De la grammatologie
Michael Zeleny
tab...@mathe.usc.edu (Mario Taboada) suggests:
>Some time ago, I suggested a public thread on his _De la grammatologie_.
>This would give everyone an opportunity to discuss *specific* points,
>both of content and style, with a specific book in mind - rather than
>the generalized pro and con posts that do not really say much about
>Derrida.
>
>How about starting with the first chapter, "la fin du livre et le
>commencement de l'ecriture"?
I second Mario's suggestion and recommend as supplementary texts Plato's
_Sophist_, _Theaetetus_, and _Statesman_; _La logique ou l'art de penser_
of Port-Royal; Frege's "Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung"; as well as Guthrie's
History of Greek Philosophy, Edwards' Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and
Peters' lexicon of Greek Philosophical Terms. I leave it to someone else
to recommend Heidegger.
My first text is Derrida's argument that in due course leads to his key
assertion that "en dernire instance, la différence entre le signifié et
le signifiant _n'est rien_":
L'évidence rassurante dans laquelle a dû s'organiser et doit vivre
encore la tradition occidentale serait donc celle-ci: l'ordre du
signifié n'est jamais contemporain, est au mieux l'envers ou le
parallèle subtilement décalé -- le temps d'un souffle -- de l'ordre
du signifiant. Et le signe doit être l'unité d'une hétérogénéité,
puisque le signifié (sens ou chose, noème ou réalité) n'est pas en
soi un signifiant, une _trace_: en tout cas n'est pas constitué
dans son sens par son rapport à la trace possible. L'essence
formelle du signifié est la _présence_, et le privilège de sa
proximité au logos comme _phonè_ est le privilège de la présence.
Réponse inéluctable dès lorsqu'on se demande "qu'est-ce que le
signe?", c'est-à dire lorsqu'on soumet le signe à la question de
l'essence, au "ti esti". L'"essence formelle" du signe ne peut
être déterminée qu'à partir de la présence. On ne peut contourner
cette réponse, sauf à recuser la forme même de la question et
commencer à penser que le signe [est] cette [chose] mal nommée, la
seule, qui échappe à la question institutrice de la philosophie:
"Qu'est-ce que...?"
I await your comments before unleashing the bilious stream of my objections.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zel...@math.ucla.edu | Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food ** www.ptyx.com ** M...@ptyx.com
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> My first text is Derrida's argument that in due course leads to his key
> assertion that "en dernire instance, la diff=E9rence entre le signifi=E9 =
et
> le signifiant _n'est rien_":
> =
> L'=E9vidence rassurante dans laquelle a d=FB s'organiser et doit vivr=
e
> encore la tradition occidentale serait donc celle-ci: l'ordre du
> signifi=E9 n'est jamais contemporain, est au mieux l'envers ou le
> parall=E8le subtilement d=E9cal=E9 -- le temps d'un souffle -- de l'o=
rdre
> du signifiant. Et le signe doit =EAtre l'unit=E9 d'une h=E9t=E9rog=E9=
n=E9it=E9,
> puisque le signifi=E9 (sens ou chose, no=E8me ou r=E9alit=E9) n'est p=
as en
> soi un signifiant, une _trace_: en tout cas n'est pas constitu=E9
> dans son sens par son rapport =E0 la trace possible. L'essence
> formelle du signifi=E9 est la _pr=E9sence_, et le privil=E8ge de sa
> proximit=E9 au logos comme _phon=E8_ est le privil=E8ge de la pr=E9se=
nce.
> R=E9ponse in=E9luctable d=E8s lorsqu'on se demande "qu'est-ce que le
> signe?", c'est-=E0 dire lorsqu'on soumet le signe =E0 la question de
> l'essence, au "ti esti". L'"essence formelle" du signe ne peut
> =EAtre d=E9termin=E9e qu'=E0 partir de la pr=E9sence. On ne peut con=
tourner
> cette r=E9ponse, sauf =E0 recuser la forme m=EAme de la question et
> commencer =E0 penser que le signe [est] cette [chose] mal nomm=E9e, l=
a
> seule, qui =E9chappe =E0 la question institutrice de la philosophie:
> "Qu'est-ce que...?"
> =
> I await your comments before unleashing the bilious stream of my objectio=
ns.
No no, object away -- we'll go from there. I can't presume to paraphrase =
this passage better than it speaks itself; although as an explanation of =
*presence* this excerpt is, of course, hardly adequate. But that only =
means we may have to reach beyond it to answer your objections.
By the way, is Russell out there? He should be in on this as the primary =
authority on Derrida's "silly nonsense."
I'd ask the same of Sokal, of course, except that putting _Of =
Grammatology_ in front of him would be like reading Balzac to a cow.
-- brian
Mario Taboada
I thought the subject of this thread was to discuss "De la grammatologie"
by Jacques Derrida....Michael posted an excerpt and invited a discussion,
echoing an earlier suggestion of mine.
Why do people ignore this and instead keep rehashing the Sokal joke?
I had even oiled the Legendary Differance Machine in order to
consult with it...now it will gather cobwebs in the back of my
garage.
Regards,
--
Mario Taboada
* Department of Mathematics * Old Dominion University * Norfolk, Virginia
e-mail: tab...@math.odu.edu
William Grosso
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
>
> Michael Kagalenko (mkag...@lynx.dac.neu.edu) wrote:
> : brian artese (b-ar...@nwu.edu) wrote:
> : ]it up to Sokalian scrutiny. Remember that Sokal did claim to have
> : ]devastated Derrida with his Social Text article;
>
> : Quote from Sokal, please, or apology.
>
> You mean you haven't read the Lingua Franca piece either? Do you do
> anything but Usenet and memorizing Bell Curve?
>
Enclosed below is the entire Lingua Franca article (taken directly
from Sokal's Web site-- bad formatting due entirely to Sokal).
Where in it is the "claim to have devastated Derrida ?"
There are vague bits about intellectual laziness and pretension.
But nothing that specifically attacks Derrida and nothing that
need be taken as attacking Derrida-- the article works just as well,
if not better, when viewed solely as an attack on the sycophants
who drop their intellectual guard whenever D's name is invoked.
Cheers,
Andy
Lingua Franca, May/June 1996, pp. 62-64
A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies
Alan D. Sokal
Department of Physics
New York University
4 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003 USA
Internet: SO...@NYU.EDU
Telephone: (212) 998-7729
Fax: (212) 995-4016
The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter
by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests
and perspectives is --- second only to American political campaigns
---
the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of
anti-intellectualism
in our time.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)
For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the
standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the
American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist:
if I find myself unable to make head or tail of _jouissance_ and
_diff'erance_, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards,
I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment:
Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies
--- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries
as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross ---
publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if
(a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological
preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my
article,
``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics
of Quantum Gravity,'' in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of _Social_Text_.
It appears in a special number of the magazine devoted to the
``Science Wars.''
What's going on here?
Could the editors _really_ not have realized that my article
was written as a parody?
In the first paragraph I deride
``the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the
Western
intellectual outlook'':
that there exists an external world,
whose properties are independent of any individual human being
and indeed of humanity as a whole;
that these properties are encoded in ``eternal'' physical laws;
and that human beings can obtain reliable,
albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to
the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures
prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.
Is it now dogma in Cultural Studies that there
exists no external world?
Or that there exists an external world but
science obtains no knowledge of it?
In the second paragraph I declare, without the slightest evidence or
argument, that ``physical `reality' [note the scare quotes] ...
is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.''
Not our _theories_ of physical reality, mind you,
but the reality itself.
Fair enough: anyone who believes that the laws of physics are
mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those
conventions from the windows of my apartment.
(I live on the twenty-first floor.)
Throughout the article, I employ scientific and mathematical concepts
in ways that few scientists or mathematicians could possibly take
seriously.
For example, I suggest that the ``morphogenetic field'' ---
a bizarre New Age idea due to Rupert Sheldrake ---
constitutes a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity.
This connection is pure invention; even Sheldrake makes no such claim.
I assert that Lacan's psychoanalytic speculations have
been confirmed by recent work in quantum field theory.
Even nonscientist readers might well wonder
what in heavens' name quantum field theory has to do with
psychoanalysis;
certainly my article gives no reasoned argument to support such a link.
Later in the article I propose that the axiom of equality
in mathematical set theory is somehow analogous to the homonymous
concept in feminist politics. In reality, all the axiom of equality
states is that two sets are identical if and only if they have
the same elements.
Even readers without mathematical training might well be suspicious
of the claim that the axiom of equality reflects set theory's
``nineteenth-century liberal origins.''
In sum, I intentionally wrote the article so that any competent
physicist
or mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major)
would realize that it is a spoof.
Evidently the editors of _Social_Text_
felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without
bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject.
The fundamental silliness of my article lies, however, not in its
numerous solecisms but in the dubiousness of its central thesis
and of the ``reasoning'' adduced to support it.
Basically, I claim that quantum gravity --- the still-speculative
theory of space and time on scales of a millionth of a billionth
of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter ---
has profound _political_ implications (which, of course, are
``progressive'').
In support of this improbable proposition, I proceed as follows:
First, I quote some controversial philosophical pronouncements of
Heisenberg and Bohr, and assert (without argument) that
quantum physics is profoundly consonant with ``postmodernist
epistemology.''
Next, I assemble a pastiche ---
Derrida and general relativity, Lacan and topology,
Irigaray and quantum gravity --- held together by vague rhetoric
about ``nonlinearity'', ``flux'' and ``interconnectedness.''
Finally, I jump (again without argument) to the assertion that
``postmodern science'' has abolished the concept of objective reality.
Nowhere in all of this is there anything resembling a logical sequence
of thought;
one finds only citations of authority,
plays on words, strained analogies, and bald assertions.
In its concluding passages, my article becomes especially egregious.
Having abolished reality as a constraint on science, I go on to suggest
(once again without argument) that science, in order to be
``liberatory,''
must be subordinated to political strategies. I finish the article by
observing that ``a liberatory science cannot be complete without a
profound revision of the canon of mathematics.'' We can see hints of an
``emancipatory mathematics,'' I suggest, ``in the multidimensional and
nonlinear logic of fuzzy systems theory; but this approach is still
heavily marked by its origins in the crisis of late-capitalist
production
relations.'' I add that ``catastrophe theory, with its dialectical
emphases
on smoothness/discontinuity and metamorphosis/unfolding, will
indubitably
play a major role in the future mathematics; but much theoretical work
remains to be done before this approach can become a concrete tool of
progressive political praxis.''
It's understandable that the editors of _Social_Text_ were unable to
evaluate critically the technical aspects of my article (which is
exactly
why they should have consulted a scientist). What's more surprising is
how readily they accepted my implication that the search for truth in
science must be subordinated to a political agenda, and how oblivious
they were to the article's overall illogic.
Why did I do it?
While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious.
What concerns me is the proliferation,
not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking _per se_,
but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking:
one that denies the existence of objective realities,
or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays
their practical relevance.
At its best, a journal like _Social_Text_ raises important
questions that no scientist should ignore --- questions, for example,
about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work.
Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the
discussion of these matters.
In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking
is both intellectual and political.
Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that
they are false (when not simply meaningless).
There _is_ a real world;
its properties are _not_ merely social constructions;
facts and evidence _do_ matter.
What sane person would contend otherwise?
And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely
of attempts to blur these obvious truths ---
the utter absurdity of it all being
concealed through obscure and pretentious language.
_Social_Text_'s acceptance of my article exemplifies
the intellectual arrogance of Theory
--- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory ---
carried to its logical extreme.
No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist.
If all is discourse and ``text,''
then knowledge of the real world is superfluous;
even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies.
If, moreover, all is rhetoric and ``language games,''
then internal logical consistency is superfluous too:
a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well.
Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue;
allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence and logic.
My own article is, if anything, an extremely _modest_
example of this well-established genre.
Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness
is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left.
We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face.
For most of the past two centuries,
the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism;
we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of
objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for
combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful ---
not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right.
The recent turn of many ``progressive''
or ``leftist'' academic humanists and social scientists
toward one or another form of epistemic relativism
betrays this worthy heritage and
undermines the already fragile prospects for
progressive social critique.
Theorizing about ``the social construction of reality''
won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS
or devise strategies for preventing global warming.
Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and
politics
if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.
The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least,
that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left
have been getting intellectually lazy.
The editors of _Social_Text_ liked my article
because they liked its _conclusion_:
that ``the content and methodology of postmodern science provide
powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.''
They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence,
the cogency of the arguments, or even the relevance of the
arguments to the purported conclusion.
Of course, I'm not oblivious to the ethical issues involved in my rather
unorthodox experiment. Professional communities operate largely on
trust;
deception undercuts that trust. But it is important to understand
exactly
what I did. My article is a theoretical essay based entirely on publicly
available sources, all of which I have meticulously footnoted. All works
cited are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are
invented. Now, it's true that the author doesn't believe his own
argument. But why should that matter? The editors' duty as scholars is
to
judge the validity and interest of ideas, without regard for their
provenance. (That is why many scholarly journals practice blind
refereeing.) If the _Social_Text_ editors find my arguments convincing,
then why should they be disconcerted simply because I don't? Or are they
more deferent to the so-called ``cultural authority of technoscience''
than
they would care to admit?
In the end, I resorted to parody for a simple pragmatic reason. The
targets of my critique have by now become a self-perpetuating academic
subculture that typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from
the outside. In such a situation, a more direct demonstration of the
subculture's intellectual standards was required. But how can one show
that the emperor has no clothes? Satire is by far the best weapon; and
the blow that can't be brushed off is the one that's self-inflicted. I
offered the _Social_Text_ editors an opportunity to demonstrate their
intellectual rigor. Did they meet the test? I don't think so.
I say this not in glee but in sadness.
After all, I'm a leftist too
(under the Sandinista government I taught mathematics
at the National University of Nicaragua).
On nearly all practical political issues
--- including many concerning science and technology ---
I'm on the same side as the _Social_Text_ editors.
But I'm a leftist (and feminist)
_because_ of evidence and logic, not in spite of it.
Why should the right wing be allowed to monopolize
the intellectual high ground?
And why should self-indulgent nonsense ---
whatever its professed political orientation ---
be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement?
Alan Sokal is a Professor of Physics at New York University.
He is co-author with Roberto Fern'andez and J"urg Fr"ohlich of
_Random Walks, Critical Phenomena,
and Triviality in Quantum Field Theory_ (Springer, 1992),
and co-author with Jean Bricmont of the forthcoming
_Les impostures scientifiques des philosophes (post-)modernes_.
SIDEBAR: EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE
Thus, general relativity forces upon us radically new and
counterintuitive notions of space, time and causality; so it is not
surprising that it has had a profound impact not only on the natural
sciences but also on philosophy, literary criticism, and the human
sciences. For example, in a celebrated symposium three decades ago on
_Les Langages Critiques et les Sciences de l'Homme_,
Jean Hyppolite raised an
incisive question about Jacques Derrida's theory of structure and sign
in
scientific discourse ...
Derrida's perceptive reply went to the heart of classical general
relativity:
The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center.
It is the very concept of variability --- it is, finally, the
concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept
of some_thing_ --- of a center starting from which an observer
could master the field --- but the very concept of the game ...
In mathematical terms, Derrida's observation relates to the invariance
of the
Einstein field equation G_{\mu\nu} = 8\pi G T_{\mu\nu} under nonlinear
space-time diffeomorphisms (self-mappings of the space-time manifold
which
are infinitely differentiable but not necessarily analytic). The key
point
is that this invariance group ``acts transitively'':
this means that any space-time point, if it exists at all,
can be transformed into any other. In this way the infinite-dimensional
invariance group erodes the distinction between observer and observed;
the \pi of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant
and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity;
and the putative observer becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from
any epistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined
by
geometry alone.
William Grosso
moggin wrote:
>
> Are you serious? Seriously. If Sokal wanted to say something
> like, "There's a big drop-off in the quality of deconstruction after
> you get past Derrida," he gives absolutely no sign of it whatsoever.
Precisely. He gives no sign of really caring about deconstruction
at all.
> His target is clear: _jouissance_ is a reference to Barthes, and
> _differance_ is a reference to Derrida. How much more obvious could
> it be that Sokal's animus is directed at post-structuralism?
Well, considering that, in the paragraph containing the references
to jouissance and differance, he actually says
> For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the
> standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the
> American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist:
> if I find myself unable to make head or tail of _jouissance_ and
> _diff'erance_, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
I'd say that he's referring to the *followers* of D and B
(North American Division, USA subsection) rather than D and
B directly.
> But he spells it out anyhow, attacking "the intellectual arrogance of
> Theory -- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory..." The essay contains
> zilch, zero, zip to distinguish one such theorist from another.
How abot the following caveats, taken from his Lingua Franca
article:
>Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
or, how about his major conclusion:
> The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least,
> that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left
> have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of _Social_Text_
> liked my article because they liked its _conclusion_
I'd say "American academic left" pretty much excludes Barthes
and Derrida from the scope of the attack.
And, of course, there are his repeated references to "the
editors of Social Text."
> If you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida
> or Barthes apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence
> in his article.
Nor does his article give any evidence of his ability to
distinguish Mozart from Garth Brooks. Conclusion: he's
tone-deaf ?
As to the rest of your post: your complaint seems to be that
Sokal is attacking all of post-structuralism and he's doing so
without providing any supporting arguments.
Pretend, just for a moment, that he's only attacking a specific
branch ("Cultural Studies") and, in fact, is only attacking the
people he says he's attacking ("Certain precincts of the American
academic humanities"). If this is the case, his failure to support
an all-out indictment of post-structuralism isn't nearly so damning.
In fact, it's just what you'd expect. What would he gain by
throwing in a gratuitous assault on Barthes ?
Cheers,
Andy
Silke-Maria Weineck
Michael Kagalenko (mkag...@lynx.dac.neu.edu) wrote:
: brian artese (b-ar...@nwu.edu) wrote:
: ]it up to Sokalian scrutiny. Remember that Sokal did claim to have
: ]devastated Derrida with his Social Text article;
: Quote from Sokal, please, or apology.
YOu mean you haven't read the Lingua Franca piece either? Do you do
anything but Usenet and memorizing Bell Curve?
S.
moggin
apul...@ix.netcom.com (that would be Andy) wrote:
> Enclosed below is the entire Lingua Franca article (taken directly
> from Sokal's Web site-- bad formatting due entirely to Sokal).
> Where in it is the "claim to have devastated Derrida ?"
> There are vague bits about intellectual laziness and pretension.
> But nothing that specifically attacks Derrida and nothing that
> need be taken as attacking Derrida-- the article works just as well,
> if not better, when viewed solely as an attack on the sycophants
> who drop their intellectual guard whenever D's name is invoked.
Are you serious? Seriously. If Sokal wanted to say something
like, "There's a big drop-off in the quality of deconstruction after
you get past Derrida," he gives absolutely no sign of it whatsoever.
His target is clear: _jouissance_ is a reference to Barthes, and
_differance_ is a reference to Derrida. How much more obvious could
it be that Sokal's animus is directed at post-structuralism? But he
spells it out anyhow, attacking "the intellectual arrogance of Theory
-- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory..." The essay contains
zilch, zero, zip to distinguish one such theorist from another. If
you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida or Barthes
apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence in his article.
And "vague"? It's true that Sokal never gets down to cases (he
performed his hoax precisely to _avoid_ that necessity), but he gives
considerably more than some "vague bits about intellectual laziness
and pretension." For example, he writes, "What concerns me is the
proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking _per se_, but
of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking..." After that,
he invokes the cliches found in almost every assault on Derrida, _et
al_. in order to define the kind that he's thinking of.
Sokal's claims are plain enough, too -- he believes that he's
offered a "direct demonstration" of the low "intellectual standards"
which reign throughout an "academic subculture," and shown "that the
emperor has no clothes." But his substantiation isn't just _vague_,
it's completely missing. Much like the substance of his criticism.
A defender of "intellectual standards" should remember to apply them,
don't you think? Looks terrible, otherwise. Although you can hope
no one will notice.
-- moggin
brian artese
Michael Kagalenko wrote:
>> brian artese (b-ar...@nwu.edu) wrote:
>> it up to Sokalian scrutiny. Remember that Sokal did claim to have
>> devastated Derrida with his Social Text article;
>
> Quote from Sokal, please, or apology.
Here ya go: Alan Sokal in the July/August edition of _Lingua
Franca_:
"My essay ... is an annotated bibliography of the charlatanism and
nonsense purveyed by dozens of prominent French and American
intellectuals."
Although the 'American intellectuals' could theoretically refer to
anybody, the reference to the French can _only_ refer to the handful
of philosophers and critics that are read by academics in the U.S.
One of the more famous of these is Derrida. Since Sokal could not be
referring to some other more obscure French writers known only in
France, it is impossible that Derrida is not one of the 'prominent
French intellectuals' he's referring to.
-- brian
brian artese
William Grosso wrote:
> Enclosed below is the entire Lingua Franca article (taken directly
> from Sokal's Web site-- bad formatting due entirely to Sokal).
>
> Where in it is the "claim to have devastated Derrida ?"
Please see my response to Michael Kagalenko on this thread for the
_Lingua Franca_ quotation.
-- brian
brian artese
moggin wrote:
> apul...@ix.netcom.com (that would be Andy) wrote:
>
> > Enclosed below is the entire Lingua Franca article (taken directly
> > from Sokal's Web site-- bad formatting due entirely to Sokal).
> > Where in it is the "claim to have devastated Derrida ?"
> > There are vague bits about intellectual laziness and pretension.
> > But nothing that specifically attacks Derrida and nothing that
> > need be taken as attacking Derrida-- the article works just as well,
> > if not better, when viewed solely as an attack on the sycophants
> > who drop their intellectual guard whenever D's name is invoked.
>
> Are you serious? Seriously. If Sokal wanted to say something
> like, "There's a big drop-off in the quality of deconstruction after
> you get past Derrida," he gives absolutely no sign of it whatsoever.
> His target is clear: _jouissance_ is a reference to Barthes, and
> _differance_ is a reference to Derrida. How much more obvious could
> it be that Sokal's animus is directed at post-structuralism? But he
> spells it out anyhow, attacking "the intellectual arrogance of Theory
> -- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory..." The essay contains
> zilch, zero, zip to distinguish one such theorist from another. If
> you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida or Barthes
> apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence in his article.
Yep.
And the next logical question: Where is Sokal's _actual_ critique of
Derrida and Barthes? In my neck of the woods a critique of a writer is
something directed at, you know, actual books he's written. And if a
colleage claims to have unmasked a charlatan, you feel a bit envious
because you know that as a scholar he couldn't possibly make such a
sweeping claim without having read virtually all of the texts in
question. If he hasn't -- well, you try to laugh _with_ him. If he
hasn't even offered a direct critique -- then people sort of avoid him
out of sheer embarrassment.
-- brian
Silke-Maria Weineck
William Grosso (apul...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
: >
: > Michael Kagalenko (mkag...@lynx.dac.neu.edu) wrote:
: > : brian artese (b-ar...@nwu.edu) wrote:
: > : ]it up to Sokalian scrutiny. Remember that Sokal did claim to have
: > : ]devastated Derrida with his Social Text article;
: >
: > : Quote from Sokal, please, or apology.
: >
: > You mean you haven't read the Lingua Franca piece either? Do you do
: > anything but Usenet and memorizing Bell Curve?
: >
: Enclosed below is the entire Lingua Franca article (taken directly
: from Sokal's Web site-- bad formatting due entirely to Sokal).
: Where in it is the "claim to have devastated Derrida ?"
I'd say something like the below qualifies nicely:
: _Social_Text_'s acceptance of my article exemplifies
: the intellectual arrogance of Theory
: --- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory ---
: carried to its logical extreme.
: No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist.
: If all is discourse and ``text,''
: then knowledge of the real world is superfluous;
: even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies.
: If, moreover, all is rhetoric and ``language games,''
: then internal logical consistency is superfluous too:
: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well.
: Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue;
: allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence and logic.
: My own article is, if anything, an extremely _modest_
: example of this well-established genre.
He claims that "acceptance of [his] article" proves something
about Postmodernist Literary Theory instead of about "Cultural Studies as
practiced _SOcial Text_ --- he does not need to mention Derrida's name
at this point. It is in passages like this one that he makes himself
risible; I have said numerous times, and say it again here for the
record, that I approve of the hoax and think ST had it coming -- I was
quite amused until I read the Lingua Franca article which is
intellectually irresonsible besides quite megalomaniac.
Silke
G*rd*n
wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck):
| ... I approve of the hoax and think ST had it coming -- I was
| intellectually irresonsible besides quite megalomaniac.
Maybe it's another hoax.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ gcf @ panix.com }"{
Doug Turnbull
In article <327DB0...@nwu.edu>, brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
> moggin wrote:
>
[big snip about Sokal et al]
> > If
> > you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida or Barthes
> > apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence in his article.
>
> Yep.
>
> And the next logical question: Where is Sokal's _actual_ critique of
> Derrida and Barthes? In my neck of the woods a critique of a writer is
> something directed at, you know, actual books he's written. And if a
> colleage claims to have unmasked a charlatan, you feel a bit envious
> because you know that as a scholar he couldn't possibly make such a
> sweeping claim without having read virtually all of the texts in
> question. If he hasn't -- well, you try to laugh _with_ him. If he
> hasn't even offered a direct critique -- then people sort of avoid him
> out of sheer embarrassment.
>
So what gives? I thought you all wanted to have a discussion of
Derrida without all the name calling and irrelevant nastiness of the
Sokal/Science/etc. threads, and here you've already swamped this embryonic
thread with just such sniping. Don't any of you understand Derrida either?
I was hoping that I could lurk and pick up some of D's ideas without
having to wade through his prose, a prospect I find far from appealing.
Indeed, the writing style in the original quote was even worse than I'd
been led to believe. I couldn't understand a word of it; it might as well
have been in a foreign language.
Doug Turnbull
Russell Turpin
-*-------
In article <d-turnb-0411...@obiwan.ccsm.uiuc.edu>,
Doug Turnbull <d-t...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> I was hoping that I could lurk and pick up some of D's ideas without
> having to wade through his prose, a prospect I find far from
In the past, several of us have posted passages from Derrida,
asking: What in the world is this supposed to mean? Zeleny is just
the latest to do so. I predict that what transpires now will
follow the same pattern it has in the past. (1) Derrida's
adherents will explain that they cannot explain his writing, which
itself is the most clear and concise statement of his ideas. (You
can pick yourself up off the floor now. I just recall the
progression: I do not write the jokes.) (2) In particular, they
will claim that Derrida's ideas cannot be expressed point by point.
It is some of these same adherents who claim that Derrida is
extremely rigorous in his exposition. (3) Occasionally, when
pressed hard, one of his adherents will explain what the adherent
thinks Derrida is trying to say in the posted passage. The
explanation is always clearer and more concise than the original
passage. It also ... well, maybe you will see.
> ... Indeed, the writing style in the original quote was even
> worse than I'd been led to believe. I couldn't understand a word
> of it; it might as well have been in a foreign language.
Whatever you do, don't label such passages with the G-word. Doing
so causes some of Derrida's adherents here to go into fits and
fabricate all sorts of lies about one.
Russell
--
The difference between life and a movie script is that the script has
to make sense. -- Humphrey Bogart
brian artese
Russell Turpin wrote:
> In the past, several of us have posted passages from Derrida,
> asking: What in the world is this supposed to mean? Zeleny is just
> the latest to do so. I predict that what transpires now will
> follow the same pattern it has in the past. (1) Derrida's
> adherents will explain that they cannot explain his writing, which
> itself is the most clear and concise statement of his ideas. (You
> can pick yourself up off the floor now. I just recall the
> progression: I do not write the jokes.) (2) In particular, they
> will claim that Derrida's ideas cannot be expressed point by point.
> It is some of these same adherents who claim that Derrida is
> extremely rigorous in his exposition. (3) Occasionally, when
> pressed hard, one of his adherents will explain what the adherent
> thinks Derrida is trying to say in the posted passage. The
> explanation is always clearer and more concise than the original
> passage. It also ... well, maybe you will see.
The only Derrida I've seen brought to the table (besides some
conversational excerpt about Einstein) is (1) Zeleny's _Grammatology_
thing, which didn't really beg for paraphrase (Zeleny promised a
stream of objections that would kick off a discussion, but none is
yet forthcoming. But if somebody's confused about the general
presence/phoneme thing, or whatever, they could just say so and we
could talk about it), and (2) Zeleny's quote about the
signifier/signified erasure. I wrote an explanation, we debated it,
even got to some issues of language-acquisition -- a happy bustling
Usenet extravaganza, if I recall.
-- brian
Don't be paranoid.
It makes you look suspicious to the authorities.
Mario Taboada
Silke Weineck says:
<<Doug and Mario, I think that those who are familiar with Derrida's work
find nothing strange in the passage quoted; Zeleny claimed he had
"objections," and we'd all be happy to examine them. But what's to
comment? As Brian said, the passage seems rather clear.>>
I assume this refers to the passage from Chapter 1 of "De la grammatologie".
However, I have not posted any comments on the passage.
More to the point, what leads you to believe that it is the "strangeness" of
"De la grammatologie" that deserves discussion? What was proposed was
a detailed discussion of the ideas proposed in the book, starting with
the first chapter, which hypothesizes a historical situation (that of the
chapter title) and begins to sketch a method to analyze it. In this
very first chapter there are *lots* of things to be discussed - including
serious problems regarding the assumptions, the history invoked, and
the provenance of the method (inspired by several well known authors).
Unless everything that I have mentioned here seems completely clear to
you (as you seem to imply), I would invite you to take part in the
discussion.
I am organizing my notes and, time permitting, will try to put together
some comments on Chapter 1 in the next couple of days.
But please....let's forget Sokal for a while, shall we? This group is
beginning to sound like an echo chamber when it comes to anything
"controversial" - after the first couple of posts, it's all repetition
and bickering.
Silke-Maria Weineck
0...@vyger516.nando.net> <327DB0...@nwu.edu>
<d-turnb-0411...@obiwan.ccsm.uiuc.edu>:
Distribution:
Doug and Mario, I think that those who are familiar with Derrida's work
find nothing strange in the passage quoted; Zeleny claimed he had
"objections," and we'd all be happy to examine them. But what's to
comment? As Brian said, the passage seems rather clear.
S.
Doug Turnbull (d-t...@students.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: In article <327DB0...@nwu.edu>, brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
: > moggin wrote:
: >
: [big snip about Sokal et al]
: > > If
: > > you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida or Barthes
: > > apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence in his article.
: >
: > Yep.
: >
: > And the next logical question: Where is Sokal's _actual_ critique of
: > Derrida and Barthes? In my neck of the woods a critique of a writer is
: > something directed at, you know, actual books he's written. And if a
: > colleage claims to have unmasked a charlatan, you feel a bit envious
: > because you know that as a scholar he couldn't possibly make such a
: > sweeping claim without having read virtually all of the texts in
: > question. If he hasn't -- well, you try to laugh _with_ him. If he
: > hasn't even offered a direct critique -- then people sort of avoid him
: > out of sheer embarrassment.
: >
: So what gives? I thought you all wanted to have a discussion of
: Derrida without all the name calling and irrelevant nastiness of the
: Sokal/Science/etc. threads, and here you've already swamped this embryonic
: thread with just such sniping. Don't any of you understand Derrida either?
: I was hoping that I could lurk and pick up some of D's ideas without
: having to wade through his prose, a prospect I find far from appealing.
: Indeed, the writing style in the original quote was even worse than I'd
: been led to believe. I couldn't understand a word of it; it might as well
: have been in a foreign language.
: Doug Turnbull
moggin
tur...@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin):
> In the past, several of us have posted passages from Derrida,
> asking: What in the world is this supposed to mean?
It might be my memory, which is imperfect, or my newsserver,
which is worse, but I don't remember seeing posts of that kind --
from you or anyone else. What I recall are repeated demands for
a brief summary of Derrida's work.
> Zeleny is just the latest to do so.
No, he posted an excerpt and said, "I await your comments
before unleashing the bilious stream of my objections." So in
this instance he deserves credit for being honest; you don't.
> I predict that what transpires now will
> follow the same pattern it has in the past. (1) Derrida's
> adherents will explain that they cannot explain his writing, which
> itself is the most clear and concise statement of his ideas. (You
> can pick yourself up off the floor now. I just recall the
> progression: I do not write the jokes.) (2) In particular, they
> will claim that Derrida's ideas cannot be expressed point by point.
> It is some of these same adherents who claim that Derrida is
> extremely rigorous in his exposition. (3) Occasionally, when
> pressed hard, one of his adherents will explain what the adherent
> thinks Derrida is trying to say in the posted passage. The
> explanation is always clearer and more concise than the original
> passage. It also ... well, maybe you will see.
As it happens, there have been some interesting discussions
of Derrida, de Man, and others. They don't happen often enough to
suit me, but they do occur, and they don't meet your description.
-- moggin
moggin
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
> And the next logical question: Where is Sokal's _actual_ critique of
> Derrida and Barthes? [...]
Missing.
-- moggin
moggin
d-t...@students.uiuc.edu (Doug Turnbull):
> I was hoping that I could lurk and pick up some of D's ideas without
> having to wade through his prose, a prospect I find far from appealing.
While I understand your feeling, that method is poorly suited to
Derrida's work. I strongly recommend approaching it through his texts.
If you begin with a handful of essays, the job of wading becomes much
easier. I've posted my suggestions -- tell me if you want to see them
again.
> Indeed, the writing style in the original quote was even worse than I'd
> been led to believe. I couldn't understand a word of it; it might as well
> have been in a foreign language.
If you mean the passage from _Grammatologie_, and you're not a
native French speaker, it was.
-- moggin
Silke-Maria Weineck
Mario Taboada (tab...@mathe.usc.edu) wrote:
: Silke Weineck says:
: <<Doug and Mario, I think that those who are familiar with Derrida's work
: find nothing strange in the passage quoted; Zeleny claimed he had
: "objections," and we'd all be happy to examine them. But what's to
: comment? As Brian said, the passage seems rather clear.>>
: I assume this refers to the passage from Chapter 1 of "De la grammatologie".
: However, I have not posted any comments on the passage.
I didn't suggest you had; you have asked for a discussion of quotes
brought forth several times; please start such a discussion if you want
to have it. I'm sure others will be happy to join in.
: More to the point, what leads you to believe that it is the "strangeness" of
: "De la grammatologie" that deserves discussion? What was proposed was
: a detailed discussion of the ideas proposed in the book, starting with
: the first chapter, which hypothesizes a historical situation (that of the
: chapter title) and begins to sketch a method to analyze it. In this
: very first chapter there are *lots* of things to be discussed - including
: serious problems regarding the assumptions, the history invoked, and
: the provenance of the method (inspired by several well known authors).
I'm glad to hear it, but I'm baffled: if you want to discuss these
things, why n ot put them on the table? What exactly are you waiting for?
You seem like someone who is frustrated that his remote control isn't
working anymore -- get up and change the channel yourself.
: Unless everything that I have mentioned here seems completely clear to
: you (as you seem to imply), I would invite you to take part in the
: discussion.
State your objections; I'd be happy to.
: I am organizing my notes and, time permitting, will try to put together
: some comments on Chapter 1 in the next couple of days.
Good -- that sounds promising.
: But please....let's forget Sokal for a while, shall we?
That sounds even more promising...
Silke
Doug Turnbull
In article <55m372$e...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu
(Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
> 0...@vyger516.nando.net> <327DB0...@nwu.edu>
> <d-turnb-0411...@obiwan.ccsm.uiuc.edu>:
> Distribution:
>
> Doug and Mario, I think that those who are familiar with Derrida's work
> find nothing strange in the passage quoted; Zeleny claimed he had
> "objections," and we'd all be happy to examine them. But what's to
> comment? As Brian said, the passage seems rather clear.
Well, since it was in French, it wasn't particularly clear to me. IOW,
my comment about the "foreign language" was a joke (as was some of the
rest of the post) I was going to use a smiley, but refrained in deference
to the refined sensibilities of those who find emoticons abhorrent.
Doug Turnbull
Silke-Maria Weineck
Doug Turnbull (d-t...@students.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: In article <55m372$e...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu
: (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
Perhaps Michael (who provided the French quote, presumably assuming --
correctly-- that nobody would engage it) would be kind enough to provide
an English translation.
S.
: Doug Turnbull
Richard Harter
wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
>: Well, since it was in French, it wasn't particularly clear to me. IOW,
>: my comment about the "foreign language" was a joke (as was some of the
>: rest of the post) I was going to use a smiley, but refrained in deference
>: to the refined sensibilities of those who find emoticons abhorrent.
>Perhaps Michael (who provided the French quote, presumably assuming --
>correctly-- that nobody would engage it) would be kind enough to provide
>an English translation.
Of the text or of the emoticon?
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
Life is tough. The other day I was pulled over for doing trochee's
in an iambic pentameter zone and they revoked my poetic license.
brian artese
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> Perhaps Michael (who provided the French quote, presumably assuming --
> correctly-- that nobody would engage it) would be kind enough to provide
> an English translation.
I think your presumption is correct -- but what the hell, i'll transcribe
a translation. This one's Peggy Kamuf's. I think Spivak's is probably
better, but I lent my copy to someone and, you know, i guess it turned out
to be a gift.
From _Of Grammatology_:
"The reassuring evidence within which Western tradition had to organize
itself and must continue to live would therefore be as follows: The order
of the signified is never contemporary, is at best the subtly discrepant
inverse or parallel--discrepant by the time of a breath--from the order of
the signifier. And the sign must be the unity of a heterogeneity, since
the signified (sense or thing, noeme or reality) is not in itself a
signifier, a *trace*: in any case is not constituted in its sense by its
relationship with a possible trace. The formal essence of the signified
is *presence*, and the privilege of its proximity to the logos as *phone`*
is the privilege of presence. This is the inevitable response as soon as
one asks: 'What is the sign?,' that is to say, when one submits the sign
to the question of essence, to the 'ti esti.' The 'formal essence' of the
sign can only be determined in terms of presence. One cannot get around
that response, except by challenging the very form of the question and
beginning to think that the sign [is] that ill-named [thing], the only
one, that escapes the insinuating question of philosophy: 'What is...?'"
An aside:
This is an introductory paragraph to the first chapter of the book.
Zeleny was heavily overstating things when he said that the
signifer/signifier erasure follows from this. All Derrida's doing here is
explaining the implications of the traditional conception of the
linguistic sign, as articulated by Saussure. If you haven't read the
first several pages of the "Course in General Linguistics," you may want
to do so--but it's not necessary; the schema of signification (sign =
signifer + signifed) is fairly familiar. Saussure's explanation of
linguistic value or meaning, however, which is almost always confused with
signification, is not familiar; but we'll see if we have to talk about
that...
Derrida is really only saying a couple of things about the sign here: that
there is a temporal gap between the signifier and signified; the signified
necessarily precedes the signifier. At the source of this temporal vector
is what we call presence. Since Western metaphysics divides the world
into "mind" and "reality", there are two orders of presence:
(1) the presence of the signified "thing", i.e. the essence of which the
signifier is only a trace.
(2) the presence of "mind" or "consciousness" -- again, of which the
signifier is only a trace. This is why speech is privileged over writing:
because speech is conceived as something spatially and temporally "closer"
to this consciousness than is writing. We think of writing as something
more mediated, more distant from its source, more of a stale trace of
consciousness (presence) than is speech. But anyway, I'm straying from
what Derrida is saying here...
Russell Turpin
-*------
In article <327FE0...@nwu.edu>, brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
> Derrida is really only saying a couple of things about the sign here:
> that there is a temporal gap between the signifier and signified; the
So when someone writes a specification for a thing not yet built,
the signifier for this thing signifies ... what? There are, of
course, a variety of attempts to rewrite the semantics of speech
about the future in terms of things that are present or past, but
I seriously doubt that Derrida or Artese are propounding a
philosophical preference for such semantic theories over other
semantic theories!
> ... This is why speech is privileged over writing: because speech
> is conceived as something spatially and temporally "closer" to this
> consciousness than is writing. ...
"Is perceived as"?? One can only imagine the source of this
perception! Because the tongue is closer to the head than is the
hand? Because the ear is next to the eye which is the window
into the soul? Oh, wait, wait ... I got it! Because the hearer
is always present when the speaker speaks! (Derrida lived in a
poor part of France where tape recorders were not yet available.)
There are significant differences between speech and writing. But,
... pffzzzzt! What's the point? No one here gives a damn about
linguistics.
Russell Turpin
-*--------
In article <55p46e$p...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Russell, please -- every freshman knows that the signified
> isn't the thing but the concept. I.e. every freshman who's
> read Saussure. ...
Where were you, Silke, when the lit critters here were explaining
that there are no concepts or intentions or any of this funky
mental stuff, but just words and differences between words and
(possibly, it wasn't entirely popular) the things to which words
refer? Perhaps Silke can explain to me what the post-Saussurian
lit critters want to do with concepts. If they admit that the
signified is a concept, it brings in the whole world of mentalese
(including notions such as authorial intention that they had
damned to oblivion), it creates a tight link between linguistics
and the rest of cognitive science, and it otherwise fouls their
biases and program. On the other hand ... well, as Silke
realizes, the other hand is not tenable.
> Think of it as the philosophy of language, and things look
> different. ...
What questions does a philosophy of language address?
David Swanson
In article <moggin-0511...@vyger205.nando.net>
mog...@nando.net (moggin) writes:
> As it happens, there have been some interesting discussions
> of Derrida, de Man, and others. They don't happen often enough to
> suit me, but they do occur, and they don't meet your description.
>
> -- moggin
I'm gonna risk going off topic. Feel free to relegate me to another
thread. I just read a paper about how the period from 1960-something
or other through December 1st 1987 (which was given some high-sounding
name) was an ethics-free period (for the English professors). By this
it seemed to be meant that it was recognized that an extra-human
standard of "right" was pretentious claptrap. Then De Man turned out
to be a Nazi and the roof fell in, and ethics was reborn. By this it
seemed to be meant that people took an interest in such questions as
kindness and democracy. Derrida apparently managed to BOTH show that
he had always everywhere been writing ethics AND begin a new ethical
phase. Other books were cited: something by Nussbaum, Rorty's
"Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity." Now, what is this all about? Is
it truly possible that for more than twenty years the whole entire
hoard of "theorists" supposed that because ethics was "only" human
choice no choices ever had to be made, and that De Man's downfall
opened their eyes? What was this guy, a priest? And what a
congregation!
David
"To get rich is glorious." Deng Xiaoping
moggin
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> > Perhaps Michael (who provided the French quote, presumably assuming --
> > correctly-- that nobody would engage it) would be kind enough to provide
> > an English translation.
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu>:
> I think your presumption is correct -- but what the hell, i'll transcribe
> a translation. This one's Peggy Kamuf's. I think Spivak's is probably
> better, but I lent my copy to someone and, you know, i guess it turned out
> to be a gift.
> From _Of Grammatology_:
> "The reassuring evidence within which Western tradition had to organize
> itself and must continue to live would therefore be as follows: The order
> of the signified is never contemporary, is at best the subtly discrepant
> inverse or parallel--discrepant by the time of a breath--from the order of
> the signifier. And the sign must be the unity of a heterogeneity, since
> the signified (sense or thing, noeme or reality) is not in itself a
> signifier, a *trace*: in any case is not constituted in its sense by its
> relationship with a possible trace. The formal essence of the signified
> is *presence*, and the privilege of its proximity to the logos as *phone`*
> is the privilege of presence. This is the inevitable response as soon as
> one asks: 'What is the sign?,' that is to say, when one submits the sign
> to the question of essence, to the 'ti esti.' The 'formal essence' of the
> sign can only be determined in terms of presence. One cannot get around
> that response, except by challenging the very form of the question and
> beginning to think that the sign [is] that ill-named [thing], the only
> one, that escapes the insinuating question of philosophy: 'What is...?'"
It seems Spivak and Kamuf have offered identical translations --
Spivak's may be the better, but it's also the same. I wonder how her
_Don Quixote_ is? Anyway, for those following along at home, we're at
the beginning of the section, "The Written Being/The Being Written."
-- moggin
Silke-Maria Weineck
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
: -*------
: In article <327FE0...@nwu.edu>, brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
: > Derrida is really only saying a couple of things about the sign here:
: > that there is a temporal gap between the signifier and signified; the
: > signified necessarily precedes the signifier. ...
: So when someone writes a specification for a thing not yet built,
: the signifier for this thing signifies ... what?
Russell, please -- every freshman knows that the signified isn't the
thing but the concept. I.e. every freshman who's read Saussure. You
probably mean what usually goes as "the referent."
[...]
: > ... This is why speech is privileged over writing: because speech
: > is conceived as something spatially and temporally "closer" to this
: > consciousness than is writing. ...
: "Is perceived as"?? One can only imagine the source of this
: perception! Because the tongue is closer to the head than is the
: hand? Because the ear is next to the eye which is the window
: into the soul? Oh, wait, wait ... I got it! Because the hearer
: is always present when the speaker speaks! (Derrida lived in a
: poor part of France where tape recorders were not yet available.)
: There are significant differences between speech and writing. But,
: ... pffzzzzt! What's the point? No one here gives a damn about
: linguistics.
Think of it as the philosophy of language, and things look different. And
do reread that last part of the _Phaedrus_.
Silke
brian artese
David Swanson wrote:
> I'm gonna risk going off topic. Feel free to relegate me to another
> thread. I just read a paper about how the period from 1960-something
> or other through December 1st 1987 (which was given some high-sounding
> name) was an ethics-free period (for the English professors). By this
> it seemed to be meant that it was recognized that an extra-human
> standard of "right" was pretentious claptrap. Then De Man turned out
> to be a Nazi and the roof fell in, and ethics was reborn. By this it
> seemed to be meant that people took an interest in such questions as
> kindness and democracy. Derrida apparently managed to BOTH show that
> he had always everywhere been writing ethics AND begin a new ethical
> phase. Other books were cited: something by Nussbaum, Rorty's
> "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity." Now, what is this all about? Is
> it truly possible that for more than twenty years the whole entire
> hoard of "theorists" supposed that because ethics was "only" human
> choice no choices ever had to be made, and that De Man's downfall
> opened their eyes? What was this guy, a priest? And what a
> congregation!
Here's what happened. De Man was a precocious, multi-lingual writer in
his early twenties (he was translating books by the time most of us were
congratulating ourselves about our undergraduate degrees), and he liked
big, over-arching theories. There was a popular theory in the air at
the time that the Jews were a kind of Illuminati that controlled the
world's economy, and it probably sounded good to him. Why do I presume
this? Well, he wrote hundereds of boring but well-written book reviews,
several of which were for a Belgian paper that eventually became
controlled by the Nazis. In one of these articles he talks about how
Jewish writers haven't contributed much to world literature. Pretty
stupid stuff (If you want to read the article, I think it's on the net
somewhere. In any case, de Man's wartime journalism is orderable from a
bookstore, but I forget who publishes it) During the war, he stopped
writing.
As a scholar in the U.S., he became famous decades later with the book
_Blindness and Insight_. It was one of the most influential and
controversial texts ever published in academia, because no collection of
literary essays had ever been so effective in destroying the validity of
big, over-arching theories -- especially the essentialism upon which
most "race"-talk is based. His next major text, _Allegories of Reading_
begins with a brief but comprehensive overview of
structuralist/formalist criticism and the problems therein -- probably
the best that's ever been written. He also pokes much fun at the
right-wing propensity for totality (including a pretty funny analogy
involving Archie Bunker which ends up citing Derrida as an influential
Arche-debunker). The books annoyed many people, especially
conservatives, Allan Bloom types, etc.
Later, some grad. student went to the library and found de Man's writing
in the Belgian paper. De Man was quite embarrassed. Here he was, far
past middle age, famous as one of the best close-readers in the U.S.,
and now he's a Nazi because of his idiotic 22-year-old ejaculations. He
should have told his colleagues about his youth long ago, but he didn't.
He was hoping people wouldn't notice.
Article Unavailable
brian artese
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
>> Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
>> There are significant differences between speech and writing. But,
>> ... pffzzzzt! What's the point? No one here gives a damn about
>> linguistics.
> Think of it as the philosophy of language, and things look different. And
> do reread that last part of the _Phaedrus_.
Silke, please, I hate to see you wasting your cyber-breath, on the brink of
spinning into the abyss with R.T. -- You must understand that Russell thinks
that any single sentence of Derrida's constitutes a thesis -- This is why he
says "So what? What's the point?" every third sentence. Nothing will stop
him, at every moment, from presuming that the introductory paragraph to an
introductory chapter we're looking at constitutes a manifesto.
-- brian
brian artese
Russell Turpin wrote:
> Where were you, Silke, when the lit critters here were explaining
> that there are no concepts or intentions or any of this funky
> mental stuff, but just words and differences between words and
> (possibly, it wasn't entirely popular) the things to which words
> refer? Perhaps Silke can explain to me what the post-Saussurian
> lit critters want to do with concepts. If they admit that the
> signified is a concept, it brings in the whole world of mentalese
> (including notions such as authorial intention that they had
> damned to oblivion), it creates a tight link between linguistics
> and the rest of cognitive science, and it otherwise fouls their
> biases and program. On the other hand ... well, as Silke
> realizes, the other hand is not tenable.
Russell, do you understand what is going on here? Do you
understand that we're talking about a paragraph in which Derrida is
simply paraphrasing Saussure? Do you understand that he's not yet
deconstructing the concept of the signifier/signified relationship
in this introduction, much less the notion of intent?
You respond to almost every utterance in alt.pomo as if they're
claiming to constitute an argument for these enormous issues you
bring up. I can understand attaining that habit among people who
use words like 'cognition' without blinking an eye, and I
understand your interest in the Big Issues. But if you really want
to understand what anti-essentialists are actually talking about
when they question the function of words like 'intent', please,
*read one of their books*. They will give you a much clearer, more
thorough progression through an argument than you will ever get on
the Usenet chop-block. Amateurs like myself don't have time to
write several pages of exegesis attempting to do what Foucault does
much better. Indeed, if you were really interested in
understanding the arguments before you argued against them, one
would think you would have gone the reading route first. If you
want to hear about something like intent in this thread it *may*
come up later -- the condition of presence is one of the things
intent requires.
-- brian
moggin
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu>:
[re: de Man]
> [...] There was a popular theory in the air at
> the time that the Jews were a kind of Illuminati that controlled the
> world's economy, and it probably sounded good to him. [...]
I have to disagree. There's no question de Man made anti-Semitic
remarks in the literary journalism that he wrote during the war, but he
didn't hold the view you describe -- in fact, he publically condemned
"vulgar anti-Semitism." (Leaving it unclear whether he was opposed to
anti-Semitism, or just to vulgarity.)
> Why do I presume
> this? Well, he wrote hundereds of boring but well-written book reviews,
> several of which were for a Belgian paper that eventually became
> controlled by the Nazis. In one of these articles he talks about how
> Jewish writers haven't contributed much to world literature.
The same article ("Les Juifs dans la litterature actuelle") where
de Man names Kafka as such a a contributor, along with Gide, Hemingway,
and Lawrence: a Jew, a homosexual, an anti-fascist, and a pornographer,
as someone has noted.
> Pretty
> stupid stuff (If you want to read the article, I think it's on the net
> somewhere. In any case, de Man's wartime journalism is orderable from a
> bookstore, but I forget who publishes it)
University of Nebraska Press. It's called Paul de Man: _Wartime
Journalism_, 1939-1943_.
[...]
> During the war, he stopped writing.
> Later, some grad. student went to the library and found de Man's
> writing in the Belgian paper. De Man was quite embarrassed.
That may be. However, he was also dead.
> Here he was, far
> past middle age, famous as one of the best close-readers in the U.S.,
> and now he's a Nazi because of his idiotic 22-year-old ejaculations. He
> should have told his colleagues about his youth long ago, but he didn't.
> He was hoping people wouldn't notice.
He did state that he had published articles in _Le Soir_ during
the war. But that's as far as he went. He didn't say anything about
their contents.
> There are several very famous, very popular writers in our own time who
> were known socialists/communists during Stalin's regime. Yet the evil
> stain of Stalin does not stick to these writers. There are many
> right-wing writers who are considered to me moral, upstanding men --
> even though their ideology is in most ways clearly aligned with
> Hitler's. The stain of Nazism somehow does not touch these men. Yet in
> Paul de Man -- a man who, although never an actual member of the Nazi
> party, was into national socialism when the war began, lost interest for
> some reason in 1944, and later became famous for two avowedly
> left-leaning books -- in this man is a stain, a stain of Nazism, a stain
> of evil that can do nothing but corrupt every word, every sentence he
> writes as an aging scholar. [...]
To say that de Man was "into national socialism" isn't accurate.
There are serious questions about what he wrote during the war, and
he's been accused of being a collaborator; but to call him a Nazi is
mistaken.
-- moggin
Silke-Maria Weineck
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
: -*--------
: In article <55p46e$p...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
: Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: Where were you, Silke, when the lit critters here were explaining
: that there are no concepts or intentions or any of this funky
: mental stuff, but just words and differences between words and
: (possibly, it wasn't entirely popular) the things to which words
: refer?
You wouldn't have a quote handy here, eh? Sorry, Russell, you were
caught in an elementary mistake, and you can now step down from that
rocking horse.
: What questions does a philosophy of language address?
As I said and you snipped, look as Phaedrus re speaking and writing.
Silke
: Russell
Russell Turpin
-*--------
In article <55qabf$5...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
> You wouldn't have a quote handy here, eh? Sorry, Russell, you were
> caught in an elementary mistake, and you can now step down from that
> rocking horse.
You're right about this one: the articles I found were from the
wrong folks. I should have given Artese more credit in this
area, and I apologize to him for that.
Silke-Maria Weineck
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
: -*--------
: In article <55qabf$5...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
: Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: > You wouldn't have a quote handy here, eh? Sorry, Russell, you were
: > caught in an elementary mistake, and you can now step down from that
: > rocking horse.
: You're right about this one: the articles I found were from the
: wrong folks. I should have given Artese more credit in this
: area, and I apologize to him for that.
Thanks for saying that -- what a wonderful precedent. Not being facetious.
Silke
Russell Turpin
-*--------
In article <328032...@nwu.edu>, brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> wrote:
> As a scholar in the U.S., he became famous decades later with the book
> _Blindness and Insight_. It was one of the most influential and
Translation: influential and controversial in English departments.
In most parts of academia, people don't care about de Man, his
youthful sins, or his later work.
Silke-Maria Weineck
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
: -*--------: > As a scholar in the U.S., he became famous decades later with the book
: Translation: influential and controversial in English departments.
: In most parts of academia, people don't care about de Man, his
: youthful sins, or his later work.
It depends; it is quite obvious that post-structuralism of which de Man
is a representative, even though not _the_ representative, has had
repercussions in a great number of fields other than English. As you know
and I think have complained about in the past.
Silke
Michael Zeleny
>>Perhaps Michael (who provided the French quote, presumably assuming --
>>correctly-- that nobody would engage it) would be kind enough to provide
>>an English translation.
>I think your presumption is correct -- but what the hell, i'll transcribe
>a translation. This one's Peggy Kamuf's. I think Spivak's is probably
>better, but I lent my copy to someone and, you know, i guess it turned out
>to be a gift.
>
>From _Of Grammatology_:
>
>"The reassuring evidence within which Western tradition had to organize
>itself and must continue to live would therefore be as follows: The order
>of the signified is never contemporary, is at best the subtly discrepant
>inverse or parallel--discrepant by the time of a breath--from the order of
>the signifier. And the sign must be the unity of a heterogeneity, since
>the signified (sense or thing, noeme
That will be `noema', for anyone who slept through the Husserl intro.
> or reality) is not in itself a
>signifier, a *trace*: in any case is not constituted in its sense by its
>relationship with a possible trace. The formal essence of the signified
>is *presence*, and the privilege of its proximity to the logos as *phone`*
>is the privilege of presence. This is the inevitable response as soon as
>one asks: 'What is the sign?,' that is to say, when one submits the sign
>to the question of essence, to the 'ti esti.' The 'formal essence' of the
>sign can only be determined in terms of presence. One cannot get around
>that response, except by challenging the very form of the question and
>beginning to think that the sign [is] that ill-named [thing], the only
>one, that escapes the insinuating question of philosophy: 'What is...?'"
>
>An aside:
>
>This is an introductory paragraph to the first chapter of the book.
No, it isn't. While Derrida is all too fond of promulgating spurious
non-sequiturs, his `therefore' in the first sentence you cited should
have alerted you to an implied preamble.
>Zeleny was heavily overstating things when he said that the
>signifer/signifier erasure follows from this.
That's why I said "in due course."
> All Derrida's doing here is
>explaining the implications of the traditional conception of the
>linguistic sign, as articulated by Saussure. If you haven't read the
>first several pages of the "Course in General Linguistics," you may want
>to do so--but it's not necessary; the schema of signification (sign =
>signifer + signifed) is fairly familiar. Saussure's explanation of
>linguistic value or meaning, however, which is almost always confused with
>signification, is not familiar; but we'll see if we have to talk about
>that...
>
>Derrida is really only saying a couple of things about the sign here: that
>there is a temporal gap between the signifier and signified; the signified
>necessarily precedes the signifier. At the source of this temporal vector
>is what we call presence. Since Western metaphysics divides the world
>into "mind" and "reality", there are two orders of presence:
>
>(1) the presence of the signified "thing", i.e. the essence of which the
>signifier is only a trace.
>
>(2) the presence of "mind" or "consciousness" -- again, of which the
>signifier is only a trace. This is why speech is privileged over writing:
>because speech is conceived as something spatially and temporally "closer"
>to this consciousness than is writing. We think of writing as something
>more mediated, more distant from its source, more of a stale trace of
>consciousness (presence) than is speech. But anyway, I'm straying from
>what Derrida is saying here...
Article Unavailable
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> Brian:
>> This is an introductory paragraph to the first chapter of the book.
> No, it isn't. While Derrida is all too fond of promulgating spurious
> non-sequiturs, his `therefore' in the first sentence you cited should
> have alerted you to an implied preamble.
> cannot be true of the Platonic stratification of meaning. For Plato,
> the signified exists outside of the spatiotemporal realm, and hence
> cannot be identified with or explained in terms of mental states or
> events, which are characterized by ubiety and duration. For the same
> reason, it is unintelligible to talk about a temporal gap between the
> signifier and signified. Thus the signified can be said to precede
> the signifier only in the ontological sense, as being a necessary
> component in signification.
For our own sanity's sake, I'll avoid instigating our usual spiral about
your transcendentalism. I say, "What allows you to posit this eternal
realm out of nowehere? Nothing in our empirical experience *requires*
us to accept it." You say, "Its existence is implied by our inevitable
need to refer to formal properties." I say, "But that reach for form
can be adequately accounted for by the empirical function of the
sensible signifiers that act as genuses..." etc. Let's not go there
this time.
Instead, let's grant that the signified always-already exists in
eternity (outside of time). Your argument only holds *from* this
perspective, i.e., from the perspective in which temporality as such is
a complete illusion; from the perspective in which all historical events
have always-already happened "all at once," and they're all layed out in
front of us (we, here in eternity) like a piece of thread. Because from
the perspective of creatures caught in a temporal, historical world --
creatures like myself and probably several others who Usenet -- the
always-already eternal would have to be completely foundational (or
transcendent), and thus neccessarily precede anything that goes on in
this world. Anything we isolate as an "event" must have come after this
eternity, and we're back to what Derrida says.
The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
> In this connection, it is interesting to note that nothing Derrida
> asseverates in the passage cited above, the argument that leads to it,
> or the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow, vitiates the
> canonical definition of sign as "aliquid stat pro aliquo" or something
> standing for something else, his mistranslated imputation of
> "escap[ing]
> the insinuating [an idiotic contresens of `institutrice'] question of
> philosophy: 'What is...?'" notwithstanding.
? This is unclear. The reason he brings up this foundational
formulation of philosophy--this "What is...?"--is to reinforce his
assertion that philosophy _is_ predicated on the notion of the signifier
as that which "stands for something else." You don't quite understand
the excerpt if you think he's trying to undermine this predication.
As far as "the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow" go: they
too do not claim that a signifier can always "stand for something else."
One of the things he *will* argue, however, is that it does not stand
for a contemporaneous and therefore transcendent "something else," but
for a signifier(s) that came before and possibly one(s) that will come
after.
-- brian
brian artese
moggin wrote:
> ... he
> didn't hold the view you describe -- in fact, he publically condemned
> "vulgar anti-Semitism." (Leaving it unclear whether he was opposed to
> anti-Semitism, or just to vulgarity.)
>
> The same article ("Les Juifs dans la litterature actuelle") where
> de Man names Kafka as such a a contributor, along with Gide, Hemingway,
> and Lawrence: a Jew, a homosexual, an anti-fascist, and a pornographer,
> as someone has noted.
Yes, I stand corrected. I just got back from the library where I pawed
through the 'Wartime Journalism...' again.
> > During the war, he stopped writing.
> > Later, some grad. student went to the library and found de Man's
> > writing in the Belgian paper. De Man was quite embarrassed.
>
> That may be. However, he was also dead.
True again. I was thinking of something I read in a book called, I
think, 'Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man.' The analysis was
fairly juvenile, but the author found some letter of de Man's in which
he's sort of crying on a friend's shoulder about something 'coming back'
that he thought was behind him. I guess he was referring to some other
early writings that had cropped up before '83 (the preface to _Wartime
Jounalism_ mentions some such early rumblings).
-- brian
Michael Zeleny
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> writes:
>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>Brian:
>>>This is an introductory paragraph to the first chapter of the book.
>>No, it isn't. While Derrida is all too fond of promulgating spurious
>>non-sequiturs, his `therefore' in the first sentence you cited should
>>have alerted you to an implied preamble.
>Yes, there was a preamble. And yes, it is still an introductory
>paragraph to the first chapter of the book.
Not so. Whereas the first chapter starts on page 15, the passage in
question occurs on page 31.
>>... What Derrida is claiming
>>cannot be true of the Platonic stratification of meaning. For Plato,
>>the signified exists outside of the spatiotemporal realm, and hence
>>cannot be identified with or explained in terms of mental states or
>>events, which are characterized by ubiety and duration. For the same
>>reason, it is unintelligible to talk about a temporal gap between the
>>signifier and signified. Thus the signified can be said to precede
>>the signifier only in the ontological sense, as being a necessary
>>component in signification.
>For our own sanity's sake, I'll avoid instigating our usual spiral about
>your transcendentalism. I say, "What allows you to posit this eternal
>realm out of nowehere? Nothing in our empirical experience *requires*
>us to accept it." You say, "Its existence is implied by our inevitable
>need to refer to formal properties." I say, "But that reach for form
>can be adequately accounted for by the empirical function of the
>sensible signifiers that act as genuses..." etc. Let's not go there
>this time.
Thank God for small mercies.
>Instead, let's grant that the signified always-already exists in
>eternity (outside of time). Your argument only holds *from* this
>perspective, i.e., from the perspective in which temporality as such is
>a complete illusion; from the perspective in which all historical events
>have always-already happened "all at once," and they're all layed out in
>front of us (we, here in eternity) like a piece of thread. Because from
>the perspective of creatures caught in a temporal, historical world --
>creatures like myself and probably several others who Usenet -- the
>always-already eternal would have to be completely foundational (or
>transcendent), and thus neccessarily precede anything that goes on in
>this world. Anything we isolate as an "event" must have come after this
>eternity, and we're back to what Derrida says.
Non sequitur. Nothing in my argument either presupposes or entails a
linear order of time. For example, branching timeline universes such
as are postulated by certain "many-world" interpretations of QM, are
both compatible with the foregoing account and explanatory of the
observable experience of temporal anisotropy.
>The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
>and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
>talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
>which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
>afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
Neither "before" nor "after" have any absolute meaning in modern
physics. Get used to it.
>>In this connection, it is interesting to note that nothing Derrida
>>asseverates in the passage cited above, the argument that leads to it,
>>or the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow, vitiates the
>>canonical definition of sign as "aliquid stat pro aliquo" or something
>>standing for something else, his mistranslated imputation of
>>"escap[ing]
>>the insinuating [an idiotic contresens of `institutrice'] question of
>>philosophy: 'What is...?'" notwithstanding.
>? This is unclear. The reason he brings up this foundational
>formulation of philosophy--this "What is...?"--is to reinforce his
>assertion that philosophy _is_ predicated on the notion of the signifier
>as that which "stands for something else." You don't quite understand
>the excerpt if you think he's trying to undermine this predication.
I said no such thing. Clearly, philosophy itself is that, which
Derrida is trying to undermine.
>As far as "the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow" go: they
>too do not claim that a signifier can always "stand for something else."
> One of the things he *will* argue, however, is that it does not stand
>for a contemporaneous and therefore transcendent "something else," but
>for a signifier(s) that came before and possibly one(s) that will come
>after.
I see that we are back to erasing the distinction between yonder puppy
and the string `p', `u', `p', `p', and `y'. Nice move.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zel...@math.ucla.edu | Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food ** www.ptyx.com ** M...@ptyx.com
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)
David Swanson
In article <328032...@nwu.edu>
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> writes:
> There are several very famous, very popular writers in our own time who
> were known socialists/communists during Stalin's regime. Yet the evil
> stain of Stalin does not stick to these writers. There are many
> right-wing writers who are considered to me moral, upstanding men --
> even though their ideology is in most ways clearly aligned with
> Hitler's. The stain of Nazism somehow does not touch these men. Yet in
> Paul de Man -- a man who, although never an actual member of the Nazi
> party, was into national socialism when the war began, lost interest for
> some reason in 1944, and later became famous for two avowedly
> left-leaning books -- in this man is a stain, a stain of Nazism, a stain
> of evil that can do nothing but corrupt every word, every sentence he
> writes as an aging scholar. All of his work in the U.S. must be thrown
> in the trash because of this stain. His texts claim to be
> anti-essentialist? Wrong. Racism secretly inhabits these books the way
> Satan possessed Linda Blair. The stain overrides all -- it cannot be
> overcome. You think de _B&I_ and _Allegories_ is interesting,
> informative scholarship? Wrong. And if you keep saying so, the stain
> will rub off on you, Nazi. You read Paul de Man, eh? Uh huh -- 'nuff
> said! Paul de Man is Evil, he is a Nazi -- that is the beginning and
> end of it.
>
> -- brian
I'll buy that, but I still don't understand this age of no ethics
stuff. I can find out the title of the paper if you want.
Incidentally, your Derrida post was a good one, though Russell seems
only to have grunted and sputtered a little, rooted around in his own
filth, and declared that no one's interested in linguistics.
David
"Well it's you know if you you know work at you know something you know
long enough you know you'll you know begin to get something going."
Jerry Garcia
moggin
> As a scholar in the U.S., he became famous decades later with the book
> _Blindness and Insight_. It was one of the most influential and
> controversial texts ever published in academia, because no collection of
> literary essays had ever been so effective in destroying the validity of
> big, over-arching theories -- especially the essentialism upon which
> most "race"-talk is based. His next major text, _Allegories of Reading_
> begins with a brief but comprehensive overview of
> structuralist/formalist criticism and the problems therein -- probably
> the best that's ever been written. He also pokes much fun at the
> right-wing propensity for totality (including a pretty funny analogy
> involving Archie Bunker which ends up citing Derrida as an influential
> Arche-debunker). The books annoyed many people, especially
> conservatives, Allan Bloom types, etc.
To be honest, I'm doubtful about this entire narrative -- but if
we take it as given, then Eagleton offers an interesting reading. He
claims the above is true; in his view, not only is de Man's later work
_not_ fascistic, it's a direct response to his encounter with fascism,
under the heading of "won't get fooled again." And _that_ (Eagleton
suggests) is the source of its problems. His thinking is that de Man
over-compensates for the errors of his youth and so produces a line of
criticism which shies away from arching theories, out of fear they're
all triumphal. In effect, Eagleton takes the position that it's o.k.
to be anti-fascist, but only up to a point. And one that de Man goes
beyond. (Naturally he doesn't put it anything like that; but I'd say
that's where he ends up.)
[...]
> There are several very famous, very popular writers in our own time who
> were known socialists/communists during Stalin's regime. Yet the evil
> stain of Stalin does not stick to these writers. There are many
> right-wing writers who are considered to me moral, upstanding men --
> even though their ideology is in most ways clearly aligned with
> Hitler's. The stain of Nazism somehow does not touch these men. Yet in
> Paul de Man -- a man who, although never an actual member of the Nazi
> party, was into national socialism when the war began, lost interest for
> some reason in 1944, and later became famous for two avowedly
> left-leaning books -- in this man is a stain, a stain of Nazism, a stain
> of evil that can do nothing but corrupt every word, every sentence he
> writes as an aging scholar. All of his work in the U.S. must be thrown
> in the trash because of this stain. His texts claim to be
> anti-essentialist? Wrong. Racism secretly inhabits these books the way
> Satan possessed Linda Blair. The stain overrides all -- it cannot be
> overcome. You think de _B&I_ and _Allegories_ is interesting,
> informative scholarship? Wrong. And if you keep saying so, the stain
> will rub off on you, Nazi. You read Paul de Man, eh? Uh huh -- 'nuff
> said! Paul de Man is Evil, he is a Nazi -- that is the beginning and
> end of it.
Here's an intriguing parallel, courtesy of Werner Hamacher:
... Why did de Man not refer publically to his early activities
as a journalist, particularly to his anti-Semitic article? The
question has to be taken seriously, even if it can never be answered.
I add another one which should be taken just as seriously. It
concerns Thomas Mann, the energetic, clear-sighted spokesman for
the exiled German authors and one of the sharpest and most effective
critics of Nazi barbarism. The following passage comes from Mann's
_Leiden an Deutschland -- Tagebuchblatter aus den Jarhen 1933 und
1934_, one of the most cutting attacks on the beginning of the Nazi
dictatorship: "Exorcism of the middle class-humane spirit, which
clothes principally in the robes of anti-semitism, and reduction to
the national-racial [_Volkisch-Nationale_] with unprecedented
thoroughness and force. Suppression of the control the Jewish
spirit has exercised over the German is ruinous." (GW XII [Frankfurt:
S. Fischer, 1974], p.700). This passage, like all the other journal
entries which Mann combined and published in 1945, is a revised
version of the 1933 and 1934 journals. The second sentence of the
passage just quoted reads, in its original form, as follows: "The
revolt against Jewishness would have my sympathy [_Verstandnis_], so
to speak, if the suppression of the control the Jewish spirit
exercises over Germany were not so problematic for the German people,
and if Germandom were not so dumb as to throw someone of my type into
the same pot and drive me into exile." (_Tagebucher 1933-34 [Frankfurt:
S. Fischer, 1977], p.54). A bad remark, and not the only one of its
kind. In the same journal, in an entry dated "Monday 10.IV33 Lugano,"
Mann writes: "But nevertheless, are significant and great
revolutionary things happening in Germany? The Jews....that Kerr's
arrogant and poisonous Jewish-accented Nietzsche interpretations
[_Nietzsche-Vermauschelung_] are no longer possible is ultimately no
disaster; likewise the dejewification [_Entjudung_] of justice. --
Secret, stormy, strained thoughts. Hostile, malevolent, low and un-
German things in the higher sense will continue to exist in any case.
But I am beginning to suspect that the process is, nevertheless, one
of those which has two sides..." (p.46). "Ultimately no disaster"
-- is this not exactly that gruesome sanctioning of forced exile
which Paul de Man pronounces with the words "_pas de consequences
deplorables_"? But Thomas Mann goes further than de Man and relates
what he calls "dejewification" to "significant and great
revolutionary things," evidently the Nazi revolution. The
"poisoning" Mann talks about is precisely what de Man rejected as
absurd. And while there is sufficient reason to to suspect that de
Man was pressured into writing his anti-semitic article, the same
cannot be said of Thomas Mann's private diary entry: he not only
made these statements, he meant them. Why did Thomas Mann never
distance himself, clearly and unambiguously, from the anti-semitic
diary entries, though he clearly knew that they would be published
unabridged after his death? Why did he not seize the opportunity in
1945, with the publication of _Leiden an Deutschland_, to denounce
and analyze the other _Leiden_ which befell not merely "Germany" but
also himself: anti-semitism. And on the same occasion, he could
have said something about "Blood of the Walsungs." Not a word;
although he he should have known that in the case of a writer of
international reknown even the most private feelings can have wide-
spread public effects. ...
It seems to me that the question of de Man's silence is
necessary. And even more imperative than finding an answer is
thinking about the question and the assumptions connected with it.
We should also think about the fact that questions like this are
not always asked when they should be. The selection made by the
agents of "public opinion" allows for the suspicion that they are
not really interested in these questions, but rather in preventing
the emergence of others. ...
(Werner Hamacher, "Journals, Politics: Notes on Paul de Man's
Wartime Journalism")
-- moggin
brian artese
William Grosso wrote:
> > For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the
> > standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the
> > American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist:
> > if I find myself unable to make head or tail of _jouissance_ and
> > _diff'erance_, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
>
> I'd say that he's referring to the *followers* of D and B
> (North American Division, USA subsection) rather than D and
> B directly.
When Sokal introduces this response in _Lingua Franca_ he says:
"My essay ... is an annotated bibliography of the charlatanism and
nonsense purveyed by dozens of prominent French and American
intellectuals."
The set of 'prominent French intellectuals' to the American public
-- including the readers of Lingua Franca -- is quite small and
obviously includes Derrida. The claim that Sokal is _not_ referring
to him is at best naive, at worst plainly dishonest. To say that
you read in Sokal's pronouncement some *other* 'prominent French
intellectuals' besides the poststructuralists -- such as...who? --
is impossible without bad faith.
And no Sokalite has yet to answer for his claim to have exposed the
'charlatanism' of these writers without offering a critique of any
of their work.
-- brian
brian artese
moggin wrote:
> It seems to me that the question of de Man's silence is
> necessary. And even more imperative than finding an answer is
> thinking about the question and the assumptions connected with it.
> We should also think about the fact that questions like this are
> not always asked when they should be. The selection made by the
> agents of "public opinion" allows for the suspicion that they are
> not really interested in these questions, but rather in preventing
> the emergence of others. ...
I imagine that the *motives* behind de Man's silence are fairly
banal. He knew that such a revelation would inevitably make people
read his work in a different 'mode,' always asking the question,
'yes, valuable insight: but why would an ex-Nazi make this
particular observation...?'.
As you suggest, it is important to think about this silence and the
ways in which de Man's personal and intellectual history orients or
perhaps unconsciously informs his writing. But this is an extremely
difficult and dicey project that can only be undertaken by one who
thoroughly understands what de Man's work 'consciously' says, as it
were. Otherwise what you end up with is something like the book
_Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man_, which pretends to
expose the fascistic nature of deconstruction with the evidence of
de Man's wartime journalism. The book is generally inane because
the author doesn't understand de Man's later work in the first
place.
-- brian
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> >The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
> >and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
> >talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
> >which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
> >afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
>
> Neither "before" nor "after" have any absolute meaning in modern
> physics. Get used to it.
Wow -- if a postmodernist were to use this observation in support of his
argument, the science camp would be cued up around the block to spank him.
What happens to your cogito without the before and after of premise and
conclusion?
> >As far as "the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow" go: they
> >too do not claim that a signifier can always "stand for something else."
> > One of the things he *will* argue, however, is that it does not stand
> >for a contemporaneous and therefore transcendent "something else," but
> >for a signifier(s) that came before and possibly one(s) that will come
> >after.
>
> I see that we are back to erasing the distinction between yonder puppy
> and the string `p', `u', `p', `p', and `y'. Nice move.
You know that the puppy over there is not the 'something else' I'm talking
about, and not the 'signified' that Derrida's talking about. The signified
refers to this *third* thing that you believe in, the 'form' or 'type' that
is independent of both that puppy over there *and* the written or spoken
signifier 'puppy'.
-- brian
Michael Zeleny
mog...@nando.net (moggin) writes:
> Sokal's claims are plain enough -- he believes he's offered
>a "direct demonstration" of the low "intellectual standards"
>which reign throughout an "academic subculture," and shown "that
>the emperor has no clothes." But his substantiation isn't just
>_vague_, it's completely missing. Much like the substance of his
>criticism. A defender of "intellectual standards" should remember
>to apply them, don't you think? Looks bad, otherwise. Although
>he can hope no one will notice.
This is a lie. Herewith appears a direct demonstration of NO intellectual
standards within an academic subculture, excerpted from Sokal's article:
Unfortunately, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has frequently
been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari (1994, 129-130) lucidly point out,
in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
interference of the measure with the measured, but it
measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
leaves the respective position of two of its particles
outside of the field of its actualization, the number
of independent variables being reduced and the values
of the coordinates having the same probability.
...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
according to the values it extracts from them in its
system of coordinates ...
And here comes another gem:
See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second
group of scientists and engineers - cyberneticists - contrived,
with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary
implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's
critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical
plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an
analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush
fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked
for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would
show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics
in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the
centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for
automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal
industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
It follows that one can promulgate a progressive critique of the titanic
struggle between cybernetics and quantum physics without knowing the first
thing about transistors.
Get more at http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/physics/faculty/sokal/index.html
Michael Zeleny
>>>The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
>>>and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
>>>talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
>>>which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
>>>afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
>>Neither "before" nor "after" have any absolute meaning in modern
>>physics. Get used to it.
>Wow -- if a postmodernist were to use this observation in support of his
>argument, the science camp would be cued up around the block to spank him.
Good thing that I am not a scientist -- or else, by your reasoning, I
would be obliged to cater to your masochistic urges. So humor me by
corroborating pomo with SR, pretty please.
> What happens to your cogito without the before and after of premise and
>conclusion?
Did you miss my explanation of temporal independence of logical order?
>>>As far as "the conclusions that ensue and purportedly follow" go: they
>>>too do not claim that a signifier can always "stand for something else."
>>> One of the things he *will* argue, however, is that it does not stand
>>>for a contemporaneous and therefore transcendent "something else," but
>>>for a signifier(s) that came before and possibly one(s) that will come
>>>after.
>>I see that we are back to erasing the distinction between yonder puppy
>>and the string `p', `u', `p', `p', and `y'. Nice move.
>You know that the puppy over there is not the 'something else' I'm talking
>about, and not the 'signified' that Derrida's talking about. The signified
>refers to this *third* thing that you believe in, the 'form' or 'type' that
>is independent of both that puppy over there *and* the written or spoken
>signifier 'puppy'.
Nonsense. Yonder puppy transcends "a signifier(s) that came before
and possibly one(s) that will come after" the string `p', `u', `p',
`p', and `y' as surely as does the form of puppyhood.
moggin
mog...@nando.net (moggin) writes:
> > Sokal's claims are plain enough -- he believes he's offered
> >a "direct demonstration" of the low "intellectual standards"
> >which reign throughout an "academic subculture," and shown "that
> >the emperor has no clothes." But his substantiation isn't just
> >_vague_, it's completely missing. Much like the substance of his
> >criticism. A defender of "intellectual standards" should remember
> >to apply them, don't you think? Looks bad, otherwise. Although
> >he can hope no one will notice.
zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
> This is a lie. Herewith appears a direct demonstration of NO intellectual
> standards within an academic subculture, excerpted from Sokal's article:
[...]
Sokal has published, it will interest you to learn, more than
one article. You aren't quoting from the one in _Social Text_, or
from the one that appeared subsequently in _Lingua Franca_ -- the
two we were discussing. What you _are_ drawing from, I don't know
-- the piece in _Dissent_? Anyway, Sokal still doesn't get the job
done, even in what you quote. He offers a passage from D&G, and
some remarks on Porush. But he fails to demonstrate the existence
of the "nonsense" he claims to find. Still less does he show that
this supposed nonsense typifies an entire "academic subculture."
-- moggin
Silke-Maria Weineck
Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>>The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
: >>>and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
: >>>talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
: >>>which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
: >>>afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
: >>Neither "before" nor "after" have any absolute meaning in modern
: >>physics. Get used to it.
: >Wow -- if a postmodernist were to use this observation in support of his
: >argument, the science camp would be cued up around the block to spank him.
: Good thing that I am not a scientist -- or else, by your reasoning, I
: would be obliged to cater to your masochistic urges. So humor me by
: corroborating pomo with SR, pretty please.
: > What happens to your cogito without the before and after of premise and
: >conclusion?
: Did you miss my explanation of temporal independence of logical order?
And is not logical order as well expressed in before or after? Who said
anything about temporality?
S.
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> ... Herewith appears a direct demonstration of NO intellectual
> standards within an academic subculture, excerpted from Sokal's > article=
:
> =
> Unfortunately, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has frequently
> been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As Gilles Deleuze
> and F=E9lix Guattari (1994, 129-130) lucidly point out,
> =
> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
> of independent variables being reduced and the values
> of the coordinates having the same probability.
> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
> according to the values it extracts from them in its
> system of coordinates ...
> =
> And here comes another gem:
> =
> See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second
> group of scientists and engineers - cyberneticists - contrived,
> with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary
> implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's
> critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical
> plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an
> analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush
> fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked
> for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would
> show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics
> in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the
> centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for
> automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal
> industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
=2E.. *Where* is the 'direct demonstration' of no intellectual standards? =
All =
I see is two D&G excerpts.
> It follows that one can promulgate a progressive critique of the titanic
> struggle between cybernetics and quantum physics without knowing the firs=
t
> thing about transistors.
Don't make me laugh. I suspect Deleuze and Guattari are far more equipped =
to talk about the history of science as a socio-economic industry than =
Sokal. Generally speaking, the science community likes to think of itself =
as operating independently of history and capital. This is why many =
scientists are so indebted to the notion of 'laboratory environments': they=
=
begin to believe that the science industry *itself* is a 'controlled =
environment,' a community whose activities are free of antecedents, whose =
projects are governed by pure reason, independent of the messy contingencie=
s =
of history or material production. This mystification is what allows you t=
o =
say, with a straight face, that Deleuze & Guattari can't comment on the =
history of the industry because they don't know how to build a transistor.
Of course this will draw the following Usenet response: 'Of course =
scientists are aware of history and impact of funding, etc (it's always =
about 'funding,' isn't it, as if that's the only capitalistic factor that =
manipulates the industry). And of course scientists _are_ aware of these =
things -- when they're typing a response to a post like this.
This also partly explains why their speculative discussions (at least the =
ones I've encountered) tend to make a b-line, as soon as possible, toward =
purely ahistorical beasts, like 'types,' 'consciousness,' 'cognition' -- or=
=
in Zeleny's case, Platonic Forms.
-- brian
moggin
moggin wrote:
> > Are you serious? Seriously. If Sokal wanted to say something
> > like, "There's a big drop-off in the quality of deconstruction after
> > you get past Derrida," he gives absolutely no sign of it whatsoever.
William, a.k.a. Andy:
> Precisely. He gives no sign of really caring about deconstruction
> at all.
Right -- just his constant attacks. Aside from that, nothing.
moggin:
> > His target is clear: _jouissance_ is a reference to Barthes, and
> > _differance_ is a reference to Derrida. How much more obvious could
> > it be that Sokal's animus is directed at post-structuralism?
Andy:
> Well, considering that, in the paragraph containing the references
> to jouissance and differance, he actually says
> > For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the
> > standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the
> > American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist:
> > if I find myself unable to make head or tail of _jouissance_ and
> > _diff'erance_, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
> I'd say that he's referring to the *followers* of D and B
> (North American Division, USA subsection) rather than D and
> B directly.
Doubtful, since Derrida spent years teaching in California, and
the Yale School was based at, well, Yale. Now, if Sokal would like
to demonstrate de Man's lack of "intellectual rigor," he's welcome
to -- as of yet, his arguments are conspicuous by their absence, but
that doesn't stop him from tossing out comments like the above. If
there's any one place in American academia that we can say with some
assurance shows a lack of "intellectual rigor," it's the one where
Sokal and his followers are standing.
Sokal couldn't be more clear about the generalizations that he
wants to make. "_Social_Text_'s acceptance of my article," he says,
"exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory --- meaning
postmodernist _literary_ theory --- carried to its logical extreme."
That's a case of extreme stupidity. A single editorial slip-up at a
small cultural studies journal is supposed to _exemplify_ (Sokal's
term) "postmodernist literary theory." And furthermore, the link is
supposed to be self-evident -- or so I have to assume, since Sokal
says nothing to establish it. So much for "intellectual rigor."
moggin:
>>But he spells it out anyhow, attacking "the intellectual arrogance of
>>Theory -- meaning postmodernist _literary_ theory..." The essay contains
>>zilch, zero, zip to distinguish one such theorist from another.
Andy:
> How abot the following caveats, taken from his Lingua Franca
> article:
> >Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies
That's not a caveat -- one of his mistakes (and it's become a
common one) is to generalize from _Social Text_ to "post-modernism,"
"the humanities," and so forth. If he confined his conclusions to
_Social Text_, he'd be that much better off. But he's after bigger
game. Remember, he's using _Social Text_ to test "the standards of
rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities" --
that's by his own account. So the question is, why does he think
that hoaxing one, minor journal will allow him to draw conclusions
about entire "precincts" of academia? No "intellectual rigor" in
that.
And let's not forget the following claim: "My own article is,
if anything, an extremely _modest_ example of this well-established
genre" (i.e., "postmodern literary theory"). Sokal is saying that
he's proven something about an entire genre of scholarly work -- he
certainly isn't limiting his conclusions to a certain journal of
cultural studies. In any case, how does simply mentioning a given
journal do anything to distinguish between theorists? Especially
when it's not concerned with the type of theory he's attacking?
> or, how about his major conclusion:
> > The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least,
> > that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left
> > have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of _Social_Text_
> > liked my article because they liked its _conclusion_
> I'd say "American academic left" pretty much excludes Barthes
> and Derrida from the scope of the attack.
How can they possibly be excluded when he says, "at the very
least"? That "excludes" (hold on, while I do my sums) _nothing_.
And notice that his references to "American academia" are few and
far between -- he mentions it a couple of times, but forgets about
it when he's delivering a broadside at "the spread of subjectivist
thinking" or "postmodernist literary theory" or "the recent turn
of many 'progressive' or 'leftist' academic humanists and social
scientists" (all of which offend his political sensibilities). At
the end, he's targeting an entire "academic subculture," with no
reference to nationality.
It's possible that he meant to qualify his remarks, only to
get carried away by his own polemic -- hard to say, though, since
his article is so sloppy and unrigorous. I can't believe that it
would have been printed by...y'know, Gordon may have something --
maybe the _Lingua Franca_ article is a hoax, too. Only this time,
Sokal isn't giving the game away too soon.
> And, of course, there are his repeated references to "the
> editors of Social Text."
Uh-huh. Who he claims _exemplify_ "postmodernist literary
theory." See how that works?
moggin:
> > If you want to claim that Sokal is capable of telling Derrida
> > or Barthes apart from anyone else, you won't find any evidence
> > in his article.
Andy:
> Nor does his article give any evidence of his ability to
> distinguish Mozart from Garth Brooks. Conclusion: he's
> tone-deaf ?
Oh, come on. He's not discussing music -- he's sure as hell
discussing, or pretending to discuss post-modernism. Besides, you
were the one who claimed that he _wasn't_ attacking Derrida. For
that to be true, he would have to distinguish between Derrida and
the masses of postmodernists that he castigates. But he doesn't.
> As to the rest of your post: your complaint seems to be that
> Sokal is attacking all of post-structuralism and he's doing so
> without providing any supporting arguments.
> Pretend, just for a moment, that he's only attacking a specific
> branch ("Cultural Studies") and, in fact, is only attacking the
> people he says he's attacking ("Certain precincts of the American
> academic humanities"). If this is the case, his failure to support
> an all-out indictment of post-structuralism isn't nearly so damning.
> In fact, it's just what you'd expect. What would he gain by
> throwing in a gratuitous assault on Barthes ?
_If_ he was attacking only cultural studies, he's still
way off the mark. Ross and _Social Text_ are not major targets,
they aren't exemplary, and Sokal's generalizations are still
empty -- what's more, he's very confused, since he believes that
cultural studies is the same as "postmodern literary theory,"
and rings in stuff like _jouissance_ and _differance_ (distinct
references to Barthes and Derrida, whether or not you think he's
attacking them).
In fact, if he was limiting his attack to cultural studies,
his paper (meaning the hoax) would hardly make any sense, since
it quotes Derrida, Lacan, and Irigaray. Even his attack, itself,
becomes nonsense. As an assault on post-structuralism or pomo
literary theory, it's recognizable, albeit laughably inaccurate;
but as a thrust against cultural studies, it doesn't even apply.
So it's not just _difficult_ to pretend that Sokal is only
attacking cultural studies; given the contents of his attack, it
makes him look even worse: his comments about post-structuralism
are unsupported, and I'd say absurd, but they bear some relation
to the subject, if only as distortions and cliches. Understood
as an attack on cultural studies, they're incomprehensible.
And to repeat:
Sokal's claims are plain enough -- he believes he's offered
a "direct demonstration" of the low "intellectual standards"
which reign throughout an "academic subculture," and shown "that
the emperor has no clothes." But his substantiation isn't just
_vague_, it's completely missing. Much like the substance of his
criticism. A defender of "intellectual standards" should remember
to apply them, don't you think? Looks bad, otherwise. Although
he can hope no one will notice.
That's true no matter _what_ Sokal chose as his target.
-- moggin
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>The only thing that would make this untrue is if we denied that "before"
>>>>>and "after" had any meaning at all. And remember that Derrida is
>>>>>talking about the predominate assumptions of Western metaphysics --
>>>>>which are overwhelmingly predicated on the unavoidability of befores and
>>>>>afters; much more oriented toward Aristotle, in this sense, than Plato.
>>>>Neither "before" nor "after" have any absolute meaning in modern
>>>>physics. Get used to it.
>>>Wow -- if a postmodernist were to use this observation in support of his
>>>argument, the science camp would be cued up around the block to spank him.
>>Good thing that I am not a scientist -- or else, by your reasoning, I
>>would be obliged to cater to your masochistic urges. So humor me by
>>corroborating pomo with SR, pretty please.
Well?
>>> What happens to your cogito without the before and after of premise and
>>>conclusion?
>>Did you miss my explanation of temporal independence of logical order?
>And is not logical order as well expressed in before or after?
Not in this case. At any rate, the cogito does not separate into
premiss and conclusion.
>Who said anything about temporality?
Lorenz, Minkowski, and Einstein, to name a few.
David Swanson
In article <328391...@nwu.edu>
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> writes:
> I imagine that the *motives* behind de Man's silence are fairly
> banal. He knew that such a revelation would inevitably make people
> read his work in a different 'mode,' always asking the question,
> 'yes, valuable insight: but why would an ex-Nazi make this
> particular observation...?'.
Far from banal, that. More banal and more likely is that he didn't
want to be known to be an ex-Nazi (or whatever he was).
David
I probably love you.
-H.
brian artese wrote:
>
> moggin wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that the question of de Man's silence is
> > necessary. And even more imperative than finding an answer is
> > thinking about the question and the assumptions connected with it.
> > We should also think about the fact that questions like this are
> > not always asked when they should be. The selection made by the
> > agents of "public opinion" allows for the suspicion that they are
> > not really interested in these questions, but rather in preventing
> > the emergence of others. ...
>
> banal. He knew that such a revelation would inevitably make people
> read his work in a different 'mode,' always asking the question,
> 'yes, valuable insight: but why would an ex-Nazi make this
> particular observation...?'.
>
> ways in which de Man's personal and intellectual history orients or
> perhaps unconsciously informs his writing. But this is an extremely
> difficult and dicey project that can only be undertaken by one who
> thoroughly understands what de Man's work 'consciously' says, as it
> were. Otherwise what you end up with is something like the book
> _Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man_, which pretends to
> expose the fascistic nature of deconstruction with the evidence of
> de Man's wartime journalism. The book is generally inane because
> the author doesn't understand de Man's later work in the first
> place.
>
> -- brian
do you mean lehmen's *signs of the times*? i found the first part
to be a fine introduction to po-mo history and the second half to be a
well reasoned and well defended and well documented bit of work. or is
that what makes it inane? bet you didnt like ellis' *against
deconstruction* either.
-H.
ObBook: richard ford *independence day*
moggin
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu>:
> > I imagine that the *motives* behind de Man's silence are fairly
> > banal. He knew that such a revelation would inevitably make people
> > read his work in a different 'mode,' always asking the question,
> > 'yes, valuable insight: but why would an ex-Nazi make this
> > particular observation...?'.
dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
> Far from banal, that. More banal and more likely is that he didn't
> want to be known to be an ex-Nazi (or whatever he was).
Thank you for the parenthesis. "What he was" is hard to say
with any certainty. Belgian nationalist? Probably. Anti-semite?
Quite possibly. Working with the Resistance? Well, maybe -- but
not a Nazi, in any case. Therefore he couldn't have become an ex-
Nazi, later on. But you bring out another good point: de Man may
have been guessing that if he was honest about his past, he would
inevitably be known as an "ex-Nazi," regardless of "what he was."
If that's so, events have proved him right.
-- moggin
moggin
"-H." <wh...@virginia.edu>:
> do you mean lehmen's *signs of the times*? i found the first part
> to be a fine introduction to po-mo history and the second half to be a
> well reasoned and well defended and well documented bit of work. or is
> that what makes it inane? bet you didnt like ellis' *against
> deconstruction* either.
That would be the Ellis who misquotes Derrida. But maybe that
kind of thing doesn't bother you.
-- moggin
brian artese
-H. wrote:
> do you mean lehmen's *signs of the times*? i found the first part
> to be a fine introduction to po-mo history and the second half to be a
> well reasoned and well defended and well documented bit of work. or is
> that what makes it inane? bet you didnt like ellis' *against
> deconstruction* either.
Yes, that's the book. I was thinking of the subtitle. I read the book
in a couple of days at a used book store/coffee shop so i wouldn't have
to buy it. The journalistic exposition of the events surrounding the
discovery of the wartime writings was fine, but his 'analysis' of de
Man's well-known work was just silly. That might not have mattered so
much if the thesis of the book--that deconstruction is inherently
fascistic--did not depend entirely on that reading.
-- brian
Silke-Maria Weineck
-H. (wh...@virginia.edu) wrote:
: brian artese wrote:
: >
: > moggin wrote:
: > > It seems to me that the question of de Man's silence is
: > > necessary. And even more imperative than finding an answer is
: > > thinking about the question and the assumptions connected with it.
: > > We should also think about the fact that questions like this are
: > > not always asked when they should be. The selection made by the
: > > agents of "public opinion" allows for the suspicion that they are
: > > not really interested in these questions, but rather in preventing
: > > the emergence of others. ...
: > I imagine that the *motives* behind de Man's silence are fairly
: > banal. He knew that such a revelation would inevitably make people
: > read his work in a different 'mode,' always asking the question,
: > 'yes, valuable insight: but why would an ex-Nazi make this
: > particular observation...?'.
: > As you suggest, it is important to think about this silence and the
: > ways in which de Man's personal and intellectual history orients or
: > perhaps unconsciously informs his writing. But this is an extremely
: > difficult and dicey project that can only be undertaken by one who
: > thoroughly understands what de Man's work 'consciously' says, as it
: > were. Otherwise what you end up with is something like the book
: > _Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man_, which pretends to
: > expose the fascistic nature of deconstruction with the evidence of
: > de Man's wartime journalism. The book is generally inane because
: > place.
: >
: > -- brian
: do you mean lehmen's *signs of the times*? i found the first part
: to be a fine introduction to po-mo history and the second half to be a
: well reasoned and well defended and well documented bit of work. or is
: that what makes it inane? bet you didnt like ellis' *against
: deconstruction* either.
I would like to be able to say, just take my word for it: Lehmann is one
of the most resentful and stupid books on deMan ever written, but I know you
won't (and I probably wouldn't either if I were you).
Post your favorite passage, and we'll talk -- how's that?
Silke
: -H.
Michael Zeleny
mog...@nando.net (moggin) writes:
>>> Sokal's claims are plain enough -- he believes he's offered
>>>a "direct demonstration" of the low "intellectual standards"
>>>which reign throughout an "academic subculture," and shown "that
>>>the emperor has no clothes." But his substantiation isn't just
>>>_vague_, it's completely missing. Much like the substance of his
>>>criticism. A defender of "intellectual standards" should remember
>>>to apply them, don't you think? Looks bad, otherwise. Although
>>>he can hope no one will notice.
zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
>>This is a lie. Herewith appears a direct demonstration of NO intellectual
>>standards within an academic subculture, excerpted from Sokal's article:
moggin:
>[...]
Quotation restored:
>>
>> Unfortunately, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has frequently
>> been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As Gilles Deleuze
>> and Félix Guattari (1994, 129-130) lucidly point out,
>>
>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>> system of coordinates ...
>>
>>And here comes another gem:
>>
>> See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second
>> group of scientists and engineers - cyberneticists - contrived,
>> with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary
>> implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's
>> critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical
>> plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an
>> analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush
>> fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked
>> for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would
>> show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics
>> in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the
>> centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for
>> automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal
>> industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
>>
>>It follows that one can promulgate a progressive critique of the titanic
>>struggle between cybernetics and quantum physics without knowing the first
>>thing about transistors.
>>
>>Get more at http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/physics/faculty/sokal/index.html
moggin:
> Sokal has published, it will interest you to learn, more than
>one article. You aren't quoting from the one in _Social Text_, or
>from the one that appeared subsequently in _Lingua Franca_ -- the
>two we were discussing. What you _are_ drawing from, I don't know
>-- the piece in _Dissent_?
You are lying once again. I invite all interested parties to refer to
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/physics/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/footnode.html#73
moggin:
> Anyway, Sokal still doesn't get the job
>done, even in what you quote. He offers a passage from D&G, and
>some remarks on Porush. But he fails to demonstrate the existence
>of the "nonsense" he claims to find. Still less does he show that
>this supposed nonsense typifies an entire "academic subculture."
The nonsense should be self-evident to anyone with a rudimentary grasp
of physics. I am not interested in discussing your alleged inability
to detect it. The wealth of similar quotations collected in Sokal's
article amply confirms his subsequent attribution of this nonsense to
"a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or
disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
Michael Zeleny
Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry) writes:
>zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) wrote:
>>The nonsense should be self-evident to anyone with a rudimentary grasp
>>of physics. I am not interested in discussing your alleged inability
>>to detect it. The wealth of similar quotations collected in Sokal's
>>article amply confirms his subsequent attribution of this nonsense to
>>"a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or
>>disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
>Zeleny's assertions in the above paragraph are as follows:
>
>1) lit crit types don't understand physics
Only as far as the examples cited by Sokal are concerned.
>2) people who do understand physics can tell this from reading lit
>critters try to discuss physics.
Only as far as the examples cited by Sokal are concerned.
>3) said physics-understanders (as represented by Zeleny and Sokal) need
>only say "you are wrong" without explaining why, because the lit critters
>aren't worth explaining such things to.
Where does it say that?
>4) the lit critters represent a group that "typically ignores (or
>disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
Not so. I have nothing but respect for such "lit critters" as
Erich Auerbach, Michael Screech, Roman Jakobson, Tsvetan Todorov,
Umberto Eco, Leo Spitzer, Jean Starobinski, Meyer Abrams, Paul
Bénichou, Brian Vickers, Paul Ricoeur, Algirdas Greimas, or
Gérard Genette, to name but a few. You will note their common
ground in solid historical scholarship and rigorous argumentation,
often buttressed by scientific training in disciplines ranging from
linguistics to medicine, and above all, intellectual honesty that
steers them away from preposterous totalizing claims identifying
reality with linguistic constructs.
>Now, it's 3 and 4 taken together that are problematic. Where exactly is
>the reasoned criticism coming from, when the people who are competent to
>make it refuse to do so?
Deal with Eco and Abrams on Derrida and Vickers on de Man. Then we can talk.
Silke-Maria Weineck
Hey, I'll bite.
Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>
: >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
: >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
: >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
: >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
: >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
: >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
: >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
: >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
: >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that the
problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never :
>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
: >> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
: >> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
: >> according to the values it extracts from them in its
: >> system of coordinates ...
What exactly is wrong with that statement?
I'd like other scientists to come in here as well; I'd like to compare notes.
Silke
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> The nonsense should be self-evident to anyone with a rudimentary grasp
> of physics. I am not interested in discussing your alleged inability
> to detect it. The wealth of similar quotations collected in Sokal's
> article amply confirms his subsequent attribution of this nonsense to
> "a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or
> disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
Again: Where is this 'reasoned criticism'? All we've got here is
Sokal's response and your finger pointing at a couple D&G excerpts --
both of which amount to: "this is nonsense -- take my word for it."
I don't think I will.
In his purported foray into poststructuralist thought, Sokal has not
demonstrated _any_ critical thinking skills that would allow me to 'take
his word' about anything.
By the way, I imagine i have a rudimentary grasp of physics; feel free
to offer a critique of D&G's excerpt. If i can't cope with it, i'll let
you know.
-- brian
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> [Derrida & de Man offer] preposterous totalizing claims identifying
> reality with linguistic constructs.
... which proves that, like Abrams, you haven't a clue about what
Derrida and de Man are saying.
-- brian
Clore
> >>Not so. I have nothing but respect for such "lit critters" as
> >>Erich Auerbach, Michael Screech, Roman Jakobson, Tsvetan Todorov,
> >>Umberto Eco, Leo Spitzer, Jean Starobinski, Meyer Abrams, Paul
> >>Bénichou, Brian Vickers, Paul Ricoeur, Algirdas Greimas, or
> >>Gérard Genette, to name but a few. You will note their common
> >>ground in solid historical scholarship and rigorous argumentation,
> >>often buttressed by scientific training in disciplines ranging from
> >>linguistics to medicine, and above all, intellectual honesty that
> >>reality with linguistic constructs.
Please add Michael Riffaterre to that list--probably the most important
literary theorist at work today.
Dan Clore
Michael Zeleny
>> ... Herewith appears a direct demonstration of NO intellectual
>>standards within an academic subculture, excerpted from Sokal's article:
>>
>> Unfortunately, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle has frequently
>> been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As Gilles Deleuze
>> and Félix Guattari (1994, 129-130) lucidly point out,
>>
>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>> system of coordinates ...
>>
>>And here comes another gem:
>>
>> See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second
>> group of scientists and engineers - cyberneticists - contrived,
>> with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary
>> implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's
>> critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical
>> plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an
>> analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush
>> fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked
>> for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would
>> show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics
>> in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the
>> centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for
>> automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal
>> industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
>*Where* is the 'direct demonstration' of no intellectual standards?
If you have to ask, you will not understand my explanation.
>All I see is two D&G excerpts.
That shows how much you know. The second quotation is Sokal's parody.
>>It follows that one can promulgate a progressive critique of the titanic
>>struggle between cybernetics and quantum physics without knowing the first
>>thing about transistors.
>Don't make me laugh. I suspect Deleuze and Guattari are far more
>equipped to talk about the history of science as a socio-economic
>industry than Sokal. Generally speaking, the science community likes
>to think of itself as operating independently of history and capital.
>This is why many scientists are so indebted to the notion of
>'laboratory environments': they begin to believe that the science
>industry *itself* is a 'controlled environment,' a community whose
>activities are free of antecedents, whose projects are governed by
>pure reason, independent of the messy contingencie s of history or
>material production. This mystification is what allows you t o say,
>with a straight face, that Deleuze & Guattari can't comment on the
>history of the industry because they don't know how to build a
>transistor. Of course this will draw the following Usenet response:
>'Of course scientists are aware of history and impact of funding, etc
>(it's always about 'funding,' isn't it, as if that's the only
>capitalistic factor that manipulates the industry). And of course
>scientists _are_ aware of these things -- when they're typing a
>response to a post like this. This also partly explains why their
>speculative discussions (at least the ones I've encountered) tend to
>make a b-line, as soon as possible, toward purely ahistorical beasts,
>like 'types,' 'consciousness,' 'cognition' -- or in Zeleny's case,
>Platonic Forms.
Laugh all you want. I have yet to see any evidence of your historical
scholarship, which would entitle you to judge the competence of Deleuze
and Guattari. You seem to fancy that trite ideological posturing and
vague babbling about "historicity" exempts you from the responsibility
to do hard work.
Andy Perry
In article <561kq7$20...@uni.library.ucla.edu>, zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu
(Michael Zeleny) wrote:
>The nonsense should be self-evident to anyone with a rudimentary grasp
>of physics. I am not interested in discussing your alleged inability
>to detect it. The wealth of similar quotations collected in Sokal's
>article amply confirms his subsequent attribution of this nonsense to
>"a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or
>disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
Zeleny's assertions in the above paragraph are as follows:
1) lit crit types don't understand physics
2) people who do understand physics can tell this from reading lit
critters try to discuss physics.
3) said physics-understanders (as represented by Zeleny and Sokal) need
only say "you are wrong" without explaining why, because the lit critters
aren't worth explaining such things to.
4) the lit critters represent a group that "typically ignores (or
disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
Now, it's 3 and 4 taken together that are problematic. Where exactly is
the reasoned criticism coming from, when the people who are competent to
make it refuse to do so?
--
Andy Perry We search before and after,
Brown University We pine for what is not.
English Department Our sincerest laughter
Andrew...@brown.edu OR With some pain is fraught.
st00...@brownvm.bitnet -- Shelley, d'apres Horace Rumpole
Michael Zeleny
dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) writes:
>zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>Not so. I have nothing but respect for such "lit critters" as
>>Erich Auerbach, Michael Screech, Roman Jakobson, Tsvetan Todorov,
>>Umberto Eco, Leo Spitzer, Jean Starobinski, Meyer Abrams, Paul
>>Bénichou, Brian Vickers, Paul Ricoeur, Algirdas Greimas, or
>>Gérard Genette, to name but a few. You will note their common
>>ground in solid historical scholarship and rigorous argumentation,
>>often buttressed by scientific training in disciplines ranging from
>>linguistics to medicine, and above all, intellectual honesty that
>>steers them away from preposterous totalizing claims identifying
>>reality with linguistic constructs.
>You will? I noted their common ground in not being redhaired
>Indonesians.
More to the point is their common ground in not being David Swanson,
or anything intellectually resembling him.
Michael Zeleny
Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> writes:
>>Not so. I have nothing but respect for such "lit critters" as
>>Erich Auerbach, Michael Screech, Roman Jakobson, Tsvetan Todorov,
>>Umberto Eco, Leo Spitzer, Jean Starobinski, Meyer Abrams, Paul
>>Bénichou, Brian Vickers, Paul Ricoeur, Algirdas Greimas, or
>>Gérard Genette, to name but a few. You will note their common
>>ground in solid historical scholarship and rigorous argumentation,
>>often buttressed by scientific training in disciplines ranging from
>>linguistics to medicine, and above all, intellectual honesty that
>>steers them away from preposterous totalizing claims identifying
>>reality with linguistic constructs.
>Please add Michael Riffaterre to that list--probably the most important
>literary theorist at work today.
Sure thing -- and likewise Kenneth Burke, Roger Shattuck, Michel
Butor, François Rigolot, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ross Chambers, Andrei
Siniavski, Jean Cohen, René Girard, E.D. Hirsch, Jean Paulhan, Yuri
Lotman, Edmund Wilson, George Steiner, or Eric Gans.
>Dan Clore
Mario Taboada
Since it seems to be name-dropping day, I'll mention Franco Moretti,
an excellent Italian critic whose work I follow with much interest.
His "Signs taken for wonders" is an outstanding book. One of these days
I'm going to post a couple of pages in which he analyzes the problems
with literary criticism as an intellectual activity and, without
mentioning names, delivers a scathing attack of ahistorical criticism
(and other types which he doesn't consider rigorous). I have heard good
things about his recent book (forget the title). Has anyone in this
group read it?
Let me also put in a good word for the much maligned Paul De Man. Some
of his work is astoundingly on the mark, even if his writing is at
best inelegant.
I almost forgot to mention Walter Ong, a brilliant expert on orality and
its relation to literacy.
By the way, I agree with the praise of Rittaferre, an excellent critic
and writer.
Regards,
--
Mario Taboada
* Department of Mathematics * Old Dominion University * Norfolk, Virginia
e-mail: tab...@math.odu.edu
Michael Zeleny
>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
Deleuze & Guattari:
>>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
>the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
No shit, Sherlock. The essential role of consciousness in quantum
observation is well-known. See e.g. Abner Shimony's first paper in the
second volume of his _Search for a Naturalistic Worldview_ for a concise
explanation. I will not bother dealing with other absurdities in their
presumable allusion to the quantum uncertainty principle, many of which
are somewhat mitigated by the translation. The context is especially
egregious, what with its remark that Cartesian coordinates somehow
"privilege" the points situated near their origin.
>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>>>> system of coordinates ...
>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
What could be right about it? They start out by garbling perspectivism
and proceed to draw an irrelevant and unintelligible distinction couched
in gratuitous abuse of mathematical terminology.
>I'd like other scientists to come in here as well; I'd like to compare notes.
>
>Silke
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Michael Zeleny
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> writes:
>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>The nonsense should be self-evident to anyone with a rudimentary grasp
>>of physics. I am not interested in discussing your alleged inability
>>to detect it. The wealth of similar quotations collected in Sokal's
>>article amply confirms his subsequent attribution of this nonsense to
>>"a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or
>>disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside."
>Again: Where is this 'reasoned criticism'? All we've got here is
>Sokal's response and your finger pointing at a couple D&G excerpts --
>both of which amount to: "this is nonsense -- take my word for it."
Silly boy. Sokal has explicitly disclaimed the futilitarian strategy of
offering reasoned criticism from the outside. His purpose is to expose
and humiliate pomo pseudo-scholarship by collecting egregious examples.
>I don't think I will.
Should anyone care?
>In his purported foray into poststructuralist thought, Sokal has not
>demonstrated _any_ critical thinking skills that would allow me to 'take
>his word' about anything.
I beg to differ. In selecting his quotations and spoofing cited pomo
sources, Sokal has demonstrated considerable verve and acumen. The
fact that his critical parody went over the heads of its ostensible
yet unintended audience is collateral damage not directly related to
its main thrust -- to expose the ignorance of pomo "authorities".
>By the way, I imagine i have a rudimentary grasp of physics; feel free
>to offer a critique of D&G's excerpt. If i can't cope with it, i'll let
>you know.
You already have.
-H.
brian artese wrote:
>
> -H. wrote:
>
> > do you mean lehmen's *signs of the times*? i found the first part
> > to be a fine introduction to po-mo history and the second half to be a
> > well reasoned and well defended and well documented bit of work. or is
> > that what makes it inane? bet you didnt like ellis' *against
> > deconstruction* either.
>
> in a couple of days at a used book store/coffee shop so i wouldn't have
> to buy it. The journalistic exposition of the events surrounding the
> discovery of the wartime writings was fine, but his 'analysis' of de
> Man's well-known work was just silly. That might not have mattered so
> much if the thesis of the book--that deconstruction is inherently
> fascistic--did not depend entirely on that reading.
>
> -- brian
read this when i bought a remaindered copy so it's been awhile...
i remember that the first half of the book was pretty much a
straight forward presentation of the rise of po-mo thinking without
to much (if any) critique. a sort of "this is what it is and this
is how it got here...no matter what you might happen to think of it."
part two showed the strenuous acrobatics de man's followers went through
to evade the issue of de man's collaboration (or at least its significance)
in which po-mo techniques featured big time. i remember the point being
the ease with which po-mo theory lent itself to this agenda-not that "theory"
itself was fascist or that de man was a fascist for espousing it. de man
was a fascist because he was a nazi fellow traveller.
it has been several years so i could very well be wrong about the thrust of
the book. and i aint picking it back up now...it'll have to wait till
the end of the semester. i'm sure some form of this thread will still
be going. would you care to post a fragment you find either egregiously
inane or pointlessly vindictive.
my mention of *against deconstruction* was spurred by ellis' remarks on
po-mo adherents' predilection for dis-allowing citicisms by outsiders/non-
believers.
-H.
ObBook: richard ford *independence day* pg 163 and STILL no aliens!
Silke-Maria Weineck
I wonder nobody has mentioned Peter Szondi.
Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> writes:
: >>Not so. I have nothing but respect for such "lit critters" as
: >>Erich Auerbach, Michael Screech, Roman Jakobson, Tsvetan Todorov,
: >>Umberto Eco, Leo Spitzer, Jean Starobinski, Meyer Abrams, Paul
: >>Bénichou, Brian Vickers, Paul Ricoeur, Algirdas Greimas, or
: >>Gérard Genette, to name but a few. You will note their common
: >>ground in solid historical scholarship and rigorous argumentation,
: >>often buttressed by scientific training in disciplines ranging from
: >>linguistics to medicine, and above all, intellectual honesty that
: >>steers them away from preposterous totalizing claims identifying
: >>reality with linguistic constructs.
: >Please add Michael Riffaterre to that list--probably the most important
: >literary theorist at work today.
: Sure thing -- and likewise Kenneth Burke, Roger Shattuck, Michel
: Butor, François Rigolot, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ross Chambers, Andrei
: Siniavski, Jean Cohen, René Girard, E.D. Hirsch, Jean Paulhan, Yuri
: Lotman, Edmund Wilson, George Steiner, or Eric Gans.
: >Dan Clore
: Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
moggin
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck):
> I wonder nobody has mentioned Peter Szondi.
Well, it was the weekend -- never on Szondi.
-- moggin
brian artese
-H. wrote:
> .... Would you care to post a fragment you find either egregiously
> inane or pointlessly vindictive.
I don't actually have the book; i read it over a couple of days
sitting in a used bookstore/coffee shop (so i wouldn't have to buy
it) -- so i can't critique any particular passage. It seems
uneccessary, in any case, to have to 'defend' poststructuralism
against the laughable claim that it's fascistic. I'm not sure how
something that rejects essentialism as a first principle could ever
hold hands with the race essentialism required by fascism...
-- brian
Silke-Maria Weineck
Doug Turnbull (d-t...@students.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: In article <562pgb$o...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu
: (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
: > Hey, I'll bite.
: >
: > Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: > : >>
: > : >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
: > : >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
: > : >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
: > : >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
: > : >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
: > : >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
: > : >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
: > : >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
: > : >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
: >
: > What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that the
: > problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
: Well, the "interference of the measure with the measured" is one way
: of deriving the Uncertainty Principle (UP). As far as I can tell, the word
: "subjective" is completely unnecessary.
That's what D+G seem to say as well.... the background of their remark
is a common confusion in the metaphoric use of the UP when applied to
criticism -- D+G are arguing against that.
If anything, it incorrectly
: describes what they're trying to describe.
Precisely.
IOW- the measurement of a
: particle does disturb the particle, but this has nothing to do with
: subjectivity.
Precisely.
(There are several different ways of deriving the
: uncertainty principle- I would hesitate to say that one was right and the
: others wrong. The first section of Volume 3 of the Feynman Lectures on
: Physics has a discussion of the interference of the measurement with the
: measured quantity. Section 2-1 has a brief discussion of an alternative
: approach to the UP. I'd recommend it for an introduction to the wierdness
: of QM.)
: Getting back to the quote, the UP deals with measures of a single
: particle, not two particles as the quote says.
Sure, but they do refer to _one particle_ at the beginning, so that seems
not so terrible (in fact, more like a mistranslation, but I can't say
that it is)
It also does not reduce the
: number of independant variables.
I read the quote to say, "even if ind. var. are reduced"
I cannot garner anything resembling
: meaning from the phrase "the values of the coordinates having the same
: probability." It certainly doesn't describe anything to do with the UP.
: And, if I understand it correctly, saying it "leaves ... position...
: outside of the field of its actualization" is a rather tortured way of
: expressing the concept.
That's hardly a crime.
: >
: > ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never :
: > >> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
: > : >> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
: > : >> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
: > : >> according to the values it extracts from them in its
: > : >> system of coordinates ...
: >
: > What exactly is wrong with that statement?
: Well, I'm not really competent to comment on this quote, since I
: don't know what perspectivism is. If I had to criticize something,
You don't have to...
I'd
: guess the problem lies with the last part- that there is something really
: important about the particular system of coordinates chosen. I'm also
: suspicious of the use of the word "values" in a mathematical context.
The context is not purely mathematical
: Perhaps the problem lies in trying to apply the ideas of variable and
: coordinates to a philosophical position?
Perhaps. But the above doesn't seem to be the devastating criticism that
Zeleny wishes us to imagine.
Thanks, Doug!
Silke
: Doug Turnbull
Silke-Maria Weineck
Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: >Zilch, as I expected.
: Sapienti sat. In view of your erstwhile befuddlement by an elementary
: explanation of the workings of your TV set, I was not expecting you to
: evince more understanding on the present occasion.
There goes your chance to prove you have something to contribute.
Silke
: >S.
: Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
: Zel...@math.ucla.edu | Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
: itinerant philosopher -- will think for food ** www.ptyx.com ** M...@ptyx.com
: ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)
: >Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: >>>Hey, I'll bite.
: >>>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>Deleuze & Guattari:
: >>>>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
: >>>>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
: >>>>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
: >>>>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
: >>>>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
: >>>>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
: >>>>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
: >>>>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
: >>>>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
: >>>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
: >>>the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
: >>No shit, Sherlock. The essential role of consciousness in quantum
: >>observation is well-known. See e.g. Abner Shimony's first paper in the
: >>second volume of his _Search for a Naturalistic Worldview_ for a concise
: >>explanation. I will not bother dealing with other absurdities in their
: >>presumable allusion to the quantum uncertainty principle, many of which
: >>are somewhat mitigated by the translation. The context is especially
: >>egregious, what with its remark that Cartesian coordinates somehow
: >>"privilege" the points situated near their origin.
: >>>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
: >>>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
: >>>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
: >>>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
: >>>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
: >>>>>> system of coordinates ...
: >>>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
: >>What could be right about it? They start out by garbling perspectivism
: >>and proceed to draw an irrelevant and unintelligible distinction couched
: >>in gratuitous abuse of mathematical terminology.
: >>>I'd like other scientists to come in here as well; I'd like to compare notes.
: >>>
: >>>Silke
: >>Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Michael Zeleny
wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>Zilch, as I expected.
Sapienti sat. In view of your erstwhile befuddlement by an elementary
explanation of the workings of your TV set, I was not expecting you to
evince more understanding on the present occasion.
>S.
Silke-Maria Weineck
Zilch, as I expected.
S.
Doug Turnbull
> Hey, I'll bite.
>
> Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
> : >>
> : >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
> : >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
> : >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
> : >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
> : >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
> : >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
> : >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
> : >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
> : >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>
> What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that the
> problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
Well, the "interference of the measure with the measured" is one way
of deriving the Uncertainty Principle (UP). As far as I can tell, the word
"subjective" is completely unnecessary. If anything, it incorrectly
describes what they're trying to describe. IOW- the measurement of a
particle does disturb the particle, but this has nothing to do with
subjectivity. (There are several different ways of deriving the
uncertainty principle- I would hesitate to say that one was right and the
others wrong. The first section of Volume 3 of the Feynman Lectures on
Physics has a discussion of the interference of the measurement with the
measured quantity. Section 2-1 has a brief discussion of an alternative
approach to the UP. I'd recommend it for an introduction to the wierdness
of QM.)
Getting back to the quote, the UP deals with measures of a single
particle, not two particles as the quote says. It also does not reduce the
number of independant variables. I cannot garner anything resembling
meaning from the phrase "the values of the coordinates having the same
probability." It certainly doesn't describe anything to do with the UP.
And, if I understand it correctly, saying it "leaves ... position...
outside of the field of its actualization" is a rather tortured way of
expressing the concept.
>
> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never :
> >> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
> : >> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
> : >> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
> : >> according to the values it extracts from them in its
> : >> system of coordinates ...
>
> What exactly is wrong with that statement?
Well, I'm not really competent to comment on this quote, since I
don't know what perspectivism is. If I had to criticize something, I'd
guess the problem lies with the last part- that there is something really
important about the particular system of coordinates chosen. I'm also
suspicious of the use of the word "values" in a mathematical context.
Perhaps the problem lies in trying to apply the ideas of variable and
coordinates to a philosophical position?
Doug Turnbull
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
> Deleuze & Guattari:
> >>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
> >>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
> >>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
> >>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
> >>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
> >>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
> >>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
> >>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
> >>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>
> >What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
> >the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
>
> No shit, Sherlock. The essential role of consciousness in quantum
> observation is well-known. See e.g. Abner Shimony's first paper in the
> second volume of his _Search for a Naturalistic Worldview_ for a concise
> explanation. I will not bother dealing with other absurdities in their
> presumable allusion to the quantum uncertainty principle, many of which
> are somewhat mitigated by the translation. The context is especially
> egregious, what with its remark that Cartesian coordinates somehow
> "privilege" the points situated near their origin.
The only thing approaching a 'critique' in this paragraph is in the last
sentence; yet nowere in the excerpt do D&G talk about 'the origin of
Cartesian coordinates.'
> >>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
> >>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
> >>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
> >>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
> >>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
> >>>> system of coordinates ...
>
> >What exactly is wrong with that statement?
>
> What could be right about it? They start out by garbling perspectivism
> and proceed to draw an irrelevant and unintelligible distinction couched
> in gratuitous abuse of mathematical terminology.
This post offers nothing in terms of a critique.
-- brian
Doug Turnbull
In article <56afe9$9...@netnews.upenn.edu>, wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu
(Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
> Doug Turnbull (d-t...@students.uiuc.edu) wrote:
[snip]
> : "...outside of the field of its actualization" is a rather tortured way of
> : expressing the concept.
>
> That's hardly a crime.
But it should be! Just get Congress to pass a few laws, then William
Safire and I can get set up in the Star Chamber and sort this whole
postmodernism thing out in a few months. After that we'll proactively
downsize (with extreme prejudice) all the management buzzword types. Why,
the opportunities are elmost endless.
Doug Turnbull
Richard Harter
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
>Hey, I'll bite.
>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>: >>
>: >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>: >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>: >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>: >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>: >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>: >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>: >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>: >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>: >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that the
>problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
There's a bit of mixing of apples and pomegranates going on here.
There is a notion that a particle does not have a position/velocity
per se unless it is observed. When nobody is looking its position is
smeared all over the universe with some areas being more probable than
others. This smearing is described by the Quantum wave function.
When somebody looks the wave function collapses and it has a location.
What does it mean to say "when somebody looks"? Well there you have
an argument. Under some interpretations it does mean "somebody",
a conscious observer, implicitly or explicitly. In others it doesn't.
So the cited paragraph seems to be taking a position on this issue of
interpretation.
However there is a second notion involved here, the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle which says that there is a necessary imprecision
in measuring both the position and the momentum of a particle (or
anything else). It's not a matter of measuring one or the other.
The principle says that it's the product of the two that cannot be
measured precisely so that, the more accurate the measurement of
one, the less accurate the measurement of the other.
I hope this is clear. [Some hopes are not destined to be realized.]
The important point here is that there are two separate notions. It
is true that both notions fall out of QM but they are separate
notions.
One thing that is wrong with the cited paragraph is that it has these
two notions muddled together. You can get the uncertainty principle
from QM wave collapse, but the subjective/objective bit isn't
relevant, except indirectly.
To speak of Heisenberg's demon is off the mark; Maxwell introduced the
notion of "Maxwell's demon" but that is in an entirely different
context.
To say that the number of independent variables is reduced is false.
To say that the values of the coordinates have the same probability is
false. I don't want to guess what is meant by "the field of its
actualization". In that sentence, by the way, "two particles" should
probably be "two parameters".
>...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never :
>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>: >> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>: >> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>: >> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>: >> system of coordinates ...
>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
The real thing that is wrong with that statement is that it was
written in the first place; the author should have been incarcerated
long before for genocidal atrocities against the English language.
I would not advocate strangling for I am opposed to the death penalty.
However I could be persuaded the to waive the ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.
The part of the sentence after "a truth of the relative" is
gobbledegook. It is not just a matter of words being used in ways
that no mathematician would use them or of petty errors of English.
Even standing on one's head it's hard to think of any conceivable
meaning that the author had in mind.
If we omit the author's "explanation" and "perspectivism" we are left
with "scientific relativism, is never relative to a subject: it
constitutes not a relativity of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of
the relative" we have something which, while vague, has the prospect
of having some meaning.
What that might be is quite unclear to me; however I am guessing that
it might be something like this: There is a conventional picture of
scientific relativism which says that we have data and theories and
that the truth of a theory is measured by how well the theory matches
the data. We need not go into the difficulties of this picture. I
will guess that this picture is what is meant by "a relativity of
truth". There is a second picture in which we think of a theory being
constructed to match data; the theory is true relative to the data
that was selected for building the theory. I will guess that this
picture is what is meant by "a truth of the relative". This
interpretation is supported by the confluence of words in the second
half of the sentence.
If this interpretation is right then the author is getting at is
something like this: Scientific relativism, the approximate truth
that scientists speak of, is not a matter of approximate correctness,
i.e., a fuzzy world-view, but rather it is a matter of a sharp view of
a restricted world. If that's what the author meant, it is a sensible
albeit debatable thing to say.
On the other hand the author may have had a hangover that day.
>I'd like other scientists to come in here as well; I'd like to compare notes.
I'm not a scientist. However I hope this has been of some help.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
Life is tough. The other day I was pulled over for doing trochee's
in an iambic pentameter zone and they revoked my poetic license.
moggin
D&G:
>>: >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>: >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>: >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>: >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>: >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>: >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>: >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>: >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>: >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter):
Oh, but it is, at least on my guess. (It would help considerably to
have the statement in context.) D&G are making the point (at least
I would surmise) that the Uncertainty Principle describes a certain
"state of affairs" concerning the universe -- one that's inherent to
the structure of reality, rather than a product of the subjectivity of
measurements. The mote is in God's eye, not the physicist's.
>To speak of Heisenberg's demon is off the mark; Maxwell introduced the
>notion of "Maxwell's demon" but that is in an entirely different
>context.
Maybe the allusion is to Descartes.
[...]
>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>>: >> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>>: >> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>>: >> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>>: >> system of coordinates ...
[...]
>The part of the sentence after "a truth of the relative" is
>gobbledegook. It is not just a matter of words being used in ways
>that no mathematician would use them or of petty errors of English.
>Even standing on one's head it's hard to think of any conceivable
>meaning that the author had in mind.
If you want to hear a guess, it's a reference to the calculations
involving the collapse of the wave function. (As the Talking Heads
say, "This is only...a guess.") I have a feeling Nietzsche is in the
vicinity, too.
>If we omit the author's "explanation" and "perspectivism" we are left
>with "scientific relativism, is never relative to a subject: it
>constitutes not a relativity of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of
>the relative" we have something which, while vague, has the prospect
>of having some meaning.
>What that might be is quite unclear to me; however I am guessing that
>it might be something like this: There is a conventional picture of
>scientific relativism which says that we have data and theories and
>that the truth of a theory is measured by how well the theory matches
>the data. We need not go into the difficulties of this picture. I
>will guess that this picture is what is meant by "a relativity of
>truth". There is a second picture in which we think of a theory being
>constructed to match data; the theory is true relative to the data
>that was selected for building the theory. I will guess that this
>picture is what is meant by "a truth of the relative". This
>interpretation is supported by the confluence of words in the second
>half of the sentence.
>If this interpretation is right then the author is getting at is
>something like this: Scientific relativism, the approximate truth
>that scientists speak of, is not a matter of approximate correctness,
>i.e., a fuzzy world-view, but rather it is a matter of a sharp view of
>a restricted world. If that's what the author meant, it is a sensible
>albeit debatable thing to say.
I think you're half-way there. Again, this is speculation, but I'd
say they're talking about a sharp view of a _fuzzy_ world. And that's
the point -- "Do not adjust your set." The fuzziness in the picture is
a part of the picture. The more clearly you see the world, the more
clearly you perceive that it's a fuzzy place.
-- moggin
David Swanson
In article <moggin-1311...@user-37kb943.dialup.mindspring.com>
mog...@mindspring.com (moggin) writes:
> >If this interpretation is right then the author is getting at is
> >something like this: Scientific relativism, the approximate truth
> >that scientists speak of, is not a matter of approximate correctness,
> >i.e., a fuzzy world-view, but rather it is a matter of a sharp view of
> >a restricted world. If that's what the author meant, it is a sensible
> >albeit debatable thing to say.
>
> I think you're half-way there. Again, this is speculation, but I'd
> say they're talking about a sharp view of a _fuzzy_ world. And that's
> the point -- "Do not adjust your set." The fuzziness in the picture is
> a part of the picture. The more clearly you see the world, the more
> clearly you perceive that it's a fuzzy place.
>
> -- moggin
May I humbly suggest that it's all a crock, either way. Also, one
cannot commit atrocities against a language.
David
"When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the
apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person
could have written them. When you find an answer, . . . when these
passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages,ones
you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."
Kuhn
Richard Harter
dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
>In article <moggin-1311...@user-37kb943.dialup.mindspring.com>
>mog...@mindspring.com (moggin) writes:
>May I humbly suggest that it's all a crock, either way. Also, one
>cannot commit atrocities against a language.
Perhaps "one" cannot but you can.
[forbidden device deleted]
David Christopher Swanson
c...@tiac.net writes:
> dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
>
> >In article <moggin-1311...@user-37kb943.dialup.mindspring.com>
> >mog...@mindspring.com (moggin) writes:
>
>
> >May I humbly suggest that it's all a crock, either way. Also, one
> >cannot commit atrocities against a language.
>
>
> Perhaps "one" cannot but you can.
> [forbidden device deleted]
What's deleted?
Is this a personal attack or do you just prefer "you" to "one"?
DS
David Swanson
In article <E0u5n...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
dc...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (David Christopher Swanson) writes:
> > Perhaps "one" cannot but you can.
> > [forbidden device deleted]
>
>
> What's deleted?
>
> Is this a personal attack or do you just prefer "you" to "one"?
>
> DS
I get it. I get it. The forbidden device is one of those - ;-). But
I still don't get it.
Richard Harter
dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
>In article <E0u5n...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
>dc...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (David Christopher Swanson) writes:
>> > Perhaps "one" cannot but you can.
>> > [forbidden device deleted]
>>
>>
>> What's deleted?
>>
>> Is this a personal attack or do you just prefer "you" to "one"?
>>
>> DS
>I get it. I get it. The forbidden device is one of those - ;-). But
>I still don't get it.
Oh, fooey, and I was having so much fun with you too.
Richard Harter
dc...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (David Christopher Swanson) wrote:
>c...@tiac.net writes:
>> dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
>>
>> >In article <moggin-1311...@user-37kb943.dialup.mindspring.com>
>> >mog...@mindspring.com (moggin) writes:
>>
>>
>> >May I humbly suggest that it's all a crock, either way. Also, one
>> >cannot commit atrocities against a language.
>>
>>
>> Perhaps "one" cannot but you can.
>> [forbidden device deleted]
>What's deleted?
>Is this a personal attack or do you just prefer "you" to "one"?
Cheese, it's very sad what some people don't get. The "forbidden
device " is an emoticon; we just went through a long discussion about
whether emoticons were an abomination unto to the text or were a
useful and convenient convention. The sentence, "Perhaps...can" is
intended as a bit of wit. You, that is you, David Swanson had
delivered yourself of a vapid, stuffy, pretentious dicta as is, alas,
your wont from time to time. The sentence says, to paraphrase,
Perhaps an abstract indeterminate person, the "one", cannot do such a
thing but a real human being, the "you" can. Whether the "you"
denotes a person generally or David Swanson personally is left open
as a deliberate ambiguity, one which the author is quite aware of by
the way. The author (that's me) expected as a matter of course, but
quite incorrectly, that the ambiguity would be perceived as and
appreciated as word play.
The author (that's me, again) appreciates the riposte, the clever
reply. And you (that's David Swanson) had delivered yourself of a
setup, a straight line, that begged, that positively demanded the
gibe. The author wished to say (I just checked, yep, that's what I
wanted to say) that he recognized this demand of the text and that he
was delivering, per implicit request, the gibe demanded and that,
furthermore, the response was to the demand of the text and not
directed to the author of the text (that's you, David Swanson). This
the author did this by appending a conventional icon which the
perceptive, in this context, might readily and correctly interpret as
the author's intent. However, as we [that's me and my E. Coli] have
implied above in this text, said icon is forbidden so a pointer was
left in its place, one that the unfortunate author so incorrectly
assumed would be swiftly recognized for its inexorable intent.
It should further be pointed out [Here the author is doing the passive
voice trick, implying that the text speaks for itself, or is being
written as though the author is the channel for an unspecified
impersonality of great but unspecified authority or, perhaps, simply
that the forthcoming text need not be identified by a specific author
but indeed might well have been said by anyone. In this regard, the
author prevaricates. Indeed I have consulted the author on this very
point and, after rigorous examination, have concluded that he
prevaricates shamelessly despite his impassioned denials.] that the
cited formulation of the substituted phrase delivers a collateral
message, not to the direct audience, but rather to the author of the
dictum, said message being loosely translatable as:
Nyanyanya
---
The author has been known to indulge in elaborate sarcasm.
Richard Harter
mog...@mindspring.com (moggin) wrote:
>D&G:
>>>: >> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>>: >> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>>: >> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>>: >> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>>: >> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>>: >> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>>: >> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>>: >> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>>: >> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter):
>>One thing that is wrong with the cited paragraph is that it has these
>>two notions muddled together. You can get the uncertainty principle
>>from QM wave collapse, but the subjective/objective bit isn't
>>relevant, except indirectly.
> Oh, but it is, at least on my guess. (It would help considerably to
>have the statement in context.) D&G are making the point (at least
>I would surmise) that the Uncertainty Principle describes a certain
>"state of affairs" concerning the universe -- one that's inherent to
>the structure of reality, rather than a product of the subjectivity of
>measurements. The mote is in God's eye, not the physicist's.
I don't think context would help. You may be right as to the intent.
However I don't think a physicist would put the matter in terms of the
subjectivity of measurements. The trouble is that they don't really
understand what they are talking about; physicists use very precise
language in these matters. The authors fairly clearly have not
captured all the nuances; the reader is left befuddled, not knowing
whether a statement is wrong, confused, or merely paraphrased into
different modes of speech.
>>The part of the sentence after "a truth of the relative" is
>>gobbledegook. It is not just a matter of words being used in ways
>>that no mathematician would use them or of petty errors of English.
>>Even standing on one's head it's hard to think of any conceivable
>>meaning that the author had in mind.
> If you want to hear a guess, it's a reference to the calculations
>involving the collapse of the wave function. (As the Talking Heads
>say, "This is only...a guess.") I have a feeling Nietzsche is in the
>vicinity, too.
Or Meister Eckhart. Or maybe they got it from the "Zen Koan of the
Month" club.
>>If this interpretation is right then the author is getting at is
>>something like this: Scientific relativism, the approximate truth
>>that scientists speak of, is not a matter of approximate correctness,
>>i.e., a fuzzy world-view, but rather it is a matter of a sharp view of
>>a restricted world. If that's what the author meant, it is a sensible
>>albeit debatable thing to say.
> I think you're half-way there. Again, this is speculation, but I'd
>say they're talking about a sharp view of a _fuzzy_ world. And that's
>the point -- "Do not adjust your set." The fuzziness in the picture is
>a part of the picture. The more clearly you see the world, the more
>clearly you perceive that it's a fuzzy place.
That's a sensible thing to say but I don't think it fits with the text
which speaks of scientific relativism and offers a mysterious
dichotomy.
But to return to Silke's question: What is wrong with these excerpts?
What is wrong with them is that they are definitely wrong in spots,
gobbledegook in spots, and muddy and unclear throughout. One can,
with effort, torture meaning out of them but one is never sure that
one's reading is the intended meaning or indeed if there was ever an
intended meaning.
David Swanson
In article <56eso1$1...@news-central.tiac.net>
c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
> Cheese, it's very sad what some people don't get.
I seem to be getting nothing lately, so get used to it.
The "forbidden
> device " is an emoticon; we just went through a long discussion about
> whether emoticons were an abomination unto to the text or were a
> useful and convenient convention.
Actually, I remembered and posted a follow up, but I didn't find that
discussion terribly useful.
The sentence, "Perhaps...can" is
> intended as a bit of wit. You, that is you, David Swanson had
> delivered yourself of a vapid, stuffy, pretentious dicta as is, alas,
> your wont from time to time.
Why is it pretentious to suggest that you/one/a person can't abuse a
language? In another thread we've got a request to put pomo into plain
English. It ain't gonna happen. It's an idiotic request. When one
says something NEW, one needs new language. This is the simplest of
truths. Not being a historian, I don't know whether when, say, Kant
came along the Germans screamed about wanting plain German (whatever
that would be ;-) ;-) ). I don't know how much this resistance in the
name of existing language is unique to our day and age (I suspect much
less than its proponents imagine). But Heidegger is worth reading
BECAUSE you've got to read him three times before you get it,
afterwhich you yourself simply start talking like Heidegger. Clear?
Or was my pretentious dictum the one stating that it's nonsense to
bicker about fuzzily describing an unfuzzy world or unfuzzily
describing a fuzzy world?
The sentence says, to paraphrase,
>
> Perhaps an abstract indeterminate person, the "one", cannot do such a
> thing but a real human being, the "you" can.
That's not a paraphrase, it's a clarification and an explanation. I
LIKE the word "one" and I don't mean by it "an abstract indeterminate
person as opposed to a real human being."
Whether the "you"
> denotes a person generally or David Swanson personally is left open
> as a deliberate ambiguity, one which the author is quite aware of by
> the way. The author (that's me) expected as a matter of course, but
> quite incorrectly, that the ambiguity would be perceived as and
> appreciated as word play.
What can I tell ya?
>
> The author (that's me, again) appreciates the riposte, the clever
> reply. And you (that's David Swanson) had delivered yourself of a
> setup, a straight line, that begged, that positively demanded the
> gibe. The author wished to say (I just checked, yep, that's what I
> wanted to say)
Now, this operation interests me VERY much. How did you check?
that he recognized this demand of the text and that he
> was delivering, per implicit request, the gibe demanded and that,
> furthermore, the response was to the demand of the text and not
> directed to the author of the text (that's you, David Swanson). This
> the author did this by appending a conventional icon which the
> perceptive, in this context, might readily and correctly interpret as
> the author's intent. However, as we [that's me and my E. Coli] have
> implied above in this text, said icon is forbidden so a pointer was
> left in its place, one that the unfortunate author so incorrectly
> assumed would be swiftly recognized for its inexorable intent.
A fine upstanding argument clothed in rags. I SEE that meaning IN THE
TEXT now that you point it out (and before, actually.) Don't talk of
authorial intent, please; it gives people a bad impression of your
upbringing. This comment may be taken either as a moronic failure to
catch the proper level of sarcasm, or a warning to lurkers who will
have so failed.
>
> It should further be pointed out [Here the author is doing the passive
> voice trick, implying that the text speaks for itself, or is being
> written as though the author is the channel for an unspecified
> impersonality of great but unspecified authority or, perhaps, simply
> that the forthcoming text need not be identified by a specific author
> but indeed might well have been said by anyone. In this regard, the
> author prevaricates. Indeed I have consulted the author on this very
> point and, after rigorous examination, have concluded that he
> prevaricates shamelessly despite his impassioned denials.] that the
> cited formulation of the substituted phrase delivers a collateral
> message, not to the direct audience, but rather to the author of the
> dictum, said message being loosely translatable as:
> Nyanyanya
>
> ---
Because for a slight moment somewhere in that paragraph - though I
can't on reflection pinpoint the spot - I heard the voice of
Dostoievski, I will not comment wittily, flatheadedly, appreciatively,
angrily, or otherwise.
DS
>
> The author has been known to indulge in elaborate sarcasm.
No excuse.
>
>
> Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
> URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
> Life is tough. The other day I was pulled over for doing trochee's
> in an iambic pentameter zone and they revoked my poetic license.
>
Michael Zeleny
d-t...@students.uiuc.edu (Doug Turnbull) writes:
>wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
>>Hey, I'll bite.
>>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) quoted Deleuze & Guattari:
>>>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
>>the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
> Well, the "interference of the measure with the measured" is
>one way of deriving the Uncertainty Principle (UP). As far as I can
>tell, the word "subjective" is completely unnecessary. If anything,
>it incorrectly describes what they're trying to describe. IOW- the
>measurement of a particle does disturb the particle, but this has
>nothing to do with subjectivity. (There are several different ways
>of deriving the uncertainty principle- I would hesitate to say that
>one was right and the others wrong. The first section of Volume 3 of
>the Feynman Lectures on Physics has a discussion of the interference
>of the measurement with the measured quantity. Section 2-1 has a brief
>discussion of an alternative approach to the UP. I'd recommend it for
>an introduction to the wierdness of QM.)
Feynman says nothing to support your claim that measurement has
nothing to do with subjectivity. That is a connection arising on the
level of QM interpretation. The easiest way to make it is by arguing
from the fact that the measuring device as a physical system is itself
subject to QM description in terms of states and observables, in the
manner of von Neumann and London & Bauer.
> Getting back to the quote, the UP deals with measures of a single
>particle, not two particles as the quote says. It also does not reduce
>the number of independant variables. I cannot garner anything resembling
>meaning from the phrase "the values of the coordinates having the same
>probability." It certainly doesn't describe anything to do with the UP.
>And, if I understand it correctly, saying it "leaves ... position...
>outside of the field of its actualization" is a rather tortured way of
>expressing the concept.
It gets even worse in the original French.
>>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>>>>> system of coordinates ...
>>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
> Well, I'm not really competent to comment on this quote, since I
>don't know what perspectivism is. If I had to criticize something, I'd
>guess the problem lies with the last part- that there is something really
>important about the particular system of coordinates chosen. I'm also
>suspicious of the use of the word "values" in a mathematical context.
>Perhaps the problem lies in trying to apply the ideas of variable and
>coordinates to a philosophical position?
Perspectivism is a form of scientific realism advocated by Evander
McGilvary, which aims to account for consciousness in its causal and
non-causal aspects, as arising within different kinds of perspectives,
possessed of peculiar extra-spatiotemporal existence. Needless to
say, this theory has nothing to do with "truth of the relative."
Michael Zeleny
wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>>>Zilch, as I expected.
>>Sapienti sat. In view of your erstwhile befuddlement by an elementary
>>explanation of the workings of your TV set, I was not expecting you to
>>evince more understanding on the present occasion.
>There goes your chance to prove you have something to contribute.
Attempting to make an intellectual contribution to a sterile mind would be
as futile as attempting to propagate one's germ line by fucking a sheep.
>Silke
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zel...@math.ucla.edu | Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food ** www.ptyx.com ** M...@ptyx.com
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)
>>>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>>>>>Hey, I'll bite.
>>>>>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>Deleuze & Guattari:
>>>>>>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>>>>>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>>>>>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>>>>>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>>>>>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>>>>>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>>>>>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>>>>>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>>>>>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>>>>>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
>>>>>the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
>>>>No shit, Sherlock. The essential role of consciousness in quantum
>>>>observation is well-known. See e.g. Abner Shimony's first paper in the
>>>>second volume of his _Search for a Naturalistic Worldview_ for a concise
>>>>explanation. I will not bother dealing with other absurdities in their
>>>>presumable allusion to the quantum uncertainty principle, many of which
>>>>are somewhat mitigated by the translation. The context is especially
>>>>egregious, what with its remark that Cartesian coordinates somehow
>>>>"privilege" the points situated near their origin.
>>>>>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>>>>>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>>>>>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>>>>>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>>>>>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>>>>>>>> system of coordinates ...
>>>>>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
>>>>What could be right about it? They start out by garbling perspectivism
>>>>and proceed to draw an irrelevant and unintelligible distinction couched
>>>>in gratuitous abuse of mathematical terminology.
>>>>>I'd like other scientists to come in here as well; I'd like to compare notes.
>>>>>
>>>>>Silke
Michael Zeleny
brian artese <b-ar...@nwu.edu> writes:
>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>Deleuze & Guattari:
>>>>>> in quantum physics, Heisenberg's demon does not express
>>>>>> the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the
>>>>>> position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective
>>>>>> interference of the measure with the measured, but it
>>>>>> measures exactly an objective state of affairs that
>>>>>> leaves the respective position of two of its particles
>>>>>> outside of the field of its actualization, the number
>>>>>> of independent variables being reduced and the values
>>>>>> of the coordinates having the same probability.
>>>What exactly is wrong about that statement? Are you suggesting that
>>>the problems in measuring _are_ due to subjective interference?
>>No shit, Sherlock. The essential role of consciousness in quantum
>>observation is well-known. See e.g. Abner Shimony's first paper in the
>>second volume of his _Search for a Naturalistic Worldview_ for a concise
>>explanation. I will not bother dealing with other absurdities in their
>>presumable allusion to the quantum uncertainty principle, many of which
>>are somewhat mitigated by the translation. The context is especially
>>egregious, what with its remark that Cartesian coordinates somehow
>>"privilege" the points situated near their origin.
>The only thing approaching a 'critique' in this paragraph is in the last
>sentence; yet nowere in the excerpt do D&G talk about 'the origin of
>Cartesian coordinates.'
Who said anything about "approaching a 'critique'"? The challenge was
to specify what exactly was wrong with D&G's statement. I cited one
factual error -- the quantum effects of measurement cannot be due to
brute physical interaction with a measuring device. Besides, the last
sentence explicitly addresses the context of the excerpt, on p. 123 of
the Minuit edition.
>>>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
>>>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
>>>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
>>>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
>>>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
>>>>>> system of coordinates ...
>>>What exactly is wrong with that statement?
>>What could be right about it? They start out by garbling perspectivism
>>and proceed to draw an irrelevant and unintelligible distinction couched
>>in gratuitous abuse of mathematical terminology.
>This post offers nothing in terms of a critique.
There is nothing in the description of "truth ... of variables whose
cases it orders according to the values it extracts from them in its
system of coordinates" to merit any sort of critique. Not a single
mathematical term is used therein in a way even vaguely reminiscent
of its proper meaning.
Doug Turnbull
In article <E0v9r...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
dc...@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
> In article <56eso1$1...@news-central.tiac.net>
> c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
>
> > Cheese, it's very sad what some people don't get.
>
> I seem to be getting nothing lately, so get used to it.
I wouldn't sell yourself short. From where I'm sitting, it looks like
you've at least been getting plenty of grief lately.
Doug Turnbull
brian artese
Michael Zeleny wrote:
Where does the excerpt imply 'brute interaction with a measuring device?' It
cites only the act of registering a measurement.
> >>>>>> ...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never
> >>>>>> relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity
> >>>>>> of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative,
> >>>>>> that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders
> >>>>>> according to the values it extracts from them in its
> >>>>>> system of coordinates ...
> There is nothing in the description of "truth ... of variables whose
> cases it orders according to the values it extracts from them in its
> system of coordinates" to merit any sort of critique. Not a single
> mathematical term is used therein in a way even vaguely reminiscent
> of its proper meaning.
yes, so you say...
-- brian