PIGS, BROADS, AND OTHERS
Michael Zeleny
"soc.culture.soviet via ListServ" <SC...@indycms.iupui.edu> writes:
>>Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 03:24:44 GMT
>>From: Michael Zeleny <zel...@HUSC10.HARVARD.EDU>
MZ:
>>.....
>>As for prayer, I tried it once
>>..... found that I was merely talking to myself. Personal identity is
>>the very pinnacle of personal relationships with God, don't you agree?
DL:
>Yes, I agree; one of them.
Undoubtedly you realize that superlatives never admit multiple predication.
DL:
> Another one is God's personal identity.
That is rather uninteresting, I'm afraid. The putative identity of the
most perfect being interests me even less than the putative location of the
most perfect island (I trust you are up on your Anselm and Gaunilo);
furthermore, I agree with Aristotle and Spinoza that the feeling must be
mutual. It follows that the most appropriate attitude to be adopted
towards Christians, as well as other idolaters of a personal deity, is that
of benign contempt, wouldn't you agree?
MZ:
>>"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less
>>stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as
>>this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
DL:
>Exactly.
How kind of you to agree.
MZ:
>>Harry G. Frankfurt, "On Bullshit"
>>
>>best wishes,
DL:
>You too,
mz
Lee Story
In article <920720201...@feds66.Prime.COM>
"soc.culture.soviet via ListServ" <SC...@indycms.iupui.edu> writes:
MZ:
>>..... Personal identity is
>>the very pinnacle of personal relationships with God, don't you agree?
DL:
>Yes, I agree; one of them.
MZ:
Undoubtedly you realize that superlatives never admit multiple predication.
While the rest of MZ's reply seems on target, this appears not merely
petty but incorrect. The awkwardness of "the pinnacle is <plural>" is
resolved by "the pinnacles are...", as any third grader will tell you.
To move beyond the idiosyncracies of natural language and accept the
broader meaning of his prohibition would seem to demand that we accept
something very like monotheism a priori. A peculiar position for
Mikhail!
regards,
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Story (l...@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
(Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Bruce Ostrum
| >>"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less
| >>stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as
| >>this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
|
| DL:
| >Exactly.
|
| How kind of you to agree.
It seems quite ironic that Mikhail would quote from Harry Frankfurt's
excellent little essay about bullshit and bullshit artists, since
Mikhail himself is one of the best examples of the bullshit artist
manque that we have had the pleasure and exasperation to witness on
the net.
Right here, in fact, we have a fair example of the artist at work:
Frankfurt is not using the word "sincerity" here in its normal sense.
He is using it in a specific technical sense which he introduces earlier
in his essay. In that sense, sincerity probably is bullshit, at least
among those smart enough to know better.
However, Mikhail makes no effort to point out that this quote is lifted
out of context, even when his decontextified presentation of it leads
someone else to agree with it. As Frankfurt says of those willing to
bullshit, "[h]e is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need
requires".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?"
"You can have your cake and eat it, and never have to puke up a thing."
-- Crowded House/Richard Thompson
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Zeleny
>In article <1992Jul21.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
MZ:
>>>>"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less
>>>>stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as
>>>>this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
DL:
>>>Exactly.
MZ:
>>How kind of you to agree.
CBO:
>It seems quite ironic that Mikhail would quote from Harry Frankfurt's
>excellent little essay about bullshit and bullshit artists, since
>Mikhail himself is one of the best examples of the bullshit artist
>manque that we have had the pleasure and exasperation to witness on
>the net.
Make up your mind, Calvin: either I'm "one of the best examples", or
"manqu\'e" (one would think that, writing from Canada, you wouldn't have
this trouble with the _accent aigu_); or is it that you and your tapeworms
had a little disagreement, what with your exasperation, and their chiming
in "we have had the pleasure"?
CBO:
>Right here, in fact, we have a fair example of the artist at work:
>Frankfurt is not using the word "sincerity" here in its normal sense.
>He is using it in a specific technical sense which he introduces earlier
>in his essay. In that sense, sincerity probably is bullshit, at least
>among those smart enough to know better.
Had you bothered to check the text, you might have noticed that Frankfurt
uses `bullshit', but certainly not `sincerity', "in a specific technical
sense". Indeed, the latter term occurs in the essay only twice, making its
first appearance in the penultimate paragraph, where it is used in a
perfectly standard fashion, reminiscent of Lionel Trilling's discussion of
Shakespeare: "Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might
hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being
true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no
sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be
true to himself." Oh, and do read _Sincerity and Authenticity_ before you
presume to pontificate on the subject of the "normal sense" of a cultural
topos.
CBO:
>However, Mikhail makes no effort to point out that this quote is lifted
>out of context, even when his decontextified presentation of it leads
>someone else to agree with it. As Frankfurt says of those willing to
>bullshit, "[h]e is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need
>requires".
Sounds just like your valiant effort above... "smart enough to know better"
indeed. "For tis the sport to haue the engineer\\ Hoist with his owne petar."
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?"
> "You can have your cake and eat it, and never have to puke up a thing."
> -- Crowded House/Richard Thompson
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
regards,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
"Avalanche, veux-tu m'emporter dans ta chute?"
Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]
>resolved by "the pinnacles are...", as any third grader will tell you.
>To move beyond the idiosyncracies of natural language and accept the
>broader meaning of his prohibition would seem to demand that we accept
>something very like monotheism a priori. A peculiar position for
>Mikhail!
Hmmmm. I certainly don't know any third graders who
would speak like that. Rather precocious, eh?
---
Dano
1st Warning Department
Sub-Assistant 3rd Class to the
Junior Associate Undersecretary
Petty Offenses Division
Bureau of Sweeping Generalizations
Michael Zeleny
l...@wang.com (Lee Story) writes:
>In article <1992Jul21.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>In article <920720201...@feds66.Prime.COM>
>>"soc.culture.soviet via ListServ" <SC...@indycms.iupui.edu> writes:
MZ:
>>>>..... Personal identity is
>>>>the very pinnacle of personal relationships with God, don't you agree?
DL:
>>>Yes, I agree; one of them.
MZ:
>>Undoubtedly you realize that superlatives never admit multiple predication.
LS:
>While the rest of MZ's reply seems on target, this appears not merely
>petty but incorrect. The awkwardness of "the pinnacle is <plural>" is
>resolved by "the pinnacles are...", as any third grader will tell you.
>To move beyond the idiosyncracies of natural language and accept the
>broader meaning of his prohibition would seem to demand that we accept
>something very like monotheism a priori. A peculiar position for
>Mikhail!
I take the term `pinnacle' to designate, by way of a dead metaphor,
the highest point of perfection; under this interpretation, it surely
can't be predicated of more than one thing. Of course, Anselm's
position, to which I was alluding, assumed monotheism from the start;
without such an assumption, the ontological argument gets shot down
even before the problem of realization, noted by Gaunilo. Mutatis
mutandis, the same goes for Spinoza, who has the merit of recognizing
this issue and addressing it in Proposition V of _De Deo_ in _Ethica_;
he also attempts to circumvent Gaunilo by arguing in Proposition VII
that the unique substance is a _causa sui_, but that's another story.
>regards,
>--
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Lee Story (l...@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
> (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
cheers,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
Michael Zeleny
c...@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>In <1992Jul24.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>Mikhail Zeleny (zel...@husc.harvard.edu) writes to an excessively
>large number of newsgroups:
Thank you for sharing your judgment of impropriety of my cross-posting,
Calvin. However, I'm sure you will agree with me that it is the author's
prerogative to choose the venues for his writings. Feel free to respond
wherever you see fit, for I shall do just that.
CBO:
>>>It seems quite ironic that Mikhail would quote from Harry Frankfurt's
>>>excellent little essay about bullshit and bullshit artists, since
>>>Mikhail himself is one of the best examples of the bullshit artist
>>>manque that we have had the pleasure and exasperation to witness on
>>>the net.
MZ:
>>Make up your mind, Calvin: either I'm "one of the best examples", or
>>"manqu\'e"
CBO:
>Why should I have to make up my mind? Many of the famous folks on the
>net seem to have done so prematurely, and end up defending outlandish
>positions. Besides, when it comes to making up my mind, this
>particular dilemma is not one I have to face, because Mikhail has
>misread my expression. He is, I was saying, an example of something.
>Of what? Of a "bullshit artist manque". What kind of example? One of
>the best.
Far be it from me to attempt forcing you to make up your mind: you are
hereby permitted to vacillate in perpetuity, or until such time as senility
or dizziness settles in. Aside from this issue, I am happy to defer to
your autoexegetic capacities, for it is obvious that, in contradistinction
from Socrates, you are indeed the best interpreter of your own words.
MZ:
>>(one would think that, writing from Canada, you wouldn't have
>>this trouble with the _accent aigu_);
CBO:
>I don't believe I have any more trouble than the typical Anglophone
>Canadian. In particular, I do not require explicit typesetter commands
>embedded in ASCII text intended only for human consumption in order
>to tell me where the accents are to be placed, whereas Mikhail seems
>to insist upon it (I also recall the nearly illegible slabs of
>Tex code he occasionally posted in the past in order to render logical
>formula).
Likewise, rest assured that it has never been my intention to separate you
from the typical example of your breed. Please carry on with your
garrulous Anglophone ways; I shall try to tolerate the ensuing monotone
dirge as best I can.
CBO:
>Personally, I find "manque" makes for much easier reading than
>"manqu\'e". I suspect this is also true of virtually all of the
>French-speaking contributors to soc.culture.french: when they post
>in French, they uniformly leave the accents out. Do they also have
>"this trouble with the _accent aigu_"?
Your suspicion is wholly unfounded: in the group whereof you speak, most
French-language articles are written in what I am told is an adaptation of
the troff accent convention. I'll be happy to share with you a shell
script designed to convert it to TeX, so that you may be properly estranged
from the texts in question.
MZ:
>>or is it that you and your tapeworms
>>had a little disagreement, what with your exasperation, and their chiming
>>in "we have had the pleasure"?
CBO:
>I took care of the tapeworms a long time ago, thanks. But it seems like
>it would be Mikhail's tapeworms that are more ideally situated to take
>advantage of any of the bullshit he should happen to produce.
You, Calvin, seem to be laboring under a false assumption that I regard the
production of bullshit as an infelicitous, or even a shameful activity.
Please be advised that this is not the case.
CBO:
>There are many on the net who have been pleased to read Mikhail's
>posts from time to time. There are many also who have been exasperated.
>(And the intersection of these classes is also quite large: there
>is no disagreement there.) The "we" above is meant to refer to the
>union of these classes.
I am sorry to have missed the momentuous occasion, whereupon you were
appointed the official spokescreature of the above group. Still, given
your propensity for bombastic commonplaces, I in no way doubt your capacity
to speak for a vague multitude of your fellow Anglophone consumers of my
modest musings.
MZ:
>>Had you bothered to check the text,
CBO:
>Mikhail has no good reason to accuse me of not "bothering" to "check"
>the text. The tone of this phrase suggests a number of things. One,
>that since I didn't "bother", I was in some way negligent. Two, that
>all that would be required would be a mere "check" of the text, as
>opposed to careful study. This reinforces the implicit innuendo that
>I have been negligent. This charge is unwarranted. Mikhail can deny
>that he made it of course, since it's only innuendo. As I understand
>it, that part of what makes for bullshit.
The figure in question was a litote, rather than a vulgar innuendo; to
spell it out, you may have bothered to check the text, but you certainly
haven't come back with even an elementary understanding of its message.
Take this observation as bullshit, if such interpretation should make you
feel better about your deficiency.
CBO:
>This reminds me muchly of the last time Mikhail used a similar phrase,
>in the "Rock implements all FSAs" thread, where someone finally had to
>post enough of the text to show that it was in fact Mikhail who was
>being unfaithful to the text.
How nice for you to be endowed with such powers of voluntary recollection!
(Here, have some Hydergine.) Yet observe that even if you managed to
demonstrate that I am indeed being "unfaithful to the text", there would
remain a much larger issue of being faithful to the truth; and as you will
undoubtedly recall, it is my opponents in the Putnam thread who failed to
refute my extension of his argument to arbitrary finite state automata, for
want of a coherent notion of implementation. In our present situation, I
understand the point that "sincerity itself is bullshit" to be concerned
precisely with the cognate distinction between allegiance to an accurate
representation of an elusive phenomenal construct, such as a Humean self,
or, if you wish, a Barthesian text, and loyalty to its underlying,
substantial reality. Given an exclusive choice between the two, you are
most welcome to take the former; as for me, I prefer to stick with the
facts of the matter.
MZ:
>>you might have noticed that Frankfurt
>>uses `bullshit', but certainly not `sincerity', "in a specific technical
>>sense".
CBO:
>"noticed" continues to play on the theme of my negligence. I am not
>nearly as bright as Mikhail, of course, so what he notices I may
>miss even after careful study. But I think he is wrong here.
You underestimate the scope of my insult, which wasn't meant to suggest a
banal interpersonal comparison. It isn't relevant to this discussion
whether you are as bright, or even brighter than yours truly; the important
aspect of your intellect is that you are not bright _simpliciter_, or,
which amounts to the same thing, that you are not nearly as bright as you
think you are.
CBO:
>First, as to the use of "bullshit": Frankfurt's essay "On Bullshit"
>is basically a conceptual analysis of "bullshit" as it is used in
>day-to-day life and elswhere. He starts out:
>
>" One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so
>" much bullshit. Everyone knows this...
>" I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of
>" bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory
>" philosophical analysis...
>" My aim is simply to give a rough sketch of what bullshit is... to
>" articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept
>
>Clearly he is talking about "bullshit", and bullshit, as people normally
>understand them. As with any conceptual analysis, a certain amount
>of revisionism will seep in, of course, but this makes no signficant
>difference. Note that the first thing Frankfurt does is to consult the
>OED, which does not support the idea that he is using the word in any
>specific technical sense.
Once again you are mistaken, Calvin: the first thing Frankfurt does is
to consult, not the OED, but the essay "The Prevalence of Humbug" by a
fellow analytic philosopher, Max Black. The OED is considered ("quite
selectively") only after a detailed discussion of this article, in
which Frankfurt considers `humbug' as a genteel form of `bullshit',
and after a discussion of some anecdotal evidence about Wittgenstein's
putative opposition to manifestations of bullshit. It is quite clear
that Frankfurt adduces these cases in order to qualify his use of the
term `bullshit' in a way that is quite different from the colloquial
practice. In this, he is following the estabilished tradition of
Anglophone philosophy, which since Hobbes and Locke has aspired to the
standard of technical discourse, complete with explicitly constrained
meanings attached to every term.
MZ:
>>Indeed, the latter term occurs in the essay only twice, making its
>>first appearance in the penultimate paragraph, where it is used in a
>>perfectly standard fashion, reminiscent of Lionel Trilling's discussion of
>>Shakespeare: "Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might
>>hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being
>>true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no
>>sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be
>>true to himself." Oh, and do read _Sincerity and Authenticity_ before you
>>presume to pontificate on the subject of the "normal sense" of a cultural
>>topos.
CBO:
>Second, as to the use of "sincerity": it's hardly relevant to my point
>that it occurs in the essay only twice. And it's not relevant that it's
>used in a fashion reminiscent of Lionel Trilling. This may be true to
>large degree, but I wasn't talking (or pontificating) about a "cultural
>topos". I was simply talking about the normal use of the *word*, such as
>would be brought to mind upon reading the quote. I don't think I should
>be required to go off and read an entire book selected dictatorially
>before doing that.
Your low opinion of my humble suggestion for further reading has been
noted. Observe that your disdainful appeal to "the normal use of the
*word*, such as would be brought to mind upon reading the quote" turns
precisely on the passage in question being lifted out of its context, which
surely includes Polonius' farewell speech to Laertes. Compare:
"This above all -- to thine own self be true,
"And it must follow, as the night the day,
"Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Now Frankfurt:
"The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in
various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access
to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of
knowing how things truly are. These ``anti-realist'' doctrines undermine
confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true
and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of
objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a
retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of {\it
correctness} to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by
pursuit of an alternative ideal of {\it sincerity}. Rather than seeking
primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the
individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of
himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might
hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being
true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no
sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be
true to himself."
The merit of my suggestion consisted in emphasizing the commection between
the sententious suggestion of the senile Danish courtier, and Frankfurt's
diagnosis of the condition of sincerity. Surely by failing to consider the
context of the concept in question (which, by the way, may also be found in
the classic book on literrature and sincerity by Henri Peyre), you commit
the same error of which you accused me in your previous article, in a
passage you have conveniently elided on this occasion:
In article <92Jul23.192...@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
c...@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
CBO:
>However, Mikhail makes no effort to point out that this quote is lifted
>out of context, even when his decontextified presentation of it leads
>someone else to agree with it. As Frankfurt says of those willing to
>bullshit, "[h]e is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need
>requires".
To return to your exhortation to attend to "the normal use of the *word*,
such as would be brought to mind upon reading the quote", I must confess
that, enmired in the morass of cultural intoxication, upon reading the
above text I immediately think of the Shakespearean passage. It may be
that the customary reaction of your mind is to dismiss all cultural
connotations of the term it encounters in colloquial use, retaining only
such connexions as would be made by a "typical Anglophone Canadian", whose
grasp of matters historical may, for all I know, be akin to that of
Nietzsche's exemplary happy cattle. [1] Alas, unlike you, I am not at all
content with living unhistorically; consequently I tend to get most unhappy
with pronouncements like the following.
CBO:
>With the normal use of "sincere", most people think that it is possible
>to be sincere, or at least to sincerely attempt to be so (how close is
>that to the same thing?) without thereby committing bullshit. By
>normal use, I mean roughly the way the word is defined in a good
>dictionary.
A good dictionary, even that paragon of historical research, the OED, is
hardly equipped to define anything like "normal use"; at mest, it makers
must be content with reporting such use, and their success in this
undertaking will have very little bearing on normative questions of true
nature, such as we are considering at the moment. Furthermore, the
Victorian sensibilities of your British Anglophone counterparts have
compelled them to terminate their historical account of the term in
question with their sole XXth century qoutation, the 1904 Harvard clich\'e
by Butcher: "At the root of all good writing lies sincerity of conviction."
Indeed, their treatment of `sincerity' and other related terms is wholly
unsatisfactory for our purpposes, for the simple reason that it ignores the
modern recognition of the fundamental opposition between sincerity and
irony, as practiced by Baudelaire, Wilde, and Nietzsche. Thus it is clear
that no modern writer (think, for example, of Beckett) would formulate
Butcher's dictum, to whose substance he would nonetheless assent, in quite
the same terms.
CBO:
>But Frankfurt's use is quite different. Frankfurt identifies two ideals,
>and designates them with the terms "correctness" and "sincerity"
>respectively. Mikhail above quotes part of Frankfurt's account
>of sincerity. But there is a crucial ambiquity: is sincerity (roughly)
>the attempt to be true to oneself (call this the straight ideal), or
>is it the attempt to be true to onself *because* one has decided that
>it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, and consequently
>shunned the ideal of correctness (call this the reactive ideal).
You are demonstrably wrong. Consider the next and final paragraph of
Frankfurt's essay:
"But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and
hence susceptible both to correct and incorrect descriptions, while
supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been
exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to
other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them.
Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience,
to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself
that is the easiest for a person to know. Faxts about ourselves are not
peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are,
indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less
inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the
case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
Clearly, the dilemma is between correctness and sincerity, as defined in
the first paragraph quoted above. Now, the final passage supports the
exclusive dichotomy between these alternatives by suggesting that the
choice of sincerity is incorrect, insofar as it turns on favoring the least
substantial aspect of one's experience as the basis of one's judgment,
while the choice of correctness is insincere, as it requires a deliberate
abnegation of the natural impulse towards self-representation. Thus any
attempt to be consistently true to oneself, which you call "the straight
ideal", will be in the end indistinguishable in its consequences from "the
attempt to be true to on[e]self *because* one has decided that it makes no
sense to try to be true to the facts", insofar as in order to sustain what
you call "the reactive ideal", one must, in following the perpetual
vagaries of the self, inevitably come in conflict with the immutable facts
of correctness.
CBO:
>I don't know Trilling, but I suspect he uses the straight ideal
>of sincerity, although he probably comments that this kind of sincerity
>arose as an ideal because the ideal of correctness faded, without
>actually incorporating this story of its origin into its actual
>definition. But Frankfurt himself appears to use the reactive ideal.
How silly of you to presume to judge a book you know only by title.
CBO:
>This is not clear from the text, but it seems crucial for the argument.
>*Why* is sincerity bullshit? Because anyone who has adopted reactive
>sincerity as an ideal has shunned correctness. But, if someone
>recognises correctness as a false ideal, Frankfurt argues, he must
>likewise recognise reactive sincerity as a false ideal:
>
>" But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate
>" and hence susceptible both to correct and incorrect description,
>" while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else
>" has been exposed as a mistake.
>
>For this reason, one cannot *really* be adopting reactive sincerity with
>sincerity (there is nothing to be any more sincere about than there was
>to be correct about with the rejected ideal of correctness). This must
>lead to bullshit.
In this case, your speculations yield a nice example of inconstancy
implicit in sincere discourse. For the moment, our reality is grounded in
the immutable aspects of Frankfurt's (manifestly non-Barthesian) text,
which, as I have argued above, is sufficient for sustaining the argument
that (straight) sincerity is bullshit. In accordance with this text, it is
impossible to adopt reactive sincerity whilst retaining allegiance to
correctness, but it is quite easy to adopt it with straight sincerity,
which, after all, calls for no greater warrant than that given by one's
sentiment of the moment. What leads to bullshit is not the putative
paradox implicit in reactive sincerity, but the inconstancy and ensuing
incorrectness in which it is grounded.
CBO
>However, the notion of reactive sincerity is a very strange one.
>Straight sincerity seems more natural, and has the virtue that it
>can be adopted *along* *with* the ideal of correctness. Now, both of
>these ideals, in a primitive absolute form, are subject to the
>criticisms that Frankfurt alludes to. But suitably modifed forms of them
>can quite possible be developed and advance hand in hand.
>
>So, the upshot of this is that day-to-day sincerity is not bullshit,
>and perhaps there is even a "cultural topos" of sincerity that is not
>bullshit either.
This is sheer bullshit. See above.
CBO:
>I recommend Frankfurt's interesting essay to anyone who has read this far,
>and request of anyone who knows anything about work that has expanded
>upon its final two paragraphs that they let me know about that work.
>(Work in analytic philosophy mode, that is, not in literary mode). Thanks.
I regret my inability to attach any meaning to the implied distinction
between analytic and "ordinary" philosophy, but some philosophical works
relevant to the subject, if not to the text in question (which originally
appeared in _Raritan_, universally acknowledged as a vehicle of "analytic"
philosophy) are the introduction and the title essay in Leo Strauss'
_Persecution and the Art of Writing_, and the first chapter of the great
last book by the late Gregory Vlastos, _Socrates, Ironist and Moral
Philosopher_.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?"
> "You can have your cake and eat it, and never have to puke up a thing."
> -- Crowded House/Richard Thompson
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Ever mindful of your likely failure to catch the context of a literary
allusion, I enclose this quotation:
"Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is
meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about
again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the
moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholu nor
bored. This is a hard sight for man to see; for, though he thinks himself
better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envying them
their happiness -- what they have, a life neither bored nor painful, is
precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it because he refuses to be
like an animal. A human being may well ask an animal: `Why do you not
speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal
would like to answer, and say: `The reason is I always forget what I was
going to say' -- but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so
that the human being was left wondering.
But he also wonders at himself, that he cannot learn to forget but clings
relentlessly to the past: however far and fast he may run, this chain runs
with him. And it is a matter for wonder [...]", and so on.
"On the Uses & Disadvantages of History for Life", translated by
R.J.Hollingdale; highly recommended for all "typical speakers".
cordially,
Calvin Bruce Ostrum
contained in Mikhail's recent posting in this thread, I've slain this
particular Hydra too many times not to have learned that the effort
is pretty well futile for a mere mortal.
In the *exceedingly* unlikely event that someone would like to see my
intended responses to Mikhail on any particular points, I will be happy
to provide those responses for him or her via e-mail (unfortunately
for Mikhail, perhaps, this means that I won't be publically admitting
those places where he actually pointed out my own errors. Except on
one point: I'll leave the newsgroup line alone. It appears from the
responses I've got that some people in these other groups might actually
find the choice relevant).
As far as the issue of sincerity being bullshit goes, I simply reiterate
that in the everyday sense of the words, it is clearly possible to be,
or attempt to be, sincere, without thereby committing bullshit. The
manifest obviousness of this truth is probably what gives Frankfurt's
closing phrase, "sincerity is bullshit", such a neat bite.
But when you come at it the right way around, the idea that the *ideal*
of "reactive" sincerity (as I called it) is bullshit makes quite a lot
of sense, a fact I never denied. However, no one has established that
"straight sincerity", in a suitably modified form, need be bullshit, and
that it need be pursued independently of the ideal of correctness.
The claim that it cannot be seems to be based on a bad pun more than
anything else. If the catch phrase is Polonius's "To thine own self
be true", this only rules out "correctness" if it is impossible to be
true to more than one thing at once. Even if one wants to adopt this
particular slogan, there is no need to read it like the truth is a
jealous lover.
I think there is an interesting connection with Rorty's "Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature"[1]. Rorty distinguishes between "systematic"
and "edifying" philosophy. Systematic philosophy is based on
epistemology, and the results of this: man's being a mirror of an
objectively given nature. As such, it is analogous (exactly how,
I don't know) to Frankfurt's notion of "correctness". Rorty doesn't
care much for systematic philosophy, at times claiming it's boring,
and at other times claiming that it's impossible. He opts for edifying
philosophy, which, as far as I can tell, amounts to sitting around
and shooting the breeze (although no doubt in a creative and innovative
way) by participating in an "eternal conversation of mankind".
In other words, bullshitting. Or at least it sounds like bullshitting
to me. Although it rejects the ideal of correctness, it also appears
to reject the ideal of sincerity: Rorty's eliminativist philosophy of
mind rules out the notion of any kind of self to be true to. But the
self that is left over to engage in the continuing conversation
seems to be big enough to warrant a charge of reactive sincerity.
Whether this charge sticks or not doesn't seem that important. In
either case, the similarity (in my opinion) between Rorty's brand of
edification and the ideal of reactive sincerity is that their
reactions to the alleged demise of systematic philosophy and the
ideal of correctness are both *over*reactions. (At least, this
is what I would *like* to believe. Correctness isn't as straightforward
as it used to be, what with God dead and all [2]).
[1] Obligatory book reference
[2] Obligatory religion reference
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tell you, Hobbes, it's great to have a friend who appreciates
an earnest discussion of ideas. -- Calvin, 1992/07/14
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew C. Aiken
>In other words, bullshitting. Or at least it sounds like bullshitting
>to me. Although it rejects the ideal of correctness, it also appears
>to reject the ideal of sincerity: Rorty's eliminativist philosophy of
>mind rules out the notion of any kind of self to be true to. But the
>self that is left over to engage in the continuing conversation
>seems to be big enough to warrant a charge of reactive sincerity.
I suppose that Rorty's philosophical "preferences" are merely the
result of divers biochemical processes, which, though complex, are
entirely predictable. I would advise Rorty that loan oft loses both
itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. But these
acts of loan and borrowing are mere social constructs. Rorty borrows,
and yet, since his uptake of M.D. 20/20 (note here the reference to
marginalized subcultures) wanes, like Compton's little friend, we loan
him nothing. Loaning and borrowing are thusly tossed upon the ashheap of
history, along with the toxic biochemical waste of "late capitalist"
culture. Rorty rises, the New Man, the sort of man who votes for Lenora
Fulani because "it's fun." There he is, self-admiring and content-free,
in apprehension how like a god.
>Whether this charge sticks or not doesn't seem that important. In
>either case, the similarity (in my opinion) between Rorty's brand of
>edification and the ideal of reactive sincerity is that their
>reactions to the alleged demise of systematic philosophy and the
>ideal of correctness are both *over*reactions. (At least, this
>is what I would *like* to believe. Correctness isn't as straightforward
>as it used to be, what with God dead and all [2]).
Not even a million armies of angels could have saved Him from
the perfection of ideology.
Andrew Aiken
Calvin Bruce Ostrum
zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
| principled loyalty to oneself is absolutely
| incompatible with loyalty to truth,
This has been asserted repeatedly, but I still don't see why it must be
true. It must be true, of course, if there is in some instance a
definite and serious conflict between these two loyalties, such that
a decision on such a conflict is forced, and irrevocably casts one into
only one of the two loyalties forever (This conflict would have to be
instrinsicially deeper and more irresolvable than the intra-ideal
conflicts that no doubt would already exist, such as those discussed
in Nagel's "The Fragmentation of Value").
| I take Frankfurt as making the
| same point in the two final paragraphs of his article that I quoted earlier.
I don't. I am unable to see where in his article Frankfurt says that
straight sincerity is incompatible with correctness. Of course,
reactive sincerity is, since it is defined to be. Frankfurt clearly
suggests that the problem with reactive sincerity is that it supposes
being true to the self is easier or more possible than being true to
the facts, and that the preposterous nature of this belief is what makes
reactive sincerity the bullshit it is. One might argue that since he
says our natures are "notoriously less stable and less inherent than
the natures of other things" that he himself would opt only for the
ideal of correctness. But this still does not imply that he thinks no
ideal of straight sincerity can be constructed within or alongside
an ideal of correctness.
| >and at other times claiming that it's impossible. He opts for edifying
| >philosophy, which, as far as I can tell, amounts to sitting around
| >and shooting the breeze (although no doubt in a creative and innovative
| >way) by participating in an "eternal conversation of mankind".
| >
| >In other words, bullshitting. Or at least it sounds like bullshitting
| >to me. Although it rejects the ideal of correctness, it also appears
| >to reject the ideal of sincerity: Rorty's eliminativist philosophy of
| >mind rules out the notion of any kind of self to be true to. But the
| >self that is left over to engage in the continuing conversation
| >seems to be big enough to warrant a charge of reactive sincerity.
| You are missing the fact that Rorty's conception of "solidarity" as the
| cornerstone of his "edifying" discourse stands as proxy for sincerity as
| construed by Polonius, insofar as it merely substitutes the ideal of
| loyalty to unspecified goals of an arbitrarily delineated social group for
| that of loyalty to the self.
On the contrary, I intended to imply with the above remarks that
edifying discourse, and the "solidarity" through which it is pursued,
do take the place of the idea of sincerity, although it is true that
I did not explicitly state this. (One reason I am reluctant to do
so is that there do seem to be some differences. Notably, I get the
feeling that bullshit somehow or other plays a much more upfront role
for Rorty that it does the typical advocate of the ideal of reactive
sincerity).
If it is agreed, then, that solidarity is appropriately related to
sincerity, my original point can be made with it also. Solidarity
can be divided into two sorts: reactive and straight. Rorty
acknowledges as much in "Solidarity and Objectivity", where he admits
that there is a group of people (he calls them "realists") that attempt
to ground solidarity in objectivity ("objectivity" here is Rorty's
"correctness"). Of course, Rorty dismisses this as "not working",
but I am not at all convinced that this dismissal is forced upon us.
A solidarity grounded in objectivity would be a version of straight
solidarity.
Lest I be accused of (or congratulated for) bullshitting here myself,
I should point out that I personally find all these "correctness-
systematic-objectivity/sincerity-edifying-solidarity" dichotomies rather
abstract and vertigo-inducing, and would welcome a systematic
treatment of them of a series of more concrete examples.
We can only hope that this request doesn't lead Mikhail Zeleny to
subject us to even more of his notorious doctrine that the essence of
sexuality (this is the "correctness") implies that sex between any two
mutually consenting adults (this is the "sincerity") is immoral. Who
said an apparent dedication to the ideal of correctness can't itself
produce loads of bullshit?
Ozan Yigit
the twentieth century due to a time warp, writes: [in response to
Calvin B. Ostrum]:
[various zelenyana elided]
CBO:
>This reminds me muchly of the last time Mikhail used a similar phrase,
>in the "Rock implements all FSAs" thread, where someone finally had to
>post enough of the text to show that it was in fact Mikhail who was
>being unfaithful to the text.
How nice for you to be endowed with such powers of voluntary recollection!
(Here, have some Hydergine.) Yet observe that even if you managed to
demonstrate that I am indeed being "unfaithful to the text", there would
remain a much larger issue of being faithful to the truth; and as you will
undoubtedly recall, it is my opponents in the Putnam thread who failed to
refute my extension of his argument to arbitrary finite state automata, for
want of a coherent notion of implementation.
[etc]
For those interested, said articles regarding Putnam's "Rocks" and
Zeleny's discussion thereof may be found in the comp.ai.philosophy
newsgroup archives.
The complete archives of comp.ai.philosophy starting from late oct 91
are now available for anonymous ftp from nexus.yorku.ca [130.63.9.66]
under pub/c.a.p, and recently updated for the months feb/mar/apr.
total 5768
-rw-rw-r-- 1 oz 13 87 Feb 28 17:33 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 461963 May 13 15:32 apr.92.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 979121 Feb 21 16:06 dec.91.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 1138282 May 13 15:32 feb.92.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 1287861 Feb 21 16:06 jan.92.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 1102027 May 13 15:33 mar.92.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 841332 Feb 21 16:06 nov.91.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 oz 13 22849 Feb 21 16:06 oct.91.tar.Z
each tar file for a specific month contains a directory of individual
articles posted within that month, as received by our main news host.
[filenames are numbered in article reception order, which may/may not
correspond to the posting order.]
enjoy... oz
---
ps: as an internetworking courtesy, please try to avoid ftp transfers
during peak working hours, i.e. 9.00am-5:00pm EST.
---
postings are long, life is short. | internet: o...@nexus.yorku.ca
-- anonymous | phone: 416 736 2100 x 33976
Michael Zeleny
mtar...@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>do...@hal.com (Doug Moran) writes:
DM:
>> After all, verbosity *is* what philosphy mostly produces.
MT:
>I disagree.
Strangely, I agree: one aspect of the XXth century professionalization
of philosophical writing has resulted in its appearing as pointless
verbiage to an uninformed reader. On the other hand, on a personal
level, I find that philosophical training mostly produces an unerring
ability to identify uninformed opinions, similar to those expressed by
Mr Moran, as bullshit.
>Mark
best wishes,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
Michael Zeleny
c...@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>In article <1992Jul26.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
MZ:
>>principled loyalty to oneself is absolutely
>>incompatible with loyalty to truth,
CBO:
>This has been asserted repeatedly, but I still don't see why it must be
>true. It must be true, of course, if there is in some instance a
>definite and serious conflict between these two loyalties, such that
>a decision on such a conflict is forced, and irrevocably casts one into
>only one of the two loyalties forever (This conflict would have to be
>instrinsicially deeper and more irresolvable than the intra-ideal
>conflicts that no doubt would already exist, such as those discussed
>in Nagel's "The Fragmentation of Value").
Indeed, Nagel's petty worries will at the most be effective against Rawls'
conception of primary goods, along the hackneyed but perfectly valid lines
of the incommensurability argument. The conflict I have in mind is far mor
fundamental than that between interpersonal loyalties to diverse value
schemata. More on this anon; for now observe that the key word in the
above formulation is `principled'.
MZ:
>>I take Frankfurt as making the
>>same point in the two final paragraphs of his article that I quoted earlier.
CBO:
>I don't. I am unable to see where in his article Frankfurt says that
>straight sincerity is incompatible with correctness. Of course,
>reactive sincerity is, since it is defined to be. Frankfurt clearly
>suggests that the problem with reactive sincerity is that it supposes
>being true to the self is easier or more possible than being true to
>the facts, and that the preposterous nature of this belief is what makes
>reactive sincerity the bullshit it is. One might argue that since he
>says our natures are "notoriously less stable and less inherent than
>the natures of other things" that he himself would opt only for the
>ideal of correctness. But this still does not imply that he thinks no
>ideal of straight sincerity can be constructed within or alongside
>an ideal of correctness.
Recall that the distinction between straight and reactive sincerity is
yours, and not in any way substantiated by the text. If you reexamine the
final paragraph of Frankfurt's essay, which I posted in an earlier message,
you will see that nowhere does his conclusion depend on the reasons for
choosing loyalty to truth about the self over loyalty to truth about the
world; in fact, all that msatters is the fact that the sincere individual
is in principle committed to favoring the former; and as we all know in the
wake of the Hume-Reid controversy, the sole force capable of constituting
the self as an entity more substantial than a mere bundle of perceptions,
is the will with all of its wambles and vagaries. Consequently, each time
the will's own truth deviates from factual truth, the sincere individual
must deviate from correctness. Indeed, the matter is so straightforward,
that I find myself at a loss trying to guess your reasons for attempting to
argue Frankfurt out of a very perspicuous point.
CBO:
>>>and at other times claiming that it's impossible. He opts for edifying
>>>philosophy, which, as far as I can tell, amounts to sitting around
>>>and shooting the breeze (although no doubt in a creative and innovative
>>>way) by participating in an "eternal conversation of mankind".
>>>
>>>In other words, bullshitting. Or at least it sounds like bullshitting
>>>to me. Although it rejects the ideal of correctness, it also appears
>>>to reject the ideal of sincerity: Rorty's eliminativist philosophy of
>>>mind rules out the notion of any kind of self to be true to. But the
>>>self that is left over to engage in the continuing conversation
>>>seems to be big enough to warrant a charge of reactive sincerity.
MZ:
>>You are missing the fact that Rorty's conception of "solidarity" as the
>>cornerstone of his "edifying" discourse stands as proxy for sincerity as
>>construed by Polonius, insofar as it merely substitutes the ideal of
>>loyalty to unspecified goals of an arbitrarily delineated social group for
>>that of loyalty to the self.
CBO:
>On the contrary, I intended to imply with the above remarks that
>edifying discourse, and the "solidarity" through which it is pursued,
>do take the place of the idea of sincerity, although it is true that
>I did not explicitly state this. (One reason I am reluctant to do
>so is that there do seem to be some differences. Notably, I get the
>feeling that bullshit somehow or other plays a much more upfront role
>for Rorty that it does the typical advocate of the ideal of reactive
>sincerity). ^|
for (?)
Given our obvious differences in cultural background and personal
dispositions, I am glad to see that we can agree on something as
fundamental as the relation between solidarity and sincerity.
CBO:
>If it is agreed, then, that solidarity is appropriately related to
>sincerity, my original point can be made with it also. Solidarity
>can be divided into two sorts: reactive and straight. Rorty
>acknowledges as much in "Solidarity and Objectivity", where he admits
>that there is a group of people (he calls them "realists") that attempt
>to ground solidarity in objectivity ("objectivity" here is Rorty's
>"correctness"). Of course, Rorty dismisses this as "not working",
>but I am not at all convinced that this dismissal is forced upon us.
>A solidarity grounded in objectivity would be a version of straight
>solidarity.
So far, so good; however observe that solidarity grounded in objectivity
would differ from Rortean solidarity, inasmuch as the latter would depend
on an arbitrarily (because non-objectively) preestablished boundary of the
community serving as its basis, whilst the former would have to constantly
reconstitute this boundary, according as the actions of its members fulfill
the basic objective ideal or fail to do so. To this extent, the two kinds
of solidarity would differ in the course of action they validate as just or
permissible.
CBO:
>Lest I be accused of (or congratulated for) bullshitting here myself,
>I should point out that I personally find all these "correctness-
>systematic-objectivity/sincerity-edifying-solidarity" dichotomies rather
>abstract and vertigo-inducing, and would welcome a systematic
>treatment of them of a series of more concrete examples.
Your wish is my command: a concrete example is forthcoming at the end of my
article.
CBO:
>We can only hope that this request doesn't lead Mikhail Zeleny to
>subject us to even more of his notorious doctrine that the essence of
>sexuality (this is the "correctness") implies that sex between any two
>mutually consenting adults (this is the "sincerity") is
^^
Please substitute `may be'.
> immoral. Who
>said an apparent dedication to the ideal of correctness can't itself
>produce loads of bullshit?
Neither Frankfurt, nor your humble servant, who wholeheartedly wishes that
you would let the sleeping dogs lie.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I tell you, Hobbes, it's great to have a friend who appreciates
> an earnest discussion of ideas. -- Calvin, 1992/07/14
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since we have established that solidarity is to the community what
sincerity is to its members, I shall conclude with a historical example of
the former. Consider two communities that have adopted cognate, and
largely indistinguishable ideals of solidarity. Two typical high-ranking
members of their military find themselves in similar situations, involving
large groups of outsiders destined for imminent destruction by the orders
of their (extremely popular) leaders. Neither of the officers is
particularly fond of the victims; however one of them meticulously follows
the orders, or, at best, looks the other way while the dirty work is done
by his colleagues; by contrast, his counterpart deliberately chooses to
obstruct the annihilation of the people unrelated to him in any way, except
through their basic humanity. The former never considers questions of
ethics, while the latter is constantly concerned with them; time after time
he responds to the relentless pressure to surrender the troublesome aliens
under his protection by proclaiming that this act would be absolutely
incompatible with his honor.
Whence this striking difference in behavior of men belonging to different
cultures? It is tempting to pursue the suggestion made by one writer, by
appealing to "the almost automatic general humanity of an old and civilized
people", descended from the citizens of a mighty empire whose policy was to
worship the gods of all people it absorbed through conquest; unfortunately
this explanation calls for a somewhat unsatisfactory converse attribution
of an almost automatic general inhumanity to the descendants of the
barbarians who sacked the great empire in question. Perhaps it is better
to limit ourselves to an observation that one of the officers grounded his
solidarity in absolute considerations of ethics and honor, while the other
was inclined to blindly favor his nation's will no matter how far it
conflicted with his humanity, no matter how much it came to appear like
pure, unadulterated bullshit. And per our agreement, as it is for nations,
so it is for individuals.
For more information, see:
Hannah Arendt, _Eichmann in Jerusalem_.
Raul Hilberg, _The Destruction of the European Jews_.
Jonathan Steinberg, _All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941-43_.
best wishes,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
Calvin Bruce Ostrum
| MZ:
| >>principled loyalty to oneself is absolutely
| >>I take Frankfurt as making the
|
| CBO:
| >I don't. ...
|
| Recall that the distinction between straight and reactive sincerity is
| yours, and not in any way substantiated by the text. If you reexamine the
| final paragraph of Frankfurt's essay, which I posted in an earlier message,
| you will see that nowhere does his conclusion depend on the reasons for
| choosing loyalty to truth about the self over loyalty to truth about the
| world; in fact, all that msatters is the fact that the sincere individual
| is in principle committed to favoring the former; and as we all know in the
| wake of the Hume-Reid controversy, the sole force capable of constituting
| the self as an entity more substantial than a mere bundle of perceptions,
| is the will with all of its wambles and vagaries. Consequently, each time
| the will's own truth deviates from factual truth, the sincere individual
| must deviate from correctness. Indeed, the matter is so straightforward,
| that I find myself at a loss trying to guess your reasons for attempting to
| argue Frankfurt out of a very perspicuous point.
I do not believe that I am trying to argue Frankfurt out of anything.
Let me recap. My main complaint is with the decontextualising of
Frankfurt's claim that "Sincerity is bullshit". Sincerity is not
bullshit under many reasonable readings of those terms. It is only
bullshit under a particular reading of the term "sincerity" provided
by Frankfurt in his essay. (And even then, it may not be bullshit).
Again, what is it that makes Frankfurt's kind of sincerity bullshit?
It is not that sincerity disagrees with correctness at some points.
Whether it does or not is not relevant to this judgement. The problem
lies in the reason for adopting sincerity. The reason Frankfurt suggests
people have adopted sincerity is that it is easier to be true to oneself,
in general, than it is to be true to the facts. But this, Frankfurt
argues, is false. For one thing, as the Professor in the comic strip
Shoe has said, "The mind is a dark forest". A person who adopts
sincerity because it is easier, then, is prone to commit bullshit.
This is the main point of Frankfurt's last two paragraphs. As far
as the above point about compatibility goes, Frankfurt never
explicitly claims that "identifying the truth about things" is
incompatible with "being true to one's own nature". In fact, he
strongly suggests that the two are indeed compatible, by pointing
out that the truth about ourselves is a proper subpart of all truth.
It's just not a particularly reliable, solid, or easily ascertainable
subpart (it's true that Frankfurt is not completely clear on the
difference between being true to facts about ourselves, versus being
true to a will that can make up "facts" willy-nilly. Doing the latter
could indeed, in specific instances, be counter to correctness).
| >If it is agreed, then, that solidarity is appropriately related to
| >sincerity, my original point can be made with it also. Solidarity
| >can be divided into two sorts: reactive and straight. Rorty
| >acknowledges as much in "Solidarity and Objectivity", where he admits
| >that there is a group of people (he calls them "realists") that attempt
| >to ground solidarity in objectivity ("objectivity" here is Rorty's
| >"correctness"). Of course, Rorty dismisses this as "not working",
| >but I am not at all convinced that this dismissal is forced upon us.
| >A solidarity grounded in objectivity would be a version of straight
| >solidarity.
|
| So far, so good; however observe that solidarity grounded in objectivity
| would differ from Rortean solidarity, inasmuch as the latter would depend
| on an arbitrarily (because non-objectively) preestablished boundary of the
| community serving as its basis, whilst the former would have to constantly
| reconstitute this boundary, according as the actions of its members fulfill
| the basic objective ideal or fail to do so. To this extent, the two kinds
| of solidarity would differ in the course of action they validate as just or
| permissible.
"So far, so good" is enough for me, as this grants that whatever
"solidarity" is, or turns out to be, can in fact be grounded in
"objectivity", and that in a similar way, given the accepted
correspondence, "sincerity" can be grounded in "correctness". And
such a sincerity need not be bullshit.
One thing that should be pointed out, though, is that the discussion
of sincerity need not be posed completely in terms of *right*, as is
suggested above with the phrase "just or permissible". Differing
conceptions of sincerity may agree on what is just or permissible while
differing on what would make the best life for given individuals.
Perhaps there is nothing morally wrong with not being "true to oneself"
provided that one does no harm to others. This is the modern liberal
view, as coded by Rawl's slogan of "The priority of the right over
the good". Although I don't buy it, this is one way of looking at how
correctness could be compatible with sincerity: correctness provides
the moral framework, and beyond that it is up to the individual to
pursue sincerity insofar as he feels like it, without contradicting
correctness no matter what he does.
Some of the communitarian critics of Rawls would suggest that this
simple bifurcation between right and good is not possible. They would
express this by saying that the Rawlsian man is too narrow, flat, or
atomistic to make a serious notion of sincerity possible for him. I
would agree with this, I think, but then make the same comment about
Rawlsian man as Churchill made about democracy. I have found Charles
Taylor's comments on this subject to be particularly interesting. In
his recently published lecture series "The Malaise of Modernity", he
talks about what he calls "The ethic of authenticity", which I take to
be to a reasonable model of sincerity (note that the word "authenticity"
is taken from the Trilling book mentioned earlier, as identifying the
more modern ideal corresponding to the earlier ideal Trilling himself
identified as "sincerity"). Taylor is concerned to navigate between
the Scylla of crude, elitist, conservative absolutist correctness
(symbolised by Allan Bloom) and the Charybdis of radical, subjectivist
nihilism and caprice (symbolised by Derrida) that a quest for authenticity
(or sincerity) can degrade into. Interestingly, in his earlier work
on this subject, Taylor has allied himself closely with one of
Frankfurt's own main ideas as expressed in his paper "Freedom of the
will and the concept of a person". (As I did earlier, I heartily
recommend this paper, as well as some of Taylor's related papers:
"What is Human Agency?" and "Self-Interpreting Animals").
| >We can only hope that this request doesn't lead Mikhail Zeleny to
| >subject us to even more of his notorious doctrine that the essence of
| >sexuality (this is the "correctness") implies that sex between any two
| >mutually consenting adults (this is the "sincerity") is immoral
| ^^
| Please substitute `may be'.
Better yet, insert "of the same sex" after "adults" like I had originally
intended, but lost in the editing. (Yes, I actually edit this stuff).
| ...your humble servant... wholeheartedly wishes that
| you would let the sleeping dogs lie.
I am more apt to consider the wishes of the net at large in this regard,
and I suspect that they have similar wishes. However, this seems to be
a much better example than the poor ones provided so far. In fact, this
very example was employed by Taylor himself in his aforementioned lecture
series. I'd go into this a little more, but I'm too tired.
Michael Zeleny
Hakki_...@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:
>Hey Mikhail !
>it is double bullsh to talk about "the will of a nation" Man ...
Your incisive criticism has been noted, Hakki. Given its lapidary and
inconclusive nature, I trust that you'll forgive me for not taking it too
seriously.
>I think you are confusing "citizens" with "nation"...think about it..
No, I am not confusing anything. You think about it, and while you're at
it, read some Jean-Jacques, if you can bear to separate yourself from
Saint Wittgenstein's secret Philosophico-Political Treatise.
Hakki Kocabas
it is double bullsh to talk about "the will of a nation" Man ...
Hakki Kocabas
I was a suckling :->
Did you say "inconclusive"...but of course ! you have to move your grey
cells yourself and use intellect, it is more fun then...:-)
BTW, I'm glad you're baaaaaack....
Michael Zeleny
to running a logic seminar and finishing the summer term. I hope that
this discussion won't be curtailed thereby; alternatively we might
consider a more Socratic format of exchange.
In article <92Aug3.1936...@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
c...@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>In article <1992Aug2.2...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
MZ:
>>>>principled loyalty to oneself is absolutely
>>>>incompatible with loyalty to truth ...
>>>>I take Frankfurt as making the
>>>>same point in the two final paragraphs of his article...
CBO:
>>>I don't. ...
MZ:
>>Recall that the distinction between straight and reactive sincerity is
>>yours, and not in any way substantiated by the text. If you reexamine the
>>final paragraph of Frankfurt's essay, which I posted in an earlier message,
>>you will see that nowhere does his conclusion depend on the reasons for
>>choosing loyalty to truth about the self over loyalty to truth about the
>>world; in fact, all that msatters is the fact that the sincere individual
>>is in principle committed to favoring the former; and as we all know in the
>>wake of the Hume-Reid controversy, the sole force capable of constituting
>>the self as an entity more substantial than a mere bundle of perceptions,
>>is the will with all of its wambles and vagaries. Consequently, each time
>>the will's own truth deviates from factual truth, the sincere individual
>>must deviate from correctness. Indeed, the matter is so straightforward,
>>that I find myself at a loss trying to guess your reasons for attempting to
>>argue Frankfurt out of a very perspicuous point.
CBO:
>I do not believe that I am trying to argue Frankfurt out of anything.
>Let me recap. My main complaint is with the decontextualising of
>Frankfurt's claim that "Sincerity is bullshit". Sincerity is not
>bullshit under many reasonable readings of those terms. It is only
>bullshit under a particular reading of the term "sincerity" provided
>by Frankfurt in his essay. (And even then, it may not be bullshit).
Observe that there are two issues involved here -- one of correctness of
interpretation, another of factual correctness. My claim is that
Frankfurt's interpretation of principled sincerity as based on a willful
rejection of correctness is largely irrelevant to his characterization of
the same as bullshit. This interpretation is substantiated by the author's
observation that our nature, to an accurate representation of which the
sincere agent must be committed, is "elusively insubstantial -- notoriously
less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things", which
constitute the basis of the alternative ideal of correctness.
CBO:
>Again, what is it that makes Frankfurt's kind of sincerity bullshit?
>It is not that sincerity disagrees with correctness at some points.
>Whether it does or not is not relevant to this judgement. The problem
>lies in the reason for adopting sincerity. The reason Frankfurt suggests
>people have adopted sincerity is that it is easier to be true to oneself,
>in general, than it is to be true to the facts. But this, Frankfurt
>argues, is false. For one thing, as the Professor in the comic strip
>Shoe has said, "The mind is a dark forest". A person who adopts
>sincerity because it is easier, then, is prone to commit bullshit.
You keep saying that whether or not sincerity disagrees with correctness at
some points is not relevant to the judgement that sincerity is bullshit,
and I keep telling you that your claim is incorrect both factually and
textually. Unless you start paying attention to what the text says, rather
than what you would like it to say, we are not going to get anywhere. I
suggest starting with the final sentence and reading backwards; then
perhaps you could tell me why Frankfurt doesn't see fit to qualify his
claim that sincerity is bullshit in any way that remotely resembles your
line of reasoning.
Again, the text doesn't say that sincerity is bullshit because of the bogus
relativist reason that could be used to justify its adoption as a _modus
vivendi_; instead, it says that it is bullshit insofar as our natures are
elusively insubstantial, notoriously less stable and less inherent than the
natures of other things. In other words, the judgment is validated by
facts about our natures, rather than by such considerations of possible
motivation as are offered in the preceding paragraph.
CBO
>This is the main point of Frankfurt's last two paragraphs. As far
>as the above point about compatibility goes, Frankfurt never
>explicitly claims that "identifying the truth about things" is
>incompatible with "being true to one's own nature". In fact, he
>strongly suggests that the two are indeed compatible, by pointing
>out that the truth about ourselves is a proper subpart of all truth.
>It's just not a particularly reliable, solid, or easily ascertainable
>subpart (it's true that Frankfurt is not completely clear on the
>difference between being true to facts about ourselves, versus being
>true to a will that can make up "facts" willy-nilly. Doing the latter
>could indeed, in specific instances, be counter to correctness).
Damn, this is getting remedial. I don't wish to patronize you, but it's
unclear to me just what kind of philosophical education you've had, and
what you are claiming above is a classic example of a distinction without a
difference, such as might have been deflated by a cursory acquaintance with
the history of modern philosophy, coming to bear on the remarks I made in
my previous article.
What might constitute facts about ourselves? Insofar as their content is
concerned, it would have to involve propositions with the self being a
constituent. Now, what constitutes the self? Hume, in the _Treatise_
I.iv.vi (Second Oxford edition, p. 252; cf. the Appendix, pp. 634--6),
claims that our selves "are nothing but a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and
are in perpetual flux and movement". Hume's theory is, of course, a
reaction against Locke's conception of personal identity grounded in
remembrance and/or consciousness of past actions and thoughts. Given that
Hume rejects the Lockean doctrine of power or necessary connexion (most
explicitly in the first _Enquiry_, VII.i.50ff.), his worldview lacks, as it
were, a metaphysical glue required to make the Lockean conception of the
self cohere in a clearly individuated entity.
Thomas Reid, in his _Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man_ III.iv and
_Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind_ I.i-iv, suggests what I
(incidentally, not standing alone in this judgment) believe to be the sole
viable retort to Hume's rejection of active powers as mere artefacts of
incomprehensible observed regularity in temporal succession. Reid's
proposal rehabilitates efficient causation by grounding it in immediately
experienced volition, and construes personal identity as the ininterrupted
continuity of this volition (which is, as against Locke, only evidenced by,
but not dependent on, the continuity of memory). Reid refers to Leibniz'
conception of the self as a _monad_ in order to emphasize its essential
unity; however the rest of his theory accords not at all with monadology,
which postulates its objects as mirroring each other, but not in any way
interacting with them; "monads", quoth Leibniz famously, "have no windows".
This is all fine and dandy if you buy into the metaphysical picture; yet I
don't know of any systematic Leibnizians functioning at the moment. As a
matter of personal choice, I do windows. So I must account for the
coherence of the self which causally interacts with other selves. Again,
the only metaphysical glue available to me is, _pace_ Reid, the volition;
consequently, all propositions having the self as a complex constituent are
reducible to propositions about volitions. Whence being true to facts
about ourselves is the same as being true to facts of our will. Given the
empirically verifiable truth that this will can and does make up "facts"
willy-nilly, it follows that being true to facts about ourselves is
incompatible with being true to facts about the world. Q.E.D.
CBO:
>>>If it is agreed, then, that solidarity is appropriately related to
>>>sincerity, my original point can be made with it also. Solidarity
>>>can be divided into two sorts: reactive and straight. Rorty
>>>acknowledges as much in "Solidarity and Objectivity", where he admits
>>>that there is a group of people (he calls them "realists") that attempt
>>>to ground solidarity in objectivity ("objectivity" here is Rorty's
>>>"correctness"). Of course, Rorty dismisses this as "not working",
>>>but I am not at all convinced that this dismissal is forced upon us.
>>>A solidarity grounded in objectivity would be a version of straight
>>>solidarity.
MZ:
>>So far, so good; however observe that solidarity grounded in objectivity
>>would differ from Rortean solidarity, inasmuch as the latter would depend
>>on an arbitrarily (because non-objectively) preestablished boundary of the
>>community serving as its basis, whilst the former would have to constantly
>>reconstitute this boundary, according as the actions of its members fulfill
>>the basic objective ideal or fail to do so. To this extent, the two kinds
>>of solidarity would differ in the course of action they validate as just or
>>permissible.
CBO:
>"So far, so good" is enough for me, as this grants that whatever
>"solidarity" is, or turns out to be, can in fact be grounded in
>"objectivity", and that in a similar way, given the accepted
>correspondence, "sincerity" can be grounded in "correctness". And
>such a sincerity need not be bullshit.
You are missing the "principled" part. Per my argument, it is absolutely
impossible for principled solidarity to be grounded in objectivity, or for
principled sincerity to be grounded in correctness.
CBO:
>One thing that should be pointed out, though, is that the discussion
>of sincerity need not be posed completely in terms of *right*, as is
>suggested above with the phrase "just or permissible". Differing
>conceptions of sincerity may agree on what is just or permissible while
>differing on what would make the best life for given individuals.
>Perhaps there is nothing morally wrong with not being "true to oneself"
>provided that one does no harm to others. This is the modern liberal
>view, as coded by Rawl's slogan of "The priority of the right over
>the good". Although I don't buy it, this is one way of looking at how
>correctness could be compatible with sincerity: correctness provides
>the moral framework, and beyond that it is up to the individual to
>pursue sincerity insofar as he feels like it, without contradicting
>correctness no matter what he does.
Again, _ad nauseam_: this is not principled sincerity; indeed, the course
of action you are describing is practically guaranteed to conflict with the
goal of being true to oneself each time the agent finds his volition
constrained by the rights of the others. Moreover, the application of
Rawls' principle depends on a prior determination, either in intension (by
stipulating a condition of membership) or in extension (by explicit
enumeration), of the community of others, whose rights are not to be
infringed. The extensional strategy is clearly untenable for the reason
that the priority of right over the good, as any other contractarian
scheme, will only work in situations which do not in any way threaten the
fundamental well-being of the agent. Once any citizen of your imaginary
community decides to forfeit his contract by violating the rights of his
neighbors, they are no longer compelled to regard his rights as having
priority over their good (cf. Locke's _Second Treatise_, 8-9). On the
other hand, the intensional strategy depends on a preestablished standard
of correctness. And so on.
CBO:
>Some of the communitarian critics of Rawls would suggest that this
>simple bifurcation between right and good is not possible. They would
>express this by saying that the Rawlsian man is too narrow, flat, or
>atomistic to make a serious notion of sincerity possible for him. I
>would agree with this, I think, but then make the same comment about
>Rawlsian man as Churchill made about democracy. I have found Charles
>Taylor's comments on this subject to be particularly interesting. In
>his recently published lecture series "The Malaise of Modernity", he
>talks about what he calls "The ethic of authenticity", which I take to
>be to a reasonable model of sincerity (note that the word "authenticity"
>is taken from the Trilling book mentioned earlier, as identifying the
>more modern ideal corresponding to the earlier ideal Trilling himself
>identified as "sincerity"). Taylor is concerned to navigate between
>the Scylla of crude, elitist, conservative absolutist correctness
>(symbolised by Allan Bloom) and the Charybdis of radical, subjectivist
>nihilism and caprice (symbolised by Derrida) that a quest for authenticity
>(or sincerity) can degrade into. Interestingly, in his earlier work
>on this subject, Taylor has allied himself closely with one of
>Frankfurt's own main ideas as expressed in his paper "Freedom of the
>will and the concept of a person". (As I did earlier, I heartily
>recommend this paper, as well as some of Taylor's related papers:
>"What is Human Agency?" and "Self-Interpreting Animals").
Well, neither a cursory acquaintance with the profoundly superficial
_Sources of the Self_, nor first-hand experience of five minutes of his
name-dropping banter at a recent Harvard colloquium has left a good
impression of Charles Taylor in the wax tablet of yours truly. Should you
wish to discuss his views, preferably as exemplified by the aforementioned
tome, I'll be happy to oblige, and will fire the opening salvo by making
the following observation.
I would have borrowed the habitual expression of Carlo Ginzburg,
characterizing your Anglophone Canadian compatriot Charles Taylor as a
third-rate scholar, but for my inability to discern any evidence of
scholarship in _The Sources of the Self_. For those who have been spared
the sight of the said volume, it's a depressingly journalistic effort to
trace the genealogy of the modern ideal of subjectivity, designed to ground
the moral and political discourse of those hapless individuals, who are
credulous enough to accept Mr Taylor's argument, in a putative public
conception of the good, which is to be somehow obtained from our individual
conceptions of the same. Unfortunately, Mr Taylor's quasi-philosophical
argument falls flat even before it gets off the ground, insofar as its
historical underpinnings rely on an ill-digested compendium of assorted
critical clich\'es of the postwar (WWII) decades. In particular, Mr
Taylor's key reading of the writer often considered as the originator of
aesthetic modernism, Charles Baudelaire, is based, it seems, exclusively on
secondary sources. Had it been done properly, an interpretation of the
position of Baudelaire might have sufficed to refute the main premisses of
the author's compatibilist claims. Likewise, these claims would have been
vitiated by a brief meditation on the implications of Sade's position on
the nature of the good in _La Philosophie dans le boudoir_, which would
have been infinitely preferable to the obligatory regurgitation of hoary
Manichaean commonplaces concerning the divine marquis.
Concerning Taylor's compromise strategy outlined by you above, I can only
say what is even more applicable to the aforementioned tome: the middle of
the road is a good place to get run over. In any case, I don't come here
to learn about all the nifty new books you've read; if you don't wish to
present arguments, you might as well abstain from making literary
recommendations. In other words, if you believe that there can exist "an
ethic of authenticity" immune to the considerations I presented above, by
all means tell me about it, so that I may expose it as yet another
despicable relativist stratagem.
CBO:
>>>We can only hope that this request doesn't lead Mikhail Zeleny to
>>>subject us to even more of his notorious doctrine that the essence of
>>>sexuality (this is the "correctness") implies that sex between any two
>>>mutually consenting adults (this is the "sincerity") is immoral
MZ:
>> ^^
>>Please substitute `may be'.
CBO:
>Better yet, insert "of the same sex" after "adults" like I had originally
>intended, but lost in the editing. (Yes, I actually edit this stuff).
MZ:
>>...your humble servant... wholeheartedly wishes that
>>you would let the sleeping dogs lie.
CBO:
>I am more apt to consider the wishes of the net at large in this regard,
>and I suspect that they have similar wishes. However, this seems to be
>a much better example than the poor ones provided so far. In fact, this
>very example was employed by Taylor himself in his aforementioned lecture
>series. I'd go into this a little more, but I'm too tired.
I find it regrettable indeed that you would be more apt to consider the
alleged wishes of the net at large than those of your interlocutor. This,
of course, is the very gist of the trouble involved in basing a
comprehensive sociopolitical worldview on any conception of human good,
insofar as the degree of one's acquaintance with such a conception is
inversely proportional to the square of one's distance from its point of
origin. In any case, I am unaware of Taylor's lecture series, and unable
to find any mention of it in Books in Print. I would ask you to summarize
his argument, but for my ardent desire that you not get too tired.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Calvin Ostrum c...@cs.toronto.edu
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I tell you, Hobbes, it's great to have a friend who appreciates
> an earnest discussion of ideas. -- Calvin, 1992/07/14
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------