupid words. It means that
at the center is an undecidable shuttling between a phenomenon which
occupies the position of writing and one which occupies the position of
speech.
Note that I actually say something here.
"Say something!" - Pulp Fiction
A demotic understanding of post-modern thought results not in
incoherence of the snorp kanunkle variety, but of the negative variety,
the easily made claim that "butthead, you don't understand what Derrida
meant by logocentrism".
The genuine philosopher, as opposed to the Philosophy Major, has
genuine concerns (nor would Derrida identify the signifier "genuine" as
hopelessly logocentric: home had no problem with speech: destruction of
the ability to speak is a ruling class project.)
"Will you let me speak, president of assasins?" - Robespierre
There is a genuine retrograde motion in Western culture in which speech
of the living word is used, conveniently, to destroy record keeping and
memory. For example, Henry Kissinger liked Xerox machines. He liked
them because they enabled his secretary to change the record.
I am not making this up.
Michael
It is another paradox that this sort of paradox leads people to
conclude that philosophy is BS, while mathematics generates paradox
all the time, regarded by mathematicians as an incentive to do their
(nondialectical) work of reconciliation.
********************
Name one concept in mathematics that is a paradox.
Michael
Michael
AngloAmerican rage to win arguments is Fascism.
***************
I agree, but I wonder why you limited it only to AngloAmericans.
Isn't Russian/French/Mongolian/Iranian/Chilean/German rage
to win arguments also Fascism? Or is their rage justified and
pure because they are the "others?"
I respect the small acts that I think postmodernism capable of,
but I find the extrapolation of it into politics most often turns into
a melee of equivocation and straw man attacks, rife with logical
farce that wouldn't stand up to a first year philosophy student.
Michael
James Whitehead
I said he maintained a position - nothing about showing in his work where
this place is - that would be down to whoever is reading this - and so
fairly simple task - e.g. "Glas is located outside of philosophy"
He 'maintained' as in has said so... e.g.
"The utterances i proliferate around this problem are put forward from a
position other than that of philosophy...... it is not the position of
philosophy"
His words - he then above at least could be said to be maintaing a position
outside philosophy...
James Whitehead
"Michael" <zsp...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:1140358235.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
"The Infinite"
>
James Whitehead
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140346606.8...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Kater Moggin
> I said he maintained a position - nothing about showing in his work where
> this place is -
My point exactly. You said Derrida "maintained a position
outside of philosophy," but you failed to show anywhere in
particular he made the claim that you assigned him -- i.e., you
didn't give any referenced quotes.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
I gave quotes - 4 or 5 by now and quite explicit- i didnt reference them as
this is a use group and not some academic institution which needs references
to check up - if you are not aware of where these occur then that is
something *you* should address- if you want me to point you to where you can
find these my fees as a tutor are fairly reasonable. I accept paypal and i
can give you a diploma! Failing that go read some Derrida.....
Kater Moggin
> I gave quotes -
You put words inside quotation marks, but you neglected to
give any references, so you failed to show where Derrida
"maintained a position outside of philosophy," despite what you
claimed.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
OK then please get on to SMW over her quote of Derrida - no references there
either -
but for free p.140 of ear of the other ....
Kater Moggin
> OK
No, not o.k. You failed to show where Derrida "maintained
a position outside of philosophy" as you claimed, then you
bullshitted about it for a half-dozen posts. The same as usual
from you.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> p.140 of ear of the other ....
Oh, look -- a cite without a quote to go with those quotes
minus citations. I wonder why James is so reluctant to
provide both at the same time. Is he afraid someone that would
check on his accuracy? Understandable, considering his
history of giving distorted quotations. So let's see what's on
_Ear of the Other_ 140.
Sure enough, James has been getting up to tricks. Derrida
talks about "a position other than that of philosophy" only
after refusing to deny that he's a philosopher: a detail James
found it convenient to remove, quoting only half Derrida's
remark. "I wouldn't say that I am not a philosopher" magically
vanished from Jame's version.
So at best James is offering a half-truth -- or maybe even
less, since his supposedly explicit quote doesn't refer to a
position outside philosophy, as he claimed, but merely and very
ambiguously to one _other_ than philosophy, which is hardly
the same thing. Easy now to see why he didn't want to give any
cites.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
sufficient to show he maintained a position outside philosophy- which he
states so twice here and other times elsewhere- but using similar magic you
leave that out, and you leave out "I was not at all passing myself off as a
philosopher.." further whilst demanding cites - you havent provided them
for your own quotes...
but it remains now ive done the work for you youve found it in the ear of
the other a clear statement of a non philosophical position - as also is
given in the un cited quote of Kearney -you use without citation over and
over - incorrectly in your terms as that particular reply begins "It is
true... and it goes on to discuss his attempts to find a non-site and latter
actually gives an example of his doing just this p.171-2 "It is neither
philosophy nor poetry... and give rise to something else, some *other*
site."
"Kater Moggin" <kimm...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:kimmerian-99636...@news.verizon.net...
Kater Moggin
> Nothing vanished -
You're lying again, James. Derrida's refusal to deny he's
a philosopher went totally missing from your distorted
quotation, explaining why you were so reluctant to offer a cite.
More specifically, you quoted him referring to "a position
other than philosophy," falsely claimed you had shown he
explicitly put himself outside it, and left off the
beginning of his sentence, "I wouldn't say that I am not at all
a philosopher," which entirely vanished from your highly
misleading quotation, meaning you supplied a half-truth or less.
> the other a clear statement of a non philosophical position -
A clear retreat from your claim Derrida explicitly located
himself outside of philosophy, and the closest that you
typically come to acknowledging even your most obvious mistakes.
> and it goes on to discuss his attempts to find a non-site
Evidence against you, since you claimed Derrida
"maintained a position outside of philosophy," while as you now
admit, he talks about "attempts to find a non-site" --
something very distinct from the _position_ you assigned to him.
> and latter
> actually gives an example of his doing just this p.171-2 "It is neither
> philosophy nor poetry... and give rise to something else, some *other*
> site."
"...neither philosophic nor poetic. It circulates between
these two genres..." _Ear of the Other_ 140. So being
"neither philosophy nor poetry" _doesn't_ require being outside
them. It's a highly ambiguous condition in Derrida's
description -- an ambiguity that you resolve by simply ignoring
half the story.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
> Evidence against you, since you claimed Derrida
> "maintained a position outside of philosophy," while as you now
> admit, he talks about "attempts to find a non-site" --
> something very distinct from the _position_ you assigned to him.
>
No - "It is neither philosophy nor poetry... something else, some other
site." The position is not one i assigned it is his - stated over and over -
i would think "It is neither philosophy nor poetry... something else, some
other site." - is fairly categorical - but if you wish to think otherwise
its fine... if you fail to see what "It is neither philosophy nor poetry...
something else, some other site." implies then we have little hope in
discussing how deconstruction also it appears according to Derrida takes
place outside the orbit of philosophy and metaphysics - in a site or
non-site. Not an attempt - but an actual accomplishment - for
deconstruction takes place - And this is one of the many remarkable features
of his work that you amongst others fail to appreciate. That this position
is not "sceptical" - his description... etc.- i really must now finish at
let you have your last word...
from Of Grammatology...
"my choice is in fact *exorbitant*.... i wished to reach the point of a
certain exteriority in relation to the totality of the age of logcentrism.
Starting from this point of exteriority, a certain deconstruction of that
totality ... might be broached..."
I think this is where he first introduces the idea and practice of
deconstruction "When I chose the word, or when it imposed itself on me - I
think it was in *Of Grammatology* - ..."
I suppose you admitting to my " half truth" is some very rare and wonderful
event and i should be grateful for managing you make to see - half the
truth...
Kater Moggin
> I suppose you admitting to my " half truth" is
The admission is entirely yours. A half-truth is the kind
of lie that mixes truth with falsehood or leaves out key
details: precisely what you've done with your distorted quotes.
For example, you removed "I am not sure..." from Derrida's
remark about the location of his work, thus turning his
expression of doubt concerning its philosophical propriety into
the very opposite, namely a confident-sounding assertion
about what belongs to philosophy. Highly deceitful editing job.
Another example: you quoted him talking about "a position
other than philosophy," but you chose to leave out the
beginning of his sentence, "I wouldn't say that I am not at all
a philosopher," which vanished from your very misleading
version. Then you lied about what you'd done, claiming nothing
had disappeared.
> No -
Oh, yes -- definitely. You argued against yourself -- and
then erased your own words -- by referring to Derrida's
"attempts to find a non-site," contrary to your claim he staked
a _position_ outside philosophy.
> "It is neither philosophy nor poetry... something else, some other
> site." The position is not one i assigned
Exactly. You insisted that Derrida "maintained a position
outside of philosophy" and claimed to have shown that he
explicitly did so -- but the position he takes here _isn't_ the
one that you assigned him, since he's referring to a site
other rather than outside of philosophy. Hardly the same thing.
What's more, you've repeatedly ignored Derrida's ambiguity.
"...neither philosophic nor poetic. It circulates between
these two genres..." (_Ear of the Other_ 140). Being
"neither philosophy nor poetry" _doesn't_ require being outside
them. Derrida refers to circulation in between poetry and
philosophy, flowing back and forth -- another item gone missing
from your story.
> something else, some other site." implies
Well, so much for your claim Derrida explicitly positioned
himself outside philosophy -- now you've backed down to an
implication, and it concerns only "some other site" rather than
an exterior one.
-- Moggin
Michael
No, not o.k. You failed to show where Derrida "maintained
a position outside of philosophy" as you claimed, then you
bullshitted about it for a half-dozen posts. The same as usual
from you.
************
Bottom line is that Moggin caught you with your panties down,
James. It's OK! I screw up, you screw up, I think Kater might
even screw up. It would be best for you just to fess up and get
on with life.
Michael
spino...@yahoo.com
Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
paradox.
Mathematics is trivial bullshit to many people. It transforms coffee
cups to donuts and as a pure, Hilbertian formalism can "prove" 1+1=10
to the deluded (who haven't guessed, of course, that I just used the
binary number system).
The REAL problem is the exagerrated respect for mathematics which in
Adorno's Freudian terms is the Id trying to get gratification from the
ego's products.
In this context, a passionate and informed discussion about issues that
matter becomes incomprehensible while chess, noughts and crosses,
popular mathematics and logic puzzles are invested with passion.
>
> Michael
James Whitehead
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140499233.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Michael wrote:
> > Spinoza wrote:
> >
> > It is another paradox that this sort of paradox leads people to
> > conclude that philosophy is BS, while mathematics generates paradox
> > all the time, regarded by mathematicians as an incentive to do their
> > (nondialectical) work of reconciliation.
> >
> > ********************
> > Name one concept in mathematics that is a paradox.
>
also - what about zero?
James Whitehead
Maybe its me but let me at least try to explain it to you-
I said Derrida maintained a position outside philosophy - and I did *not*
offer the Kearney quote of mine from two years ago as proof.
I did offer a quote from The Ear of the other and from Of Grammatology then
latter a quote from Kearney- all of which show an explicit idea from
Derrida of (some) of his work being sited *other* than in philosophy...
(Glas - aint philosophy or is spurs IMO) and this is more than a simple
point (i argue) but crucial to understanding (and you should cross that word
out) his work - re deconstruction. When he first? positions himself outside
"exorbitant" in Of G. he locates the site of deconstruction. Thats why its
not a method etc- thats why its very problematic, philosophy cant account
for it - nothing can - i.e. there is nothing outside (or in) that can fully
account for any text which we discuss elsewhere. (He says Deconstruction is
always taking place...) Finally note the feeling we have just contradicted
ourselves- we seem to have reached an explanation - or have represented what
"Deconstruction" is - but we cant - its always open - (not closed) to more
meaning - not closed and sceptical - not uncertain. Maybe i'm not being
clear here - but its a case of getting on with my life then this thinking is
very much part of it. I'm not interested in whether moggin thinks i'm a liar
or not - as Derrida states elsewhere you can never know - so such arguments
are pointless, the use of them and him is that it provokes thought. And
didnt some old guy say an unquestioned life was no life at all?
Kater Moggin
> I said Derrida maintained a position outside philosophy - and I did *not*
> offer the Kearney quote of mine from two years ago as proof.
You chopped off the beginning of the quote you lifted from
Kearney -- the part where Derrida says "I am not sure..." --
thus changing his expression of skepticism about the
philosophical propriety of his work into a seemingly firm claim
about what's proper to philosophy.
> I did offer a quote from The Ear of the other
You gave a deceitfully edited fragment, carefully refusing
to say where it came from. Once again you chopped off the
start of Derrida's remark, editing out his refusal to deny he's
a philosopher, quoting only his reference to "a position
other than that of philosophy." Then you lied about it, saying
nothing had disappeared.
> and from Of Grammatology then
> latter a quote from Kearney- all of which show an explicit
> idea from Derrida of (some) of his work being sited *other* than in
> philosophy...
Not your claim. You said Derrida took a position "outside
of philosophy" and you pretended to have shown that he
explicitly did so; referring to something other than philosophy
is far from the same thing.
What's more, you simply ignored the ambiguity in Derrida's
remarks, quoting "neither philosophy nor poetry" while
entirely neglecting to mention "it circulates between these two
genres," according to him.
-- Moggin
Michael
Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
paradox.
Mathematics is trivial bullshit to many people. It transforms coffee
cups to donuts and as a pure, Hilbertian formalism can "prove" 1+1=10
to the deluded (who haven't guessed, of course, that I just used the
binary number system).
***************
Saying something IS isn't much of an argument. It's called begging
the question. And complex numbers are hardly a paradox, even
if you call them imaginary.
Saying mathematics is "trivial bullshit" to many people is also not
much of an argument. Many Germans thought Jews were worthless
or less during the first part of last century. It doesn't make it
true. You are appealing to a populist argument. False logic.
Michael
Michael
also - what about zero?
*********************
What about it? You're going to have to do better than that. If you
are declaring zero a paradox, you've got some explaining to do.
Michael
James Whitehead
I wasnt asking a question - but before zero you need to address the infinite
which has many paradoxes involved-
my favourite one at the moment being Hilberts Hotel - there are loads of
others -
Like the paradox of infinite sets - sets are bounded - infinity isnt but you
can have infinite sets and prove some are larger than others.
Now Zero - is it a number - no or yes
3 2 1 0 -1 -2
It appears here as a number as its properties are that of being 1 greater
than -1 and 1 less than 1
but its not possible to count with it
0+0+0+0 = 0
But i can count up to it and above it...
And if you are first in line then you are at the beginning - there is no
zero position, so numbers start at 1 then zero must be negative...
and as i write this i see an *even* number of grazing diplodoci - the
number being 0.
"The word "number" is a general term which refers to a member of a given
(possibly ordered) set"
An empty set has zero in it? All sets must therefore have zero in them - as
its possible remove its members till we are left with zero...hence empty
so if i remove all the numbers from the set of odd numbers i'm left with
zero - still in the set - but zero is even....*
* If this is true and original can i call it the "Whitehead Paradox"?
Michael
An empty set has zero in it? All sets must therefore have zero in them
- as
its possible remove its members till we are left with zero...hence
empty
so if i remove all the numbers from the set of odd numbers i'm left
with
zero - still in the set - but zero is even....*
***************
You're joking, of course. A set with zero in it is not an empty set.
A set with zero elements in it is an empty set. Do you not make the
distinction?
And what is the paradox about adding zero to zero? The fact that it
behaves differently in addition than other numbers? Are you calling
that a paradox? I'd call it the additive identity property.
Michael
James Whitehead
> James wrote:
>
> An empty set has zero in it? All sets must therefore have zero in them
> - as
> its possible remove its members till we are left with zero...hence
> empty
> so if i remove all the numbers from the set of odd numbers i'm left
> with
> zero - still in the set - but zero is even....*
>
> ***************
> You're joking, of course. A set with zero in it is not an empty set.
> A set with zero elements in it is an empty set. Do you not make the
> distinction?
Can you not see the paradox - we have a set with something in it-
if that is "zero elements" its empty - but if its empty it cant have
anything in it- but it has. You say so yourself...
"A set with zero elements in it is an empty set."
>
> And what is the paradox about adding zero to zero? The fact that it
> behaves differently in addition than other numbers? Are you calling
> that a paradox? I'd call it the additive identity property.
>
> Michael
>
I assume from the lack - the missing text above that infinity has been
accepted as a paradox - so as you only wanted someone to name one i win my
prize. Of course you'll give me nothing - but how can you do that?
Nothing is a paradox.
SleepyHeed
James Whitehead wrote:
> "Michael" <zsp...@gte.net> wrote in message
> news:1140539448.6...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > James wrote:
> >
> > An empty set has zero in it? All sets must therefore have zero in them
> > - as
> > its possible remove its members till we are left with zero...hence
> > empty
> > so if i remove all the numbers from the set of odd numbers i'm left
> > with
> > zero - still in the set - but zero is even....*
> >
> > ***************
> > You're joking, of course. A set with zero in it is not an empty set.
> > A set with zero elements in it is an empty set. Do you not make the
> > distinction?
>
> Can you not see the paradox - we have a set with something in it-
> if that is "zero elements" its empty - but if its empty it cant have
> anything in it- but it has. You say so yourself...
> "A set with zero elements in it is an empty set."
Er, the paradox merely arises from calling "zero elements" "something",
viz:
An empty set is a set with something in it, namely zero elements.
That's just the same as saying "This set doesn't contain anything".
Michael
Can you not see the paradox - we have a set with something in it-
if that is "zero elements" its empty - but if its empty it cant have
anything in it- but it has. You say so yourself...
"A set with zero elements in it is an empty set."
**********************
I understand now. You're joking.
Michael
James Whitehead
"SleepyHeed" <simonh...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1140541371.7...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Er, the paradox merely arises from calling "zero elements" "something",
> viz:
>
> An empty set is a set with something in it, namely zero elements.
>
if there is something in it - it cant be empty...
> That's just the same as saying "This set doesn't contain anything".
>
If "A set is a group or collection of objects or numbers" then what is
above isnt a set.
A set that doesnt contain anything can't have zero elements in it...
we cant count nothing
Is zero the same as nothing? Maybe not -
but if then zero elements = nothing
we still have a paradox as nothing is paradoxical.
If we can count nothing and decide its zero then we can say that nothing is
even, but that again seems odd as we have given nothing a property - the
cardinality of zero and of being even. If we cant count nothing then we cant
count an empty sets contents and check its empty...
Or maybe we can count nothing as 1, but i think this makes more problems.
Michael
An empty set is a set with something in it, namely zero elements.
*************
So nothing is something? That's the best you can do? Sophist
word games were old-school back in Aristotle's day.
Michael
James Whitehead
The idea of nothing and zero is more than a word game - it implies all kind
of things - its resistance in the west was due to theological consequences-
in the east its contemplation is seen as deeply important. Any paradox can
be dismissed as you have done- or simply ignored- as you have done.
Michael
The idea of nothing and zero is more than a word game - it implies all
kind of things - its resistance in the west was due to theological
consequences- in the east its contemplation is seen as deeply
important. Any paradox can be dismissed as you have done- or
simply ignored- as you have done.
**********************
We were talking about paradox in mathematics. And yes, I pretty
much do choose to ignore Sophist word games that can demonstrate
that black is white and up is down. Really, that sort of thing
has given philosophy a black eye for over 2000 years.
Near as I can tell, your knowledge of mathematics is minimal.
Michael
Michael
concepts like infinity and zero can invoke paradoxes. But I don't
think that mathematics generates those paradoxes. They come
from other areas, such as the ones you mention.
Michael
anarc...@yahoo.com
All mathematics is now entirely self-consistent?
SleepyHeed
> So we cant have "zero elements"?
Sure we can have zero elements in the same way that there can be no
apples on a tree. But that doesn't mean the tree's full of nothingness,
it just means there aren't any apples there. The tree is empty.
>> An empty set is a set with something in it, namely zero elements.
> if there is something in it - it cant be empty ...
Hmm - that's the kind of logic I'd expect from a mathematician! There's
something in this set: Nothing! The next problem you'll have will be
something like 'Nothing' is a kind of 'Something'. Whereas 'Nothing' is
simply the absence of something.
>> That's just the same as saying "This set doesn't contain anything".
> If "A set is a group or collection of objects or numbers" then what is above isnt a set.
Then empty sets aren't sets and the paradox goes away. But of course
you need to be able to talk about empty sets in set theory because you
need to be able to say things like "This set doesn't have anything in
it", and the way you have to do that numerically is to say "This set
has zero elements in it". And then (of course) you want to say "This
set has something in it - namely zero elements". But that's just a case
of being misled by a particular kind of expression, just like the
apple-tree example I gave above ...
This tree doesn't have any fruit on it.
This tree has zero fruit.
This tree has some fruit on it - namely zero fruit.
The last of the three expressions is just a convoluted way of saying
the same thing as the first which arises through the peculiar way
set-theory phrases things.
> A set that doesnt contain anything can't have zero elements in it ...
Er, that's the same thing. An apple-bucket that has zero apples in it
doesn't contain any apples - it (to put the same thing a different way)
contains zero apples.
>> we can't count nothing
> Is zero the same as nothing? Maybe not
Well 'nothing' isn't a mathematical concept as far as I know. All you
have in maths are numbers; even the absence of numbers has to be
represented using numbers (hence the importance of 'zero' in
mathematics). But that's just a peculiarity of mathematical
descriptions and doesn't have any bearing on Enlgish in general, where
'Nothing' is quite often the same as having zero things.
> > but if then zero elements = nothing we still have a paradox as nothing is paradoxical.
Nothing isn't a paradoxical concept; paradoxes only arise from looking
at things in an unusual way.
> If we can count nothing and decide its zero then we can say that nothing is
even, but that again seems odd as we have given nothing a property -
the
cardinality of zero and of being even. If we cant count nothing then we
cant
count an empty sets contents and check its empty...
> Or maybe we can count nothing as 1, but i think this makes more problems.
Firstly - you can't count the absence of something - try it and see:
Count how many chickens aren't on your desk!
Secondly - 'Nothing' is neither odd nor even - it's the absence of
something, and the absence of something is neither odd nor even. Which
is to say - it's not a mathematical concept. Trying to talk about it in
maths is as pointless as trying to translate a chair into French.
1Z
spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
> paradox.
Complex numbers have nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
Michael
All mathematics is now entirely self-consistent?
************
I'm aware of issues like Betrand Russell's paradox (the
equivalent of Groucho saying he wouldn't join a club that would
have him as a member), but I never made it to axiomatic set
theory. All the math I studied had a wonderful, lyrical thread
that wove it together into a satisfying aesthetic discipline.
Michael
spino...@yahoo.com
News fa-lash.
(1) This was an enumeration of two paradoxes that in mathematics
created further work. If in mathematics paradox is welcomed, as I have
shown, why in the humanities is it taken as license for assuming that
the humanities are bullshit?
(2) Everything is linked to everything else: proof: a and b are
unrelated, therefore it is true that unrelated(a,b), therefore there is
a relation, the relation of not being related, between a and b, which
is a paradox, and contradicts the assumption: therefore, if (big if
given Intuitionism's questioning of the excluded middle) we may use
*reductio*, the negation of the assumption is proven, so everything,
like wow, is related to everything else, man. Groovy.
(3) Despite the fact that as we have shown (and can show constructively
without reductio: the proof is left to the trolls) that "everything
[speakable, talkable-aboutable, representable using language, "the
great Mirror"] is related to everything else", like stoned man, the
deliberate moronization of the Expert is his illusion that there are
indeed unrelated islands of thought (gedanken) which are not related,
even by a finite chain of steps, such as Trainspotting and Paula Abdul.
[In this particular example, there is a provable relation, in fact
provable in intuitionistic logic: hint: stagger to the DVD store.]
spino...@yahoo.com
We need to deconstruct this Pop meme: that Science 'n Math "r" Kewl.
Increasingly, Pop representations of Science 'n Math implicitly, or
explicitly, contrast its reified flash with mere reading, mere
listening, mere receptiviity, and mere dialogue...in a world where part
of the problem is an absence of reading, the burning of libraries from
Sarajevo to Baghdad, bodies unreceptive, bodies turned to stone as
heavy as the Moon, and screeching on this goddamn Internet.
>From Yvonne Sherratt, Adorno's Positive Dialectic (Cambridge 2002):
"Looking at the regression of the features of the *concept* and those
of the *system* we have the following. For Adorno, the *determinacy* of
the concept regresses to *rigidity*. The determinacy of the system, in
both its features, *organization* and *comprehensiveness*, regresses to
domination. Whilst the former, rigidity entails the lack of an ability
of the concept, the latter, *domination*, is even more regressive in
that it encompasses, not only a lack of responsiveness to the Object,
but an actual imposition of the system's own voice upon the Object
["Hamas must renounce violence" - Henry A. Kissinger...as a
precondition for speaking to bloodstained thugs like Kissinger?]. In
that way, the system actually comes to 'ignore' and supplant the
Object. That is, it regresses to encompass the further feature of
*hypostasis*.
"The hypostasis of the (representative) conceptual system consists of
three aspects. First it ignores the Object. 'The system, the form of
presenting a totality to which nothing remains extraneous absolutises
the thought against each of its contents and evaporates the content
thought' (Adorno, 1973: 23 [Negative Dialectics 35]). Second, it
becomes a world unto itself governed by its own intention that would
transcend the system' (Adorno and Horkheimer: 18 [Dialectic of
Enlightenment 34]). This, he writes, is 'the game which mathematicians
have for long proudly asserted is their concern' (Adorno and Horkheimer
1979: 18 (Dialectical of Enlightenment 34])."
Consider that mathematics may seem to be "wonderful" only if, as Ms.
Sherratt shows, we are increasingly disempowered in real political,
economic and sexual life, and the Triumph of the Nerd in pop culture
(movies like Beautiful Mind and Proof) may represent that stage of
disempowerment, where ms Sherratt's Freudian reading of Adorno shows,
the Id, deprived of satisfaction in the Ego's world because in a world
of rigid concepts, its activity in the sphere of ego is re-presented as
"reinventing the wheel", starts to try to get Mick Jagger's form of
Satisfaction from the junk produced by previous Egos, including "pure"
mathematics.
Now I personally have read Mathematics for the Million. I've "done"
axiomatic set theory (Quine). I liked Proof, and I worked briefly for
the real-life hero of A Beautiful Mind. I've published Build Your Own
.Net Language and Compiler (Apress 2004). Therefore I am personally
quite familiarity with what seems like beauty, St. Elmo's fire.
At the same time, I have to confess to you that this reified "beauty"
is inversely proportional to the quantum of political and sexual power
I feel I have, a quantum that is in steady decline (when I was a kid,
my Mom's role models for me were Albert Schweitzer and Ghandi-ji,
neither of whom would be able to do much more than open a chip shop
today, given the loud domination of politics, and medicine for that
matter, by unprincipled fat thugs like Ariel Sharon and islamic
*Mullahs*).
Natan Scharansky became in the former Soviet Union a computer
programmer because despite the fact that his first love was politics
and law, he realized he could get no traction in a society which had
withheld political and sexual power from its members systematically
under Stalin.
Mathematics as such has nothing I recognize as beauty. My kid, who got
As in it, prefers art and music and said "I don't like it, but I am
good at it and it makes sense". I submit to you that ANY other attitude
towards mathematics is INSANE.
As soon as Bertie Russell got laid, he abandoned mathematics, which was
fortunate because he sucked as a mathematician according to
professional mathematicians.
In the Pop meme, we are encouraged to "love" artifices because the
society has sealed off any other forms of noncommodified gratification.
>
> Michael
Michael
(2) Everything is linked to everything else: proof: a and b are
unrelated, therefore it is true that unrelated(a,b), therefore there is
a relation, the relation of not being related, between a and b, which
is a paradox, and contradicts the assumption: therefore, if (big if
given Intuitionism's questioning of the excluded middle) we may use
*reductio*, the negation of the assumption is proven, so everything,
like wow, is related to everything else, man.
*************************
I thought we were talking about mathematics. Does the word
"unrelated" fit in to mathematics somewhere? Your paradox is with
the definition of "related." Like James, you're simply playing
word games with shabby Sophist logic. Would you like for me to
demonstrate that up is down?
Michael
1Z
spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> 1Z wrote:
> > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >
> > > Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
> > > paradox.
> >
> > Complex numbers have nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
>
> News fa-lash.
>
> (1) This was an enumeration of two paradoxes that in mathematics
> created further work.
My apologies for reading the penultimate of your second sentence as the
definite rather than indefinite article.
However there is still a problem: if you can resolve a problem, it is
not strictly speaking a paradox. The square root of minus 1 is not
standardly cited as a paradox for precisely that reason. GIT does
not have resolution and therefore is a genuine paradox.
> If in mathematics paradox is welcomed, as I have
> shown, why in the humanities is it taken as license for assuming that
> the humanities are bullshit?
The interest in mathematical paradox lies in the fact that it is
arrived
at despite the best efforts of mathematicians to avoid it. OTOH anyone
can concoct
a fake paradox by simply making no effort to
resolve a problem. The difference is often evident to laypeople.
> (2) Everything is linked to everything else: proof: a and b are
> unrelated, therefore it is true that unrelated(a,b), therefore there is
> a relation, the relation of not being related, between a and b, which
> is a paradox,
That's sophistry.
spino...@yahoo.com
1Z wrote:
> spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > 1Z wrote:
> > > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
> > > > paradox.
> > >
> > > Complex numbers have nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
> >
> > News fa-lash.
> >
> > (1) This was an enumeration of two paradoxes that in mathematics
> > created further work.
>
> My apologies for reading the penultimate of your second sentence as the
> definite rather than indefinite article.
>
> However there is still a problem: if you can resolve a problem, it is
> not strictly speaking a paradox. The square root of minus 1 is not
> standardly cited as a paradox for precisely that reason. GIT does
> not have resolution and therefore is a genuine paradox.
Until the development of the theory of complex numbers in the early
19th century, the square root of -1 was indeed an anomaly and a
paradox. Likewise, there is no reason why Godel should not be
superseded: perhaps there is a notion of effective computability "out
there" which is NOT subject to the self-referential paradoxes
discovered by Godel and by Turing, of which the effective computation
we know is a special case.
<irresponsibleSpeculations>Perhaps if dialectical materialist arguments
are allowed in addition to logical arguments, the resulting logic is
both consistent and complete.</irresponsibleSpeculation>.
>
> > If in mathematics paradox is welcomed, as I have
> > shown, why in the humanities is it taken as license for assuming that
> > the humanities are bullshit?
>
> The interest in mathematical paradox lies in the fact that it is
> arrived
> at despite the best efforts of mathematicians to avoid it. OTOH anyone
> can concoct
> a fake paradox by simply making no effort to
> resolve a problem. The difference is often evident to laypeople.
Mathematical paradox is at best a subclass of paradox-in-general,
contradiction-in-general, and outside mathematics, contradiction can be
dialectical.
kevirwin
<<<"The genuine philosopher, as opposed to the Philosophy Major, has
genuine concerns">>>
Gee, that's pretty elitist. What actually differentiates a genuine
philosopher and his "genuine concerns" with the reasonably
intelligent individual with philosophical issues derived from his own
thoughts? Do you actually ascribe some notion that "philosophers"
are some kind of separate enlightened species of human with some
esoteric brainpower, whose thoughts transcend that of mere mortals,
regardless of how educated, erudite, or genetically endowed with
intelligence those mere mortals might be?
Was Nietzsche the first anti-Semitic?
It's actually been hard to find a thread devoted to philosophy in
this forum {alt.philosophy, go figure}, which I lamented in another
thread, so I'm not trying to alienate anyone in this thread. I've
just seen too many instances where the subject is actually advertised
as "too deep" for the "common man" to grasp, as if it took some
higher capacity for understanding that is lacking in all but the
"initiated".
Jean-Paul Sartre: {speaking of existentialism}...."least scandalous,
the most austere of doctrines. IT IS INTENDED STRICTLY FOR SPECIALISTS
AND PHILOSOPHERS."
Wow, poor me, working on "existence precedes essence", tryin' to
get a clue!! If only I was a philosopher, then revelations would rain
down like snowflakes in a blizzard!!!
But, I sure am interested in a lot of what I read; like Anselm's
folly (oops, I meant Anselm's Ontological Argument). This thread is
too long to read through (I don't know how people keep up with the
volume, doesn't anyone work?) and I don't want to repeat, so I'll
take note of the names posting to help me better locate topics relating
to the name of the forum. I tend to be facetious, sometimes sarcastic,
rarely sardonic, but the interest is sincere (or maybe even
"genuine").
K e v
James Whitehead
2 x 0 = 4 x 0
cancel out
2 = 4
In anticipation of the reply that zero is a special type of number -
yes - its capable of producing a paradox.......
James Whitehead
Thanks for such generosity of spirit - a rare thing here... but if
mathematics is self referential then there isn't other areas as much as
enter and alter.... i think its fairly well established now that any fair
complex logical system will have paradoxes - apriori...
anarc...@yahoo.com
> 2 x 0 = 4 x 0
>
> cancel out
>
> 2 = 4
>
> In anticipation of the reply that zero is a special type of number -
> yes - its capable of producing a paradox.......
If by paradox you mean an (informally) unusual or unexpected
result. You will have to do some logic to show that the equations
above violate some mathematical law. It might be a lot of work;
large books have been written about simple arithmetic.
James Whitehead
<anarc...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140798772.0...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
2 is not = to 4 is true
2x0 = 4x 0 is true
Apply *rule* that lets you cancel out
gives
2=4 as true - as 2=4 is the same as 2x0 = 4x0
so
2=4 is not true
2=4 is true
a paradox
anarc...@yahoo.com
> > > 2 x 0 = 4 x 0
> > >
> > > cancel out
> > >
> > > 2 = 4
> > >
> > > In anticipation of the reply that zero is a special type of number -
> > > yes - its capable of producing a paradox.......
<anarc...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > If by paradox you mean an (informally) unusual or unexpected
> > result. You will have to do some logic to show that the equations
> > above violate some mathematical law. It might be a lot of work;
> > large books have been written about simple arithmetic.
James Whitehead wrote:
> 2 is not = to 4 is true
> 2x0 = 4x 0 is true
>
> Apply *rule* that lets you cancel out
>
> gives
>
> 2=4 as true - as 2=4 is the same as 2x0 = 4x0
>
> so
>
> 2=4 is not true
> 2=4 is true
>
> a paradox
There is no rule of "cancelling out." You may be
thinking of applying the same operation to both sides
of an equation in algebra to simplify it:
x + 2 = 5
(x + 2) - 2 = 5 - 2 (2 subtracted from both sides)
x + 2 - 2 = 5 - 2
x = 3
I don't think this rule is going to get you anywhere
with 2 x 0 and 4 x 0.
Michael
2 x 0 = 4 x 0
cancel out
2 = 4
In anticipation of the reply that zero is a special type of number -
yes - its capable of producing a paradox.......
****************
Your understanding of math is not very good, James. Division
by 0 is an invalid operation. My daughter learned that 4 years
ago before she started high school.
Michael
James Whitehead
The next step i hope is that your daughter asks WHY?
(Or has George W banned the practice of asking for reasons in the USA?- and
you've all meekly gone along.)
Michael
The next step i hope is that your daughter asks WHY?
***************
That isn't the next step. The next step is for you to open up a
math book and find out for yourself. Attempting to pawn off
ignorance as evidence of a paradox is pretty lame, James.
Michael
anarc...@yahoo.com
> The next step i hope is that your daughter asks WHY?
Michael wrote:
> That isn't the next step. The next step is for you to open up a
> math book and find out for yourself. Attempting to pawn off
> ignorance as evidence of a paradox is pretty lame, James.
I'd call division by zero a discontinuity rather than a paradox.
It is a paradox only if we have some logic or mathematical
procedure that tells us that division by zero should be possible
and another that proves it isn't.
Discontinuities have often led to very interesting developments.
For instance, Pythagoras thought that number ruled in heaven
but then was unable to find a number (or a construction) that
would give the square root of two. Investigation of this class
of objects led to the "real" numbers. Likewise, proposing that
there had to be _something_ which, squared, would give us -1,
led to the complex numbers. Perhaps one might look upon
the development of transfinite mathematics and the halting
problem as related to division by zero, in the sense that
division (repeated subtraction) of zero is an algorithm which
fails to terminate.
I am not aware of any paradoxes in arithmetic. I thought
there were some in set theory but I am not up on the subject.
Maybe someone will settle it by quoting Nietzsche.
Mounard le Fougueux
using what the positivists would call bad language, intentional or not.
And thus the "solution" is to extricate oneself away from natural
lanuages (which are terrible at expressing ideas, but great and
insulting and commanding action) towards BETTER languages, such as
various forms of math (set theory, number theory, algebra, etc)
For example, by saying "'an empty set has zero elements in it'- and is
thus a paradox", he is of course confusing
{} with {0}
or likewise
{} with { {} } or { {}, {} }, etc.
The "cardinality of a set" is not to be confused with that set whose
cardinality is of interest. It is a formal relationship (function (i.e.
a one-to-one and on-to mapping)) between a set of interest and a
cardinal number (i.e. an element of the set {0,1,2,3,... N, N+1, ...}.
Thus if the Cardinalty function is expressed as C[ ],
then
0 = C[ {} ]
1 = C[ { {} } ]
2 = C[ { {}, {} } ]
etc.
Notics how well the function 'C' is defined. Conditions outside the
scope of its definition is UNDEFINED, something that seems to be lacking
in natural language as well as philosophy. When was the last time you
ever heard a philosopher say that a term or idea was undefined or needed
further defintion?
At this point JW will probably raise the question: "well isn't therefore
C[] a paradox?"
C[] is the name of a function that corresponds to a mapping whose input
if a set and whose output is a cardinal number. Any other use of the
symbols is undefined. Though can be defined in otehr contexts.
The point here is that the positivists are (still) right; sloppy
language use, or using terms outside precise definitions results in
apparent paradoxes.
Thus the positivists claim that philosophy is dead being replaced by
Analysis of language use - mathematics being the preferred language.
1Z
spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> 1Z wrote:
> > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > 1Z wrote:
> > > > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
> > > > > paradox.
> > > >
> > > > Complex numbers have nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
> > >
> > > News fa-lash.
> > >
> > > (1) This was an enumeration of two paradoxes that in mathematics
> > > created further work.
> >
> > My apologies for reading the penultimate of your second sentence as the
> > definite rather than indefinite article.
> >
> > However there is still a problem: if you can resolve a problem, it is
> > not strictly speaking a paradox. The square root of minus 1 is not
> > standardly cited as a paradox for precisely that reason. GIT does
> > not have resolution and therefore is a genuine paradox.
>
> Until the development of the theory of complex numbers in the early
> 19th century, the square root of -1 was indeed an anomaly and a
> paradox.
The square root of minus one is not a statement that impies its own
negation
and is therefore not strictly speaking a a paradox.
> Likewise, there is no reason why Godel should not be
> superseded: perhaps there is a notion of effective computability "out
> there" which is NOT subject to the self-referential paradoxes
> discovered by Godel and by Turing, of which the effective computation
> we know is a special case.
>
> <irresponsibleSpeculations>Perhaps if dialectical materialist arguments
> are allowed in addition to logical arguments, the resulting logic is
> both consistent and complete.</irresponsibleSpeculation>.
and inconsistent and incomplete. ie, if you drop the Principle of
Non-Contradiction
(NB not the same as the Law of the Excluded Middle) "consistency" is no
longer meaningful.
> >
> > > If in mathematics paradox is welcomed, as I have
> > > shown, why in the humanities is it taken as license for assuming that
> > > the humanities are bullshit?
> >
> > The interest in mathematical paradox lies in the fact that it is
> > arrived
> > at despite the best efforts of mathematicians to avoid it. OTOH anyone
> > can concoct
> > a fake paradox by simply making no effort to
> > resolve a problem. The difference is often evident to laypeople.
>
> Mathematical paradox is at best a subclass of paradox-in-general,
> contradiction-in-general, and outside mathematics, contradiction can be
> dialectical.
If it is arrived at beause of laxity about contradiction , rather than
in spite of strictness
about non-contradiction, it is of very limited interest.
1Z
Division by zero is not defined, so JW is still engaging in sophisry.
spino...@yahoo.com
1Z wrote:
> spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > 1Z wrote:
> > > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > 1Z wrote:
> > > > > spino...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Godel's result IS a paradox. Complex numbers were the solution to a
> > > > > > paradox.
> > > > >
> > > > > Complex numbers have nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem.
> > > >
> > > > News fa-lash.
> > > >
> > > > (1) This was an enumeration of two paradoxes that in mathematics
> > > > created further work.
> > >
> > > My apologies for reading the penultimate of your second sentence as the
> > > definite rather than indefinite article.
> > >
> > > However there is still a problem: if you can resolve a problem, it is
> > > not strictly speaking a paradox. The square root of minus 1 is not
> > > standardly cited as a paradox for precisely that reason. GIT does
> > > not have resolution and therefore is a genuine paradox.
> >
> > Until the development of the theory of complex numbers in the early
> > 19th century, the square root of -1 was indeed an anomaly and a
> > paradox.
>
> The square root of minus one is not a statement that impies its own
> negation
> and is therefore not strictly speaking a a paradox.
No, but until the invention of complex numbers, statements about
sqr(-1) were contradictions.
spino...@yahoo.com
Michael wrote:
> James Whitehead wrote:
>
> 2 x 0 = 4 x 0
>
> cancel out
>
> 2 = 4
Oh for Pete's sake. In
ab = cb
you are NOT allowed to "cancel out" b and thereby infer a=c. This is
because the cancellation operation is the division of both sides by b
and this is not permtted because of the possibility that b is zero!!!!
You may do so in
a/b = c/b
by multiplying both sides by b, but if a/b = c/b, b can't be zero: in
ordinary algebra a/0 is undefined.
To "prove" from ab=cb that a=c, you'd need to (validily) infer ab-cb=0
and then validly infer that b(a-c) = 0.
But then you need to get to a-c=0 to get to a=c. The problem is that
you need to DIVIDE both sides by b and this is not permitted because b
may be zero.
If it is assumed that a/b=c/b, then b is not zero, cannot be zero, will
never be zero.
Whereas if the hyposthesis is that ab=cb, b CAN be zero. To "factor it
out" you must divide by something which may be zero and this you are
not permitted to do in Algebra. The Moslems who first crafted Algebra
knew that it is the logic of mathmetical symbols, but this seems to be
a well-kept secret in American high skewls.
More generally, it has always struck me the social phenomenon of
scientism, coupled in America with loud condemnations of second-hand
understandings of deconstruction, are so often found with math anxiety
and math illiteracy.
The journalists who craft nasty obituaries for Derrida: the teachers
who fail the student for "verbosity" are ALSO the parents, I am
convinced, who cannot help their children wth algebra, because both
their children, and they themselves, learned algebra inappropriately as
a Wittgensteinian form-of-life, a BAD form-of-life, consisting in the
memorization and the following of rules by rote (such as the rule,
here, of cross-multiplication) which resurface in later life as
misapplied.
God forbid we should teach high schoolers a little logic or philosophy,
for then they might question our wisdom like they do in France.
In ab=cb, there is an assertion which leaves open the possibility that
b might be zero. In a/b=c/b no such assertion occurs. IF it is true
that a/b=c/b THEN in ordinary math b<>0.
But this ability to make an inference is in fact discouraged in
America.
spino...@yahoo.com
Is our children learning fuzzy logic?
[The latest Bushism is most amusing. He called people from the United
Kingdom the "Great British".]
I agree that it is NOT ENOUGH to tell the sensitive sort of child that
an operation is "invalid": this the authoritarian teaching of
mathematics, which, in presenting it as a normative science, sets the
infant against it.
The New Math is still taught in fair France, but, I am told, with mixed
results. I have learned that many French children can make algebraic
inferences but cannot calculate answers, trusting instead le
calculator.
I think that we must teach, even-handedly, the different joys of
following the rules, breaking the rules, and making the rules. Just as
in sex the libertine is disgusted by the absence of rules, there is no
joy in mathematics without a little pain.
I do not mean Sadism, I mean instead that after teaching children how
to do sums, have them program a simple computer in its machine language
to do sums. Then, after hearing their piteous groans about the tedium
of machine language, have them write an assembler. Then, hearkening to
their clamor once more, have them develop a Fortran compiler.
Ooops. I agree that this sound less like education than The Temple of
Doom...child abuse. But ANYTHING would be better than systems that
teach praxis without theory or vice versa.
James Whitehead
"1Z" <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140903165....@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
allowed.......................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... click
............... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
because it results in infinity.................. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
click.............
which is paradoxical.......................
James Whitehead
> James wrote about dividing by zero:
>
> The next step i hope is that your daughter asks WHY?
>
> ***************
> That isn't the next step. The next step is for you to open up a
> math book and find out for yourself.
I did - it said - "because the result is infinity...."
> Attempting to pawn off
> ignorance as evidence of a paradox is pretty lame, James.
>
> Michael
>
deceitful moronic one legged pawn brokers aside..... i confess
i'm just too intellectually honest for you guys.
................
.......
...
James Whitehead
<anarc...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > I am not aware of any paradoxes in
arithmetic. I thought
> there were some in set theory but I am not up on the subject.
> Maybe someone will settle it by quoting Nietzsche.
>
"The concept of arithmetic must be open to the other and so accept the
possibility of paradox- it therefore is apriori paradoxical"
Nietzsche - in "Why i never visited Brooklyn" page 8 - halfway down..
Sob! I.......... confess i made the above up.......
James Whitehead
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140943382.1...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> [The latest Bushism is most amusing. He called people from the United
> Kingdom the "Great British".]
>
Sorry - i see nothing funny in this?
;-)
1Z
They were never paradoxes in the strict sense.
Jasbird
<x...@yyy.co.uk> wrote:
>Would it be correct to say that a post-modern critique would involve a
>number of "routes", "programmes" whilst adorno's is singular?
Critical theorists would answer that pomo is singular and CT
multiple.
>Though i dare
>say some group with say critical theorists may hold a fairly common
>critique - that is a fairly narrow field within the spectrum of
>postmodernity... or is it within such a context that you require your
>answer - if so i'd be interested also.
>
>I think within the context of the plastic arts the critique has been seen
>both deliberately occurring, and occurring simply out of a rejection of - or
>ignoring of - modernist programmes... so each artist and each work can
>stand with regard to modernity deliberately or obliquely...
>
><map...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1139485309....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> How does the postmodern critique of meta-narrative differ from adorno's
>> opposition to totalities?
They have different objects for a start. Adorno's CT remains a
critique, pomo doesn't do critiques.
It's far more productive to think of it in terms of:
How is the postmodern deconstruction of meta-narrative similar
to Adorno's opposition to totalities?
You'd begin by looking at how Adorno's totality is similar and
DIFFERENT to pomo's meta-narrative.