Socially constructed (was: Derrida)
Raghu Seshadri
Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: : : Can you operationalize "really" and "fundamentally" for me?
:
: : I don't know what "operationalize" means.
:
: Look it up.
My dictionary doesn't have it. Do you have
any synonyms ?
: : : ps -- does anyone object vociferously against the claim that we cannot
: : : think or speak about stars in ways which aren't socially constructed?
:
: : You are right, we can't, but only in the trivial sense
: : that language is socially constructed. It is conceivable
: : that a mathematical genius can formulate his own
: : mathematical language, and then describe the processes
: : of the stars in his notation; then he can think and
: : speak about stars in ways that are NOT socially
: : constructed.
: You think? Where did your hypothetical genius learn how to do
: mathematics? In the forest, from his bear mommy?
You miss the whole point.
RS
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 16th of June, 1998
Silke:
Ach. I was always fond of the music
of the spheres. Sorry it doesn't
amount to *interest* ...
Dante and Madeleine L'Engle are one thing,
astronomy and astrophysics another. Interesting
as the former may be they do not pertain to
the way astronomers and astrophysicists think
and speak about the stars (as astronomers
and astrophysicists), and it is, umm, doubtful
to say the least that any change in social
construction could lead to astronomers and
astrophysicists speaking and thinking about
the music of the spheres as valid astronomy or
astrophysics. You did suggest that we cannot
think or speak about stars in ways that are
not socially constructed? Which is a stronger
claim, is it not, than merely that we have many
wonderful socially constructed ways of thinking
and speaking about stars?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David Christopher Swanson
In article <3586F0...@netdirect.net>
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> writes:
> if it were even possible---and I doubt it---
> it would be the long labour of multiple geniuses, and
> consequently, there doesn't seem to be any such animal.
Exactly what major cultural achievements are not the long labour of
multiple geniuses?
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m6opr$i...@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
sesh...@cse.ucsc.edu (Raghu Seshadri) writes:
> David Christopher Swanson (dcs...@cstone.net) wrote:
>
> : You will reply that our understanding of stars moves closer to the WAY
> : stars REALLY ARE, but that the latter does not change. The latter is
> : also not a meaningful concept unless you can show it to me, or at least
> : flesh out what "moving closer" is supposed to mean.
> : Our conception of stars will continue to change radically, I have
> : little doubt. How long we will use the term "star" I have no idea.
>
> This sort of thing is really, fundamentally
> a protest against the urge to seek knowledge.
> As long as this urge is there in man, he will
> seek to know more and more about the stars,
> and whenever that happens, Swanson can say
> "see ? your notion of a star has changed. This
> means the star has no objective reality. It is
> socialy constructed !" :-)
An odd thing for me to say after having spent a whole thread trying to
show that "socially constructed" is a silly thing to say. It's also
odd that I'm really fundamentally protesting the urge to seek knowledge
since I'm unaware of any such protesting - but I guess that's the way
with real fundamental actions.
>
> In a static society like say the middle ages,
> when knowledge didn't accumulate for a long time,
> this argument couldn't apply, therefore a middle
> ages Swanson would be forced to concede the
> objective reality of stars.
Not in exactly a post-Cartesian sense of objectively real or a 20th
century sense of stars.
>
> Oddly, this means the vastly increasing amount
> of knowledge today enables the Swansons of today
> to repudiate it ! Talk about irony !!
>
> RS
What's "it"? And how many Swansons are there out there?
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m6rgg$56j$2...@netnews.upenn.edu>
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
> Raghu Seshadri (sesh...@cse.ucsc.edu) wrote:
> : Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
> :
> : : Can you operationalize "really" and "fundamentally" for me?
>
> : I don't know what "operationalize" means.
>
> Look it up.
It's not in Random House.
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m6uio$dc$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
> What I will point out is something a little different. (1) Part of our
> cognitive abilities includes the ability to model our experience,
> including our non-linguistic experience.
"Model" it non-linguistically?
(2) We use language to
> discuss these models. (3) Our models are rarely perfect,
Meaning something other than what follows the comma and the "and"?
and
> frequently we experience conflict between them and further experience.
> I don't believe that any of this requires the unapproachable
> thing-in-itself, really Really Real of the philosophers.
I agree that we use language and that what we say changes.
But if you
> don't believe that people do this, then how do you account for the
> areas where people explicitly think they are doing this and act like
> they are doing this? Consider a simple example: Someone believes that
> water always boils at 212 degrees. That is part of how they model
> water's behavior. We have evidence of this because they tell us so.
> That is communication about their model. They are given a sealed flask
> of water that demonstrably boils at much lower temperatures. That is
> conflicting experience. If you don't like how I am describing this
> situation, why not? How would you describe it?
>
> Russell
I like your way fine. Is there a reason why I shouldn't?
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <358732...@netdirect.net>
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> writes:
> Silke:
> Ach. I was always fond of the music
> of the spheres. Sorry it doesn't
> amount to *interest* ...
>
> Dante and Madeleine L'Engle are one thing,
...which I didn't think Silke had mentioned. It must be nice to be as
blind to the past as to the future.
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
Richard Harter
dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson) wrote:
>In article <3586F0...@netdirect.net>
>"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> writes:
>> if it were even possible---and I doubt it---
>> it would be the long labour of multiple geniuses, and
>> consequently, there doesn't seem to be any such animal.
>Exactly what major cultural achievements are not the long labour of
>multiple geniuses?
I was reading one just recently.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
The animal described in Job is like no other;
That's because it is a uniqueorn
Jonathan Stone
In article <6m7d3h$q3a$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
|> Michael S. Morris (msmo...@netdirect.net) wrote:
|> : Tuesday, the 16th of June, 1998
|> And that was always the case? The music of the spheres is an Ancient
|> Greek concept, if memory serves right (which it often doesn't).
The concept of the Spheres is an ancient one. we've been to see.
The spheres posited from the Ptolemaic system just ain't there.
Rather quaint to ask about whether the music made by nonexistent
crystal spheres is astronomy or not.
(perhaps the _spheres_ were socially constructed?)
|> and it is, umm, doubtful : to say the least that any change in social
|> : construction could lead to astronomers and
|> : astrophysicists speaking and thinking about
|> : the music of the spheres as valid astronomy or
|> : astrophysics.
|>
|> I know. And the reasons for that are socially constructed. Thanks for
|> helping out.
Please explain how those reasons are socially constructed?
|> No, not really. The language of science is socially constructed. It
|> wouldn't work otherwise. Raghu's example of the lonely genius is a case
|> in point. The whole enterprise seems rather based upon the
|> constructability of its terms.
I'm not familiar with Raghu, but why is Einstein not is a counter-example?
The ways Einstein _thought_ about things was radically new. I don't
see how that new, original insight was, as an insight, socially constructed.
That communication requires some shared context is hardly new, or even
particularly relevant. We seem to be quite good at coming up with new,
non-linguistic constructs for communicating the relevant phenomena.
|> Funny, to say that we cannot speak about anything without the mediation of
|> the social never struck me as a very controversial claim, and I never
|> cease to wonder that some people actually take it upon themselves to
|> contradict it. It's like contradicting the statement that most people who
|> fall out of a 21st story window will die.
But that is precisely the point: people are shmashed up as a result
result of such impacts, none of what _happens_ to them is socially
constructed in any way.
tejas
Mario Taboada wrote:
>
> Swanson:
>
> <<What's "it"? And how many Swansons are there out there?>>
>
>
> Mario Taboada
>
> ObSong: Cottonmouth Briquet's incomparable "Meano Snake Blues" in the
> turntable right now.
Buncha damn vegetarians tried to appropriate for an anti-flatulence
campaign, calling it "Beano Snake Blues", but Briquet's grandson,
Jamoka Allemande Briquet, a lawyer and breeder of prime blooded
fightin' cocks from Nutbush, TN quashed that ploy raight in the bud,
Yessireebobtail.
("J.A" also has a chain of bbq establishments in the Memphis area and
is looking to expand into West Helena, Arkansas and into Mississippi
to take advantage of the explosion of gaming parlours in that state.
He has also chosen not to enter the catfish industry.)
"Grand-daddy knew how to make them chickens mean (something)"
J.A. Briquet
ObTeeVeeShow: THE SOUL OF STAX (Froggish and currently in rotation on
BRAVO. Footage of Booker T and the MGs..)
--
TBSa...@richmond.infi.net (also te...@infi.net)
'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
Hank Snow THE RHUMBA BOOGIE
Gerry Quinn
In article <6m6kli$3p4$1...@Skuzzy.cstone.net>, dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson)
<6m66s8$mbi$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com> wrote:
>In article <6m66s8$mbi$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
>tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
>
>> Perhaps millenia from now humans, using
>> technology we can now only imagine, will change Sirius in some
>> substantive way, and then we may speak of it as partly a social
>> construction.
>
>Perhaps if we continue this discussion, you can bear in mind a certain
>distinction. When people scream "Race is a social construct!" what
>they mean is "I don't find that way of thinking useful." They do not
>mean "You people have genetically engineered races. There didn't used
>to be any."
I thought they usually meant "Race is a categorisation I want everyone
to stop using!".
Anyway, people may often use vague, misleading or rhetorical language,
but I hope those posting here will attempt to be precise in what they
say...
- Gerry
----------------------------------------------------------
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
----------------------------------------------------------
tejas
David Christopher Swanson wrote:
>
> In article <6m6uio$dc$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
> tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
>
> > What I will point out is something a little different. (1) Part of our
> > cognitive abilities includes the ability to model our experience,
> > including our non-linguistic experience.
>
> "Model" it non-linguistically?
Ground water modelers do it all the time. But you seldom want to have
a ground water modeller at a respectable socially constructed function.
Surface water modellers are even worse. And they track up the carpet
even more....
Gerry Quinn
In article <6m6p3f$lfq$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
>
>ps -- does anyone object vociferously against the claim that we cannot
>think or speak about stars in ways which aren't socially constructed?
I think all our thoughts about stars are somewhat influenced by our
experiences, if that is what you mean. But it is hard to stretch the
term 'socially constructed' to mean anything useful when we think
about the physics of energy production in stars - its sense becomes so
weak and general as to be effectively meaningless.
Francis Muir
Gerry Quinn writes:
Silke-Maria Weineck writes:
ps -- does anyone object vociferously against the claim
that we cannot think or speak about stars in ways which
aren't socially constructed?
I think all our thoughts about stars are somewhat influenced
by our experiences, if that is what you mean. But it is hard to
stretch the term 'socially constructed' to mean anything useful
when we think about the physics of energy production in stars
- its sense becomes so weak and general as to be effectively
meaningless.
Come now. The recent discovery that neutrinos have mass, which
is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass, is very much
a social construct in that it allows for a snappy end to the universe
that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The old ending, the Chaotic
Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and I'm looking forward to the
Astrophysical equivalent of the First Council of Trent to begin denying
tenure to Old Thinkers.
Francis
Russ Turpin
-*-------
David Swanson writes:
> "Model" it non-linguistically?
The short answer is: in large part, yes.
Let me offer you an example. Certain medical conditions are associated
with some unique odors. Now: you might have read this, and you might
have as much an understanding of this as words can convey, and still be
ignorant when face to face with the condition concerned because you
have never smelled the odor named, and so have no idea whether what are
smelling is *it* or something else, UNTIL someone who knows that smell
is with you and says "that is the smell of X." Then your cognitive
model expands, not with a new word or new linguistic belief, but with
the identification of a smell, an identification that may persist, by
the way, even if you suffer a stroke that destroys your linguistic
ability to talk about it. Well, I know any talk about non-linguistic
knowlege is heresy in certain parts. But it is old hat to neurologists
and cognitive scientists and those who must develop an understanding of
how people do indeed think about such things. Ob book: "The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for His Hat," by Oliver Sachs.
Turpin:
>> .. If you don't like how I am describing this situation
>> [people modeling their experience], why not? How would you
>> describe it?
Swanson:
> I like your way fine. Is there a reason why I shouldn't?
In my mind, no. But this way of discussing how people think about
their experience, so common in the sciences, always seems to rile some
in the literary community.
Russell
--
This new ship here is fitted according to the reported increase of knowledge
among mankind. Namely, she is cumbered end to end, with bells and trumpets
and clock and wires, ... she can call voices out of the air of the waters to
con the ship while her crew sleep. But sleep Thou lightly. It has not yet
been told to me that the Sea has ceased to be the Sea. -- Rudyard Kipling
David Christopher Swanson
In article <358783...@richmond.infi.net>
tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> writes:
> David Christopher Swanson wrote:
> >
> > In article <6m6uio$dc$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
> > tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
> >
> > > What I will point out is something a little different. (1) Part of our
> > > cognitive abilities includes the ability to model our experience,
> > > including our non-linguistic experience.
> >
> > "Model" it non-linguistically?
>
> Ground water modelers do it all the time. But you seldom want to have
> a ground water modeller at a respectable socially constructed function.
> Surface water modellers are even worse. And they track up the carpet
> even more....
Seems to me they draw picturers, visualize images. And it's really
only the dowsers that disturb me.
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m7io3$g...@news-central.tiac.net>
c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
> dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson) wrote:
>
> >In article <3586F0...@netdirect.net>
> >"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> writes:
>
> >> if it were even possible---and I doubt it---
> >> it would be the long labour of multiple geniuses, and
> >> consequently, there doesn't seem to be any such animal.
>
>
> >Exactly what major cultural achievements are not the long labour of
> >multiple geniuses?
>
> I was reading one just recently.
Why the suspense?
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m7jrb$jlf$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
jona...@Kowhai.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
> The ways Einstein _thought_ about things was radically new. I don't
> see how that new, original insight was, as an insight, socially constructed.
"Socially constructed" is most often used as a stand-in for "made" or
"invented" or "humanly produced." If we could reduce it to
"constructed" we would avoid this further confusion of debating the
strengths of individual efforts. How much an individual contributes to
some creation may be an interesting question, but it is not the
question of whether stuff is "created" as opposed to "discovered."
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m80lf$bnb$2...@news.indigo.ie>
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) writes:
> In article <6m6kli$3p4$1...@Skuzzy.cstone.net>, dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson)
> <6m66s8$mbi$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com> wrote:
> >In article <6m66s8$mbi$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
> >tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
> >
> >> Perhaps millenia from now humans, using
> >> technology we can now only imagine, will change Sirius in some
> >> substantive way, and then we may speak of it as partly a social
> >> construction.
> >
> >Perhaps if we continue this discussion, you can bear in mind a certain
> >distinction. When people scream "Race is a social construct!" what
> >they mean is "I don't find that way of thinking useful." They do not
> >mean "You people have genetically engineered races. There didn't used
> >to be any."
>
> I thought they usually meant "Race is a categorisation I want everyone
> to stop using!".
I'll accept that translation.
snip
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m8eph$cvk$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
> -*-------
> David Swanson writes:
> > "Model" it non-linguistically?
>
> The short answer is: in large part, yes.
>
> Let me offer you an example. Certain medical conditions are associated
> with some unique odors. Now: you might have read this, and you might
> have as much an understanding of this as words can convey, and still be
> ignorant when face to face with the condition concerned because you
> have never smelled the odor named, and so have no idea whether what are
> smelling is *it* or something else, UNTIL someone who knows that smell
> is with you and says "that is the smell of X." Then your cognitive
> model expands, not with a new word or new linguistic belief, but with
> the identification of a smell, an identification that may persist, by
> the way, even if you suffer a stroke that destroys your linguistic
> ability to talk about it. Well, I know any talk about non-linguistic
> knowlege is heresy in certain parts. But it is old hat to neurologists
> and cognitive scientists and those who must develop an understanding of
> how people do indeed think about such things. Ob book: "The Man Who
> Mistook His Wife for His Hat," by Oliver Sachs.
This kind of confusion is eternal in these discussions. I do not
disagree with anything in the above paragraph. I would point out that
"that is the smell of x" is, in fact, a series of words. I would not
dispute that the person had smelled something before he put a name to
it. I just woudn't have thought that smelling he did qualified as
"modeling."
I also, BTW, once again, as always, do not dispute that people think in
pictures, music, smells, and other media than words.
>
> Turpin:
> >> .. If you don't like how I am describing this situation
> >> [people modeling their experience], why not? How would you
> >> describe it?
>
> Swanson:
> > I like your way fine. Is there a reason why I shouldn't?
>
> In my mind, no. But this way of discussing how people think about
> their experience, so common in the sciences, always seems to rile some
> in the literary community.
Such as who?
>
> Russell
DCS
http://www.cstone.net/~dcswan
Russ Turpin
-*---------
I wrote:
>> Perhaps millenia from now humans, using
>> technology we can now only imagine, will change Sirius in some
>> substantive way, and then we may speak of it as partly a social
>> construction.
David Swanson:
> Perhaps if we continue this discussion, you can bear in mind a certain
> distinction. When people scream "Race is a social construct!" what
> they mean is "I don't find that way of thinking useful." They do not
> mean "You people have genetically engineered races. There didn't used
> to be any."
Actually, I think people who talk much about social constructs often --
either knowingly or not -- are trying to obscure the kinds of
distinction that Swanson is so careful about. As an example, Gordon
Fitch in another thread claimed that homosexuals did not exist prior to
the social construction of this category, merely people who preferred
sex only with members of their own gender. Well ... it doesn't matter
when the English word "homosexual" was invented. Its meaning includes
what Fitch describes, and as long as there have been people, some of
them have been homosexual.
Of course, pointing out that a word is a social construct is no
criticism of it. There are many useful words, and they are all social
constructs.
Cynthia Froning
Francis Muir wrote:
> Come now. The recent discovery that neutrinos have mass, which
> is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass, is very much
> a social construct in that it allows for a snappy end to the universe
> that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The old ending, the Chaotic
> Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and I'm looking forward to the
> Astrophysical equivalent of the First Council of Trent to begin denying
> tenure to Old Thinkers.
>
> Francis
Yes, but now you're conflating the theorists and the observers. Trust
me, in what is surely a socially constructed truth (or just a fancy
way of saying a popularity constest), the type of astrophysicists who
worry about the Big Bang and dark matter haven't given a thought
to the more mundane observables like stars for years.
Cyndi Froning
Russ Turpin
-*-------
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin):
>> But Sirius -- the star -- is not at all socially constructed. The hand
>> of man has affected it not one iota, and it merrily goes on its way....
Fitch:
> More accurately, there seems to be a _Ding_an_sich_ out
> there which produces the phenomena we construct to be
> the star Sirius, ..
I thought the philosophical Ding_an_sich was about how things
Really Are, rather than about how they appear, and as such,
its relationship to the star Sirius is rather .. mysterious.
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1998
Silke:
Ach. I was always fond of the music
of the spheres. Sorry it doesn't
amount to *interest* ...
I said:
Dante and Madeleine L'Engle are one thing,
astronomy and astrophysics another. Interesting
as the former may be they do not pertain to
the way astronomers and astrophysicists think
and speak about the stars
Silke:
And that was always the case?
No. We learned more. So?
Silke:
The music of the spheres is an Ancient
Greek concept, if memory serves right
(which it often doesn't).
It is correct I believe in this case, although
I confess it escapes me immediately where I should
go looking to find it---possibly somewhere in the
acid trip of _Timaeus_. It is considered part of
the Ptolemaic system, though I doubt to find it in
Ptolemy per se---Plotinus, perhaps?
I said:
and it is, umm, doubtful
to say the least that any change in social
construction could lead to astronomers and
astrophysicists speaking and thinking about
the music of the spheres as valid astronomy or
astrophysics.
Silke:
I know. And the reasons for that are socially
constructed. Thanks for helping out.
You mistake. If a changed social construction---a
deconstruction followd by a reconstruction?---cannot
lead to a different astronomy and astrophysics that
is still astronomy and astrophysics and not, say,
astrology in sheep's clothing, then it would seem
that the only thing that is in fact socially constructed
with respect to astronomy and astrophysics is the
lexicon. Raghu's point.
It's really very simple: To demonstrate the claim of
interesting social construction in science all you have to do is
come up with a differently constructed science, still
valid as science.
I said:
You did suggest that we cannot
think or speak about stars in ways that are
not socially constructed? Which is a stronger
claim, is it not, than merely that we have many
wonderful socially constructed ways of thinking
and speaking about stars?
Silke:
No, not really. The language of science is
socially constructed. It wouldn't work otherwise.
Raghu's example of the lonely genius is a case
in point. The whole enterprise seems rather based upon the
constructability of its terms.
I thought that Raghu had agreed that the lexicon
itself was in fact socially constructed. There remains
nevertheless that nagging distinction between the freedom
to construct lore about the music of the spheres, and the
constaints on modeling convective transport in Sirius-B.
Silke:
Funny, to say that we cannot speak about anything
without the mediation of the social never struck me
as a very controversial claim, and I never cease to
wonder that some people actually take it upon themselves
to contradict it.
I don't think Raghu or I have even attempted to contradict
it. What I think rather is that we have both tried to
distinguish in what sense "we cannot speak about anything
without the mediation of the social"---whether this is
a trivial and uninteresting claim, or whether you are
suggesting there is some sense in which "the music of the
spheres" is equally valid astrophysics, and that is just a
matter of arbitrary convention that we consider the one
to be lore and the other to be science.
Silke:
It's like contradicting the statement that most people who
fall out of a 21st story window will die.
Oh, so it was a trivial, uninteresting claim after all.
Why did you not just agree with Raghu in the first place
when he suggested, sure, the lexicon is socially constructed?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Francis Muir
Cynthia Froning writes:
Francis Muir writes:
Come now. The recent discovery that neutrinos have mass,
which is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass,
is very much a social construct in that it allows for a snappy
end to the universe that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The
old ending, the Chaotic Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and
I'm looking forward to the Astrophysical equivalent of the First
Council of Trent to begin denying tenure to Old Thinkers.
Yes, but now you're conflating the theorists and the observers.
Trust me, in what is surely a socially constructed truth (or just a
fancy way of saying a popularity contest), the type of astrophysicists
who worry about the Big Bang and dark matter haven't given a
thought to the more mundane observables like stars for years.
I think I first heard the word "conflate" used on r.a.b by the Lesser
Godwit and I have endeavoured never to use it myself since. That
said I believe that you, Cynthia, and I are in agreement on the essence
of the thing. For me Astrophysickers are the Theoreticians who are
sometimes useful and entertaining but more often too loud in presenting
their positions. The folk who look at stars are Astronomers, example
your MacDonald Observatory crowd, whose wise radio pronunciamenti
often make my day.
Francis
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1998
Silke:
Ach. I was always fond of the music
of the spheres. Sorry it doesn't
amount to *interest* ...
I said:
Dante and Madeleine L'Engle are one thing,
David:
...which I didn't think
Silke had mentioned.
I happen to think that she did.
I also happen to have expected that
she would deny that she did, which
is why I did bring them up in the first
place.
David:
It must be nice to be as
blind to the past as to the future.
It must be lonely to have to attribute
every disagreement in substance to
ignorance of the other. Very Platonic
of you, by the way.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Jim Collier
Francis Muir wrote:
> Come now. The recent discovery that neutrinos have mass, which
> is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass, is very much
> a social construct in that it allows for a snappy end to the universe
> that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The old ending, the Chaotic
> Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and I'm looking forward to the
> Astrophysical equivalent of the First Council of Trent to begin > denying tenure to Old Thinkers.
I didn't know that whether to crunch had been resolved, with or
without massive neutrinos.
Jim
Gerry Quinn
In article <3587B210...@stanford.edu>, fra...@stanford.edu wrote:
>Gerry Quinn writes:
> Silke-Maria Weineck writes:
>
> ps -- does anyone object vociferously against the claim
> that we cannot think or speak about stars in ways which
> aren't socially constructed?
>
> I think all our thoughts about stars are somewhat influenced
> by our experiences, if that is what you mean. But it is hard to
> stretch the term 'socially constructed' to mean anything useful
> when we think about the physics of energy production in stars
> - its sense becomes so weak and general as to be effectively
> meaningless.
>
>is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass, is very much
>a social construct in that it allows for a snappy end to the universe
>that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The old ending, the Chaotic
>Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and I'm looking forward to the
>Astrophysical equivalent of the First Council of Trent to begin denying
>tenure to Old Thinkers.
Identifying a possible motive does not secure a conviction...
David Christopher Swanson
In article <6m8ffr$o17$3...@netnews.upenn.edu>
wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
> Gerry Quinn (ger...@indigo.ie) wrote:
> : In article <6m6p3f$lfq$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
> : >
> : >ps -- does anyone object vociferously against the claim that we cannot
> : >think or speak about stars in ways which aren't socially constructed?
>
> : I think all our thoughts about stars are somewhat influenced by our
> : experiences, if that is what you mean. But it is hard to stretch the
> : term 'socially constructed' to mean anything useful when we think
> : about the physics of energy production in stars - its sense becomes so
> : weak and general as to be effectively meaningless.
>
> I agree it's not a big point. Never thought it was. But mathematics is a
> social construct, so is physics, so is the very existence of a scientific
> discipline called astrophysics. So are the schools and colleges and grad
> schools that make astrophysicists astrophysicists. So are the tools they
> use. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. But, again, it's not a major insight, it's
> rather obvious. There's the real, and then there's talking about the real...
>
> smw
This view seems to me a very common one, probably the most common among
those who use the term "social construct." Philosophically it
represents exactly nothing. It's just traditional realism using a
new-fangled term for "subjective" or "artificial." In this crowd
perhaps the only useful distiction "social construct" makes is between
the social and the individual. "Construct" remains just what it was
before Nietzsche, just what Heidegger wrongly accused Nietzsche of
making it be.
The following things, in my view, are neither "constructed" nor
"discovered":
mathematics, physics, astrophysics, stars. This is Heidegger's view,
and whether you agree with it or not, it at least is a new way of
thinking worth arguing about. The term "social construct," on the
other hand, is not only not a big point - it is a new-sounding term for
nothing new.
Schools and colleges and grad schools are rather different sorts of
enties from scientific theories. I see no point in cheering for the
"construct" side in these cases until someone appears over on the
"Reality in itself" side.
David Christopher Swanson
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On 17 Jun 1998, David Christopher Swanson wrote:
> In article <6m80lf$bnb$2...@news.indigo.ie>
> ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) writes:
>
> > In article <6m6kli$3p4$1...@Skuzzy.cstone.net>, dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson)
> > <6m66s8$mbi$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com> wrote:
> > >Perhaps if we continue this discussion, you can bear in mind a certain
> > >distinction. When people scream "Race is a social construct!" what
> > >they mean is "I don't find that way of thinking useful." They do not
> > >mean "You people have genetically engineered races. There didn't used
> > >to be any."
> >
> > I thought they usually meant "Race is a categorisation I want everyone
> > to stop using!".
>
>
> I'll accept that translation.
Without caveats, I don't. The claim that race is a social construct does
not necessarially mean that it is not useful for explaning social
phenomenon. To tak an example a little less loaded: I would argue that
states are social constructs, but that they are essential to understanding
modern political phenomenon. Viewing them as social constructs opens up
certain modes of understanding of and causal stories about modern politics
which viewing them as 'objective' givens wouldn't.
Regards, Dan | Columbia Political Science
"Surely here is an opportunity to get rid of that great stick of a
character _Homo economicus_ and to replace him with someone real, like
Madame Bovary." -D. McCloskey, _The Rhetoric of Economics_
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On 17 Jun 1998, Russ Turpin wrote:
>
> -*-------
> David Swanson writes:
> > "Model" it non-linguistically?
>
> The short answer is: in large part, yes.
>
> Let me offer you an example. Certain medical conditions are associated
> with some unique odors. Now: you might have read this, and you might
> have as much an understanding of this as words can convey, and still be
> ignorant when face to face with the condition concerned because you
> have never smelled the odor named, and so have no idea whether what are
> smelling is *it* or something else, UNTIL someone who knows that smell
> is with you and says "that is the smell of X." Then your cognitive
> model expands, not with a new word or new linguistic belief, but with
> the identification of a smell, an identification that may persist, by
> the way, even if you suffer a stroke that destroys your linguistic
> ability to talk about it.
I think it is time to step back for a moment. This conversation has
evolved into a discussion of "language" qua written/spoken signs
(actually, we would probably need to be more specific about the
differences, if any, between "langue" and "parole" given the theorists who
sparked this exchange). But the 'linguistic turn' (in Continental thought)
is *not* -- in its stronger forms -- a claim that there is no
extra-linguistic reality but that there is no extra-discursive reality.
This is *not* the same claim, since discourse is not limited to spoken and
written signs but is better thought of as their combination with "action."
That being said, identifying stimuli which is non-verbal (e.g. smells)
is really not very relevant to the underlying social constructivism
debate. A hard core believer in the linguistic turn would simply respond
that you've explicated a nice showing of how a *smell* can be a sign
signifying a complex of other phenomenon (a medical condition), which
themselves are both signs and signifieds. Interestingly enough, your
example of the 'expansion of a cognitive model' is straight out of the
statementary approach to social knowledge creating postulated by Edinburgh
school sociologists of science. Hell, I can't think of a better
illustration of the social production of knowledge then learning a
language to express a smell's relationship to a language of medical
diagnosis and etiology and then being told, upon sensing the smell, that
this is the smell which has been preconfigured as meaningful within that
discourse. The relevant question -- which does not have a simple answer --
is whether it would be meaningful to say that we can extra-discursively
identify the meaning of the smell (note: not the same thing as saying the
smell isn't 'real').
Well, I know any talk about non-linguistic
> knowlege is heresy in certain parts. But it is old hat to neurologists
> and cognitive scientists and those who must develop an understanding of
> how people do indeed think about such things. Ob book: "The Man Who
> Mistook His Wife for His Hat," by Oliver Sachs.
Its not that it is "heresy," it is that you've got to be more careful with
your terms.
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On 17 Jun 1998, Russ Turpin wrote:
> -*---------
> I wrote:
> >> Perhaps millenia from now humans, using
> >> technology we can now only imagine, will change Sirius in some
> >> substantive way, and then we may speak of it as partly a social
> >> construction.
>
> David Swanson:
> > Perhaps if we continue this discussion, you can bear in mind a certain
> > distinction. When people scream "Race is a social construct!" what
> > they mean is "I don't find that way of thinking useful." They do not
> > mean "You people have genetically engineered races. There didn't used
> > to be any."
>
> Actually, I think people who talk much about social constructs often --
> either knowingly or not -- are trying to obscure the kinds of
> distinction that Swanson is so careful about. As an example, Gordon
> Fitch in another thread claimed that homosexuals did not exist prior to
> the social construction of this category, merely people who preferred
> sex only with members of their own gender. Well ... it doesn't matter
> when the English word "homosexual" was invented. Its meaning includes
> what Fitch describes, and as long as there have been people, some of
> them have been homosexual.
Be slightly more careful: Gordon, AFAIK, is drawing on the distinction
between heteroerotic/homoerotic acts and heterosexuality/homosexuality.
The claim made by advocates of this and similar distinctions is that we
have an important shift in the social construction of human sexuality when
sexual acts start to be identified with personhood -- i.e. when engaging
in homoerotic acts *makes* *you* *a* "homosexual." Now, the categorical
scheme of "homosexual/heterosexual" may be transhistoricizable in that we
might *call* Alexander the Great a "homosexual" because he showed a
distinct preference for men (although he also married a sired a child who
subsequently died); the question is whether it is meaningful or helpful to
engage in that act of transhistoricization. Most proopents of this
approach would argue -- with good reason, IMHO -- that it is not, because
it uses contemporary notions of identity to explain behavior when those
identities did not hold.
Regards, Dan | Columbia Political Science | www.columbia.edu/~dhn2
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Michael S. Morris wrote:
> It's really very simple: To demonstrate the claim of
> interesting social construction in science all you have to do is
> come up with a differently constructed science, still
> valid as science.
Whose/which understandings of "science" and "scientific proof" (e.g. how
truth claims are etablished) are we to use? Therein lies the rub.
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1998
Silke:
I have no clue what gave you the
idea that I think genres are
interchangeable.
I suppose it must have been when you suggested *everything*
is socially constructed. This means to me we could
in principle alter the whatever it is by coming to some
new social agreement. We might be able to do that with a
lot of things, true, but it seems to me also that there are
some things we can't alter in any but a sophistical way.
Silke:
I consider to marvel at the
amount of straw flying through this space...
Oh, knock it off. You yell "straw" every single
time you posit some seemingly outrageous statement
and I try to come to terms with you by going through
the possible meanings for purposes of excluding them.
What does it mean that everything is socially constructed?
I still haven't a clue. "Socially constructed" ain't an
ordinary street usage. If I go downtown to the circle in
Indianapolis and ask passersby about it, they're not
going to know what I am talking about. Just how much
ideology do I buy into by agreeing with you that
"everything is socially constructed", which you claim
to be incontrovertible? Science plainly claims to have
something about it that is *not* socially constructed,
in the ordinary sense that it cannot be altered by
convention. There is something in science about
a dialogue with nature and where we scientists cannot
control or construct or create what it is that nature
says back to us. That is the way science is, the way we know
that most of what we try to reason out about nature
is wrong, and only a very little bit ever ends up being
right. So, to zeroth order there would seem to be this
whopping big thing---namely science---that is *not* "socially
constructed"---that does not seem to be capable of any different
"social construction". Well, maybe you just mean that
scientists use English or French or somesuch artificial
language to communicate to other scientists and that that
language itself is both necessarily "socially constructed"
and indispensible to science. If so, why not just be clear
in the first place what it is you mean? Why use a terminology
that makes it seem you recognize no substantive difference
between astrology and astronomy in terms of the arbitrariness
of the knowledge derived from either discipline? Is there
some agenda or isn't there? If you hand me some equation
I've never seen before in physics, I test it out in order
to try and understand it, I take the parameters to 0 to 1
and to infinity and see if the simplified equation still
seems to do the right thing in those limits. And yet every
single time one of these grand pronouncements comes along---
"everything is socially constructed"---and I try to take
the parameters to 0 and 1 and infinity to try and figure
out what you might mean, I get precisely nowhere, it is
all straw and I'm supposed to just eat my pablum and shut up
and don't question what apparently cannot be questioned.
For what little it is worth at the moment, the
original claim still sounds totally wrong to me.
No doubt most human knowledge has a socially
constructed component to it. How essential this
component may be to any body of knowledge remains
to be seen. There would seem to be science as an
obvious example of a place to find a body of knowledge
where the socially constructed part of that knowledge
seems utterly inessential to its content.
Silke:
It's like contradicting the statement that most people who
fall out of a 21st story window will die.
I said:
Oh, so it was a trivial, uninteresting claim after all.
Silke:
It was a simple claim. Neither trivial nor
uninteresting. Simple and rather obvious.
If you say so, but then I still don't know
what was being claimed, do I?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1998
I said:
It's really very simple: To demonstrate the claim
of interesting social construction in science all
you have to do is come up with a differently constructed
science, still valid as science.
Daniel Hugh Nexon says:
Whose/which understandings of "science" and
"scientific proof" (e.g. how truth claims are
established) are we to use? Therein lies the rub.
No. That is precisely where I am saying the rub does
*not* lie. To call some other methodology "scientific"
or some other body of lore "science" would be
lexicographical legerdemain---to demonstrate
the "social construction" of science only
in the most trivial and sophistical sense. Which
sense simply isn't interesting. What would be interesting
would be if there is such a thing as a "feminist science",
say, where by making a different social construction one
could be led to scientific knowledge not accessible
otherwise. Or a Native American science or a Ptolemaic
science or an alchemical science that were in some sense
different "social constructions" than modern science but
nevertheless led to scientific knowledge not accessible
to science as we know it.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
j...@ncgr.org
Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
> Silke wrote:
> > The music of the spheres is an Ancient
> > Greek concept, if memory serves right
> > (which it often doesn't).
>
> It is correct I believe in this case, although
> I confess it escapes me immediately where I should
> go looking to find it---possibly somewhere in the
> acid trip of _Timaeus_. It is considered part of
> the Ptolemaic system, though I doubt to find it in
> Ptolemy per se---Plotinus, perhaps?
It's right out there in the heavens, should one happen to look at
them that way. For example, the stations of Venus form a pentagon
(precessing only slowly). Once, this meant something, or was at
least part of a growing body of science about which, naturally, not
everything had yet been discovered. Kepler is one of the guys
to cite, though I haven't read him yet. (Looking forward to it,
though.)
The pentagon is reproducable, falsifiable ... "objective". The
relavance of the number five to "music" is uncontroversial, I guess.
Result: music out there. The project, of course, was a little more
ambitious, as one would like to understand relations between this
five and other numbers.
Mike:
> and it is, umm, doubtful
> to say the least that any change in social
> construction could lead to astronomers and
> astrophysicists speaking and thinking about
> the music of the spheres as valid astronomy or
> astrophysics.
I wonder about this. I know that I make equally confident propositions
about the likelihood of this or that, but, honestly, is there some
clear criterion that helps us know whether "music of the spheres" might
not be the cutting edge of some future astrophysical science?
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Russ Turpin
-*--------
Daniel Nexon:
> Be slightly more careful: Gordon, AFAIK, is drawing on the distinction
> between heteroerotic/homoerotic acts and heterosexuality/homosexuality.
> The claim made by advocates of this and similar distinctions is that we
> have an important shift in the social construction of human sexuality when
> sexual acts start to be identified with personhood -- i.e. when engaging
And I view this as sloppy language. It confuses someone being a
homosexual with them also living in a culture that attaches particular
kinds of importance to that (and that therefore is more likely than
other cultures to have a word for this.) It is very easy to describe
and discuss the latter state of affairs in English without resorting
to language that is quite misleading.
> ... Now, the categorical scheme of "homosexual/heterosexual" may be
> transhistoricizable in that we might *call* Alexander the Great a
> "homosexual" because he showed a distinct preference for men ..;
> the question is whether it is meaningful or helpful to engage in
> that act of transhistoricization. ...
"Meaningful" and "helpful" are very different. It is meaningful
precisely because homosexual is an English word correctly applied to
a man who shows "a distinct preference for men" as sexual partners.
Whether it is helpful or useful depends on what one is trying to do.
In discussing Alexander, it may be precisely one's purpose to show
a world famous (indeed, world conquering), macho, martial man who
openly enjoyed his homosexuality.
> ... Most proopents of this approach would argue -- with good reason,
> IMHO -- that it is not, because it uses contemporary notions of
> identity to explain behavior when those identities did not hold.
This *assumes* that one purpose in all discussions where Alexander is
identified as homosexual is to explain his behavior AS IF he were a
homosexual in the current culture. If these "proponents" want to
correct a logical error, they would do well not to perform one while
doing so!
Richard Harter
dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson) wrote:
>In article <6m7io3$g...@news-central.tiac.net>
>c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
>> dcs...@cstone.net (David Christopher Swanson) wrote:
>>
>> >In article <3586F0...@netdirect.net>
>> >"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> writes:
>>
>> >> if it were even possible---and I doubt it---
>> >> it would be the long labour of multiple geniuses, and
>> >> consequently, there doesn't seem to be any such animal.
>>
>>
>> >Exactly what major cultural achievements are not the long labour of
>> >multiple geniuses?
>>
>> I was reading one just recently.
>Why the suspense?
It's a little joke, David. Do not worry about it.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
The animal described in Job is like no other;
That's because it is a uniqueorn
Cynthia Froning
Francis Muir wrote:
> I think I first heard the word "conflate" used on r.a.b by the Lesser
> Godwit and I have endeavoured never to use it myself since.
I almost didn't use it. I wanted to check the definition and it was not
in my paperback copy of The American Heritage Dictionary (a perfectly
awful dictionary, btw). It did appear in the online Webster's, though.
> That said I believe that you, Cynthia, and I are in agreement on the
> essence of the thing.
Yes, I believe so. I simply think that the truly interesting role
social
construction of models plays in astronomy (or science in general, for
that matter) is often completely missed by the crowd that prefers
to go whole hog and argue that the near-infrared photons impinging
on my CCD have been constructed by me and those before me.
I mean, it's not like I can _see_ them, and indeed, what would it matter
if I
could?
Cheers,
Cyndi Froning
Joann Zimmerman
In article <358826...@imp.as.utexas.edu>, Cynthia Froning
<cy...@imp.as.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Yes, I believe so. I simply think that the truly interesting role
> social
> construction of models plays in astronomy (or science in general, for
> that matter) is often completely missed by the crowd that prefers
> to go whole hog and argue that the near-infrared photons impinging
> on my CCD have been constructed by me and those before me.
>
> I mean, it's not like I can _see_ them, and indeed, what would it matter
> if I
> could?
Want to come lecture to some art history classes on this topic? The
impending 99-hour rule[*] prevents me from doing it myself.
[*] For persons not engaged in doctoral research at public universities in
Texas, the 99-hour rule is one of the more charming Catch-22s to come down
the pike in many a year. Seemingly the Texas Ledge is under the impression
that all of us grad students are slackin' off, and that anyone should be
able to complete a PhD in 5 and one-half years, the impending penalty for
not doing so being the requirement that said slacker pay out-of-state
tuition rates for their continued enrollment past said 99 hours. Putting
together the money to pay this outrageous sum will only cause the victims
to take on further employment, thus further delaying the completion of
their already blighted dissertations and surprise, it's vicious circle
time.
--
"A memory is what is left behind when something happens and does not completely unhappen." -- E. DeBono
Joann Zimmerman jz...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Richard Harter
Daniel Hugh Nexon <dh...@columbia.edu> wrote:
... transhistoricizable ... transhistoricization ...
Francis, can't you do something about this?
Richard Harter
Daniel Hugh Nexon <dh...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>Regards, Dan | Columbia Political Science
>"Surely here is an opportunity to get rid of that great stick of a
>character _Homo economicus_ and to replace him with someone real, like
>Madame Bovary." -D. McCloskey, _The Rhetoric of Economics_
Snicker.
Richard Harter
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
>Michael S. Morris (msmo...@netdirect.net) wrote:
>: Tuesday, the 16th of June, 1998
>: Silke:
>: ps -- does anyone object vociferously
>: against the claim that we cannot think or
>: speak about stars in ways which aren't socially
>: constructed?
>: Raghu:
>: You are right, we can't, but only in the trivial sense
>: that language is socially constructed.
>: Exactly. There is no *interesting* sense in which
>: the social conventions involved matter to the way
>: astronomers and astrophysicists think and speak about
>: stars.
>Ach. I was always fond of the music of the spheres. Sorry it doesn't
>amount to *interest* ...
No angel ever wept in tears
To hear the music of the spheres
The lovely stones that course the skies
Were never made for human eyes
The stars are there if you but look
At them and not the poet's book
Their song is but a poet's phrase
Tis him and not the stars you praise
Mario Taboada
Silke:
Funny, to say that we cannot speak about anything
without the mediation of the social never struck me
as a very controversial claim, and I never cease to
wonder that some people actually take it upon themselves
to contradict it.
"Construction" suggest an artifact, one that has been created
purposefully. That word is a bad choice. Homosexuality, as far as we
know, has always existed. It's deceiving to call it a "construct". The
name sometimes makes (or is) the thing, but by no means always.
Now to show that Silke's statement is false:
I can speak about mathematics without appealing in any nontrivial way to
"social constructs". For example, I can state Fermat's theorem. The
statement will say exactly the same to every person cognizant of
elementary mathematics. There is no social construct at work.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
tejas
David Christopher Swanson wrote:
>
> In article <358783...@richmond.infi.net>> > > In article <6m6uio$dc$1...@thetimes.pixel.kodak.com>
> > > tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin) writes:
> > >
> > > > What I will point out is something a little different. (1) Part of our
> > > > cognitive abilities includes the ability to model our experience,
> > > > including our non-linguistic experience.
> > >
> > > "Model" it non-linguistically?
> >
> > Ground water modelers do it all the time. But you seldom want to have
> > a ground water modeller at a respectable socially constructed function.
> > Surface water modellers are even worse. And they track up the carpet
> > even more....
>
> Seems to me they draw picturers, visualize images. And it's really
> only the dowsers that disturb me.
Come, young David; dowsers are less disturbing than morris dancers
and snake handlers laboring in the spirit. Rather like feng shui.
--
TBSa...@richmond.infi.net (also te...@infi.net)
'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
Hank Snow THE RHUMBA BOOGIE
Mario Taboada
Silke:
>Since I still claim that mathematics is itself a social construct (and >a fine one), this sentence makes no sense to me.
Why do you consier mathematics "social"?
Me:
: For example, I can state Fermat's theorem. The
: statement will say exactly the same to every person cognizant of
: elementary mathematics. There is no social construct at work.
Silke:
>"Fermat", "theorem," "cognizant of elemantary mathematics." No social
>constructs anywhere. Sure, darling. Suit yourself.
Cara: you are confusing "social constructs" with language. The
Textualist Fallacy is rearing its beaten-up head again. I forgive you
because you make a living at it - I always respect professionals.
Regards, and do read the statement of Fermat's theorem (or of any other
theorem in mathematics). Then show me how social conditions can affect a
competent person's understanding of it.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
William Grosso
Mario Taboada wrote:
>
> Regards, and do read the statement of Fermat's theorem (or of any other
> theorem in mathematics). Then show me how social conditions can affect a
> competent person's understanding of it.
>
How about regarding the question "Is it actually a theorem ? Should
we regard it as proved ?" Surely you would agree that, over the
centuries, and within different circles of mathematicians, there
have been different standards of proof ?
--A
G*rd*n
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck):
| Well, I've been to a few parties with mathematics, and...
| I think mathematics is a discipline that has evolved historically, and is
| still evolving. So, saying "I can talk about mathematics without
| referring to any social constructs" just seems weird. Sounds like, "I can
| talk about trees without any reference to plants."
Mathematicians assure me that the language of mathematics
points to things which are definitely not language, just as
the language of physical things points to things which are
not language. Are these _things_ "mathematics", or only
something which mathematics points out, indicates, talks
about? If the former, then when you talk mathematics, you
may be referring to things which are not socially
constructed.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
Note: This mailbox generally cannot be reached from
sites which permit origination or relaying of junk mail.
Mario Taboada
>And your contention that everyone so
>cognizant will think of exactly the same thing when she hears 'Fermat's
>Theorem' strikes me as downright bizarre. And, well, easily
>falsifiable...
The meaning of the statement of Fermat's last theorem is unambiguous.
People may think of the rain outside or of King Canut, but that has
nothing to do with their understanding of the statement that "Under such
and such conditions, the following equation has no integer solutions,
etc."
: Regards, and do read the statement of Fermat's theorem (or of any
other
: theorem in mathematics). Then show me how social conditions can affect
a
: competent person's understanding of it.
>I see. There is no, and there never has been, any disagreement about
>Fermat's theorem amongst the cognizant. Again, suit yourself.
There was never any disagreement as to what the theorem (until recently,
a conjecture) says. There were many failed attempts at proving it - but
those failures had nothing to do with misunderstanding what was to be
proved.
To give a more elementary example: do you consider the statement:
"The three heights of a triangle pass through the same point"
a "socially constructed" statement?
If so, I would be interested in hearing why and how.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
William Grosso
Mario Taboada wrote:
>
> The meaning of the statement of Fermat's last theorem is unambiguous.
>
Sure it is. And nobody's understanding of the integers changed
as a result of Peano's axiomatization either.
Facts without context are like *meaningless*. You can wander
around claiming they're "unambiguous," but it's not at all
clear how a meaningless statement could be ambiguous.
>
> To give a more elementary example: do you consider the statement:
>
> "The three heights of a triangle pass through the same point"
>
> a "socially constructed" statement?
>
ObObsbcureAndOccludedStarTrekReference: "Point", "point", what is
this "point" ?
--A
tejas
Francis Muir wrote:
>
> Gerry Quinn writes:
> Silke-Maria Weineck writes:
>
> that we cannot think or speak about stars in ways which
> aren't socially constructed?
>
> by our experiences, if that is what you mean. But it is hard to
> stretch the term 'socially constructed' to mean anything useful
> when we think about the physics of energy production in stars
> - its sense becomes so weak and general as to be effectively
> meaningless.
>
> is to say the recent invention that neutrinos have mass, is very much
> a social construct in that it allows for a snappy end to the universe
> that mirrors its Big Bang beginning. The old ending, the Chaotic
> Whimper, is now the New Heresy, and I'm looking forward to the
> Astrophysical equivalent of the First Council of Trent to begin denying
> tenure to Old Thinkers.
Trent Lott will preside?
redflag
Mario Taboada wrote:
> Cara: you are confusing "social constructs" with language. The
> Textualist Fallacy is rearing its beaten-up head again. I forgive you
> because you make a living at it - I always respect professionals.
>
> Regards, and do read the statement of Fermat's theorem (or of any other
> theorem in mathematics). Then show me how social conditions can affect a
> competent person's understanding of it.
I was begining to agree with you until it occured to me that becoming
a "competent person" involves some degree of social conditioning.
One is not born knowing how to count, associating numbers with their values
or knowing the multiplication table, Mario, these are learned abilities.
BTW, I am completely ignorant of Fermat's theorem, having fallen through
the arithmetic safety net as a child. Hit my head. Never recovered.
Robert Vienneau
In article <35889716...@smi.stanford.edu>, William Grosso
<gro...@smi.stanford.edu> wrote:
> Mario Taboada wrote:
> > The meaning of the statement of Fermat's last theorem is unambiguous.
> Sure it is. And nobody's understanding of the integers changed
> as a result of Peano's axiomatization either.
Anybody who understands this ever watch a child learn to count? The
child is simultaneously discovering the idea of a sequence;
one-to-one relationships; the concept of an isomorphism between
all sequences; and that the number of items in a finite
set is a property of the set, not how they are ordered.
I think it says something interesting about us that we find
counting useful.
How about a different question. Is science always better understood
by contextualizing it?
--
Robert Vienneau
r
v
i
e m
n o Whether strength of body or of mind, or wisdom,
@ c or virtue, are always found...in proportion to
d . the power or wealth of a man [is] a question
r e fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the
e p hearing of their masters, but highly unbecoming
a a to reasonable and free men in search of the
m c truth.
s -- Rousseau
G*rd*n
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin):
| ... As an example, Gordon
| Fitch in another thread claimed that homosexuals did not exist prior to
| the social construction of this category, merely people who preferred
| sex only with members of their own gender. Well ... it doesn't matter
| when the English word "homosexual" was invented. Its meaning includes
| what Fitch describes, and as long as there have been people, some of
| them have been homosexual.
This misses the point. There was no category of persons
designated as homosexual. In point of fact, when human
sexual behavior is examined along a spectrum of hetero-
versus homosexuality, it spreads out seamlessly (although
not uniformly). The number of persons whose feelings,
thoughts, and behavior are completely at one end of the
spectrum or the other are rare. In order to designate
persons as heterosexual and homosexual, it's necessary to
draw a line somewhere; but the line is an artifice which the
situation itself does not necessarily require of us.
As long as homosexuals were politically and culturally
repressed, they could be thought of us all the same. As
the repression began to end, it turned out that they did
not all fall into one self-evident category, and that is
why one now sees such formulas as "Gay, Lesbian, bisexual,
and transgendered." New systems of categorization have
been required, and those who do not fall into the standard
heterosexual model now have progressed to four. It might be
that if "heterosexual" were not used repressively, it, too,
might require division.
Of course, all these categorizations are repressive of the
substantial fact of the seamless spectrum. But they have
considerable cultural meaning for those who participate in
their construction, and so they "exist."
It's true that the categories could be applied to people
who lived before they were invented; one can always do that.
One can decide whether Nero was a Republican or a Democrat.
But it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
G*rd*n
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin):
| >> But Sirius -- the star -- is not at all socially constructed. The hand
| >> of man has affected it not one iota, and it merrily goes on its way....
Fitch:
| > More accurately, there seems to be a _Ding_an_sich_ out
| > there which produces the phenomena we construct to be
| > the star Sirius, ..
tur...@temporarily.unavailable (Russ Turpin):
| I thought the philosophical Ding_an_sich was about how things
| Really Are, rather than about how they appear, and as such,
| its relationship to the star Sirius is rather .. mysterious.
It's the _Ding_an_sich_, or else there's nothing behind
phenomena, or maybe the situation is impossible for us to
understand. Since the second and third possibilities
trouble people, Kant invented (constructed) the
_Ding_an_sich_ category for them, and said there was stuff
in it. It makes things like Sirius easier to think about.
Of course, Sirius _could_ be a self-conscious being, and
not just the mere object of construction. But we don't
know this at the moment.
Lee Rudolph
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) writes:
>Of course, Sirius _could_ be a self-conscious being, and
>not just the mere object of construction. But we don't
>know this at the moment.
APPEAL TO THE GOVERNOR
After the manner of the Greeks,
old spiders: set this point
equal to the shoulder joint,
this to the eye; lay off these lines,
belt, fore-arm, sword; complete the figure
with straightedge alone. This is Orion.
Proceed to the next construction, Sirius.
Continue like this.
Do not reproach me that I have been unable
to take your tattoos from you: there have been hot needles
thrust under your skin; like night when the mad engineer
unloaded his train car by car, and burned it all
to sear his way through, leapfrogging switches, your flesh
was startled, the tracks sealed off behind.
When the barn catches fire,
the spiders in the loft
will run to the centers of their webs.
The wind is high, it blows through chinks in the walls
to fan the fire, it blows through the coarse-weave,
the homespun, blows your lace off the pins,
the antimacassar has slipped from the horsehair chair
and now you can see: the sky is upholstery,
the stars seen close enough on are brass,
sixsided tacks, restraining the substantial dark.
Who would have thought such a simple guest
in your parlor would find the flaw in your fine rug,
would leave you to hang yourself
among the attic rafters?
(copyright 1974, 1997, by Lee Rudolph)
ObRAB: ISBN 0-914086-04-9 (ask your bookseller to find you a
copy *today*).
Lee Rudolph
Paul Ilechko
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Make up your mind... is mathematics itself socially constructed or do
> you refer to the language used to describe the abstract concepts that
> mathematics deals with?
--
Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
defined ?
***************
Paul Ilechko
http://www.transarc.com/~pilechko/homepage.htm
Russ Turpin
-*-------
Turpin:
>> .. Well ... it doesn't matter when the English word "homosexual"
>> long as there have been people, some of them have been homosexual.
Fitch:
> This misses the point. There was no category of persons
> designated as homosexual. In point of fact, when human
> sexual behavior is examined along a spectrum of hetero-
> versus homosexuality, it spreads out seamlessly (although
> not uniformly). The number of persons whose feelings,
> thoughts, and behavior are completely at one end of the
> spectrum or the other are rare. In order to designate
> persons as heterosexual and homosexual, it's necessary to
> draw a line somewhere; but the line is an artifice which the
> situation itself does not necessarily require of us.
The problem is that what Fitch originally said -- that there were no
homosexuals before this concept was invented -- neither helps nor is
buttressed by all the points he now very nicely makes. Yes, the
category didn't exist .. but that doesn't mean that people then didn't
fit the category. Yes, human sexuality falls along a spectrum .. but
many, valid, useful concepts carve out areas of complex phenomena that
fall along continuous ranges. Yes, the boundaries for such notions are
human artifice .. but so are the boundaries of all words. These are
all nice points, and they do nothing to buttress what Fitch originally
and falsely claimed: that homosexuals didn't exist until the category
was invented.
Again, I suggest that Fitch would better say what he wants to say if
he were to leave behind the silly rhetoric that is popularly borrowed
from certain literary camps. For example, we now get:
> .. Of course, all these categorizations are repressive of the
> substantial fact of the seamless spectrum.
Only for those who seem to have forgotten how words work.
> It's true that the categories could be applied to people
> who lived before they were invented; one can always do that.
No, one can't always do that. Indeed, some categories can't be applied
to people until long after the category is invented. For example, our
ancestors were talking about those would live in the 20th century
before any such person was born! The point is that whether or not a
category can be applied to a person at a particular time and in a
particular place has very little to do with when a category is
invented, and everything to do with its meaning, and in particular,
with its membership criteria.
> One can decide whether Nero was a Republican or a Democrat. But it
> doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Of course it doesn't, because he wasn't and could not have been,
because those parties did not exist then. (Note, well, that the issue
isn't that the *words* didn't exist then, but that those words mean
something -- membership or voting affiliation with particular political
parties -- that qualifies no one in ancient Rome.) In contrast,
homosexual has a meaning that quite well qualifies some people of
ancient Rome.
Paul Ilechko
Russ Turpin wrote:
> > One can decide whether Nero was a Republican or a Democrat. But it
> > doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
>
> Of course it doesn't, because he wasn't and could not have been,
> because those parties did not exist then. (Note, well, that the issue
> isn't that the *words* didn't exist then, but that those words mean
> something -- membership or voting affiliation with particular political
> parties -- that qualifies no one in ancient Rome.)
--
For most of the world, the worlds "republican" and "democrat" are not
capitalized, and have specific meanings that have nothing to do with
American political parties (both of which are by and large republican
AND democratic). Those words did in fact make sense in Nero's time.
Russ Turpin
-*------
Fitch writes:
> It's the _Ding_an_sich_, or else there's nothing behind
> phenomena, or maybe the situation is impossible for us to
> understand.
I wonder if these alternatives really exhaust the possibilities
of metaphysics.
> .. Kant invented (constructed) the _Ding_an_sich_ category ..
> It makes things like Sirius easier to think about.
Curiously, those who spend a lot of time thinking about stars
seem to have little need for Ding an Sich. Ditto those who
think about plants. Or animals. Or .. well, we could run
through all the natural sciences and engineering. Maybe there
is some other purpose to it?
Paul Ilechko
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> : > Make up your mind... is mathematics itself socially constructed or do
> : > you refer to the language used to describe the abstract concepts that
> : > mathematics deals with?
> : Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
> : defined ?
> I'd like to hear Rajappa rap on zero wrt this.
--
Also negative numbers, real numbers, imaginary numbers, infinity ...
Francis Muir
Paul Ilechko writes:
Silke-Maria Weineck writes:
Mr. X writes:
Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to
describe it was defined ?
I'd like to hear Rajappa rap on zero wrt this.
Also negative numbers, real numbers, imaginary numbers, infinity ...
And, more importantly, NaN, Not any Number. It is remarkable how
long it took for those two anonymes from Intel to come up with a
useful closed arithmetic that also ameliorated the biassing problems
introduced by Big Blue, who were supposed to have access to the
math geniuses of the world. Now and then IEEE Committees lay down
the law and dear old Auntie Iso tags along.
Francis
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: Why? Do you think that zero as a concept didn't exist until someone
: used the term zero?
Of course!
Zero STILL doesn't exist.
Can you show me any place that it does?
David Loftus
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Michael S. Morris wrote:
> "scientific proof" (e.g. how truth claims are
> established) are we to use? Therein lies the rub.
>
> No. That is precisely where I am saying the rub does
> *not* lie. To call some other methodology "scientific"
> or some other body of lore "science" would be
> lexicographical legerdemain---to demonstrate
> the "social construction" of science only
> in the most trivial and sophistical sense. Which
> sense simply isn't interesting.....
> ..... Or a Native American science or a Ptolemaic
> science or an alchemical science that were in some sense
> different "social constructions" than modern science but
> nevertheless led to scientific knowledge not accessible
> to science as we know it.
What's "science" and "science as we know it"?
Regards, Dan | Columbia Political Science | www.columbia.edu/~dhn2
William Grosso
Robert Vienneau wrote:
>
> Anybody who understands this ever watch a child learn to count? The
> child is simultaneously discovering the idea of a sequence;
> one-to-one relationships; the concept of an isomorphism between
> all sequences; and that the number of items in a finite
> set is a property of the set, not how they are ordered.
>
Yeah, right. As someone who, every now and then, has to explain
modus ponens to grown ups, I really doubt they're discovering
these notions with great precision.
ObBook: _The Alphabet Effect_ by some guy. I briefly skimmed this
many years ago. The gist of the argument went something like:
Take a typical 10 year old in China or England. They have roughly
equivalent vocabularies and roughly equivalent "writing skills"
(e.g. know the spelling / pictograph of the same number of words
and have the same level of grammatical skills). So what did the
English child learn the Chinese chiild was learning all those
individual symbols ? Well, the notion of indexing and sequences.
It was a long time ago and I never bothered to find out whether
he had his facts right. But an interesting thesis.
--A
Paul Ilechko
Zero exists as a concept, not as a thing.
However, Rajappa ignored my original question as to whether Mathematics
could be said to have existed before the concepts were formalized by
defining a language to describe them.
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On 17 Jun 1998, Russ Turpin wrote:
> -*--------
> Daniel Nexon:
> > Be slightly more careful: Gordon, AFAIK, is drawing on the distinction
> > between heteroerotic/homoerotic acts and heterosexuality/homosexuality.
> > The claim made by advocates of this and similar distinctions is that we
> > have an important shift in the social construction of human sexuality when
> > sexual acts start to be identified with personhood -- i.e. when engaging
> > in homoerotic acts *makes* *you* *a* "homosexual." ...
>
> And I view this as sloppy language. It confuses someone being a
> homosexual with them also living in a culture that attaches particular
> kinds of importance to that (and that therefore is more likely than
> other cultures to have a word for this.) It is very easy to describe
> and discuss the latter state of affairs in English without resorting
> to language that is quite misleading.
I disagree with your characterization of "sloppy language." While I am
open to debate on this matter, it doesn't seem to me you've given any
reason to believe that we should call someone a "homosexual" absent the
dsicursive context (a term, which, for all its problems, is more
appropriate here than "a culture") which gives rise to the notion
"homosexual."
> "Meaningful" and "helpful" are very different. It is meaningful
> precisely because homosexual is an English word correctly applied to
> a man who shows "a distinct preference for men" as sexual partners.
It is *not* meaningful (so the argument goes) because the categorization
requires a social-cultural context -- one which did not exist -- in order
to be comprehensible. To say that it *is* meaningful requires, for
example, that we imagine "if Alexander had lived in the 1990s we would
call him a homosexual." That would require us to assume that Alexander has
an "essence" which is transposable outside of his social-cultural context.
Unfortunately, we cannot rip the personhood of Alexander outside of the
social-cultural (and material) environment in which he was produced,
holding only his sexual activity constant, and still have "Alexander" by
any stretch of the imagination.
Francis Muir
David J. Loftus writes:
Rajappa Iyer writes:
Why? Do you think that zero as a concept didn't exist until
someone used the term zero?
Of course!
Zero STILL doesn't exist.
Can you show me any place that it does?
It certainly did not exist for the very well-known Indian mathematicuan,
Dr. B. For it was "zedro", a nice indo-anglicization. His integrals inevitably
ran from zedro to infinighty. Perhaps he had been attacked by one
neutrino too many.
Francis
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: dl...@netcom.com (David J. Loftus) writes:
: > Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: >
: > : Why? Do you think that zero as a concept didn't exist until someone
: > : used the term zero?
: >
: >
: > Of course!
: >
: > Zero STILL doesn't exist.
: >
: > Can you show me any place that it does?
: I said, the *concept* of zero. Subtle difference.
Subtle or not subtle, it is a difference without a significance in this
case. In whose mind did the concept of zero exist before a human being
concocted it ... God's?
David Loftus
William Denton
Paul Ilechko <pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com> wrote:
: Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it
: was defined ?
Was 1 + 1 = 2? Was there a unique decomposition into prime factors of
any whole number? All that? Yes.
Bill
--
--
William Denton : Toronto, Ontario, Canada : bu...@interlog.com
http://www.vex.net/~buff/
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: Paul Ilechko <pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com> writes:
: > However, Rajappa ignored my original question as to whether Mathematics
: > could be said to have existed before the concepts were formalized by
: > defining a language to describe them.
: Didn't ignore it... just didn't think there was any controversy about
: that. The concepts of mathematics that are described by a formal
: language could be said to have existed before the language itself was
: defined.
They "could be said to have existed," yes (nice use of the passive voice,
there). In fact, you're saying it over and over -- but on what basis?
That's what several of us are asking.
: This is why most mathematical results are *discovered* as
: opposed to being *invented*.
Are they discovered, or are they said to be discovered?
In other words, what is the substantive difference between being
discovered and being invented, in this instance?
David Loftus
Mario Taboada
: Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
: defined ?
Of course. And, in the main, mathematics is not "described" but "done" -
an important distinction, especially for pomo-mushroomers and leafers
who subscribe to the Textualist Fallacy. A description of a theorem and
its proof is used to help people understand how it is situated within a
theory and in what ways it is significant, what motivates the proof (if
the presenter is generous with the audience), what other interesting
questions it opens up, and what applications it may have. But such a
description does not replace in any way the statement + proof. The
latter is the mathematics.
If someone wants to make a sociological or psychological study of how
mathematicians work, that's fine (even interesting); or how scientific
communities function and sanction, that's fine, even necessary. But the
mathematics itself is not subject to social forces.
I apologize for repeating the obvious, but it looks like
pomo-mushroomers and leafers need this sort of remedial instruction in
elementary science.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
David J. Loftus
Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: : Why? Do you think that zero as a concept didn't exist until someone
: : used the term zero?
: What real entity does 'zero' refer to? What real entity does -1 refer to?
: Since you seem to be sure that -1 could have existed as a concept before
: someone conceptualized it, how did it exist and how do you know?
In my view, what you are saying, Rajappa, is no different from asserting
that Sherlock Holmes, Little Red Riding Hood, Stephen Dedalus, and Betty
Boop existed as concepts or characters before some human being
happened to discover them.
David Loftus
Richard Harter
Paul Ilechko <pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com> wrote:
>Rajappa Iyer wrote:
>> Make up your mind... is mathematics itself socially constructed or do
>> you refer to the language used to describe the abstract concepts that
>> mathematics deals with?
>--
>Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
>defined ?
Oh dear, oh dear. "Exist" is, like, just this word, you know. It sort
of slops over all over the place.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
The animal described in Job is like no other;
That's because it is a uniqueorn
Russ Turpin
-*-----
Daniel Nexon:
> .. While I am open to debate on this matter, it doesn't seem to me
> you've given any reason to believe that we should call someone a
> "homosexual" absent the dsicursive context (a term, which, for all
> its problems, is more appropriate here than "a culture") which gives
> rise to the notion "homosexual."
Why should this be any more relevant to the word "homosexual" than
to the word "bipedal"? Do you also think we should refrain from
discussing whether certain of our ancestors were bipedal, because
they lacked the discursive context that gives rise to this notion?
> It is *not* meaningful (so the argument goes) because the categorization
> requires a social-cultural context -- one which did not exist -- in order
> to be comprehensible. ...
Again, I see a looseness in language that confounds those speaking with
those spoken about. The speakers must be in the social-cultural
context to understand this word, but their understanding of it does not
require those spoken about to share this context.
> ... To say that it *is* meaningful requires, for example, that we
> imagine "if Alexander had lived in the 1990s we would call him a
> homosexual." ..
No, it just requires knowing Alexander's sexual preferences, and
whether he preferred men to women. His preferences, in his time and in
his culture. Just as affirming that Alexander was bipedal requires
only knowing that he walked rather than crawled his way through Asia
Minor, and does NOT require imagining how he might how he might have
moved about in 1990!
Paul Ilechko
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> In other words, while the
> language and symbols used to describe mathematical concepts may be
> social constructs, the concepts themselves are not.
--
I still fail to understand how a "concept" can exist without a language
to describe it. An unnamed "object" can exist - it can be seen, heard,
felt, tasted - but a concept is by its very nature a function of
language.
Raghu Seshadri
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: Paul Ilechko <pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com> writes:
:
: > However, Rajappa ignored my original question as to whether Mathematics
: > could be said to have existed before the concepts were formalized by
: > defining a language to describe them.
:
: Didn't ignore it... just didn't think there was any controversy about
: that. The concepts of mathematics that are described by a formal
: language could be said to have existed before the language itself was
: opposed to being *invented*.
Rajappa, Mario and Mike,
I admire your eternal optimism, indefatigable
energy and persistence ( touched with a little bit
of naivete ) in your attempt to teach the
subtleties of mathematical concepts and
other highfalutin' stuff to people who haven't
noticed the objective existence of the SUN !!
These guys think the Sun, the star Sirius etc
are all "socially constructed". The only thing
to do, imo, is to say "sure, sure, whatever"
and slowly back off, making sure that there
are no sharp instruments with which they might
hurt you or themselves.
I like the elegant and lucid explanations
all of you have presented, but I doubt if
it will penetrate the solid wall with which
pomo surrounds its victims.
RS
Paul Ilechko
Richard Harter wrote:
> >Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
> >defined ?
>
> Oh dear, oh dear. "Exist" is, like, just this word, you know. It sort
> of slops over all over the place.
--
Maybe Mathematics is really God. Or vice versa ..
Paul Ilechko
Raghu Seshadri wrote:
> These guys think the Sun, the star Sirius etc
> are all "socially constructed". The only thing
> to do, imo, is to say "sure, sure, whatever"
> and slowly back off, making sure that there
> are no sharp instruments with which they might
> hurt you or themselves.
>
> I like the elegant and lucid explanations
> all of you have presented, but I doubt if
> it will penetrate the solid wall with which
> pomo surrounds its victims.
--
I really hope you don't jump in front of traffic as easily as you jump
to conclusions. I, for one, have a degree in mathematics and strenuously
object to a 'pomo" tag. And I'm very surprised that someone so
apparently intelligent doesn't understand the difference between an
object and a concept.
Mario Taboada
Silke:
<<Also, your very own use of "Fermat's Theorem" isn't meant to point to
the theorem itself. It's meant, as far as I can determine, as "something
mathematical I know about and you probably don't." Or, "something
famous in mathematics." After all, there's no direct connection between
this thread and the theorem.>>
I mentioned Fermat's theorem (the famous one) because it is something
that *the public* knows about and because its statement is very easy to
understand to someone who knows high-school algebra. My point was and is
that the statement of this theorem is "saying something" that is not
socially constructed. The choice of theorem is inessential here.
My comment is directly relevant to the thread in that it shows your
assertion that "anything one can say is socially constructed" is false.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
Raghu Seshadri
Paul Ilechko (pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com) wrote:
: I really hope you don't jump in front of traffic as easily as you jump
: to conclusions. I, for one, have a degree in mathematics and strenuously
: object to a 'pomo" tag.
I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote that.
: And I'm very surprised that someone so
: apparently intelligent doesn't understand the difference between an
: object and a concept.
We can have a nice discussion on these
matters, and rational people can differ
on what the various terms mean; my only
point is that these discussions are futile,
when one of the parties hasn't noticed the
independent existence of the Sun and the
star Sirius, and imagines that human society
is needed for their existence :-)
What is your position on this ? Do you
think the sun didn't exist before humans
"conceptualized" about it ? If you think
that is absurd, then we can discuss the
difference between an object and a concept
and other higher stuff. If not, further
discussion is not likely to be useful.
RS
Raghu Seshadri
Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: : We can have a nice discussion on these
: : matters, and rational people can differ
: : on what the various terms mean; my only
: : point is that these discussions are futile,
: : when one of the parties hasn't noticed the
: : independent existence of the Sun and the
: : star Sirius, and imagines that human society
: : is needed for their existence :-)
: And you are entirely certain that you are paraphrasing the various
: positions that have come up correctly?
There is a simple test which will reveal
if I am right or not, about my paraphrase.
Do you agree with the following statement ?
" The sun, the star Sirius etc existed before human
society evolved, and their internal processes,
their orbits and the principles that govern them
are entirely independent of what humans think
about them. Humans can be right about them,
or wrong about them, but human thoughts cannot
negate their objective existence."
If you disagree, then my claim is proved.
If you agree, then I admit I was wrong about
my formulation of your views.
: : What is your position on this ? Do you
: : think the sun didn't exist before humans
: : "conceptualized" about it ? If you think
: : that is absurd, then we can discuss the
: : difference between an object and a concept
: : and other higher stuff. If not, further
: : discussion is not likely to be useful.
:
: How is the existence of the sun relevant to my claim that representations
: of the sun are socially mediated?
First things first. I will answer this question
after getting your reply, because that will determine
if further "discussion" will be useful.
RS
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: > Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: > : Why? Do you think that zero as a concept didn't exist until someone :
: > used the term zero? : -- :
: >
: > What real entity does 'zero' refer to?
: A concept doesn't really need to refer to a physical entity in order
: for the concept to exist.
No, but it has to have a meaning to someone to exist; without humans to
conceive of it -- or evidence that someone other than humans is
conceiving or has conceived of it -- it does not exist.
: For example, zero could refer to the number of times you've provided
: a satisfactory answer to my query `What is deconstruction?' :-)
It might ... but you're the one who interprets silke's behavior and
applies to concept of zero to it. In other words, you care. Without
humans to care, zero does not exist, let alone have any consequence.
: > Since you seem to be sure that -1 could have existed as a concept before
: > someone conceptualized it, how did it exist and how do you know?
: I'll answer that when you conclusively demonstrate that the concept
: did not exist until someone coined a formal term for it. Hint: why do
: we say `discover' when talking about mathematical results?
Because we are a vain and self-centered species.
According to Occam's Razor, it is more logical to assume non-existence,
which creates nothing from nothing, than existence, which creates
something from what may perhaps have been nothing.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: A concept doesn't really need to refer to a physical entity in order
: for the concept to exist.
Another way to say this is that the concepts of God, heaven, the Devil and
UFOs don't really need to refer to physical entities in order to exist.
Therefore, they exist as concepts quite apart from what humans might
think or say about them ... and perhaps even as physical entities.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: dl...@netcom.com (David J. Loftus) writes:
: > Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: >
: > : I said, the *concept* of zero. Subtle difference.
: >
: > Subtle or not subtle, it is a difference without a significance in this
: > case. In whose mind did the concept of zero exist before a human being
: > concocted it ... God's?
: Why was Fermat considered to have *discovered* many properties about
: numbers and not have *invented* them? Until he formally stated those
: properties, whose mind did those properties exist in?
He was "considered to have *discovered*" them because other human beings
observed and labeled his activities as such, because they cared about it,
not because there was anything necessarily inherent, transcendent, or
objective about what he was doing -- just like the properties he was
inventing.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
Rajappa Iyer (r...@lucent.com) wrote:
: dl...@netcom.com (David J. Loftus) writes:
: > In my view, what you are saying, Rajappa, is no different from
: > asserting that Sherlock Holmes, Little Red Riding Hood, Stephen
: > Dedalus, and Betty Boop existed as concepts or characters before
: > some human being happened to discover them.
: It is possible, although I've not seen any reason to believe so. Look
: at it this way... there are numerous instances in history where the
: same mathematical results were arrived at by two or more individuals
: who had never heard of each other's work. Does that tell you
: something about the existence of mathematical concepts before its
: formal discovery (i.e. the process of formally describing it)?
Not necessarily. It might tell me a lot about human perceptions and
values -- and their largely shared but possibly limited nature.
Look at it this way: A lot of people at various locations around the
globe have described superior beings in the same way, and reported the
content of their nightmares in the same manner? Do you therefore
conclude there is something inherent, objective, or transcendent about the
contents of their descriptions?
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
Raghu Seshadri (sesh...@cse.ucsc.edu) wrote:
: Rajappa, Mario and Mike,
: I admire your eternal optimism, indefatigable
: energy and persistence ( touched with a little bit
: of naivete ) in your attempt to teach the
: subtleties of mathematical concepts and
: other highfalutin' stuff to people who haven't
: noticed the objective existence of the SUN !!
: These guys think the Sun, the star Sirius etc
: are all "socially constructed". The only thing
: to do, imo, is to say "sure, sure, whatever"
: and slowly back off, making sure that there
: are no sharp instruments with which they might
: hurt you or themselves.
: I like the elegant and lucid explanations
: all of you have presented, but I doubt if
: it will penetrate the solid wall with which
: pomo surrounds its victims.
Your inability to grasp the distinction between whatever objective
physical reality is out there and our descriptions of it is stunning, as
well, Raghu. Your elegant but nevertheless snide contempt is less so.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
Raghu Seshadri (sesh...@cse.ucsc.edu) wrote:
: Paul Ilechko (pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com) wrote:
:
: : I really hope you don't jump in front of traffic as easily as you jump
: : to conclusions. I, for one, have a degree in mathematics and strenuously
: : object to a 'pomo" tag.
: I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote that.
: : And I'm very surprised that someone so
: : apparently intelligent doesn't understand the difference between an
: : object and a concept.
: We can have a nice discussion on these
: matters, and rational people can differ
: on what the various terms mean; my only
: point is that these discussions are futile,
: when one of the parties hasn't noticed the
: independent existence of the Sun and the
: star Sirius, and imagines that human society
: is needed for their existence :-)
Who ever said it was?
Has it ever occurred to you that you might, at times, be just as
responsible for the lack of progress in mutual understanding in the course
of disagreements like these, as the other side may be?
David Loftus
Richard Harter
Paul Ilechko <pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com> wrote:
>Richard Harter wrote:
>> >Question: did Mathematics exist before the language to describe it was
>> >defined ?
>>
>> Oh dear, oh dear. "Exist" is, like, just this word, you know. It sort
>> of slops over all over the place.
>--
>Maybe Mathematics is really God. Or vice versa ..
Maybe, maybe not. My money is on not.
My point was that people are using the word "exist" in different
unacknowledged senses. Perhaps it would be better to say that they are
using it in reiterated nonsenses.
The nifty thing about the argument is that all sides recognize that
everyone else is babbling.
Raghu Seshadri
Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: : There is a simple test which will reveal
: : if I am right or not, about my paraphrase.
:
: : Do you agree with the following statement ?
:
: : " The sun, the star Sirius etc existed before human
: : society evolved, and their internal processes,
: : their orbits and the principles that govern them
: : are entirely independent of what humans think
: : about them. Humans can be right about them,
: : or wrong about them, but human thoughts cannot
: : negate their objective existence."
: I agree with it up to a point (pesky things, these neither/nors, eh?) --
: in terms of the discussion we're having, it's a rather sloppy way of
: talking. You might want to qualify it a bit to bring to the fore what you
: mean -- "Aspects of what we call the sun..." I don't think "the sun"
: existed before society evolved if you think of "the sun" as a signifier
: that signifies a great deal more than what you mention above. Certainly,
: "the concept of the sun" didn't exist before there was a mind to
: conceptualize it. I'm not sure there is such a thing as "a principle" that
: exists independently from the mind, either.
Your last sentence precludes any reasonable
dialog with you, Silke. The logical conclusion of
what you wrote there is that if we humans
didn't exist, the principles that govern the
existence of the sun today wouldn't exist
either, so the sun wouldn't exist but for
humans.
Mr Loftus, do you agree with Silke here ?
If yes, any further discussion with either
of you is impossible. If not, I agree with your
point that there is a legitimate argument
that may be made about objects and concepts,
and we can continue with that.
RS
Paul Ilechko
Raghu Seshadri wrote:
> What is your position on this ? Do you
> think the sun didn't exist before humans
> "conceptualized" about it ? If you think
> that is absurd, then we can discuss the
> difference between an object and a concept
> and other higher stuff. If not, further
> discussion is not likely to be useful.
I haven't followed that part of the discussion, and I'm not sure what
the specific differences of opinion are; however, I will answer your
question specifically. I DO think that the sun existed before humans
"conceptualized it". I doubt that anyone specifically disagree with that
question, and there are probably some subtle semantic issues here that
aren't clear from what you are saying.
I am less clear that saying that mathematical concepts existed before
there was a language to describe them (and yes, Richard Harter is right
and "exist" is a real fuzzy word here) makes sense.
Paul Ilechko
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> The expression of a concept is a function of the language not the
> concept itself. Are you telling me that you've never had an idea that
> you could not put into words (at least, not without expending a
> non-trivial amount of thought)?
--
I'm not clear that the amount of complexity required to express a
concept is relevant to the discussion at hand.
Raghu Seshadri
David J. Loftus (dl...@netcom.com) wrote:
: : when one of the parties hasn't noticed the
: : independent existence of the Sun and the
: : star Sirius, and imagines that human society
: : is needed for their existence :-)
:
: Who ever said it was?
:
: Has it ever occurred to you that you might, at times, be just as
: responsible for the lack of progress in mutual understanding in the course
: of disagreements like these, as the other side may be?
I designed a simple test to verify your point
above, please read Silke's response.
I'd like to know your reaction.
RS
William Denton
Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: I cannot prove a negative, as you well know.
Why can't you? Happens all the time in math.
Raghu Seshadri
Paul Ilechko (pile...@NOSPAM.transarc.com) wrote:
: > think the sun didn't exist before humans
: > "conceptualized" about it ? If you think
: > that is absurd, then we can discuss the
: > difference between an object and a concept
: > and other higher stuff. If not, further
: > discussion is not likely to be useful.
:
: I haven't followed that part of the discussion, and I'm not sure what
: the specific differences of opinion are; however, I will answer your
: question specifically. I DO think that the sun existed before humans
: "conceptualized it". I doubt that anyone specifically disagree with that
: question, and there are probably some subtle semantic issues here that
: aren't clear from what you are saying.
If you think the Sun existed before humans did,
then the Sun could not have been socially
constructed. This silly claim was repeatedly
made by others, and that was what invited my
derision.
Silke has confirmed that she thinks the principles
by which the Sun exists depend upon human thought.
Ergo, if humans didn't exist, the sun couldn't,
because it depends upon human thoughts !
: I am less clear that saying that mathematical concepts existed before
: there was a language to describe them (and yes, Richard Harter is right
: and "exist" is a real fuzzy word here) makes sense.
There are several philosophies that are
current on these matters. It is interesting
that while philosophers differ, the overwhelming
number of practicing mathematicians think
and act as if Platonism is true - that mathematical
objects exist in nature, waiting to be discovered,
so to speak. (Result of a University of Chicago survey)
Think of the example Mario cited - Fermat's Last
Theorem. Do you think that it was true before Fermat
was born ? If yes, you have agreed that mathematical
concept existed before it was discovered.
If no, please give me your reasons.
RS
:
: ***************
:
: Paul Ilechko
: http://www.transarc.com/~pilechko/homepage.htm
Daniel Hugh Nexon
On 18 Jun 1998, Russ Turpin wrote:
> Daniel Nexon:
> > .. While I am open to debate on this matter, it doesn't seem to me
> > you've given any reason to believe that we should call someone a
> > "homosexual" absent the dsicursive context (a term, which, for all
> > its problems, is more appropriate here than "a culture") which gives
> > rise to the notion "homosexual."
>
> Why should this be any more relevant to the word "homosexual" than
> to the word "bipedal"?
The short answer is that it is more relevant to the word "homosexual" than
the word "bipedal." I'll exand on this shortly.
> > It is *not* meaningful (so the argument goes) because the categorization
> > requires a social-cultural context -- one which did not exist -- in order
> > to be comprehensible. ...
>
> Again, I see a looseness in language that confounds those speaking with
> those spoken about.
Well, I see a kind of assumption here about the relationship between the
subject and object (the observor and the observed) which has (certainly in
the context of social science) been long abandoned :).
But, anyway.....
> The speakers must be in the social-cultural
> context to understand this word, but their understanding of it does not
> require those spoken about to share this context.
It depends upon what kind of claims you want to express. You're probably
on reasonably safe grounds calling our distant ancestors "bipeds" (whether
or not they thought of themselves that way) if you want to express certain
concepts of evolution or biology. But if one want to make a social
statement like "the Greeks tolerated homosexuality" (the context of
Gordon's comments, IIRC) one is on far shakier ground -- the 'Greeks',
didn't "tolerate homosexuality" but men who engaged in sexual acts with
men. By defining those men as homosexuals you import notions of the
relationship between sexual acts and identity which were not relevant to
the subjects in question. *That* does render one's claim pretty much
irrelevant.
But let's back up a second -- I've been operating under the assumption
that you know what terms like "discursive context" mean. Do you dispute
the porposition that languages are open systems without final referants?
If you don't, then meaning is not endogenous to the words we use, but
involves certain fixings of the relationship between words (in addition,
no words is exhaustively defined by looking at something like a dictionary
definition -- since all you're given is other words which are, themselves,
defined with references to other words) which is external to the words
themselves.
(You should note that I am not making claims here that are restricted to
so-called 'post-modernism.' I reject the epistemic- and
linguistic-fallacies, properly understood, but I also reject the
application of unproblematic realism to the 'social world.')
>
> > ... To say that it *is* meaningful requires, for example, that we
> > imagine "if Alexander had lived in the 1990s we would call him a
> > homosexual." ..
>
> No, it just requires knowing Alexander's sexual preferences, and
> whether he preferred men to women. His preferences, in his time and in
> his culture....
Wrong. See above.
. Just as affirming that Alexander was bipedal requires
> only knowing that he walked rather than crawled his way through Asia.
These are not the same kinds of categorical claims.
Regards, Dan | Columbia Political Science | www.columbia.edu/~dhn2
"Surely here is an opportunity to get rid of that great stick of a
character _Homo economicus_ and to replace him with someone real, like
Madame Bovary." -D. McCloskey, _The Rhetoric of Economics_
Raghu Seshadri
Silke-Maria Weineck (wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: : If you think the Sun existed before humans did,
: : then the Sun could not have been socially
: : constructed. This silly claim was repeatedly
: : made by others, and that was what invited my
: : derision.
: concepts. All concepts are human. The claim was not that the real doesn't
: exist. If you want to proclaim that you get sunburnt for a reason, find
: someone to argue with. We ain't it.
You make several claims, some of them
contradicting others. Here you say you
are not denying the existence of the Sun.
Good.
But elsewhere you denied the independent
existence of the principles which allow
the Sun to exist. This is the same as
denying the existence of the Sun.
: : Silke has confirmed that she thinks the principles
: : by which the Sun exists depend upon human thought.
:
: No, she hasn't. I said that "principle" is a human concept.
Let me reiterate the implication of
your belief. If principle is a human concept,
before the existence of humans, no principles
existed. As a subset, no principles which
allow the Sun to exist existed. Therefore
the Sun didn't exist before humans.
You shrink from the logical conclusion of
your premise, yet you cling to your silly
premises !
This is irrational.
: : Ergo, if humans didn't exist, the sun couldn't,
: : because it depends upon human thoughts !
: You really believe that? Man, you're far gone...
How old are you ? This is way too childish
even for a 10 year old.
RS
:
: smw
:
:
Paul Ilechko
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> The claim that was made was that "the Sun" signifies many different
> concepts. All concepts are human. The claim was not that the real doesn't
> exist. If you want to proclaim that you get sunburnt for a reason, find
> someone to argue with. We ain't it.
--
I find it pretty scary that I'm on the same side of an argument as Silke
- I don't think it ever happened before !
Paul Ilechko
Raghu Seshadri wrote:
> If you think the Sun existed before humans did,
> then the Sun could not have been socially
> constructed. This silly claim was repeatedly
> made by others, and that was what invited my
> derision.
I think you are misrepresenting their claims. I don't think anyone is
saying that the sun did not exist. I think perhaps they are saying that
"the sun" as a signifier of an object can be seperated from the object
itself, but as I said, I haven't followed it that closely.
The Sun is a star - why do we give it a special name ? Because there is
a tremendous mythology attached to it which is socially constructed. The
Sun appears to rotate around the earth, and its disappearance brings on
nightfall. This has been an incredible source of myths, stories and
religions over time. I think discussion of the Sun certainly has
resonances beyond it being a ball of burning gas.
I said:
> : I am less clear that saying that mathematical concepts existed before
> : there was a language to describe them (and yes, Richard Harter is right
> : and "exist" is a real fuzzy word here) makes sense.
You replied:
> There are several philosophies that are
> current on these matters. It is interesting
> that while philosophers differ, the overwhelming
> number of practicing mathematicians think
> and act as if Platonism is true - that mathematical
> objects exist in nature, waiting to be discovered,
> so to speak. (Result of a University of Chicago survey)
I always thought mathematics was an art, but it appears that most
mathematicians are engineers ;-)
> Think of the example Mario cited - Fermat's Last
> Theorem. Do you think that it was true before Fermat
> was born ? If yes, you have agreed that mathematical
> concept existed before it was discovered.
To my mind it was neither true or false, as it did not exist as a
theorem before Fermat proposed it. Did imaginary numbers exist in
nature before humanity found a need for them ?