Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
br...@wralaw.com
While it is important to note that 'postmodernism' and 'postmodernity'
can not easily be defined that there has been none the less a tendency
for the term to be applied to a minority movement that is simultaneously
defined as a social movement, a philosophy, and a time period. Or more
directly 'postmodernism' is defined a philosophy that is becoming
more popular in this time period usually defined after the 1970's to
the present. And it is also important to note that often the same
people who believe in the philosophy also believe that the philosophy
is popular and that it's Ideas are more common after around 1970'
if not completely unique to the time period after 1970.
The philosophy itself tends to deny that any Universal, or Absolute
Truth statements can ever be made. The philosophy makes similar
claims about statistical and measuring phenomena. And claim in it's
prose to be focusing on the discontinuities, and fragmentations of
theories mainly dealing with art, society and philosophy.
My claims against PostModernism are...
1. Postmodernism can never provide a complete theory of itself.
2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
and autocannibalistic.
3. Its' sociological assertions are suspect due to the fact that
its philosophers believe in postmodernity.
4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
5. That many of its claims against historical scientists and
and philosophers are nit-picking. And are often done
thinking that these philosophers and scientists assumed
that their theories could only be Identical approximations
of reality.
6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
true or false independently as is PostModernism)
7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
(obvious)
8. That ‘incompleteness’ theorems(Godel) and uncertainty
principals in science are not self-contradictory and
do not assert no truth is possible when considering
abstractions and wide-boundaries.
Without a specified theory of PostModernism I realize that the
claims against it can not be Universally validated. And that
with the 'sometimes truth is stranger than religion' consequences
of Godels incompleteness theorem and the Copenhagen Interpretation
of Quantum Mechanics that theories with some simularities to
PostModernisms wording may turn out to be viable. But assertions
of PostMOdernisms extreme importance in the present is highly
suspect. The false controversy played by Post Modernism against
Modern subjects itself to ‘you-too’ critical dismissals by noting
that the PostModern repeats the same error of absolutism -if this
is in fact an error by Modern.
There is really no problem if an individual decides to be
aphilosophical, or nominally nihilistic to some degree. Post
Modernism does not satisfy the need for a nominally nihilistic
or an aphilosophic theory. My observation is that Post
Modernists use nihilism and aphilosophicism in an ad-hoc
manner to dodge criticism -without considering the cosmological
implications of such positions. My own position is not that
rationalism, objectivism, or Modernism is validated by the
problems of postmodernism. Nor do I mean to imply by my reference
to Godels theorem, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics and formal logic that I believe these class systems
are Universal outside of theoretical application.
Bryn Ayers
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MrKurtz
>
>1. Postmodernism can never provide a complete theory of itself.
>
As an aside, you mention Goedel as someone you are leaning on
most here... but I think your above statement is not only
consistent with PM, and rather insightful in a Zen sort of way,
but is also consistent with Goedel.
I think that what you take from the Goedle depends what you bring
to it. I think the old division between Plato and Aristotle
still holds true. i can peg someone in either/or pretty quick,
and I especially enjoy those I can't, which should tell you that
i'm a Sophist and proud of it.
Now about PostM. I'm not relying on any grand theory here, just
my gut.
Did you see that Fox special on the Pyramids. It was very
Queer... "We're going back to the Dawn of Recorded
time...LIVE!" This is Ancient History, the past unchanging, the
fixed, the eternal, the facts of the future being born... LIVE!"
What I'm saying here is HISTORY HAS CAUGHT UP WITH ITSELF.
The Historical project is concurrent with itself. That's why all
the trickery and goofery is valid. It is self justifying becuase
all it proposes to do it narrate its own existence. The prime
project of PostM is "The definition of PostM" No other period
in History has arguably begun with the naming of it. And no
other peiod has had as much arguing, while it was in progress, of
WHETHER IT EXISTS.
Here are two people having an argument. The first says...
"This Statement is True."
Fine. the second says...
"This statement is False"
They have different Gestalts, different POV's, bring different
lampshades to the party...
but here is why PM untilmately wins. I've said it before, and
I've said it again...
It wins becuase everything needs something to which to oppose
itself in order to exist (in the case of everything, the
something is nothing). You, as an opponent of PM, are providing
this valuable service. You know comedy teams? Abbot and
costello? Smothers brothers? You get to play the "Straight man"
while PM gets to have all the fun, throw all the pies, take all
the prattfalls. And like the "Dumb" smothers brother, it is
never out of Character. Its like a clown has come up to you and
won't leave you alone. You start shouting "This person is a
clown!" in hopes that this will hurt his feelings and make him
stop.
On the contrary, this is what makes him funny!
Nice nice nice!
--Ball
"I remember at the end of it all you were on your
knees and I was standing tall/ Or is my memory
deceiving me was I hanging there as you prayed for me?"
--nomeansno
emat...@tomatoweb.com
br...@wralaw.com wrote:
>
>
> While it is important to note that 'postmodernism' and 'postmodernity'
> can not easily be defined that there has been none the less a tendency
> for the term to be applied to a minority movement that is simultaneously
> defined as a social movement, a philosophy, and a time period. Or more
> directly 'postmodernism' is defined a philosophy that is becoming
> more popular in this time period usually defined after the 1970's to
> the present. And it is also important to note that often the same
> people who believe in the philosophy also believe that the philosophy
> is popular and that it's Ideas are more common after around 1970'
> if not completely unique to the time period after 1970.
>
> The philosophy itself tends to deny that any Universal, or Absolute
> Truth statements can ever be made. The philosophy makes similar
> claims about statistical and measuring phenomena. And claim in it's
> prose to be focusing on the discontinuities, and fragmentations of
> theories mainly dealing with art, society and philosophy.
>
> My claims against PostModernism are...
>
>
'In many circles, Lyotard is celebrated as the postmodern theorist par
excellence. His book The Postmodern Condition (1984; orig. 1979) introduced
the term to a broad public and has been widely discussed in the postmodern
debates of the last decade. During this period, Lyotard has published a
series of books which promote postmodern positions in theory, ethics,
politics, and aesthetics. More than almost anyone, Lyotard has championed a
break with modern theory and methods, while popularizing and disseminating
postmodern alternatives...
Above all, Lyotard has emerged as the champion of difference and plurality in
all theoretical realms and discourses, while energetically attacking
totalizing and universalizing theories and methods. In The Postmodern
Condition, Just Gaming (1985; orig. 1979), The Difference (1988; orig. 1983)
and a series of other books and articles published in the 1980s, he has
called attention to the differences among the plurality of regimes of
phrases' which have their own rules, criteria, and methods. Stressing the
heterogeneity of discourses, Lyotard has, following Kant, argues that such
domains as theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgement have their own
autonomy, rules, and criteria. In this way, he rejects notions of
universalist and foundationalist theory, as well as claims that one method or
set of concepts has privileged status in such disparate domains as
philosophy, social theory, or aesthetics. Arguing against what he calls
terroristic' and totalitarian' theory, Lyotard thus resolutely champions a
plurality of discourses and positions against unifying theory.
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kellner/pm/pm.html
I think your synopsis has merit, but of course its specifics are debatable
(it happens all the time). I appreciate the substance of your comments,
especially constrasted with the proliferation of sentiments, disguised as
critique, that are appearing on these ng pages--like mushrooms. I've
included the above clip from the Utexas site, which is pushing its
publication "Post Modernism" which looks to be a pretty good primer on the
subject. I just thought I'd throw it on here to give some color to a point I
wish to make. And that is that there is an obvious problem with the
reification of a concept like 'post modern.' For example, Bryn, where you
say 'deny that any Universal, or Absolute Truth statements can ever be made'
the position of one of post modern theory's principle spokespersons, Lyotard,
would say 'totalizing and universalizing theories and methods.' Yet you are
absolutely correct in your statement if applied to some or other post modern
theorists. It simply raises the question who is 'the' spokesperson --
especially piognant since there is little agreement on these things from
within this discourse and its many manifestations. This is to say nothing of
the irony that post modernism is rooted the denial of totalization and
unitary premise, a methodology that would extend to its own self-definition
(which, following the logic of the method, would produce a definition of
itself that was plural, fragmented, disintegrated -- and subsequently quite
useless).
I'm just saying, to draw a parallel, that if we are going to discuss an
understand the philosophy of christian mysticism, for example, ultimately we
would have to deal with Miester Ekhart on his own terms and the merits or
demerits of his actual works, and not Ekhart as a mascot of a reified
concept.I suggest this is true with whatever falls under the rubric 'post
modernism.' If we started looking at individual authors, we would
spontaneously start sorting the wheat from the chaff, and in doing so see
much of the substancial errors or weaknesses belonging to the chaff (which
would be a pretty big pile). But on looking at the wheat closely (a much
smaller pile) we would begin to see that this kernal really isn't wheat -
it's oats - and this other is barley, not wheat at all. A case in point is
Foucault, who many cite as post modern, but who is actually merely a voice
among many that 'informs' post modernism--and is no more a post modern
theorist than is Nietzsche or Bataille. In other much of post modern thought
deletes more Foucault than it underwites (a sort of parasitism, really).
So I would like to see people on this newsgroup get past what I see as an
impasse, for the way post modernism is presented here is a fiction, and thus
not even meritorious of discussion or debate. The way to get past this is to
begin to discuss the contributions of specific theorists, especially those
from the wheat, barley, oats pile. We know the chaff is composed of pure
cellulous and will require more energy to digest than it could supply.
Erik Mattila
gwen_...@cybergal.com
br...@wralaw.com wrote:
>
>
> 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
> and autocannibalistic.
>
Saying that it is autocannibalistic is falling into the trap of florid
language that postmodernism itself is guilty of. How does an art movement eat
itself? Even as a metaphor it doesn't make much sense to me.
A lot of art criticism is inconsistent and self-contradictory, but still
useful, inspiring and interesting.
>
> 3. Its' sociological assertions are suspect due to the fact that
> its philosophers believe in postmodernity.
>
I wouldn't call them 'philosophers'. Critics, apologists, or academics that
can't do real art.
>
> 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
>
It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
that anything is as good as anything else. So a sentence from a three year
old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare. It is the basis of
political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
None of this means that post modern art is necessarily bad - just that if I
was blind I would strongly suspect that given all the hype and nonsense, it
probably would be bad.
>
> 6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
> since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
> true or false independently as is PostModernism)
>
The failure of anything does not justify something else just by themselves.
>
> 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> (obvious)
>
This is characteristic of most areas of life where there is no sound basis
of theory to ground the discussion. Psychology and European 'philosophy' are
two very good examples. Interestingly, now that sociobiology has informed
evolutionary psychology the language has tightened up and people are happy
to use plain English to say what they mean rather than go on for ages hoping
to sound impressive whilst saying nothing.
>
> 8. That ‘incompleteness’ theorems(Godel) and uncertainty
> principals in science are not self-contradictory and
> do not assert no truth is possible when considering
> abstractions and wide-boundaries.
>
This is certainly true! Some would like to believe this, but it is just
wishful thinking, like wanting to believe in magic.
Gwen Jones
There is almost nothing Welsh women have not done.
G*rd*n
| >
| > 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
| > and autocannibalistic.
| >
| Saying that it is autocannibalistic is falling into the trap of florid
| language that postmodernism itself is guilty of. How does an art movement eat
| itself? Even as a metaphor it doesn't make much sense to me.
| ...
"Pop will eat itself...."
I suppose any stylistic, rhetorical, or methodological
formula can be applied either in so excessive a manner as
to become a satire of itself, or it can be turned
_directly_ against itself. Here's "postmodernist"
cult-crit eating itself, taken from a notice on a mailing
list about a conference to discuss the commodification of
_alterity_, supposedly a staple postmodernist concept:
> Alterity seems to have become the most frenetically produced, contested,
> negotiated and consumed cultural position in contemporary
> knowledge-productions. A vertiginous proliferation of discourses regarding
> postcoloniality, subalternity, and feminism is available for the
> consumption of the metropolitan academic. The issues of race, gender,
> class, subjectivity and positionality are all intimately linked with
> various negotiations of alterity. ...
One would suppose the conference itself might have to
consider its own commodification, etc., and eventually
suffer a stack overflow. On the other hand, the
objectification of _alterity_ probably guarantees its
absorption and annihilation: a product that disappears
almost as soon as it's produced, like those very
uncomfortable bits in the best particle acclerators.
Watch carefully, then....
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 2/15 <-adv't
Ariane
On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
> >
> >1. Postmodernism can never provide a complete theory of itself.
> >
> Hey Fella--
> As an aside, you mention Goedel as someone you are leaning on
> most here... but I think your above statement is not only
> consistent with PM, and rather insightful in a Zen sort of way,
> but is also consistent with Goedel.
> I think that what you take from the Goedle depends what you bring
> to it. I think the old division between Plato and Aristotle
> still holds true. i can peg someone in either/or pretty quick,
> and I especially enjoy those I can't, which should tell you that
> i'm a Sophist and proud of it.
=== The spirit of Protagoras lives on!!
> Now about PostM. I'm not relying on any grand theory here, just
> my gut.
> Did you see that Fox special on the Pyramids. It was very
> Queer... "We're going back to the Dawn of Recorded
> time...LIVE!" This is Ancient History, the past unchanging, the
> fixed, the eternal, the facts of the future being born... LIVE!"
> What I'm saying here is HISTORY HAS CAUGHT UP WITH ITSELF.
=== Or that TV is full of itself.
> The Historical project is concurrent with itself. That's why all
> the trickery and goofery is valid. It is self justifying becuase
> all it proposes to do it narrate its own existence.
=== Like Herodotus made clear 2600 years ago, history is all about
storytelling, and has no valid claim to pretensions of objectivity.
That's fine with me, it's just the objectivist posturing that I find a bit
annoying. Like on TV.
The prime
> project of PostM is "The definition of PostM"
=== I disagree. That's a smoke-screen. PM is the attempt to supplant and
replace modernist society and its vestiges.
=== And so, when we all take our toys home at the end of the day, PoMo
will lapse into some profound and unfathomable silence??!! Modernism is
far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain will
fall, and the next act will take the stage.
a bientot,
A.
Kay Kane
Ariane wrote in message ...
>
>On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
>
>> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
>> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
>> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
(snip for space)
Modernism is
>far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
>the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain will
>fall, and the next act will take the stage.
>
>a bientot,
>
>A.
>
Wonderful, Ariane! I'm impressed that you state that Modernism has a 2700
year history... Many theorists severely limit Modernism's time to begin in
the late 19th century. (I agree with your time assertions). Perhaps
another thread? "The beginning of Modernism...."
Kudos!
Kay
Ariane
On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Kay Kane wrote:
> From: Kay Kane <scarl...@theriver.com>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
> Ariane wrote in message ...
> >
> >On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> >
> >> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> >> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> >> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> (snip for space)
>
> Modernism is
> >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
> >the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain will
> >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
> >
> >a bientot,
> >
> >A.
> >
> Wonderful, Ariane! I'm impressed that you state that Modernism has a 2700
> year history... Many theorists severely limit Modernism's time to begin in
> the late 19th century. (I agree with your time assertions). Perhaps
> another thread? "The beginning of Modernism...."
> Kudos!
> Kay
=== Sure, if you'd like, that would be interesting. But, I don't know if
too many people out there want to get involved with examining the roots of
Western civilization 2700 years ago on an arts ng. (an arbitrary date
really, I was thinking of Mycenaean culture in the Greek Peloponnesus as a
starting point, but what's the starting point to a never ending story?).
But on the other hand, the art which precedes the Greek Classical phase is
really quite interesting in my opinion.
As to that other thread, it seems that the idea that `history is the
mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
century Spanish Armada. If history is the mother of truth, and N was
arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we are
interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested in
understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or, if
you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art artistically.
And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,' or
is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Inuit,
Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history" and
truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics in
my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
Any ideas on that thread?
a la prochaine,
A.
Kay Kane
Well, then we should definitely include Paleolithic cave paintings in
Modernism, shouldn't we?
>As to that other thread, it seems that the idea that `history is the
>mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
>century Spanish Armada.
If history is the mother of truth, and N was
>arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
>context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we are
>interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested in
>understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
>motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
>that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or, if
>you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art artistically.
>And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
>because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
>not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,' or
>is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Inuit,
>Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
>occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
>of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history" and
>truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics in
>my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
>Any ideas on that thread?
>
History the child of Art is revisionist thinking. I like it a lot. We tend
to think of "History" in terms of Western Civ. ONLY which I think misdirects
facts (indeed, misdirects History itself). I think truth shouldn't have a
bearing in (not on) art. Isn't art the act of the gift of lying, or if
truthfulness is essential, then at the least - the act of storytelling (even
in non-representational works)?
Kay Kane
What thread?
I enjoyed the entire discourse between you and N. The thing to remember
(for all of us) is that any statement can be argued convincingly. I don't
believe in "absolute truths".
>A.
>
Josh Soffer
"While it is important to note that 'postmodernism' and 'postmodernity'
can not easily be defined that there has been none the less a tendency
for the term to be applied to a minority movement that is simultaneously
defined as a social movement, a philosophy, and a time period. .... The
philosophy itself tends to deny that any Universal, or Absolute Truth
statements can ever be made. The philosophy makes similar claims about
statistical and measuring phenomena."
Your attacks on the monolithic entity you dub 'postmodernism' are so
vague and general as to make it difficult to derive much substance from
them. Let me suggest a couple of things. First of all, if you want to
locate a definition of postmodernism, you'll find it to be buried within
a rich continuum of ideas that at its conservative flank merges neatly
with 'modernism' . It can be convenient for purposes of discussion to
act as if there are clear cut boundaries between ideologies, but of
course this distorts the real picture. There is no dramatic disconnect
in ideas of indeterminacy of logical meaning, relativism of science,
etc, as one moves from early 20th century modernism to late 20th cnetury
philosophy, just a gradual transformation.Seems to me that many of your
criticisms can just as well be made of modernist philosophies.
Breathless denunciation of imagined pomo nihilism seems to ignore its
connection to tradition. Let me add that this same historical continuum
of philosophical ideas from the modern to the postmodern is thoroughly
intertwined with a continuum of scientific work (anthropology,
psychology, etc.) .
I'm sure you have a wonderfully solid understanding of physics, but
what would help me get a better sense of exactly where you stand on this
modern-postmodern continuum is you preferred theories within psychology
or related social sciences. Do you like Freud? Behaviorism? Pinker and
Dawkins' evolutionary psychology? Second generation cognitive science
and connectionist models?
If postmodern philosophy is incoherent to you, never mind it. Let's
stick to biological and social science, because I have no trouble making
the translation from particular scientific models to parallel
philosophical accounts. Give me a theory and I'll tell you it's status
relative to pomo, as well as provide you with evidence of cross-talk
between the philosophical and the scientific account (mutual
complimentary references). I may even be able to demonstrate that your
preferrred psychology isn't as far removed from pomo as you might think,
unless of course you reject all social science as pseudo science.
-------------------------------------------------------
Josh Soffer: http://www.inergy.com/joshsoffer/welcome.html
emat...@tomatoweb.com
Ariane <da_l...@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:
> As to that other thread, it seems that the idea that `history is the
> mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
> century Spanish Armada. If history is the mother of truth, and N was
> arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
> context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we are
> interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested in
> understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
> motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
> that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or, if
> you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art artistically.
> And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
> because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
> not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,' or
> is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Inuit,
> Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
> occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
> of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history" and
> truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics in
> my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
> Any ideas on that thread?
>
"History, the mother of time" has nothing to do with my claim. If you'll
reread the quotation you'll see that Borges was saying that Cervantes words
"history,the mother of time" were commonplace when the words were written,
while Menard's words "history, the mother of time' were astounding when the
words were written (300 years later). So what's changed that would cause
Borges to see it this way, since the words were exactly the same?
I want to say this, however. I'm really misstating the case to imply that N
has 'won' or you have 'lost' an argument--and I apoligise to you if words
like 'N blew your argument out of the water'suggest this. I don't want to
come across as being disrespectful to you--for in truth I think you make very
excellent cases to back up your views, and I learn much from reading your
posts. But I do believe N's citation of Menard was a very rare 'smoking gun'
type of evidence in a theoretical debate. At any rate I hope you take this
all in as it is intended, a mind-stretching exchange rather than any sort of
rivalry or ego- flaunting etc. It's all done in the best of good will.
I also apologise for being so cryptic about this. There's a method to my
madness, and that is that I sincerely feel that this discussion needs to
depart from generally misapprehended pseudo-categories into the real world of
theory. As a project, reading Borges essay is pretty straightforward, and
anyone who does so will be prepared to discuss a real theoretical issue as
opposed to discussing 'around' theoretical issues. Borges is a pretty
accessible author, and at the same time he does not lack depth, is never
superficial, and always he unearths profoundly significant ideas (those kinds
of ideas that are dangerous since understanding them can completely reorient
a readers understanding of an issue). Personally, I think I would be stupid
to just say 'Borges' essay means this and this and that, which completely
disempowers Borges. I would rather see Borges message unfold in the arena of
discussion or debate. And it has everything to do with art, too.
Erik Mattila
Puss in Boots
>> i'm a Sophist and proud of it.
Ariane <da_l...@alcor.concordia.ca>:
> The spirit of Protagoras lives on!!
Yet it lives in MrKurtz. And he dead.
-- Moggin
br...@wralaw.com
"Kay Kane" <scarl...@theriver.com> wrote:
> >> Modernism is
> >> >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
> >> >the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain
> will
> >> >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
A shift in meaning.
Bryn Ayers
Puss in Boots
> It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
> that anything is as good as anything else. So a sentence from a three year
> old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
Um, no. That's not relativism. Couldn't be: it makes an
absolute claim about the value of things -- "anything is as
good as anything else" -- and asserts in absolute terms that "a
sentence from a three year old child is as much poetry as a
sonnet by Shakespeare." I've never heard of anyone who holds a
position like that, so I'm inclined to think you've built a
strawman. But that strawman is certainly no relativist -- he's
not even close.
The most a relativist would say is that anybody's _opinion_
is as good as anybody else's. I'm not sure anyone does say
that, but even if that was just another strawman, it would be a
relativist one, at least. It would hold that the opinion
which considers the kid's poetry as good as Shakespeare's is as
valid as the reverse.
I've never met a relativist like that -- in practice, most
relativists merely say that while one opinion can be worth
more than another, for any number of different reasons, there's
no absolute basis for any of them. So while the case for
Shakespeare's superiority might be more convincing than the one
for the kid's, neither side can claim God's say-so.
>It is the basis of
>political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
Then you deserve a reward.
-- Moggin
Josh Soffer
"A case in point is Foucault, who many cite as post modern, but who is
actually merely a voice among many that 'informs' post modernism--and is
no more a post modern theorist than is Nietzsche or Bataille. In other
much of post modern thought deletes more Foucault than it underwites (a
sort of parasitism, really). "
Certainly Foucault is a voice among many, including Baudrillard, Deleuze
and Guattari, Lyotard, Derrida , Jameson and Rorty, but do you mean to
say that Foucault's ideas are somehow less identifiable as postmodern
than any of these other authors, on the basis of whatever commonality
these others share? Where have you heard this from, I wonder?
br...@wralaw.com
> Hey Fella--
> As an aside, you mention Goedel as someone you are leaning on
> most here... but I think your above statement is not only
> consistent with PM, and rather insightful in a Zen sort of way,
> but is also consistent with Goedel.
I imagine that some PM is a restatement of layman interpretations
of Godel and Quantum Mechanics, which predate the self-inflicted
philosophical movement...
'This statment is false.' -
> Here are two people having an argument. The first says...
> "This Statement is True."
> Fine. the second says...
> "This statement is False"
> They have different Gestalts, different POV's, bring different
> lampshades to the party...
> but here is why PM untilmately wins.
Wins what?
> I've said it before, and
> I've said it again...
> It wins becuase everything needs something to which to oppose
> itself in order to exist (in the case of everything, the
> something is nothing).
Deduction, deduction, deduction. The question for any seeker of
truth is this Universal truth, is it probable truth, is it unkown,
is knowably improbable, is it knowably false.
We can name rename cornflakes to mean chocolate.
A philosophies name is not what is essentially the truth. I
predisposed of several fallacies associated with PoMo. If
PoMo becomes positivist quantum mysticism I'm already there.
> You, as an opponent of PM, are providing
> this valuable service.
Service of exposing error? If as the wording of this post
implies, simular to Dao Jones's posts, are hell bent on
projecting PoMo as a pathological, undefined mindvirus...
On the contrary as a projected undefined mindvirus system
any belief that I delegate at the antithesis as a potential
synthesis is where it eventually ends up.
There is absolute truth.
> "I remember at the end of it all you were on your
> knees and I was standing tall/ Or is my memory
> deceiving me was I hanging there as you prayed for me?"
> --nomeansno
Is this the nomeansno who played with Biafra?
Kay Kane
From Kay
br...@wralaw.com wrote in message <7bvuhr$en2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <Z4EE2.17728$YV6....@news2.giganews.com>,
> "Kay Kane" <scarl...@theriver.com> wrote:
>> >> Modernism is
>> >> >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
>> >> >the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain
>> will
>> >> >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
>
>A shift in meaning.
>
>
MrKurtz
fall, and the next act will take the stage.
Modernism as I understand it would have to begin at the inception
of the renaisaance (well, you misspelled pythagoras). Both
economically and in the world of art and ideas, and these two are
far from unconnected...
The primacy of the individual, the sacredness and cultural
definiton of his desires, needs, potentials.. in short,
individuality.
This makes science as we understand it possible, and for art
as well. Capitalism begins here, and the seeds for the primacy
of reason as a "master narrative" over and above the Church.
I think we are in direct ken to this beginning, and what is
unique about the postmodern condition is that the world that the
modern project has worked so hard to make, always a carrot before
the nose, the methodlogy of it all, has reached its logical
conclusion in that logic no longer rules.
This world has fulfillef itself by coming apart at the
seems.
I think PM says that what i've called the modern era had a
rather misplaced faith, or that it got lost somehwere along the
way. Is it better to be lost or found?
The other candidates for the modern era, beside the Greek,
which as a question of cultural heritage I agree there is a
direct line and this is a fabulous question, but besides this
people talk now of the first millenium-- the idea being that
they literally so muxh expected apocolypse.. and when it didn't
happen, a new sense of freedom and enterprise developed which
brought Europe out of the "Dark Ages" and into "Meideval"
I havn't read enough or lately to PM seriously in an
understanding way. I agree the situation is always serious, and
any flagship must lead and prtect its fleet, and always fly the
colors no matter what. But as far as how this project propoeses
to heal....
I would guess that it is a possible first moment of something
ACtuallt beyond modernism, which would be HUGE, which is why a
lot of people disagree. They need modernity like a pacifier.
The Emporer has no clothes. Long live the emporer.
I'm learning a lot here, so...
--Ball
MrKurtz
>
>"History, the mother of time" has nothing to do with my claim. If you'll
>reread the quotation you'll see that Borges was saying that Cervantes words
>"history,the mother of time" were commonplace when the words were written,
>while Menard's words "history, the mother of time' were astounding when the
>words were written (300 years later). So what's changed that would cause
>Borges to see it this way, since the words were exactly the same?
>
The "pierre Menard" story is almost beyond the scope of rational
discussion.
From Borges, if nothing else, I came to appreciate "History"
as an almost mystical concept.
The funny thing is that the "Astounding words" three hundred
years later is almost slapstick funny. We, in the modern, love
the idea of nailing someone with the fact that "Its been done."
If its not new, its not true... and if its old, we have
progressed beyond it, and to go bakc would be a relapse. This is
the scientific method, in a way, but History isn't like that.
Another symptom is expressed in imagining some guy comparing the
words of Quixote and Menard side by side, a book in each hand,
and literally being bored by one and astounded by the other. It
goes to show how ones immersion in the study of Historical
context, of trying to get into the head and heart of the past, is
a mad journey, and wonderful. But also how stupid and
vainglorious are the judgemnents we pass, and then pass us, in
our moment of transcendent journey into the past. It is a
journey into the present, and the present hangs in the balance,
depending on the dice roll of what history provides us... So
Menard is that modern man of letters... engaged utterly by an old
text, but when the truth of it comes out of his mouth, he is
shocked by its implications on the present.
If nothing else, current Historical methods remind us to
always account for who we are in our examination of history.
Against the letter of objectivity, but more in the spirit of it!
So the guy simultaneously bored and surprised... I can't
tell if he is wonderfully wise or a fool. In the final analysis,
it doesn't matter.
Marilyn
Pretty good Erik, for a guy who accepts Bateman as an artist in a
postmodern age.
To follow your final metaphor, we do not digest chaff, it blows away
on the wind as the heavier kernels rest on the bottom.
Just another little critique mushroom following your fertile discourse.
Marilyn
>
> On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Kay Kane wrote:
>
> > From: Kay Kane <scarl...@theriver.com>
> > Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> > Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >
> >
> > Ariane wrote in message ...
> > >
> > >On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> > >
> > >> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> > >> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> > >> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >
> > (snip for space)
> >
> > >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
> > >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
> > >
> > >
> > >A.
> > >
> > Wonderful, Ariane! I'm impressed that you state that Modernism has a 2700
> > year history... Many theorists severely limit Modernism's time to begin in
> > the late 19th century. (I agree with your time assertions). Perhaps
> > another thread? "The beginning of Modernism...."
> > Kudos!
> > Kay
>
> === Sure, if you'd like, that would be interesting. But, I don't know if
> too many people out there want to get involved with examining the roots of
> Western civilization 2700 years ago on an arts ng. (an arbitrary date
> really, I was thinking of Mycenaean culture in the Greek Peloponnesus as a
> starting point, but what's the starting point to a never ending story?).
> But on the other hand, the art which precedes the Greek Classical phase is
> really quite interesting in my opinion.
>
> mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
> century Spanish Armada. If history is the mother of truth, and N was
> arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
> context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we are
> interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested in
> understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
> motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
> that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or, if
> you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art artistically.
> And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
> because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
> not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,' or
> is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Inuit,
> Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
> occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
> of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history" and
> truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics in
> my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
> Any ideas on that thread?
>
>
> A.
Art as the mother of truth if you inlude literature in "Art."
Here's a recent example: The Kennedy Assasination as
recent history, has prompted many different investigations &
conclusions
packed into packs of books.
Don DeLillo writes a fictional account "Libra" and he comes
closer to the truth than any historians. His version is being
proven by recently released audio tapes as we speak.
M.
Marilyn
>
> Bryn Ayers wrote:
>
> "While it is important to note that 'postmodernism' and 'postmodernity'
> can not easily be defined that there has been none the less a tendency
> for the term to be applied to a minority movement that is simultaneously
> philosophy itself tends to deny that any Universal, or Absolute Truth
> statements can ever be made. The philosophy makes similar claims about
> statistical and measuring phenomena."
>
> Josh Soffer: http://www.inergy.com/joshsoffer/welcome.html
You voiced my thoughts about the title of this thread.
How can an historical continuum be right or wrong and
how can people deny the historical context in which we live?
M.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
joshs...@webtv.net (Josh Soffer) wrote:
> Eric Mattila wrote:
>
> "A case in point is Foucault, who many cite as post modern, but who is
> actually merely a voice among many that 'informs' post modernism--and is
> no more a post modern theorist than is Nietzsche or Bataille. In other
> much of post modern thought deletes more Foucault than it underwites (a
> sort of parasitism, really). "
>
> and Guattari, Lyotard, Derrida , Jameson and Rorty, but do you mean to
> say that Foucault's ideas are somehow less identifiable as postmodern
> than any of these other authors, on the basis of whatever commonality
> these others share? Where have you heard this from, I wonder?
I'm still trying to figure it out if it is reasonable to glean things from
the internet. The quote below is from a UTexas title 'Post Modernism'. They
have some of their introductions to the chapters of the book online. I may
have overstated the case, but yes, I'm saying what you suggest, with the
qualification of 'some' of his ideas are less identifyable. I have that sense
from my own reading, but I'm not prepared to give you concrete examples. At
any rate, it all depends of what definition of 'post modern' you are working
with, and I tend to ignore these categories as much as possible, and look the
interplay of concepts and counterconcepts that interest me. By the way, I
really do consider myself theoretically challenged--I don't feel that I have
any kind of command over this material.
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kellner/pm/pm.html
'While Foucault has decisively influenced postmodern theory, he cannot be
wholly assimilate to that rubric. He is a complex and eclectic thinker who
draws from multiple sources and problematics while aligning himself with no
single one. If there are privileged figures in his work, they are critics of
reason and Western thought such as Nietzsche and Bataille. Nietzsche provided
Foucault, and nearly all French poststructuralists, with the impetus and
ideas to transcend Hegelian and Marxist philosophies. In addition to
initiating a postmetaphysical, posthumanist mode of thought, Nietzsche taught
Foucault that one could write a genealogical' history of unconventional
topics such as reason, madness, and the subject which located their emergence
within sites of domination. Nietzsche demonstrated that the will to truth and
knowledge is indissociable from the will to power, and Foucault developed
these claims in his critique of liberal humanism, the human sciences, and in
his later work on ethics. While Foucault never wrote aphoristically in the
style of Nietzsche, he did accept Nietzsche's claims that systematizing
methods produce reductive social and historical analyses, and that knowledge
is perspectival in nature, requiring multiple viewpoints to interpret a
heterogeneous reality.'
Erik
Dao Jones
> [Bryn wrote:]
> > 3. Its' sociological assertions are suspect due to the fact that
> > its philosophers believe in postmodernity.
> >
> I wouldn't call them 'philosophers'. Critics, apologists, or academics that
> can't do real art.
That's highly subjective, narrow, and quite possibly theoretically
indefensible, unless you are prepared to fall back on some kind of 'naive
realism'.
By denying these theorists the title 'philosopher', you seek to undermine
their legitimacy or insult their standing. I have no time for empty or
futile philosophies, but your distaste for a body of thought does not
make its proponents any the less 'philosophers'.
Since you raise the topic, would you like to take a stab at defining
'real art'?
> > 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> > ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> > the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
> >
> It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
> that anything is as good as anything else.
Relativism says that values (of whatever kind) are relative. That's it.
Do you have a value which is not which you would like to put forward?
I've been looking for one. It would help me enormously.
> So a sentence from a three year
> old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
genius. As to whether it is poetry when a three-year-old-speaks, that's
another question - poetry is a construct, a game, and whether the child
is doing poetry depends on how you define it.
> It is the basis of
> political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
Political correctness in the form derived from relativism is not the
demon of the media, but the desire to avoid using language to denigrate.
One of the benign things which relativism gives us is a more cautious
approach to our own values as opposed to those of others. Just being me
doesn't make me right. That does not mean I should not represent,
defend, and act on my strong convictions, despite the co-opting of the
idea of political correctness by somewhat hysterical interest groups and
their opposite numbers in the conservative establishments around the
world.
> None of this means that post modern art is necessarily bad - just that if I
> was blind I would strongly suspect that given all the hype and nonsense, it
> probably would be bad.
What a curious idea. Why? How do you come to that conclusion? Are
there any blind people out there who might like to comment?
> > 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> > (obvious)
> >
> This is characteristic of most areas of life where there is no sound basis
> of theory to ground the discussion.
That may be true, although Bryn's complaint is rather inaccurate -
there are justifications. Bryn may not accept them, or even be aware of
them, but there are. You continue:
> Psychology and European 'philosophy' are
> two very good examples.
What a fascinating statement. I notice you have kindly put European
philosophy in quotes again, as if to say it isn't really philosophy.
Since that appears to be your position, would you like to define
philosophy as well?
As to whether there is a 'sound basis of theory' to European philosophy,
what about Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Weber, Benjamin, Marcuse, Nietsche,
Foucault, Goethe, Marx, Wittgenstein and so on? Do you mean to dismiss
them all? If so, please be a little more specific about how you intend
to do so. I'm delighted to be in at the ground floor of a philosophical
revolution, and I don't want to miss anything.
> There is almost nothing Welsh women have not done.
Entirely possible. Perhaps you most sensible arguement, and not one I
dispute.
Dao Jones
Dao Jones
> My claims against PostModernism are...
>
> 1. Postmodernism can never provide a complete theory of itself.
Why is this necessary? Reasoned argument cannot either, but we use it
with great enthusiasm.
> 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
> and autocannibalistic.
This dismisses only theories which don't work. Now deal with the rest.
> 3. Its' sociological assertions are suspect due to the fact that
> its philosophers believe in postmodernity.
Please. Are you suggesting that there are social researchers out there
with some kind of scientific objectivity? Non-involved human beings?
This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
give up until we can talk to the dead.
> 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
Many are. Some are not. You have made a paper tiger. (Bonus points to
anyone who avoids use of the term 'straw man' for the duration of this
debate.)
> 5. That many of its claims against historical scientists and
> and philosophers are nit-picking. And are often done
> thinking that these philosophers and scientists assumed
> that their theories could only be Identical approximations
> of reality.
'Nit-picking' is the heart of argument. Just because you would rather
not discuss an issue does not mean that your opponents will let it lie.
All western philosophy tends to the nit-picky. Science is nit-picky,
too. Cope. In any case, some PM attempts to rebuild.
> 6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
> since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
> true or false independently as is PostModernism)
Since the two are inextricably linked, you may wish to clarify this. Or
you may not.
> 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> (obvious)
A failing not unique to them, and in any case not one which can lead to
summary rejection of the arguements presented. Also in many cases rooted
in Adornian obscurantism, which I personally dislike, but which is a
theory about how to 'do' philosophy. Refute it, debate it, don't ignore
it.
> 8. That ‘incompleteness’ theorems(Godel) and uncertainty
> principals in science are not self-contradictory and
> do not assert no truth is possible when considering
> abstractions and wide-boundaries.
Not important to me, really. Reason has enough troubles without bringing
in 'Natural Science'.
Dao Jones
mark webber
Mind if I cut in?
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote in reply to Gwen:
(snipping)
>
> Relativism says that values (of whatever kind) are relative. That's it.
> Do you have a value which is not which you would like to put forward?
> I've been looking for one. It would help me enormously.
It seems you hint at one in your next point:
>
> > So a sentence from a three year
> > old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
>
> A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
> from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
> incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
> genius.
How are you determining when Shakespeare writes well and when he writes
drivel?
By the way, thanks for some good writing - I actually enjoy those posts of
yours that I've caught.
(Speaking of which, I'd like to apologize to anyone replying to posts of
mine in the last couple of days. The absurdly archaic system through which
I visit r.a.f. was down again for a couple of days, and absolutely no
posts from that period are showing up on my list. If anyone would care to
repost or forward by email, I'm happy to reply.)
warm regards,
Webber
Ariane
> Well, then we should definitely include Paleolithic cave paintings in
> Modernism, shouldn't we?
=== To be true to what I specifically said mon ami, we could include the
art at Lascaux, Altimira, and other Palaeolithic sites as a chapter in the
(now 40,000) year old historical drama of Modernism.....And yes, I hold
this position.
> >As to that other thread, it seems that the idea that `history is the
> >mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
> >century Spanish Armada.
> If history is the mother of truth, and N was
> >arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
> >context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we are
> >interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested in
> >understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
> >motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
> >that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or, if
> >you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art artistically.
> >And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
> >because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
> >not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,' or
> >is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Inuit,
> >Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
> >occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
> >of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history" and
> >truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics in
> >my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
> >Any ideas on that thread?
> >
> History the child of Art is revisionist thinking. I like it a lot. We tend
> to think of "History" in terms of Western Civ. ONLY which I think misdirects
> facts (indeed, misdirects History itself).
=== It misses a lot of good stories at any rate.
I think truth shouldn't have a
> bearing in (not on) art. Isn't art the act of the gift of lying, or if
> truthfulness is essential, then at the least - the act of storytelling (even
> in non-representational works)?
=== I once had a dream where Picasso was talking to me in his studio and
he was instructing me to keep in mind that "Art is always a blending of
truth and illusion". I wrote it down because the whole thing was just so
bizarre. Since then I've meditated on this often but really, I don't have
any answers (I was just grateful for the "free lesson")!!
> Kay Kane
> What thread?
=== The beginnings of Modernism.
> I enjoyed the entire discourse between you and N. The thing to remember
> (for all of us) is that any statement can be argued convincingly. I don't
> believe in "absolute truths".
=== My aim is not to impose my will on to others via rational discussion.
I find that to be simple schoolyard power politics which reduces
meditation and contemplation to mere thought-sport.
But i don't take kindly to the reverse being attempted either, and so I
tend to engage in debates at times that I otherwise wouldn't spend so much
effort on. Maybe the following proverb is relevant here:
When anger spreads inside your breast
Keep watch against an idly barking tongue
- Sappho of Lesbos (600bc.)
a bientot,
A.
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999 br...@wralaw.com wrote:
> From: br...@wralaw.com
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> > >> Modernism is
> > >> >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
> > >> >the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain
> > will
> > >> >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
>
> A shift in meaning.
>
>
> Bryn Ayers
=== Perhaps, but that's because the old meaning was inadequate to express
what it was that I wanted to say.
"Every concept is a tool if you hold it right"
- Ani DiFranco
a bientot,
A.
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain will
> fall, and the next act will take the stage.
>
>
> Modernism as I understand it would have to begin at the inception
> of the renaisaance
=== But the "historical" drama of modernism reaches back as far as one
wants, or is able, to go.
> (well, you misspelled pythagoras).
=== That's because I was referring to Protagoras the Athenian Sophist and
not Pythagoras the Syracusan musician/mathematician/cult leader.
Both
> economically and in the world of art and ideas, and these two are
> far from unconnected...
> The primacy of the individual, the sacredness and cultural
> definiton of his desires, needs, potentials.. in short,
> individuality.
> This makes science as we understand it possible, and for art
> as well. Capitalism begins here, and the seeds for the primacy
> of reason as a "master narrative" over and above the Church.
> I think we are in direct ken to this beginning, and what is
> unique about the postmodern condition is that the world that the
> modern project has worked so hard to make, always a carrot before
> the nose, the methodlogy of it all, has reached its logical
> conclusion in that logic no longer rules.
=== Or that Modernist culture (Europe) no longer rules.
> This world has fulfillef itself by coming apart at the
> seems.
> I think PM says that what i've called the modern era had a
> rather misplaced faith, or that it got lost somehwere along the
> way. Is it better to be lost or found?
=== It is better to be alive!
> The other candidates for the modern era, beside the Greek,
> which as a question of cultural heritage I agree there is a
> direct line and this is a fabulous question, but besides this
> people talk now of the first millenium-- the idea being that
> they literally so muxh expected apocolypse.. and when it didn't
> happen, a new sense of freedom and enterprise developed which
> brought Europe out of the "Dark Ages" and into "Meideval"
> I havn't read enough or lately to PM seriously in an
> understanding way. I agree the situation is always serious, and
> any flagship must lead and prtect its fleet, and always fly the
> colors no matter what. But as far as how this project propoeses
> to heal....
=== You answered your own question here, healing is out of the picture
what with flagships and fleets flying colors. I agree with your
allusions, war is where its headed, beacause war is the condition of its
existence. "Those who live by the sword....."
> I would guess that it is a possible first moment of something
> ACtuallt beyond modernism, which would be HUGE, which is why a
> lot of people disagree. They need modernity like a pacifier.
> The Emporer has no clothes. Long live the emporer.
> I'm learning a lot here, so...
=== I disagree. Modernism is the point of our 40,000 year existence on
the planet because......here we are. PoMo represents our attempt to
replace Europe as world dominator, politically, culturally,
intellectually, etc. We are still very much within the dialectics of the
Modernist world in my humble opinion. A casual trip to Europe (or Asia,
Africa, South America) should put PoMo into perspective. WE are in the
information age, WE are the administrators of the New World Order as Bush
once said not to long ago. WE are vying for domination. WE have not
learned to heal.....it is not a priority.
a bientot,
A.
Jim Clark
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote:
> Please. Are you suggesting that there are social researchers out there
> with some kind of scientific objectivity? Non-involved human beings?
>
> This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
> accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
> give up until we can talk to the dead.
This is an example of the problem of _poor_ social thinking.
Because of incestuous pseudo-intellectual interactions with
people who do not believe in objectivity and hence have not tried
it or analyzed their position critically, people come to view
their own self-fulfilling views about the relativistic nature of
the world, including human experience and behavior, as the
correct ones. There are innumerable problems with this position.
1. How can one claim that social thinking is imbued by vested
interests without some objective evidence for it and without
seeing your own interpretation as one that transcends your own
biases? Without such a foundation, there is absolutely no reason
for anyone, including yourself, to believe your own words.
2. The view makes an unnecessarily stark contrast between
"vested interest" and being "dead." That is, according to the
above there is no middle ground or varying degrees of vested
interest. I expect that there are many scientists out there
doing research who have no particular investment in the direction
in which the results come out. They are simply curious about
which way it comes out.
3. Having a vested interest is wrongly taken to preclude
objective querying of nature. This is simply a false
characterization of human cognition and of science. There are
innumerable examples from science where scientists set up
objective studies to examine their favored hypotheses and the
results led to the discrediting of the hypotheses. People
knowledgeable about experimental design and measurement (e.g.,
use of double-blind procedures, randomization, reliability) can
set up objective procedures that preclude the bias of their
beliefs from affecting the outcome. That is how believers
in psychic or other false phenomena become disenchanted their
incorrect beliefs.
What is perhaps most distressing about reading postmodernist
material is (generally) the complete failure of the writers to
have any insights into the flaws in their own thinking and
language processes. It is as though they have lost the capacity
for self-reflection or willfully choose to ignore the problems
with their own views.
Best wishes
Jim
============================================================================
James M. Clark (204) 786-9313
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L02A
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
============================================================================
Kay Kane
(snip)
I am so envious! I only dream about monsters chasing me... Boring... At
least monsters are slow, but I always feel like they will catch me in my
dreams.
Kay
>
Marilyn
I enjoy everything you write.
I also like to see Montreal, Canada in your heading.
I wish you could publish a primer in philosophy,
or a theory on the philosohpy of art.
The closest I came to philosophy at Concordia was hanging out
with Alba Taylor, then wife of Charles (THE book on Hegel) Taylor.
We had an loosely connected art group which met in an abandoned
theatre of St. Patrick's Cathedral. We had life drawing on
the old stage. It was a wonderful gothic space.
The group became too Catholic to be catholic so we
wandered away from it.
bonne journee,
Marilyn
John Haber
doctrine. I just don't believe that's right.
A lot of grand syntheses have fallen apart in a quarter of a century,
from Marxism to Freud to Structuralism to abstraction's dominant place
in defining painting. And a lot of different philosophies have made a
lot of sense by being "after" something else, like post-analytic
philosophy or post-structuralism.
It's livened things up, and it suggests a Postmodernism that's always
in dialog with modernity and Modernism. And I think that's the case.
Is art today (or was someone like Rauschenberg or Minimalism) modern
or postmodern? I think the question makes sense only as long as the
terms stand in essential tension. Aka, a sense of humor.
The old Modernist tools, such as Marx and Freud and abstraction and
collage, are very much alive. They probably define Postmodernism as
well as anything. And there isn't some viable doctrine that explains
why everything's relative or other cute koans.
John Haber (www.haberarts.com)
Dao Jones
100...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU>, webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU says...
> > A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
> > from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
> > incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
> > genius.
>
> How are you determining when Shakespeare writes well and when he writes
> drivel?
My opinion - my interpretation of the societal prejudices I grew up
with, and my application of those prejudices - more of those consensual
rules of society (*our* society - and from the discussion here, not
uniformly that...).
I wish I *was* in touch with some kind of literary supertruth - it
would make my job a lot easier (I'm a writer). Although, then again, it
might not be any fun any more.
> By the way, thanks for some good writing - I actually enjoy those posts of
> yours that I've caught.
I hope that even in those instances where we disagree I can be clear and
honest enough to retain your respect. Thank you.
Dao Jones
Dao Jones
> > This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
> > accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
> > give up until we can talk to the dead.
Jim:
> This is an example of the problem of _poor_ social thinking.
> Because of incestuous pseudo-intellectual interactions with
> people who do not believe in objectivity and hence have not tried
> it or analyzed their position critically, people come to view
> their own self-fulfilling views about the relativistic nature of
> the world, including human experience and behavior, as the
> correct ones.
How do you come to 'believe' in objectivity? How is it helpful to do so?
That would seem to be another example of a vested interest in philosophy.
Jim:
> There are innumerable problems with this position.
>
> 1. How can one claim that social thinking is imbued by vested
> interests without some objective evidence for it and without
> seeing your own interpretation as one that transcends your own
> biases? Without such a foundation, there is absolutely no reason
> for anyone, including yourself, to believe your own words.
Just because evidence is not objective in the hard sense, that doesn't
mean it has to be wrong. And my interpretations most certainly do not
transcend my own biases. I try to track the truth as well as possible by
staying as aware as I can of my biases. One of the best ways of doing
this is interacting with others.
There are just as many reasons to believe what I say as there were
before. All I've said if I reject objectivity in this way is that I
recognise that I'll always be bringing something to the mix - which I
will, however dispassionate I am - be it my education, my lovelife, or
my breakfast.
Jim:
> 2. The view makes an unnecessarily stark contrast between
> "vested interest" and being "dead." That is, according to the
> above there is no middle ground or varying degrees of vested
> interest. I expect that there are many scientists out there
> doing research who have no particular investment in the direction
> in which the results come out. They are simply curious about
> which way it comes out.
Ok, you caught me. I deliberately engaged in rhetoric. I had to do
something - I could hear them snoring in Matahuxee, Illinois (I did it
again. Sorry.) The point, suitably undressed, is not without relevance,
however. It is unlikely that anyone who is curious about which way an
experiment comes out does not have a tiny bias one way or another. This
is more true in the social sciences, however, where agendas abound, and
experiments are, of necessity, more subjective in what they test for and
what they suggest.
Jim:
> 3. Having a vested interest is wrongly taken to preclude
> objective querying of nature. This is simply a false
> characterization of human cognition and of science. There are
> innumerable examples from science where scientists set up
> objective studies to examine their favored hypotheses and the
> results led to the discrediting of the hypotheses. People
> knowledgeable about experimental design and measurement (e.g.,
> use of double-blind procedures, randomization, reliability) can
> set up objective procedures that preclude the bias of their
> beliefs from affecting the outcome.
If you read my original post, you will see that I was refering
specifically to the social sciences (whether you are happy with the label
'science' applied to those disciplines or not...I'm not certain that I
am). It is more difficult (though perhaps not impossible) to construct a
social science experiment to falsify a social theory. It is far more
difficult to excise the element of interpretation from such experiments
- which throws them straight back into subjectivity again.
Jim:
> What is perhaps most distressing about reading postmodernist
> material is (generally) the complete failure of the writers to
> have any insights into the flaws in their own thinking and
> language processes. It is as though they have lost the capacity
> for self-reflection or willfully choose to ignore the problems
> with their own views.
That's a flaw I would have attributed to many who do *not* subscribe to
postmodern theories. I suspect a good deal of it comes from the slight
differences in use of language across disciplines. I find it frustrating
arguing with Ivan, for instance, because I feel that he uses terms as if
the usages in logic and computer science were the only acceptable ones.
He, I'm sure, thinks that I'm vague in my definitions.
Another flaw of which both 'sides' in the PM debate accuse one another is
not having read the theories they are using as examples. I try to stay
clear of scientific metaphors and language (by this I mean from the
physical sciences) because my background is in philosophy and social
science.
Can you point to an instance where a postmodern writer has ignored the
flaws in their own thinking and language? It would be very interesting
to discuss this.
Dao Jones
MrKurtz
>
>I imagine that some PM is a restatement of layman interpretations
>of Godel and Quantum Mechanics, which predate the self-inflicted
>philosophical movement...
>
different conclusions from Godel?
>> but here is why PM untilmately wins.
>
>Wins what?
>
>We can name rename cornflakes to mean chocolate.
>
>A philosophies name is not what is essentially the truth.
That's part of the debate (as I imagine it) the arbitrary nature
of signs is one of PMs corenrstones, thus the possibly arbitrary
designation of being "beyond Modernism" just for the sake of
aggrandizing one's own historical moment for short term gain,
which is a downside of PM which is perfect material for the
microscope of its more respectable sides
>On the contrary as a projected undefined mindvirus system
>any belief that I delegate at the antithesis as a potential
>synthesis is where it eventually ends up.
I like the fact that your reason has goove... and you see the
possibiltiy of "positivist Mysticism" I'm with you there... but
you'll have explain the above a little better
>
>There is absolute truth.
Absolutely not. (!)
>> "I remember at the end of it all you were on your
>> knees and I was standing tall/ Or is my memory
>> deceiving me was I hanging there as you prayed for me?"
>
>> --nomeansno
>
>Is this the nomeansno who played with Biafra?
No, This is the broken down old Punk icon idiot who now rides the
coatales of nomeansno. Situation kind of mirrors my quote from
them. Its important-- to find absoltue truth is a Victory, but
from some point of view, this victory may be a great loss. What
if I said "I'm not interested in absolute truth. I'll pray for
your sorry ass if you are" What you beleive predisposes what
experience you'll have. It's like "I'm going to wear a red
bandana into Compton becuase the association of red with gangs is
arbitrary." You may be right, but that won't do much for your
health. "Choose wisely!"
>Bryn Ayers
>
>-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
--Ball
"'Till human voices wake us and we drown."
T.S. (The S is for sanity) Eliot
MrKurtz
>>
>>
>> Modernism as I understand it would have to begin at the inception
>> of the renaisaance
>
>=== But the "historical" drama of modernism reaches back as far as one
>wants, or is able, to go.
This depends on what conclusion you intend to reach.
Etymylogically my statement is accurate, but I don't care for
relying too heavy on that. To say that modernity is all of
civilized history is to kind of empty the concept of practical
value. If neolithic culture is the only thing that is not
modern, then you've just replaced History with Modernity. We
already have a History, lets use Modernity for something else.
>
>> (well, you misspelled pythagoras).
>
>=== That's because I was referring to Protagoras the Athenian Sophist and
>not Pythagoras the Syracusan musician/mathematician/cult leader.
I stand corrected, may I be wrong at heaven's gates. I
love it when someone correctes someone else when, if the
correction were right, it would make the accused look rather
foolish, so here is the proud maker of right, then boom! It is
lowered. (My end Quote cares for this)
>
>=== Or that Modernist culture (Europe) no longer rules.
I think the Rough Beast They've created still rules, but the
illsuion that they control it is gone.
>
>
>=== It is better to be alive!
Well, everyone has an opionion, we're all just human, the
Holocaust never happened you say? well, everyone is entiteld to
their opinion...
Not to nitpick, but how do know it is better to be alive?
>
>> The other candidates for the modern era, beside the Greek,
>> which as a question of cultural heritage I agree there is a
>> direct line and this is a fabulous question, but besides this
>> people talk now of the first millenium-- the idea being that
>> they literally so muxh expected apocolypse.. and when it didn't
>> happen, a new sense of freedom and enterprise developed which
>> brought Europe out of the "Dark Ages" and into "Meideval"
>> I havn't read enough or lately to PM seriously in an
>> understanding way. I agree the situation is always serious, and
>> any flagship must lead and prtect its fleet, and always fly the
>> colors no matter what. But as far as how this project propoeses
>> to heal....
>
>=== You answered your own question here, healing is out of the picture
>what with flagships and fleets flying colors. I agree with your
>allusions, war is where its headed, beacause war is the condition of its
>existence. "Those who live by the sword....."
If we have some foresight, in the midst of Rome falling we can
plant seeds for its future.
>> I would guess that it is a possible first moment of something
>> ACtuallt beyond modernism, which would be HUGE, which is why a
>> lot of people disagree. They need modernity like a pacifier.
>> The Emporer has no clothes. Long live the emporer.
>> I'm learning a lot here, so...
>
>=== I disagree. Modernism is the point of our 40,000 year existence on
>the planet because......here we are. PoMo represents our attempt to
>replace Europe as world dominator, politically, culturally,
>intellectually, etc. We are still very much within the dialectics of the
>Modernist world in my humble opinion. A casual trip to Europe (or Asia,
>Africa, South America) should put PoMo into perspective. WE are in the
>information age, WE are the administrators of the New World Order as Bush
>once said not to long ago. WE are vying for domination. WE have not
>learned to heal.....it is not a priority.
Yes, we in the capital have a limited perspective. Let the
provinces judge us as they will. But we are the capital (or is
that a modern idea of the state no longer applicable) ..whatever
we are, let us take responsibiltiy for it, make a choices, and
let History be the judge!
>
>a bientot,
>
>A.
>> --nomeansno
G*rd*n
| While searching for the latest literature on Sivapithecus (1988) I came
| across a paper in an anthro journal that argued that paleolithic art was 'art
| for arts sake.' I didn't have the time to read it, and I was never able to
| relocate the paper. I thought it was a marvelous idea. I've studied Native
| American art extensively, and it is the same agrument that I would like to
| make, against the idea that it's all spiritual (which I think Frederich
| Docsteader believed, when he claims that hemitite was valued because it was
| the color of blood, as opposed to the idea that red is a pretty color that
| Indians probably liked as such, like the rest of humanity).
But would palaeolithic types construct a concept like "art"?
If not, they could not have "art for art's sake"; it would
be something else. From what little I know of tribal
people, they don't categorize practices and objects in the
same way we do; when we say one of their practices is
"religion" or "magic" or "art" or whatever, it's the
imposition of one of our categories on something which may
be very different for them, and all the more so for those
living tens of thousands of years ago.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 2/15 <-adv't
Puss in Boots
> === It is better to be alive!
"I've got better things to do than survive."
(Ani DiFranco)
-- Moggin
emat...@tomatoweb.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
> Can you point to an instance where a postmodern writer has ignored the
> flaws in their own thinking and language? It would be very interesting
> to discuss this.
>
> Dao Jones
>
>
My favorite is Louis Althusser's 'Ideological State Appuratus' (I think it
was Althusser??). But he suffered so much teasing from his peers that he
eventually withdrew the term--yet, I recall, there was a period when he sang
"Stand By Your Term" (sung to the tune of "Stand By Your Man").
Erik Mattila
emat...@tomatoweb.com
Marilyn <m...@bc.ca> wrote:
> Pretty good Erik, for a guy who accepts Bateman as an artist in a =
>
> postmodern age. =
he heehe he. Well, look at it this way: Anselm Keiffer took cubism and
turned it into a post modern terrain of nazi guilt, while Bateman took cubism
and turned it into a post modern terrain of racoon colonialism. Very similar
trajectories.
>
> To follow your final metaphor, we do not digest chaff, it blows away
> on the wind as the heavier kernels rest on the bottom.
Sure, if we don't eat it. If we do, it causes rapid 'loss of vitality'. Gee,
if I had joined 'The Cowboy Artists of America' when I had the chance, I would
be among those who could discuss this topic with more import. he heehe he
again.
>
> Just another little critique mushroom following your fertile discourse.
>
Good, but keep in mind that the former Director of the American Mycological
Society poisoned himself to death by ingesting the most innocent looking of
mushrooms.
Best, Erik
emat...@tomatoweb.com
p...@outrageous.net (MrKurtz) wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Mar 1999 04:17:45 GMT, emat...@tomatoweb.com wrote:
>
> The "pierre Menard" story is almost beyond the scope of rational
> discussion.
> From Borges, if nothing else, I came to appreciate "History"
> as an almost mystical concept.
But why? If you come face to face with the essay it shows a pure rationality
on the part of Menard. His project was an intellectual exercise in a very
concrete sense. But it's interesting what you say, since it is no more that
exclaiming that the product of pure rationality can push us to the edge of
comprehension. Frankly, I've considered for years the the whole thing was a
hoax, but I'm confidant this it is real.
But another question lingers. I came to read this essay by purchasing a
volume called "Art After Modernism" (if my memory serves me), and I remember
the first item I read was the Menard essay. Why did the editors include this
essay in an anthology of essays addressing post modernism? What's the
relevance here?
Erik Mattila
emat...@tomatoweb.com
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots) wrote:
> gwen_...@cybergal.com [re pomo]:
>
> > It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
> > old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
>
> absolute claim about the value of things -- "anything is as
> good as anything else" -- and asserts in absolute terms that "a
> sentence from a three year old child is as much poetry as a
> position like that, so I'm inclined to think you've built a
> strawman. But that strawman is certainly no relativist -- he's
> not even close.
>
> The most a relativist would say is that anybody's _opinion_
> is as good as anybody else's. I'm not sure anyone does say
> that, but even if that was just another strawman, it would be a
> relativist one, at least. It would hold that the opinion
> which considers the kid's poetry as good as Shakespeare's is as
> valid as the reverse.
>
> I've never met a relativist like that -- in practice, most
> relativists merely say that while one opinion can be worth
> more than another, for any number of different reasons, there's
> no absolute basis for any of them. So while the case for
> Shakespeare's superiority might be more convincing than the one
> for the kid's, neither side can claim God's say-so.
>
> >It is the basis of
> >political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
>
>
> -- Moggin
This reminds of a passage in Casteñeda's novels. To paraphrase, Don Juan
askes Carlos: "Do you think that you and I are equals?" Carlos enters a
long argument on cultural relativism, which smacked of the worst brands of
paternalism which gratuitiously elevated the Indian to the level of the
'human', concluding that, 'in a way,' they were equals. Don Juan responds:
"I disagree, I am vastly superior to you."
br...@wralaw.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote: A nominal No(?)
> In article <7bsmes$th0$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, br...@wralaw.com says...
> > My claims against PostModernism are...
> > 1. Postmodernism can never provide a complete theory of itself.
> Why is this necessary?
Well in the weak sense we need the "theory" in order to assert or deny
it. In the strong sense 'incompleteness' is given as a Metaphysical
constraint.
> Reasoned argument cannot either, but we use it
> with great enthusiasm.
I am not asserting a distinct controversy of 'reason' vs. various
PostModernist theories.
> > 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
> > and autocannibalistic.
> This dismisses only theories which don't work. Now deal with the rest.
I am not attempting to dismiss theories which do work, this is also
begging the question(or your argument assumes the rest do work).
The point of 'auto-cannibalism' or some other assetion of 'self-
destruction' is that many of the Ideas that I think are potentially
true discussed by some of the PostModernists start to destroy
PostModernism itself.
For Instance I can say that .... This moment is the age we live in...
Or we are part of the totality of History.
The distinct time period of Modernism or whatever is brought into question
as is any possible distinct philosophy or for that matter seperation of
Quantum Mechanics and food preference.
PMs' solutions to these dillema's are often extremely simular to
those used by nominal philosophies(ones that consider philosophy an
approximation) and even realist and absolutist philosophies.
Principals of extreme skepticism or as you called it Radical Nihilism
are just assumed to be too weird to be true. Realist muddled nominalism,
is not inherently true since on an unfair playing field extremes win.
> > 3. Its' sociological assertions are suspect due to the fact that
> > its philosophers believe in postmodernity.
> Please. Are you suggesting that there are social researchers out there
> with some kind of scientific objectivity? Non-involved human beings?
No. I am pointing out a special case where some proponents of PoMo are
especially bad. Not only does the 'some unmeasured factor' problem of
stats come into play, but the 'conflict of interest' problem is
also obvious. Not to mention that the stats asserting that whatever
beliefs these researchers hold is popular have to my knowledge never
been recorded.
> This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
> accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
> give up until we can talk to the dead.
Granted. Researchers do not escape this even if they assert it as a
problem which researchers do assert it as a problem.
If I assert that gaps in knowledge are a problem, my other
assertions are not necessarily true or false.
> > 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> > ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> > the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
> Many are. Some are not. You have made a paper tiger. (Bonus points to
> anyone who avoids use of the term 'straw man' for the duration of this
> debate.)
Straw-woman or not. A false statment, X is false, has the same
value as not X is true a true statement. Certainty is a double
edge sword. If we can not be certain -of this we can not be
certain. (I am not denying contextual)
> > 5. That many of its claims against historical scientists and
> > and philosophers are nit-picking. And are often done
> > thinking that these philosophers and scientists assumed
> > that their theories could only be Identical approximations
> > of reality.
> 'Nit-picking' is the heart of argument. Just because you would rather
> not discuss an issue does not mean that your opponents will let it lie.
In the case of Modern many of the philosophers are dead. A distinct
A or B case of Modernism vs. PostModernism, given that Modernism is
wrong PostModernism is true.
> All western philosophy tends to the nit-picky. Science is nit-picky,
> too. Cope. In any case, some PM attempts to rebuild.
I am nit-picky in an ad-hoc way.
> > 6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
> > since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
> > true or false independently as is PostModernism)
> Since the two are inextricably linked, you may wish to clarify this. Or
> you may not.
It is entirely concievable that all presently defined historical
movements are based on philosophies that contain multiple errors
and contradictions. It is possible also that all will.
> > 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> > (obvious)
> A failing not unique to them, and in any case not one which can lead to
> summary rejection of the arguements presented.
This is of course exactly correct -that we can not disprove something
based on its verbal complexity. The question of debate is is the level
of verbal complexity justified?
> o in many cases rooted
> in Adornian obscurantism, which I personally dislike, but which is a
> theory about how to 'do' philosophy. Refute it, debate it, don't ignore
> it.
Having said nothing about Adornian obscurantism... It may be not
refutable. But you having said you personally dislike it I will avoid
it to not offend you. (I dont know Adorian Obscurantism from soap)
> > 8. That ‘incompleteness’ theorems(Godel) and uncertainty
> > principals in science are not self-contradictory and
> > do not assert no truth is possible when considering
> > abstractions and wide-boundaries.
> Not important to me, really.
If 'PM' validly changes universal scientifics or truth possibilities
then it is not unimportant. Also PM is abstract. Real 'truth' in
well defined and safe limits, may be possible with some theories of QM.
> Reason has enough troubles without bringing
> in 'Natural Science'.
In many cases lack of reason(whatever I mean) amplifies troubles.
The troubles in reason and science may invalidate them. Most of
these troubles apply easily to PoMo. PoMo does not escape them
by recognizing them, as it has been estabolished that 'reason and
'science' often record their own troubles and potential for error,
-this by definition does not independantly validate them and if it
did validate them it would invalidate them -get it?
Again a controversy theory A vs. theory B is dubious at best.
> Dao Jones
Bryn Ayers
emat...@tomatoweb.com
jh...@columbia.edu wrote:
> I wish I knew how Postmodernism came to be seen as a thing or a
> doctrine. I just don't believe that's right.
>
> A lot of grand syntheses have fallen apart in a quarter of a century,
> from Marxism to Freud to Structuralism to abstraction's dominant place
> in defining painting. And a lot of different philosophies have made a
> lot of sense by being "after" something else, like post-analytic
> philosophy or post-structuralism.
metathread "Against Reification."
Erik Mattila
emat...@tomatoweb.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
> > So a sentence from a three year
> > old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
>
> A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
> from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
> incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
> genius. As to whether it is poetry when a three-year-old-speaks, that's
> another question - poetry is a construct, a game, and whether the child
> is doing poetry depends on how you define it.
>
> Dao Jones
>
We have the sayings of L'il Grundoon to contend with--a matter of record.
Walt Kelley obviously knew relativity, since he elevated the the poetry of
Grundoon to the level of Shakespeare. Consider: "xqqqqybqua" or
"qttzzzzybbh." (source: I Go PoGo--as close as we can get to I Go PoMo).
emat...@tomatoweb.com
Ariane <da_l...@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:
> === To be true to what I specifically said mon ami, we could include the
> art at Lascaux, Altimira, and other Palaeolithic sites as a chapter in the
> (now 40,000) year old historical drama of Modernism.....And yes, I hold
> this position.
While searching for the latest literature on Sivapithecus (1988) I came
across a paper in an anthro journal that argued that paleolithic art was 'art
for arts sake.' I didn't have the time to read it, and I was never able to
relocate the paper. I thought it was a marvelous idea. I've studied Native
American art extensively, and it is the same agrument that I would like to
make, against the idea that it's all spiritual (which I think Frederich
Docsteader believed, when he claims that hemitite was valued because it was
the color of blood, as opposed to the idea that red is a pretty color that
Indians probably liked as such, like the rest of humanity).
Erik Mattila
br...@wralaw.com
another act in the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon,
the curtain will fall, and the next act will take the stage."
> > A shift in meaning.
> === Perhaps, but that's because the old meaning was inadequate to express
> what it was that I wanted to say.
I think I may agree with what you wanted to say. Augment that
with the present is the time we live in.
> "Every concept is a tool if you hold it right"
> - Ani DiFranco
> a bientot,
> A.
Bryn Ayers
br...@wralaw.com
> >A philosophies name is not what is essentially the truth.
> That's part of the debate (as I imagine it) the arbitrary nature
> of signs is one of PMs corenrstones, thus the possibly arbitrary
> designation of being "beyond Modernism" just for the sake of
> aggrandizing one's own historical moment for short term gain,
> which is a downside of PM which is perfect material for the
> microscope of its more respectable sides
> >On the contrary as a projected undefined mindvirus system
> >any belief that I delegate at the antithesis as a potential
> >synthesis is where it eventually ends up.
Thesis
> >There is absolute truth.
Antithesis
> Absolutely not. (!)
I am pointing out a strong tendancy for any statement to automatically
carry its opposite. Which the antithetical response demonstrates.
PoMo's cry against absolute truth asserts it.
> I like the fact that your reason has goove... and you see the
> possibiltiy of "positivist Mysticism" I'm with you there... but
> you'll have explain the above a little better
The view that everything in the Universe including living things
behaves entirely mechanically is mathematically equivalent to
the view that everything in the Universe behaves as living things.
> >> "I remember at the end of it all you were on your
> >> knees and I was standing tall/ Or is my memory
> >> deceiving me was I hanging there as you prayed for me?"
> >> --nomeansno
> >Is this the nomeansno who played with Biafra?
> No, This is the broken down old Punk icon idiot who now rides the
> coatales of nomeansno. Situation kind of mirrors my quote from
> them. Its important-- to find absoltue truth is a Victory, but
> from some point of view, this victory may be a great loss. What
> if I said "I'm not interested in absolute truth. I'll pray for
> your sorry ass if you are" What you beleive predisposes what
> experience you'll have. It's like "I'm going to wear a red
> bandana into Compton becuase the association of red with gangs is
> arbitrary." You may be right, but that won't do much for your
> health. "Choose wisely!"
> >Bryn Ayers
> >-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> >http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
> --Ball
> "'Till human voices wake us and we drown."
> T.S. (The S is for sanity) Eliot
MrKurtz
>hoax, but I'm confidant this it is real.
>
>But another question lingers. I came to read this essay by purchasing a
>volume called "Art After Modernism" (if my memory serves me), and I remember
>the first item I read was the Menard essay. Why did the editors include this
>essay in an anthology of essays addressing post modernism? What's the
>relevance here?
>
these, always needing protection of sort or another...
If you get a hold of a respectable "dictionary of Literary
terminology" fascinating reads in their own right, you may find
the term "Ficcione" credited to one blind argentianian Librarian.
It is defined as a piece of fiction in the form of a scholarly
essay.
I think Borges is intimately relavent to PM in my limited
understanding becuase he takes fictionializes the academic
project. The idea that the critical endeavor can be artistic in
itself is near and dear to me, and if nothing else it is widely
accepted that criticism should have a broader scope and an
awareness of itself.
Its funny becuase Borges is timeless. He deals with images and
ideas as old and as universal as they come, but the way he
engages them is unique.
In the case if Menard, the answer is easy-- he is Simulating
the work, and I mean the acutal intellectual labor, of Cervantes.
It's a feast for spatial and temporal dislocation, but its not
just a breakdown, its an attempt to make something exist in a
whole nother context, and what that changes...
PM Questions all. Borges collections include Ficciones and
Labyrinths. He was very popular in the sixties though, so he's
not PM canon, he's just... Borges
MrKurtz
"Abstraction" in decorative art. Liked wavy lines and things,
but of course they lived by the sea.
I think "art for Art's sake" is kind of Historically specific.
It has to do with attention to technique for the purposes of
showing, in the art, how the technique works. In some sense, its
saying, you won't understand this unless you are an artist, or if
you have it explained to you.
This is the criteria Clement Greenberg uses to distinguish
High art form Kitsch in his Uber-essay from the twenties.
The undercurrent in his thought is that you have to educated
to appreciate art, and it was a way for him to disparage middle
class, mass produced, ubiquitous crap. Noble enough, but it was
classist in the extreme, and pretty much represents the situation
for cultural validation in modernity.
Thomas Crow wrote a less famous essay where he identified
the tendency of fringe elements, avante gardes, if you will, to
be eventually taken up, emptied of value, and sold by the
machinery of mass cultural production. Sort of "Nirvanna
Syndrome."
In post-modernity, the idea is that this syndrome involves
the taking up of cultural stuff that was already mass pruduced,
valueless from the beginning, and reselling it based on a new
context and nostalgia. So the thing, like Disco in the ninties,
has richer value than it did originally.
So to say that neolithic art would be art for art sake is
problematic. There is no class of artisan pushed far away enough
from a cultural community to resort to this mechanstic treatment.
The idea is anti-social, it balks at tradition, it demands
progress... No, there may be a pnatheon of aesthetic
consideration involved in Ancient art, but a theortically
motivated "emptiness of content" is probably not among them.
For the tip-tp of what modernism is, you need only read
Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction." Its the best
MrKurtz
I'm betting boy. I like to know the sex of my partner (sic) so I
can know whether I'm trying to impress girls by kicking you ass
or becuase you are one.
>
>Well in the weak sense we need the "theory" in order to assert or deny
>it. In the strong sense 'incompleteness' is given as a Metaphysical
>constraint.
>
equvalent of a philosophers stone. That is my prejudice, that
the method is the madness. I have to reject the culture of
science that I see and the turd-counting attitude of the
logopomorphized becuase it smells rotten. But anyway, in the
First Star wars, they build the whole Death star complete before
using it. It comes into the world perfect. Now, it has a Mark,
a Spot, a scarlett letter... and down it goes. Later they Build
another Death Star, not having learned anything from the
destruction of the first, but this time they play the trick...
it looks incomplete, but it is FULLY OPERATIONAL! I think this
makes up the whole range of what the logopamorphized will term
the issue on incompleteness. The problem is they can't think of
any strategy besides building a freaking Death Star. Why does it
have to be a Death Star? I like Foundation. Now there was
Philosophy in action! My point is that PM, God help it, will
hopefull be more like Foundation than the Death Star. The modern
mind has idolized the Death Star, and blown a lot of shit up in
the countless attempts to build a Death Star which will finally
and permanantly kick ass. You can't criticize PM for not being a
Death Star.
>
>> > 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
>> > and autocannibalistic.
>
>> This dismisses only theories which don't work. Now deal with the rest.
>
reflect its points.. its form mirrors its subject. PM on poetry
will be poetic, on Architecture will model itself on its subject,
to attempt to show real understanding. PM has given up on the
idea that it is a Meta-language, or of even looking for a
Meta-Language.
>
>For Instance I can say that .... This moment is the age we live in...
>Or we are part of the totality of History.
reconcile these, I'm sure you'd agree. I think PM understands
this in a way modernity didn't (i.e. "Run the canals through the
museums, wash away all the past! Blah blah, and twenty years
later Marinetti is a laughing stock) PM is not a revolution, or
is at least a cautious one-- but using the idea of historical
periods to advance new ideas is not wrong, its just different
this time around. No one in the age of reason said "Is this the
Age of reason?" I don't think, but in modernity people were
concerned not with making a future, but in showing off for the
furture at whatever price.
Sounds evil. A new version, perhaps, of the early 20th century
modernists sort of direct link with Fascism. At least these
people aren't proto-fascits.
>If I assert that gaps in knowledge are a problem, my other
>assertions are not necessarily true or false.
A side effect of interdisciplinary ethic, which I would think is
more good than bad
>
>> > 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
>> > ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
>> > the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
How many Turds is that?
>It is entirely concievable that all presently defined historical
>movements are based on philosophies that contain multiple errors
>and contradictions. It is possible also that all will.
Of course they all will, doesn't mean we have to throw them out.
"all good acts are shadowed by evil"
gwen_...@cybergal.com
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots) wrote:
> gwen_...@cybergal.com [re pomo]:
>
> relativists merely say that while one opinion can be worth
> more than another, for any number of different reasons, there's
> no absolute basis for any of them. So while the case for
> Shakespeare's superiority might be more convincing than the one
> for the kid's, neither side can claim God's say-so.
>
was the sort of nonsense that follows from this belief.
>
> >It is the basis of
> >political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
>
> Then you deserve a reward.
>
Gwen Jones
There is almost nothing Welsh women have not done.
David O'Bedlam
The Anti-Pomo starter of this thread is using a faulty definition
of "Postmodernism"; the true definition is my own, `Postmodernism
is whatever I, TheDavid, say it is -- at any given time.'
(And Moggin is my Prophet!)
TheDavid
Dao Jones
says...
> My favorite is Louis Althusser's 'Ideological State Appuratus' (I think it
> was Althusser??). But he suffered so much teasing from his peers that he
> eventually withdrew the term--yet, I recall, there was a period when he sang
> "Stand By Your Term" (sung to the tune of "Stand By Your Man").
>
Your point is well-taken - and yet this seems to imply more readiness
to admit a mistake than the poster was allowing for.
If you have a tape, by the way...
DJ
Dao Jones
> > > 2. PostModernism is in most forms inconsistent, self-contradictory,
> > > and autocannibalistic.
>
> > This dismisses only theories which don't work. Now deal with the rest.
>
> I am not attempting to dismiss theories which do work, this is also
> begging the question(or your argument assumes the rest do work).
You said that these were your arguments against PM. I was merely
pointing out that you were making a case against *bad* PM. You can have
it. It eats crisps in bed.
> The point of 'auto-cannibalism' or some other assetion of 'self-
> destruction' is that many of the Ideas that I think are potentially
> true discussed by some of the PostModernists start to destroy
> PostModernism itself.
The interesting thing about this is that where for traditional theories
this would be fatal, some postmodern theories actually demand that this
should be the case. I know that's annoying and seems like a cop-out, but
if any theory which accounts for the world has to die, then any theory
which claims not to must be a dud...it all depends on your starting
point. If you try to argue from the traditional dialectic, you will find
flaws, because that isn't the arena PM plays in, as Ariane recently
reminded me. Well, she reminded someone. It might even have been you,
actually.
> For Instance I can say that .... This moment is the age we live in...
> Or we are part of the totality of History.
Both are true. Neither is significant beyond the things we do because of
it. But what does either term actually mean?
> The distinct time period of Modernism or whatever is brought into question
> as is any possible distinct philosophy or for that matter seperation of
> Quantum Mechanics and food preference.
I can't speak for food preference. I've always been prepared to work on
the basis that Modernity had quite firm boundaries, in as far as it is a
concept, a construction we put upon historical events, and not a thing in
and of itself. There were trends, there were things done, there was (and
is) an ethos. But you can't find Modernity any more than you can find a
the Circle or the Dog. Interestingly, you *can* find the Metre.
> PMs' solutions to these dillema's are often extremely simular to
> those used by nominal philosophies(ones that consider philosophy an
> approximation) and even realist and absolutist philosophies.
PM writers and thinkers in dispute with traditional theory often use that
theory to display the failures of more traditional thought. PM
(which is not an entity, and therefore this is rather a strange sentence)
does not really engage in the same academic games. Roughly speaking, it
goes a bit like this:
Traditional Thought: Prove it!
Postmodernism: Okay. Here I am.
Traditional Thought: No, I mean, 'prove it according to how I like
things done'!
PM: But we are on the same level of discourse - I don't ask you to
function my way - why do I have to function your way?
TT: Cos that's how it is, buddy. I'm a Prevailing Orthodoxy, me. I'll
declare you null and void.
PM: [goes through 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' and 'Postmodern
Condition' and 'Consequences of Modernity' and so on].
TT: But that makes no sense!
PM: Yes, Darling, I know. You said it, not me.
TT: There has to be another way out of it!
PM: If you find one, let me know. I'm going out to play Baudrillard!
TT: Wait!...I don't understand that game!
See?
> Principals of extreme skepticism or as you called it Radical Nihilism
> are just assumed to be too weird to be true. Realist muddled nominalism,
> is not inherently true since on an unfair playing field extremes win.
I've never even written the words Radical Nihilism until this very
moment. I rather distrust Nihilism, because of Nechaev.
> > > 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> > > ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> > > the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
>
> > Many are. Some are not. You have made a paper tiger. (Bonus points to
> > anyone who avoids use of the term 'straw man' for the duration of this
> > debate.)
>
> Straw-woman or not.
Douze points! Ma foi!
> A false statment, X is false, has the same
> value as not X is true a true statement.
Well, value, perhaps. but that's one of the things about logic which is
misleading. There is a difference between
X is not true
and
not X is true
in any number of natural language claims.
> Certainty is a double
> edge sword. If we can not be certain -of this we can not be
> certain. (I am not denying contextual)
That isn't a problem for a claim that we cannot be certain. That's the
point of what I'm saying about X and not X:
It is not true that we can be certain
and
It is true that we can be not certain
and
It is true that we cannot be certain
are all different, and have different effects on our reason where they
are accurate. Where there is contradiction, the statement must be
regarded as unproven - but also not disproven. That's all we need to
be uncertain, which is the whole point. The regress is the demonstration
of the statement. This is where TT gets upset and PM goes and plays
Baudrillard.
> > > 6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
> > > since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
> > > true or false independently as is PostModernism)
>
> > Since the two are inextricably linked, you may wish to clarify this. Or
> > you may not.
>
> It is entirely concievable that all presently defined historical
> movements are based on philosophies that contain multiple errors
> and contradictions. It is possible also that all will.
That's a very interesting point, but as I am wearing my mental earmuffs I
can't see where it ties in.
> > > 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> > > (obvious)
>
> > A failing not unique to them, and in any case not one which can lead to
> > summary rejection of the arguements presented.
>
> This is of course exactly correct -that we can not disprove something
> based on its verbal complexity. The question of debate is is the level
> of verbal complexity justified?
That's a question about whether PM is cogently argued by some of its
proponents, and has no bearing on whether the ideas are any good.
> > o in many cases rooted
> > in Adornian obscurantism, which I personally dislike, but which is a
> > theory about how to 'do' philosophy. Refute it, debate it, don't ignore
> > it.
>
> Having said nothing about Adornian obscurantism... It may be not
> refutable. But you having said you personally dislike it I will avoid
> it to not offend you. (I dont know Adorian Obscurantism from soap)
I'm afraid one might say I was being Obscurantist even by mentioning it.
And no, it probably isn't open to refutation. The idea is that by
speaking in a convoluted manner, one forces the listener (or more often,
the reader) to go off and research the issue. The core ideas are
protected from ill-informed attack by a hedge of complexity. Basically,
it's a way of forcing people to think it through for themselves; I've
always hated it, but having seen a couple of the arguments which take
place occasionally here (of the 'PM is a French thing made up by
unscientific French people to confuse us rationalists' school) I begin to
see the appeal :) However, it has a quite good effect on the level of
debate - if an Obscurantist really sticks to his guns, anyone arguing
with him has to know almost all there is to know about the idea and its
background. It avoids the 'what's this Modernity everyone's talking
about?' moment.
Popper said 'Adorno had nothing to say, and what's worse, he said it in a
Hegelian fashion'.
Rather good, that.
> The troubles in reason and science may invalidate them. Most of
> these troubles apply easily to PoMo. PoMo does not escape them
> by recognizing them, as it has been estabolished that 'reason and
> 'science' often record their own troubles and potential for error,
> -this by definition does not independantly validate them and if it
> did validate them it would invalidate them -get it?
PM often does not try to escape TT's troubles. That's another thing
which sets them off with each other. TT says 'look at these monsters I
found in the basement' and PM immediately adopts them. 'The dialectic
doesn't work? Great, let's lose it and do something else!'
From the traditional point of view, that's irresponsible. The thing is
that there's no reason to stop doing science. PM is looking at the world
and seeing that there's a bunch of stuff missing, and it makes no
difference. That's one reason why it's so hard to test. It's about what
isn't there as much as what is.
Dao Jones
Dao Jones
> You can't criticize PM for not being a
which I wish I'd thought of.
Cheers,
Dao Jones
mark webber
> In article <Pine.PMDF.3.96.990308111751.547373453A-
> 100...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU>, webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU says...
> > > A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
> > > from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
> > > incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
> > > genius.
> >
> > How are you determining when Shakespeare writes well and when he writes
> > drivel?
>
> My opinion - my interpretation of the societal prejudices I grew up
> with, and my application of those prejudices - more of those consensual
> rules of society (*our* society - and from the discussion here, not
> uniformly that...).
Of course - I understand. But if I may, let me point out that I didn't ask
you to *identify* the process - I asked you to describe it. If you could
just say a few words about *how* you make that determination....
In other words, yes, we are indoctrinated. But the indoctrination process
does not include a sonnet by sonnet evaluation of Shakespeare. At some
point you are evaluating, not just reiterating the indoctrination.
Is some Shakespeare a tiny bit more trite than other? Are some of his
cadences less lovely? Do some of his sounds stumble a bit here or there?
>
> I wish I *was* in touch with some kind of literary supertruth - it
> would make my job a lot easier (I'm a writer).
And I find you an engaging writer. My question is this: Why must everyone
search for a Supertruth? Many of the folks I encounter here want some
simple formula for evaluating quality in art. If they aren't offered one,
then there simply can't be such a thing as quality.
I really don't think any "pre-mo" or "pre-pomo" estheticians claimed there
were supertheories or supertruths or three step formulas. It has always
involved years of work and study. Naturally we are indoctrinated along the
way - how can we not be?
But does this mean that we - that is, people who spend a lot of time with
art - don't or can't find ourselves in the presence of some pretty
astonishing work from time to time? And isn't it a bit telling that some
work is clearly more effective, provocative, imaginative, inventive or
beautiful than other work?
I guess my point is that when we are in the presence of some terrific
art and the best we can do is point out that we have been indoctrinated to
see it as wonderful because there are no universal truths, and there is
only personal taste... it seems perhaps we're throwing a lot of energy in
a lazy direction.
> I hope that even in those instances where we disagree I can be clear and
> honest enough to retain your respect. Thank you.
No question, and again, I'm making no personal attacks - I'm simply
intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
make better art by following it.
Thanks for your reply, and I look forward to reading more of your stuff.
Mark Webber
Peter H.M. Brooks
webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU "mark webber" writes:
>
> But does this mean that we - that is, people who spend a lot of time with
> art - don't or can't find ourselves in the presence of some pretty
> astonishing work from time to time? And isn't it a bit telling that some
> work is clearly more effective, provocative, imaginative, inventive or
> beautiful than other work?
>
> I guess my point is that when we are in the presence of some terrific
> art and the best we can do is point out that we have been indoctrinated to
> see it as wonderful because there are no universal truths, and there is
> only personal taste... it seems perhaps we're throwing a lot of energy in
> a lazy direction.
>
I agree! I am fascinated by the history of art in this century for that
reason. I read a biography of Matisse the other day, and what I found
remarkable was how much taste and the generally accepted view changes -
I wouldn't say 'evolves', that has far too may overtones.
There clearly are universals. Some are being discovered in more detail. They
are connected to how and why we react to art in the way that we do. Analysis
of landscapes show that humans almost uniformly like open savanna like
scenes that afford hiding places - similar to our ancestral ranges in
Africa. Portraits are prefered if they are symetrical. These are the
straightforward, untutored tastes that we all share. To move from these
to enjoying Escher or Persian carpets is to understand abstraction, and
convention in representation.
What people find acceptable representation has, very clearly, changed. A
century ago van Gogh would not have been appreciated by the vast majority
of people, now millions flock to see his pictures. I really don't think
you can say they are all simply there because of fashion or marketing,
there has been a change in accepted representation. The universals are
still there, van Gogh paints landscapes that conform to the standard
archetypes as do his portraits - only the conventions used differ.
>
> No question, and again, I'm making no personal attacks - I'm simply
> intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
> make better art by following it.
>
I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
in order to paint?
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Jim Clark wrote:
> From: Jim Clark <cl...@uwinnipeg.ca>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> Hi
>
> On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote:
> > Please. Are you suggesting that there are social researchers out there
> > with some kind of scientific objectivity? Non-involved human beings?
> >
> > This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
> > accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
> > give up until we can talk to the dead.
>
> This is an example of the problem of _poor_ social thinking.
> Because of incestuous pseudo-intellectual interactions with
> people who do not believe in objectivity and hence have not tried
> it or analyzed their position critically, people come to view
> their own self-fulfilling views about the relativistic nature of
> the world, including human experience and behavior, as the
> correct ones. There are innumerable problems with this position.
=== Is there objective proof for your opinion?
>
> 1. How can one claim that social thinking is imbued by vested
> interests without some objective evidence for it and without
> seeing your own interpretation as one that transcends your own
> biases? Without such a foundation, there is absolutely no reason
> for anyone, including yourself, to believe your own words.
=== .....Falsifiability.....
> 2. The view makes an unnecessarily stark contrast between
> "vested interest" and being "dead." That is, according to the
> above there is no middle ground or varying degrees of vested
> interest. I expect that there are many scientists out there
> doing research who have no particular investment in the direction
> in which the results come out. They are simply curious about
> which way it comes out.
=== But they are engaged in the project of science, and, to generalize,
tend to believe in a scientifically amenable universe (of human behaviour
at any rate). These are vested interests no?
> 3. Having a vested interest is wrongly taken to preclude
> objective querying of nature. This is simply a false
> characterization of human cognition and of science. There are
> innumerable examples from science where scientists set up
> objective studies to examine their favored hypotheses and the
> results led to the discrediting of the hypotheses.
=== To be fair, shouldn't we describe science as the attempt to be as
`objective' as humanly possible?
People
> knowledgeable about experimental design and measurement (e.g.,
> use of double-blind procedures, randomization, reliability) can
> set up objective procedures that preclude the bias of their
> beliefs from affecting the outcome.
=== But not the parameters of their consciousness' nor the ensuing
interpretation of the experiment's results.
That is how believers
> in psychic or other false phenomena become disenchanted their
> incorrect beliefs.
=== And ex-scientists?
> What is perhaps most distressing about reading postmodernist
> material is (generally) the complete failure of the writers to
> have any insights into the flaws in their own thinking and
> language processes.
=== I found that a lot when studying social science as well.
It is as though they have lost the capacity
> for self-reflection or willfully choose to ignore the problems
> with their own views.
=== See above comment
>
> Best wishes
> Jim
>
> ============================================================================
> James M. Clark (204) 786-9313
> Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
> University of Winnipeg 4L02A
> Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
> CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
> ============================================================================
a bientot,
A.
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Kay Kane wrote:
> From: Kay Kane <scarl...@theriver.com>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
> Ariane wrote in message ...
> >
> >
> >
> >On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Kay Kane wrote:
> >
> >> From: Kay Kane <scarl...@theriver.com>
> >> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> >> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >>
> >>
> >> Ariane wrote in message ...
> >> >
> >> >On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Kay Kane wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> From: Kay Kane <scarl...@theriver.com>
> >> >> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> >> >> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Ariane wrote in message ...
> >> >> >
> >> >> >On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> >> >> >
> >> >> >> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> >> >> >> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> >> >> >> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >> >>
> >> >> (snip for space)
> >> >>
> >> >> Modernism is
> >> >> >far from dead yet however, in fact, I see PoMo as just another act in
> >> >> >the long 2700 year historical drama of Modernism. Soon, the curtain
> >> will
> >> >> >fall, and the next act will take the stage.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >a bientot,
> >> >> >
> >> >> >A.
> >> >> >
> >> >> Wonderful, Ariane! I'm impressed that you state that Modernism has a
> >> 2700
> >> >> year history... Many theorists severely limit Modernism's time to
> begin
> >> in
> >> >> the late 19th century. (I agree with your time assertions). Perhaps
> >> >> another thread? "The beginning of Modernism...."
> >> >> Kudos!
> >> >> Kay
> >> >
> >> >=== Sure, if you'd like, that would be interesting. But, I don't know
> if
> >> >too many people out there want to get involved with examining the roots
> of
> >> >Western civilization 2700 years ago on an arts ng. (an arbitrary date
> >> >really, I was thinking of Mycenaean culture in the Greek Peloponnesus as
> a
> >> >starting point, but what's the starting point to a never ending story?).
> >> >But on the other hand, the art which precedes the Greek Classical phase
> is
> >> >really quite interesting in my opinion.
> >>
> >> Well, then we should definitely include Paleolithic cave paintings in
> >> Modernism, shouldn't we?
> >
> >=== To be true to what I specifically said mon ami, we could include the
> >art at Lascaux, Altimira, and other Palaeolithic sites as a chapter in the
> >(now 40,000) year old historical drama of Modernism.....And yes, I hold
> >this position.
> >
> >> >As to that other thread, it seems that the idea that `history is the
> >> >mother of truth' supposedly turned me into the equivalent of the 16th
> >> >century Spanish Armada.
> >> If history is the mother of truth, and N was
> >> >arguing that art can only (or best) be understood with reference to
> >> >context (history & society), then N's position ""wins,"" provided we
> are
> >> >interested in the `truth about art' rather than simply being interested
> in
> >> >understanding art as human expression, and artists as being particularly
> >> >motivated to express their humanity. But beyond this, I was pointing out
> >> >that there is a difference between understanding art, historically (or,
> if
> >> >you prefer, contextually), and of course, understanding art
> artistically.
> >> >And, further, I said that the latter was superior to the former and not
> >> >because it was in any way more "true," but because the issue was art and
> >> >not truth to begin with! And anyway, is history the `mother of truth,'
> or
> >> >is it, (like the native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the
> Inuit,
> >> >Herodotus the Greek historian and other countless people have been
> >> >occupying their evenings doing.....) the child of ART: that is, the art
> >> >of storytelling. In that sense, art would be the "mother of history"
> and
> >> >truth would be a non-issue. That's why academics make poor art critics
> in
> >> >my opinion. Anyway Kay, I'm getting long-winded and I really must go.
> >> >Any ideas on that thread?
> >> >
> >> History the child of Art is revisionist thinking. I like it a lot. We
> tend
> >> to think of "History" in terms of Western Civ. ONLY which I think
> misdirects
> >> facts (indeed, misdirects History itself).
> >
> >=== It misses a lot of good stories at any rate.
> >
> >
> > I think truth shouldn't have a
> >> bearing in (not on) art. Isn't art the act of the gift of lying, or if
> >> truthfulness is essential, then at the least - the act of storytelling
> (even
> >> in non-representational works)?
> >
> >=== I once had a dream where Picasso was talking to me in his studio and
> >he was instructing me to keep in mind that "Art is always a blending of
> >truth and illusion". I wrote it down because the whole thing was just so
> >bizarre. Since then I've meditated on this often but really, I don't have
> >any answers (I was just grateful for the "free lesson")!!
> >
> >> Kay Kane
>
> (snip)
> I am so envious! I only dream about monsters chasing me... Boring... At
> least monsters are slow, but I always feel like they will catch me in my
> dreams.
> Kay
>
=== Do you paint them? Or the feeling they give you? This sounds dark
loamy topsoil for paint and canvas.
a la prochaine,
A.
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Marilyn wrote:
> From: Marilyn <m...@bc.ca>
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> Ariane wrote:
>
> I enjoy everything you write.
> I also like to see Montreal, Canada in your heading.
> I wish you could publish a primer in philosophy,
> or a theory on the philosohpy of art.
=== I wish you were a publisher!!! Actually, I'd love to do this, or
something like this, and once I'm finished at Concordia, I think I will
sort out my next step along this path. Thank you very much Marilyn for
the encouragement.
> The closest I came to philosophy at Concordia was hanging out
> with Alba Taylor, then wife of Charles (THE book on Hegel) Taylor.
=== Wow, the wife of a philosopher?! How'd she manage?! He's a great
philosopher by any standard though, (but he's a McGill guy y'know)!!. She
must have made interesting company.
> We had an loosely connected art group which met in an abandoned
> theatre of St. Patrick's Cathedral. We had life drawing on
> the old stage. It was a wonderful gothic space.
> The group became too Catholic to be catholic so we
> wandered away from it.
=== Wonderfully put! Catholics are just too excessive to be religious in
any religious sense. It sounds like the setting for a novel, something
like the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. The next time I go by St.
Patrick's, I will see it again for the first time. Thanks.
avec bonnheur
A.
> bonne journee,
>
> Marilyn
>
>
Dao Jones
100...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU>, webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU says...
> Dao Jones wrote:
> > > > A sentence by a three-year-old might well be as beautiful as something
> > > > from Shakespeare. Kids say wonderful things, and Shakespeare was not
> > > > incapable of writing drivel, as he amply demonstrates in between bouts of
> > > > genius.
> > >
> > > How are you determining when Shakespeare writes well and when he writes
> > > drivel?
> >
> > My opinion - my interpretation of the societal prejudices I grew up
> > with, and my application of those prejudices - more of those consensual
> > rules of society (*our* society - and from the discussion here, not
> > uniformly that...).
>
> Of course - I understand. But if I may, let me point out that I didn't ask
> you to *identify* the process - I asked you to describe it. If you could
> just say a few words about *how* you make that determination....
I make reference to my feelings, and the rather rarified convictions I
have about how the English language is best used - what's elegant and
what's not. This is an appeal to value, of course - but in the end
it's a relative value. A good example is the split infinitive. Some
people get endlessly wound up about 'to boldly go', because they were
taught that it's bad usage. There's not a lot of linguistic basis for
that, but they see it as a glaring aesthetic crime. I don't, but I'm not
overly keen on sentences constructed in a way which would bring the
problem up in the first place.
How do I make the determination? I think science currently favours the
idea that I compare and evaluate a piece of art based on a body of non-
verbal memories of prior experience and on my prejudices. To me, it just
seems that I look at something and consider it - does it flow, does it
get anything out of me, evoke, exhort, or produce emotion appropriate to
what's happening in the story or the picture or whatever.
> In other words, yes, we are indoctrinated. But the indoctrination process
> does not include a sonnet by sonnet evaluation of Shakespeare. At some
> point you are evaluating, not just reiterating the indoctrination.
Of course. But that explains the diversity of views on a given subject.
> Is some Shakespeare a tiny bit more trite than other? Are some of his
> cadences less lovely? Do some of his sounds stumble a bit here or there?
Surely.
> >
> > I wish I *was* in touch with some kind of literary supertruth - it
> > would make my job a lot easier (I'm a writer).
>
> And I find you an engaging writer. My question is this: Why must everyone
> search for a Supertruth? Many of the folks I encounter here want some
> simple formula for evaluating quality in art. If they aren't offered one,
> then there simply can't be such a thing as quality.
There can't be such a 'thing' as quality, but that doesn't mean that
quality isn't real. It just means that it's relative. The difficulties
come with trying to make feelings about art commensurable - to
communicate and define ideas of quality across differences of opinion
about what is and is not desirable.
> I really don't think any "pre-mo" or "pre-pomo" estheticians claimed there
> were supertheories or supertruths or three step formulas. It has always
> involved years of work and study. Naturally we are indoctrinated along the
> way - how can we not be?
But study of what? Art? Theories of asethetics?
> But does this mean that we - that is, people who spend a lot of time with
> art - don't or can't find ourselves in the presence of some pretty
> astonishing work from time to time? And isn't it a bit telling that some
> work is clearly more effective, provocative, imaginative, inventive or
> beautiful than other work?
It is telling. It need not point to a solid value which is 'quality in
art'. You might find some of my choices bizarre, and vice versa. I'm
fond of Paul Klee, for example, but I love Albert Goodwin, and am swiftly
bored by Monet. I would say that I found something more beautiful than
something else - if I were engaging in a formal discourse, I'd hesitate
to say it 'was' more beautiful.
> I guess my point is that when we are in the presence of some terrific
> art and the best we can do is point out that we have been indoctrinated to
> see it as wonderful because there are no universal truths, and there is
> only personal taste... it seems perhaps we're throwing a lot of energy in
> a lazy direction.
On the contrary, we are coming of age.
The values we make up are none the less for it. They are not diminished
by being ours rather than "the Universe's". It's a proud moment.
Humanity says to God, 'ok, if you won't play, I'll play without you'.
That's worth a little energy.
In any case, when you are confronted by a *really* terrific piece of art,
whatever field it's in, articulating your admiration is profoundly
insufficient. That's the point. To be able to express the feeling would
be to be able to return it to the 'real' world, and that's exactly what
you can't do. I see some of Goodwin's paintings, and having that
experience is enough - or almost. Sometimes I wish I was seeing with
my own eyes what he saw. Don't justify it by saying it is beautiful -
even superlatively beautiful. That experience is unique, visceral, and
delightful. It is never the same twice. To look for a means of
comparison between two such things, or between two individual's
experience of the thing, is to destroy it.
My father calls it 'the buzz'. Some things have it for some people, some
don't. But when you feel it, you feel it, and it won't let go.
> > I hope that even in those instances where we disagree I can be clear and
> > honest enough to retain your respect. Thank you.
>
> No question, and again, I'm making no personal attacks - I'm simply
> intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
> make better art by following it.
>
> Thanks for your reply, and I look forward to reading more of your stuff.
Well, you asked for it...
Take care, though - I'm not a good sample Postmodernist. I'm probably
a good sample of a postmodern, but I'm not sufficiently well-acquainted
with (or in agreement with) postmodernism to be a 'typical
Postmodernist'. My problem in matters of theory is and has always been
that I'd rather synthesise than dissect, and I'll gleefully hop from one
dead idea to a fresh one without giving much notice. And here, I'm not
even trying to edit for consistency - this is the writer talking, and
he's not always tidy with his theory...
As to how to make art better through all this - for me, this is an
exploration of what is happening in the world. Not just the theoretical
world, but the real one. I'll talk to the cab driver, the bus conductor,
the guy at my gym about what s/he thinks is happening in the world, and
try to see whether the micro fits the macro theories (and vice versa). I
use PM theories and others as the indirect basis for ideas and story, and
gathering it all in, I hope to feed off it and glean small understandings
of human nature in this time.
PM theory has more direct effects on art for those who seek them.
Modernism had rules, theories, and an agenda. Experiments in writing and
visual art and so on have been taking place in great volume and with
varying degrees of success. I'm either secretly traditional or very
postmodern in this respect; I'm a writer of narrative film, and I just
want to write a story which is exactly that - an engaging fiction, the
thing itself. Of course, this is partly because I have seen so many
spoofs and ironies - artefacts of modernism. Lyotard writes about a
postmodern artist or philosopher defining the rules of their project as
they go along. It's in 'Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?'
which is (mercifully) short and very readable. I think that's
interesting, but for me it's more of the same - deliberate creation of
an artefact with a matching body of theory. I just want to do the thing,
not speak the speak.
The thing is, that this is no longer the 'naive' world - and I *did* go
to university and study Social and Political Science. I can't get away
from that. Theodore Adorno said that writing lyric poetry after
Auschwitz was impossible (or barbaric, I can't recall). That's not true
- the horrors the world has endured only make art more precious. He had
a point, though - to do art without letting history and 'the now' into
the process in some way is grotesque. So (I think), I need to be able to
write 'the thing itself' *in full possession and exercise of my
theoretical and critical faculty*. My thriller-love story in a country
which does not (yet?) exist must be written on the basis of the patterns
of behaviour I believe exist, yet it must be written without conscious
reference to them. I must make inside my head a world which others can
believe and envision for themselves. In other words, I have to make
theory my own.
In art, theory and beauty can be remade as reality.
Er...roughly speaking.
Dao Jones
Dao Jones
says...
>
> There clearly are universals.
Oh, my. Brace yourself for the explosion which may follow. I take it
you mean by universals something like 'traits of thinking and prefence'?
> Some are being discovered in more detail. They
> are connected to how and why we react to art in the way that we do. Analysis
> of landscapes show that humans almost uniformly like open savanna like
> scenes that afford hiding places - similar to our ancestral ranges in
> Africa. Portraits are prefered if they are symetrical. These are the
> straightforward, untutored tastes that we all share. To move from these
> to enjoying Escher or Persian carpets is to understand abstraction, and
> convention in representation.
I'd be very interested if you could furnish me with the references.
> What people find acceptable representation has, very clearly, changed. A
> century ago van Gogh would not have been appreciated by the vast majority
> of people, now millions flock to see his pictures. I really don't think
> you can say they are all simply there because of fashion or marketing,
> there has been a change in accepted representation. The universals are
> still there, van Gogh paints landscapes that conform to the standard
> archetypes as do his portraits - only the conventions used differ.
Well, we have learned perhaps to recieve a wider range of signals as
meaningful and representative. I actually find van Gogh's paintings
rather weird. I like weird, however. I also do not necessarily
interpret them as showing actual space - or rather, I do not look to
them for representations of actual space - much of what I like comes
from mood.
As to why more people go to see van Gogh's paintings, well, we are
talking about someone who is touted as one of the greatest painters ever.
Many of us are shown his paintings as we grow up as examples of one way
of painting - which is another issue - we happily accept varying ways
of representing the world now. Orthodoxy is not so powerful a force as
once it was.
> > No question, and again, I'm making no personal attacks - I'm simply
> > intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
> > make better art by following it.
> >
> I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
> in order to paint?
For what it's worth, take a look at my post in response to Mark's article
- I went on a bit, but there's stuff in there which might interest you.
Dao Jones
Jim Clark
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote:
> DJ:
> > > This is a problem with social thinking. It is inevitable. Either we
> > > accept that any theorist of social life will have a vested interest or we
> > > give up until we can talk to the dead.
>
> Jim:
> > This is an example of the problem of _poor_ social thinking.
> > Because of incestuous pseudo-intellectual interactions with
> > people who do not believe in objectivity and hence have not tried
> > it or analyzed their position critically, people come to view
> > their own self-fulfilling views about the relativistic nature of
> > the world, including human experience and behavior, as the
> > correct ones.
>
> How do you come to 'believe' in objectivity? How is it helpful to do so?
> That would seem to be another example of a vested interest in philosophy.
Scientists and others familiar with science come to believe in
objectivity just like they come to believe in other scientific
truths. That is, just as facts and well-founded theories are
credible to the degree that they correspond with increasingly
precise observations of nature, so too "objectivity" is believed
in because it corresponds so well with innumerable observations
in science (e.g., different scientists independently
demonstrating the same effect, inconceivably precise predictions
that are supported by subsequent measurement, and so on
endlessly) that are otherwise difficulty to explain. If there
were no objective way of knowing the external world, then it
would seem to be _impossible_ for such correspondences to occur.
Or perhaps you have some other explanation?
> Jim:
> > There are innumerable problems with this position.
> >
> > 1. How can one claim that social thinking is imbued by vested
> > interests without some objective evidence for it and without
> > seeing your own interpretation as one that transcends your own
> > biases? Without such a foundation, there is absolutely no reason
> > for anyone, including yourself, to believe your own words.
>
> Just because evidence is not objective in the hard sense, that doesn't
> mean it has to be wrong. And my interpretations most certainly do not
> transcend my own biases. I try to track the truth as well as possible by
> staying as aware as I can of my biases. One of the best ways of doing
> this is interacting with others.
I am not too sure what to make of the bulk of this. With respect
to the first sentence, I'm not sure what kind of non-objective
evidence you are alluding to. Perhaps an example would help.
With respect to the second, if your interpretations do not
transcend your biases, then would you say that your
interpretations are only correct for people sharing your biases
and incorrect for others? With respect to the third, some study
of psychology will quickly disabuse you of the belief that
internally-driven self-awareness of biases is easy to achieve;
the best way to check your biases is to generate some concrete
predictions about how the world should operate and then test
those predictions objectively. I agree largely with the final
statement, with the proviso that the interactions should not be
limited to people who share all of your same biases.
> There are just as many reasons to believe what I say as there were
> before. All I've said if I reject objectivity in this way is that I
> recognise that I'll always be bringing something to the mix - which I
> will, however dispassionate I am - be it my education, my lovelife, or
> my breakfast.
This however is a pretty empty position; that is, bringing
"something to the mix." What does it matter if you brought lunch
or your breakfast? So I agree, with one modification, with your
first statement: "There are just as [few] reasons to believe what
I say as there were before."
> Jim:
> > 2. The view makes an unnecessarily stark contrast between
> > "vested interest" and being "dead." That is, according to the
> > above there is no middle ground or varying degrees of vested
> > interest. I expect that there are many scientists out there
> > doing research who have no particular investment in the direction
> > in which the results come out. They are simply curious about
> > which way it comes out.
>
> Ok, you caught me. I deliberately engaged in rhetoric. I had to do
> something - I could hear them snoring in Matahuxee, Illinois (I did it
> again. Sorry.) The point, suitably undressed, is not without relevance,
> however. It is unlikely that anyone who is curious about which way an
> experiment comes out does not have a tiny bias one way or another. This
> is more true in the social sciences, however, where agendas abound, and
> experiments are, of necessity, more subjective in what they test for and
> what they suggest.
As a psychologist who has read quite a bit in different social
sciences, I agree that agendas abound in the social sciences.
But that is because of the _failure to adopt_ a scientific
orientation, rather than being necessarily true of the social
sciences. Supposedly social scientists buying into postmodernism
and other relativistic views are largely to blame for this
situation, which ironically (or sadly, depending on one's mood),
is then taken as evidence for the tainted nature of social
science. These perversions are the reason why we have people
like Kuznar writing books with titles such as "Reclaiming a
Scientific Anthropology."
Moreover, you need more than the presence of "a tiny bias" to
challenge the findings and conclusions of science. You need
sufficient bias to produce the observed results or theoretical
conclusions. But postmodernists don't seem to feel any need show
_how_ such things as "a tiny bias" invalidates a specific finding
or conclusion that has been shown to be well-founded in the
scientific literature.
> Jim:
> > 3. Having a vested interest is wrongly taken to preclude
> > objective querying of nature. This is simply a false
> > characterization of human cognition and of science. There are
> > innumerable examples from science where scientists set up
> > objective studies to examine their favored hypotheses and the
> > results led to the discrediting of the hypotheses. People
> > knowledgeable about experimental design and measurement (e.g.,
> > use of double-blind procedures, randomization, reliability) can
> > set up objective procedures that preclude the bias of their
> > beliefs from affecting the outcome.
>
> If you read my original post, you will see that I was refering
> specifically to the social sciences (whether you are happy with the label
> 'science' applied to those disciplines or not...I'm not certain that I
> am). It is more difficult (though perhaps not impossible) to construct a
> social science experiment to falsify a social theory. It is far more
> difficult to excise the element of interpretation from such experiments
> - which throws them straight back into subjectivity again.
I would be very happy to use the label science with respect to
the social science practitioners meriting that label. Of course
too many social sciences today no more deserve the label
scientist than do astrologers or alchemists, despite all of them
having some superficial similarity to the activities and concerns
of real scientists. Once again, we see a case of the critics of
social science adopting questionable views and practices that
then buttress the various criticisms they started out making
(e.g., that social sciences are political). With respect to the
difficulty of practicing sound social science, I agree entirely
with you. But rather than throwing up my hands in despair, I
undertake the difficult task of freeing my conceptions about
human experience and behavior from the same kinds of narrow
constraints that once limited our understanding of the physical
world. What would you propose?
> Jim:
> > What is perhaps most distressing about reading postmodernist
> > material is (generally) the complete failure of the writers to
> > have any insights into the flaws in their own thinking and
> > language processes. It is as though they have lost the capacity
> > for self-reflection or willfully choose to ignore the problems
> > with their own views.
>
> That's a flaw I would have attributed to many who do *not* subscribe to
> postmodern theories. I suspect a good deal of it comes from the slight
> differences in use of language across disciplines. I find it frustrating
> arguing with Ivan, for instance, because I feel that he uses terms as if
> the usages in logic and computer science were the only acceptable ones.
> He, I'm sure, thinks that I'm vague in my definitions.
Science, including the social sciences, has an extensive history
of being critical of how it tries to understand and describe the
world. Much of what scientists learn concerns the pitfalls
that tripped up earlier practitioners and the very imaginative
ways in which scientists have avoided those pitfalls and found
ways to overcome the limitations. With respect to definitions,
the critical point is to be precise and consistent. This is not
necessarily easy, but without it, conversation and discussion
becomes pretty meaningless.
> Another flaw of which both 'sides' in the PM debate accuse one another is
> not having read the theories they are using as examples. I try to stay
> clear of scientific metaphors and language (by this I mean from the
> physical sciences) because my background is in philosophy and social
> science.
It is too bad that others do not follow your example of avoiding
scientific metaphors and language; it is quite laughable (or sad
again) to read some of the metaphoric usage of such terms as
energy, uncertainty, quantum theory, and the like.
> Can you point to an instance where a postmodern writer has ignored the
> flaws in their own thinking and language? It would be very interesting
> to discuss this.
I think that is what we have been doing, although perhaps you had
in mind a better known post-modern writer than yourself. With
respect to your rebuttal above, for example, you fail to
appreciate or acknowledge that the presence of "tiny" biases in
no way substantiates the kinds of strong claims that have been
made about science's limitations.
Rather than dealing with a particular writer, perhaps I can be
allowed to illustrate with a prototypical (if extreme) example of
a postmodernist-like claim: "All knowledge about the world is
relative." Such extreme statements are self-contradictory. If it
is itself a true statement about the world, then the statement
itself must be relative, which would make it false. If this
statement is false, then there must be statements that are not
relative. This means that it is possible, somehow, to produce
and distinguish between non-relative and relative assertions
about the world. The trick then would be to identify how the two
classes of assertion are to be differentiated and that would lead
to typically scientific criteria (operational definitions,
measurement, objectivity). Gutting in "Michel Foucault's
Archeology of Scientific Reason" addresses this point, in essence
backing Foucault away from the strong claim. But once you back
off from the strong claim, then the strength of the criticism of
scientific knowledge is undermined.
Sally Porter
This was beautiful.
Sally Porter
"Peter H.M. Brooks" wrote in message <920984...@psyche.demon.co.uk>...
>In article <Pine.PMDF.3.96.9903090...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU>
> webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU "mark webber" writes:
>
>>
>> art - don't or can't find ourselves in the presence of some pretty
>> astonishing work from time to time? And isn't it a bit telling that some
>> work is clearly more effective, provocative, imaginative, inventive or
>> beautiful than other work?
>>
>> art and the best we can do is point out that we have been indoctrinated
to
>> see it as wonderful because there are no universal truths, and there is
>> only personal taste... it seems perhaps we're throwing a lot of energy in
>> a lazy direction.
>>
>reason. I read a biography of Matisse the other day, and what I found
>remarkable was how much taste and the generally accepted view changes -
>I wouldn't say 'evolves', that has far too may overtones.
>
They
>are connected to how and why we react to art in the way that we do.
Analysis
>of landscapes show that humans almost uniformly like open savanna like
>scenes that afford hiding places - similar to our ancestral ranges in
>Africa. Portraits are prefered if they are symetrical. These are the
>straightforward, untutored tastes that we all share. To move from these
>to enjoying Escher or Persian carpets is to understand abstraction, and
>convention in representation.
>
>century ago van Gogh would not have been appreciated by the vast majority
>of people, now millions flock to see his pictures. I really don't think
>you can say they are all simply there because of fashion or marketing,
>there has been a change in accepted representation. The universals are
>still there, van Gogh paints landscapes that conform to the standard
>archetypes as do his portraits - only the conventions used differ.
>>
>> intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
>> make better art by following it.
>>
>I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
>in order to paint?
>
>Peter H.M. Brooks
>
Ariane
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
> >>
> >>
> >> Modernism as I understand it would have to begin at the inception
> >> of the renaisaance
> >
> >=== But the "historical" drama of modernism reaches back as far as one
> >wants, or is able, to go.
>
> This depends on what conclusion you intend to reach.
=== This IS the conclusion I intended to reach. Kay Kane and I had
briefly discussed delving into conversing about the reasons why we agree
on this conclusion, but....you know how things go in cyberspace...maybe we
will later.
> Etymylogically my statement is accurate, but I don't care for
> relying too heavy on that. To say that modernity is all of
> civilized history is to kind of empty the concept of practical
> value.
=== Not at all, why is there no practical value in discussing the history
of Western civilization, from Mycenae to contemporary culture? It sounds
very practical within the context of understanding our collective PoMo
existence. What's the practical value of selecting some other arbitrary
starting point?
If neolithic culture is the only thing that is not
> modern, then you've just replaced History with Modernity.
=== Neolithic life culminated in Postmodern society 4000 years later.
There is a connection. Unless the Aztecs were right, and human history is
cyclical in the most literal sense imaginable, then we are dealing with a
40,000 year old continuum beginning in the Aurignacian and ending up....
here, now. In this sense then Modernism is a 40,000 year old "historical
drama" (to re-use my exact words). Carve it up any way you like from
there.
We
> already have a History, lets use Modernity for something else.
> >
> >> (well, you misspelled pythagoras).
> >
> >=== That's because I was referring to Protagoras the Athenian Sophist and
> >not Pythagoras the Syracusan musician/mathematician/cult leader.
>
I stand corrected, may I be wrong at heaven's gates. I
> love it when someone correctes someone else when, if the
> correction were right, it would make the accused look rather
> foolish, so here is the proud maker of right, then boom! It is
> lowered. (My end Quote cares for this)
>
> >
> >=== Or that Modernist culture (Europe) no longer rules.
>
> I think the Rough Beast They've created still rules, but the
> illsuion that they control it is gone.
=== Exactly! That's the Modernism I'm referring to. We both seem to
agree that modernism is alive and well and is currently performing at the
`theatre of contemporary life,' We just can't agree on semantics.
>
> >
> >=== It is better to be alive!
> Well, everyone has an opionion, we're all just human, the
> Holocaust never happened you say?
=== I most certainly did not say anything of the sort!!
well, everyone is entiteld to
> their opinion...
> Not to nitpick, but how do know it is better to be alive?
=== Because then we don't spend our lives worrying about whether it is
better to be lost or found?
> >> The other candidates for the modern era, beside the Greek,
> >> which as a question of cultural heritage I agree there is a
> >> direct line and this is a fabulous question, but besides this
> >> people talk now of the first millenium-- the idea being that
> >> they literally so muxh expected apocolypse.. and when it didn't
> >> happen, a new sense of freedom and enterprise developed which
> >> brought Europe out of the "Dark Ages" and into "Meideval"
> >> I havn't read enough or lately to PM seriously in an
> >> understanding way. I agree the situation is always serious, and
> >> any flagship must lead and prtect its fleet, and always fly the
> >> colors no matter what. But as far as how this project propoeses
> >> to heal....
> >
> >=== You answered your own question here, healing is out of the picture
> >what with flagships and fleets flying colors. I agree with your
> >allusions, war is where its headed, beacause war is the condition of its
> >existence. "Those who live by the sword....."
>
> If we have some foresight, in the midst of Rome falling we can
> plant seeds for its future.
> >> I would guess that it is a possible first moment of something
> >> ACtuallt beyond modernism, which would be HUGE, which is why a
> >> lot of people disagree. They need modernity like a pacifier.
> >> The Emporer has no clothes. Long live the emporer.
> >> I'm learning a lot here, so...
> >
> >=== I disagree. Modernism is the point of our 40,000 year existence on
> >the planet because......here we are. PoMo represents our attempt to
> >replace Europe as world dominator, politically, culturally,
> >intellectually, etc. We are still very much within the dialectics of the
> >Modernist world in my humble opinion. A casual trip to Europe (or Asia,
> >Africa, South America) should put PoMo into perspective. WE are in the
> >information age, WE are the administrators of the New World Order as Bush
> >once said not to long ago. WE are vying for domination. WE have not
> >learned to heal.....it is not a priority.
>
> Yes, we in the capital have a limited perspective. Let the
> provinces judge us as they will. But we are the capital (or is
> that a modern idea of the state no longer applicable) ..whatever
> we are, let us take responsibiltiy for it, make a choices, and
> let History be the judge!
=== Well, to take responsibility, perhaps we should learn from the past,
as far back as we are able discern.
a bientot,
A.
"I think that someone will remember us in another time"
- Sappho of Lesbos (600bc.)
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 emat...@tomatoweb.com wrote:
> From: emat...@tomatoweb.com
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> In article <moggin-0803...@user-38ld53g.dialup.mindspring.com>,
> mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots) wrote:
> > gwen_...@cybergal.com [re pomo]:
> >
> > > It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
> > > that anything is as good as anything else. So a sentence from a three year
> > > old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
> >
> > Um, no. That's not relativism. Couldn't be: it makes an
> > absolute claim about the value of things -- "anything is as
> > good as anything else" -- and asserts in absolute terms that "a
> > sentence from a three year old child is as much poetry as a
> > sonnet by Shakespeare." I've never heard of anyone who holds a
> > position like that, so I'm inclined to think you've built a
> > strawman. But that strawman is certainly no relativist -- he's
> > not even close.
> >
> > The most a relativist would say is that anybody's _opinion_
> > is as good as anybody else's. I'm not sure anyone does say
> > that, but even if that was just another strawman, it would be a
> > relativist one, at least. It would hold that the opinion
> > which considers the kid's poetry as good as Shakespeare's is as
> > valid as the reverse.
> >
> > I've never met a relativist like that -- in practice, most
> > relativists merely say that while one opinion can be worth
> > more than another, for any number of different reasons, there's
> > no absolute basis for any of them. So while the case for
> > Shakespeare's superiority might be more convincing than the one
> > for the kid's, neither side can claim God's say-so.
> >
> > >It is the basis of
> > >political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
> >
> > Then you deserve a reward.
> >
> > -- Moggin
>
> This reminds of a passage in Casteñeda's novels.
=== Castaneda, (with a ~ over the `n').
To paraphrase, Don Juan
> askes Carlos: "Do you think that you and I are equals?" Carlos enters a
> long argument on cultural relativism, which smacked of the worst brands of
> paternalism which gratuitiously elevated the Indian to the level of the
> 'human', concluding that, 'in a way,' they were equals. Don Juan responds:
> "I disagree, I am vastly superior to you."
>
> Erik Mattila
=== Well, within the domain of shamanism, spiritual power, and magic, Don
Juan was indeed the master while Castaneda was the ex-California
anthropologist turned apprentice. Within this context, Don Juan was
correct. My art teacher is also `vastly superior' to me within the domain
of draughtsmanship. Andre Malraux is `vastly superior' to Berger within
the domain of Picasso criticism.....(hee, hee I couldn't resist)! These
things are more or less relative.
Ariane
> From: emat...@tomatoweb.com
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> In article <Pine.OSF.4.10.99030...@alcor.concordia.ca>,
> Ariane <da_l...@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:
> > === To be true to what I specifically said mon ami, we could include the
> > art at Lascaux, Altimira, and other Palaeolithic sites as a chapter in the
> > (now 40,000) year old historical drama of Modernism.....And yes, I hold
> > this position.
>
> While searching for the latest literature on Sivapithecus (1988) I came
> across a paper in an anthro journal that argued that paleolithic art was 'art
> for arts sake.' I didn't have the time to read it, and I was never able to
> relocate the paper.
=== I've read this, it's in Current Anthropology, circa. 1988 or so.
Look in the late 80's or early 90's editions and you should find it. Of
course, it is pure speculation but not uninteresting. There's another
interesting one by Lewis-Williams and Dowson relating sub-Saharan !Kung
cave art to entoptic imagery (neurophysiology). This is in Current
Anthropology too (don't remember any dates, sorry).
I thought it was a marvelous idea. I've studied Native
> American art extensively, and it is the same agrument that I would like to
> make, against the idea that it's all spiritual (which I think Frederich
> Docsteader believed, when he claims that hemitite was valued because it was
> the color of blood, as opposed to the idea that red is a pretty color that
> Indians probably liked as such, like the rest of humanity).
> Erik Mattila >
=== Exactly. Anthropologists are `contextual' theorists by definition and
so they must explain their subject matter, by hook or by crook, with
reference to it's `social context'. It's no accident that post-structural
contextualism comes on the heels of structural anthropology.
Native `spirituality' has always been a convenient grab bag for
anthropologists or other theorists to refer to when offering up yet
another theory of native or pre-historic art. But this is not to say that
the symbolic values of hematite, for example, are not an ASPECT of its
overall cultural value. It's just that these academic explanations of
value, truth, beauty, sprituality, are only useful in a heuristic
and suggestive sense.
a la prochaine,
A.
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 br...@wralaw.com wrote:
> From: br...@wralaw.com
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
(snip)
> The view that everything in the Universe including living things
> behaves entirely mechanically is mathematically equivalent to
> the view that everything in the Universe behaves as living things.
>
> > >Bryn Ayers
=== Now THERE'S Pythagoras!
"Eros the limb-loosener shakes me again -that sweet, bitter,
impossible creature" Sappho of Lesbos (600bc.)
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
> From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
> The Minoans are often credited with the first use of
> "Abstraction" in decorative art.
=== By whom? The Sumerians had wonderfully abstract motifs decorating
small burial items and jewellery. This predates Crete and the Bronze Age
by at least 2500 years.
> Liked wavy lines and things,
> but of course they lived by the sea.
=== Their frescoes of dolphins and bulls in the palace at Knossos are
marvellous.
> I think "art for Art's sake" is kind of Historically specific.
> It has to do with attention to technique for the purposes of
> showing, in the art, how the technique works. In some sense, its
> saying, you won't understand this unless you are an artist, or if
> you have it explained to you.
=== Actually it was trying to theorize as to WHY humans started making art
on cave walls in the first place. According to the article, We did it
`for art's sake'. But its all a matter of personal; conviction simply
because no one will ever know. Of course, that's the beauty of it all.
> This is the criteria
Clement Greenberg uses
to distinguish > High art form Kitsch in his Uber-essay from the twenties.
> The undercurrent in his thought is that you have to educated
> to appreciate art, and it was a way for him to disparage middle
> class, mass produced, ubiquitous crap. Noble enough, but it was
> classist in the extreme, and pretty much represents the situation
> for cultural validation in modernity.
> Thomas Crow wrote a less famous essay where he identified
> the tendency of fringe elements, avante gardes, if you will, to
> be eventually taken up, emptied of value, and sold by the
> machinery of mass cultural production. Sort of "Nirvanna
> Syndrome."
> In post-modernity, the idea is that this syndrome involves
> the taking up of cultural stuff that was already mass pruduced,
> valueless from the beginning, and reselling it based on a new
> context and nostalgia. So the thing, like Disco in the ninties,
> has richer value than it did originally.
> So to say that neolithic art would be art for art sake is
> problematic.
=== Yeah but so is saying anything at all about behaviour in the
neolithic. Hell, we don't even know why people do what they do today!
There is no class of artisan pushed far away enough
> from a cultural community to resort to this mechanstic treatment.
=== How about trying out a cool piece of ochre you just found on a cave
floor?
> The idea is anti-social, it balks at tradition, it demands
> progress... No, there may be a pnatheon of aesthetic
> consideration involved in Ancient art, but a theortically
> motivated "emptiness of content" is probably not among them.
> For the tip-tp of what modernism is, you need only read
> Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
> Reproduction." Its the best
=== `Mimesis and Alterity' by Michael Taussig is a great related
postmodern work inspired by Benjamin's `Work of Art......'
a bientot,
A.
"Earth with her many garlands is embroidered"
-Sappho of Lesbos (600bc.)
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, 'David O'Bedlam' wrote:
> From: 'David O'Bedlam' <thed...@tsoft.com>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
=== I acquiesce to the faultless PoMo logic of TheDavid.
a bientot,
A.
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:
> From: Peter H.M. Brooks <pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
=== See Kay Kane's interesting post on PoMo painting and painters.
a bientot,
A.
>
> --
> Peter H.M. Brooks
>
>
>
Dao Jones
cl...@uwinnipeg.ca says...
> > How do you come to 'believe' in objectivity? How is it helpful to do so?
> > That would seem to be another example of a vested interest in philosophy.
>
> Scientists and others familiar with science come to believe in
> objectivity just like they come to believe in other scientific
> truths. That is, just as facts and well-founded theories are
> credible to the degree that they correspond with increasingly
> precise observations of nature, so too "objectivity" is believed
> in because it corresponds so well with innumerable observations
> in science (e.g., different scientists independently
> demonstrating the same effect, inconceivably precise predictions
> that are supported by subsequent measurement, and so on
> endlessly) that are otherwise difficulty to explain. If there
> were no objective way of knowing the external world, then it
> would seem to be _impossible_ for such correspondences to occur.
Actually, if there was no way of knowing the external world, it would be
impossible to know that such correspondances did occur.
> Or perhaps you have some other explanation?
I don't have to provide one. You do. However, that isn't the point -
let's not get lost in a metaphysical regress. You used the word
'believe' which I think is over-confident. 'Theorise' or 'posit' I would
have no problem with.
One of the things which one keeps running up against on this newsgroup is
the phenomenon of someone who wants to judge PM by the standards of other
ideas of how to address theory. That's like asking for a justification
of Gallilean cosmology under Ptolomeic rules. It is also a bias, in some
ways.
>
> > Jim:
> > > There are innumerable problems with this position.
> > >
> > > 1. How can one claim that social thinking is imbued by vested
> > > interests without some objective evidence for it and without
> > > seeing your own interpretation as one that transcends your own
> > > biases? Without such a foundation, there is absolutely no reason
> > > for anyone, including yourself, to believe your own words.
> >
> > Just because evidence is not objective in the hard sense, that doesn't
> > mean it has to be wrong. And my interpretations most certainly do not
> > transcend my own biases. I try to track the truth as well as possible by
> > staying as aware as I can of my biases. One of the best ways of doing
> > this is interacting with others.
>
> I am not too sure what to make of the bulk of this. With respect
> to the first sentence, I'm not sure what kind of non-objective
> evidence you are alluding to. Perhaps an example would help.
It's exactly the same evidence with a little more caution in the
interpretation.
> With respect to the second, if your interpretations do not
> transcend your biases, then would you say that your
> interpretations are only correct for people sharing your biases
> and incorrect for others?
No. They are only partially correct for anyone. There is a sliding
scale. If you mean 'is there objectivity for other people', then no.
It cannot but be the case that social thinking is imbued with biases,
because everyone is engaged in social life, and has different experiences
which will colour their perceptions. You take the 'objective' viewpoint
because of who you are. I tend to the same thing, and yet I don't see
how it can be realised, therefore I reject the position of objectivity
and attempt to find ways of doing the same work without the objective
observer or theorist.
> With respect to the third, some study
> of psychology will quickly disabuse you of the belief that
> internally-driven self-awareness of biases is easy to achieve;
> the best way to check your biases is to generate some concrete
> predictions about how the world should operate and then test
> those predictions objectively. I agree largely with the final
> statement, with the proviso that the interactions should not be
> limited to people who share all of your same biases.
I never said it was easy. I just said I tried. What do you do? We're
engaged in the same project here - I just won't call it objectivity,
because I don't believe that's sustainable. As I said before, I try to
track 'truth' as closely as I can.
> > There are just as many reasons to believe what I say as there were
> > before. All I've said if I reject objectivity in this way is that I
> > recognise that I'll always be bringing something to the mix - which I
> > will, however dispassionate I am - be it my education, my lovelife, or
> > my breakfast.
>
> This however is a pretty empty position; that is, bringing
> "something to the mix." What does it matter if you brought lunch
> or your breakfast? So I agree, with one modification, with your
> first statement: "There are just as [few] reasons to believe what
> I say as there were before."
Breakfast may not be important. Education is crucial to how we perceive
events and social theory and research. Hence the bitter claim that most
psychology experiments in the States study the psychology of the
Sophomore Psychology student.
As to whether breakfast is important to how we perceive a theory - it's
open to experiment, I suppose.
> > Jim:
> > > 2. The view makes an unnecessarily stark contrast between
> > > "vested interest" and being "dead." That is, according to the
> > > above there is no middle ground or varying degrees of vested
> > > interest. I expect that there are many scientists out there
> > > doing research who have no particular investment in the direction
> > > in which the results come out. They are simply curious about
> > > which way it comes out.
> >
> > Ok, you caught me. I deliberately engaged in rhetoric. I had to do
> > something - I could hear them snoring in Matahuxee, Illinois (I did it
> > again. Sorry.) The point, suitably undressed, is not without relevance,
> > however. It is unlikely that anyone who is curious about which way an
> > experiment comes out does not have a tiny bias one way or another. This
> > is more true in the social sciences, however, where agendas abound, and
> > experiments are, of necessity, more subjective in what they test for and
> > what they suggest.
>
> As a psychologist who has read quite a bit in different social
> sciences, I agree that agendas abound in the social sciences.
> But that is because of the _failure to adopt_ a scientific
> orientation, rather than being necessarily true of the social
> sciences.
Scientific orientation is just another agenda unless you are standing
inside it. You must have encountered that idea in your reading.
> Supposedly social scientists buying into postmodernism
> and other relativistic views are largely to blame for this
> situation, which ironically (or sadly, depending on one's mood),
> is then taken as evidence for the tainted nature of social
> science.
Do you mean 'supposed Social Scientists...' are responsible, or do you
mean 'it is supposed to be the case that' PM Social Scientists are
responsible?
Social science has been fighting a battle for that label for years -
Weber and Durkheim come to mind. You can't hang it on PM, if that's what
you're thinking.
And what's the evil of relativism? It doesn't mean nothing is possible,
it just means a little more respect is required, and a little more
caution in claiming commensurability.
> Moreover, you need more than the presence of "a tiny bias" to
> challenge the findings and conclusions of science.
Why? How can you know the effect it might have without testing? Are you
just going to assume small causes have small effects? Poppycock. That
isn't scientific method, it is a qualitative judgement about the bias.
> You need
> sufficient bias to produce the observed results or theoretical
> conclusions.
Define sufficient. In social science, you don't know until you've
checked.
> But postmodernists don't seem to feel any need show
> _how_ such things as "a tiny bias" invalidates a specific finding
> or conclusion that has been shown to be well-founded in the
> scientific literature.
There are any number of experiments in your own field showing how small
differences in experimental practice can result in large variances. I
recall watching a series of tapes in which a librarian did or did not
touch a reader in giving them a book. Reports of friendliness varied
along touched vs. not-touched lines.
Jim:
> With respect to the
> difficulty of practicing sound social science, I agree entirely
> with you. But rather than throwing up my hands in despair, I
> undertake the difficult task of freeing my conceptions about
> human experience and behavior from the same kinds of narrow
> constraints that once limited our understanding of the physical
> world. What would you propose?
Much the same. But I would suggest to you that holding too fast to the
term 'objective' will prevent you from achieving this goal - PM is not
intrinsically 'unscientific'. I am reminded again of Terramac, the
computer made up of faulty parts. It routes around the damaged areas and
produces valid answers. I'd say that was a good way of doing PM science.
My subjective perceptions and yours may be at fault, but layer enough,
and we will achieve a decent map of the landscape. It'll still be wrong,
but perhaps less wrong. Intersubjectivity, I think they called it.
Jim:
> Science, including the social sciences, has an extensive history
> of being critical of how it tries to understand and describe the
> world. Much of what scientists learn concerns the pitfalls
> that tripped up earlier practitioners and the very imaginative
> ways in which scientists have avoided those pitfalls and found
> ways to overcome the limitations.
As you know, the same can be said for much social theory. PM is an
outgrowth of some of this, and has the same high pedigree. The
bastardised versions touted are no more useful or relevant than bar room
quantum mechanics.
> > Another flaw of which both 'sides' in the PM debate accuse one another is
> > not having read the theories they are using as examples. I try to stay
> > clear of scientific metaphors and language (by this I mean from the
> > physical sciences) because my background is in philosophy and social
> > science.
>
> It is too bad that others do not follow your example of avoiding
> scientific metaphors and language; it is quite laughable (or sad
> again) to read some of the metaphoric usage of such terms as
> energy, uncertainty, quantum theory, and the like.
Obscura par obscuram. I think. These ideas are part of what some would
call the noosphere, however, and just being farcicle does not make them
insignificant.
> > Can you point to an instance where a postmodern writer has ignored the
> > flaws in their own thinking and language? It would be very interesting
> > to discuss this.
>
> I think that is what we have been doing, although perhaps you had
> in mind a better known post-modern writer than yourself.
<smile> I haven't ignored them at all. I'm here arguing them with you.
And I'm not even a card-carrying postmodernist. Best to find a less
uncertain target - as I've mentioned before on this ng, I expected to
find myself attacking, not defending, but the attacks which generally get
launched against PM are such that I share more with PM than with the
others. My theoretical architecture is subject to radical change - I
came here to thrash it out, not tout it.
> With
> respect to your rebuttal above, for example, you fail to
> appreciate or acknowledge that the presence of "tiny" biases in
> no way substantiates the kinds of strong claims that have been
> made about science's limitations.
I haven't made any particularly strong claims about science's
limitations. All I've done is attack objectivity and suggest you opt for
a less dogmatic formulation of your relationship with the world, which I
half-think you already have by another name.
As to tiny biases, I've written more on that above.
> Rather than dealing with a particular writer, perhaps I can be
> allowed to illustrate with a prototypical (if extreme) example of
> a postmodernist-like claim: "All knowledge about the world is
> relative." Such extreme statements are self-contradictory. If it
> is itself a true statement about the world, then the statement
> itself must be relative, which would make it false. If this
> statement is false, then there must be statements that are not
> relative. This means that it is possible, somehow, to produce
> and distinguish between non-relative and relative assertions
> about the world. The trick then would be to identify how the two
> classes of assertion are to be differentiated and that would lead
> to typically scientific criteria (operational definitions,
> measurement, objectivity).
Leaving aside for a moment whether or not that's a 'postmodernist-like
claim', and why you feel more comfortable with a notional postmodernist,
this paradox is one which gets thrown into the aether here with
depressing regularity. You could either construct a tiered system of
langauge and metalanguage, or object that this is a failure of langauge
rather than of thought. Or you could just say 'all knowledge we possess
is relative' or 'all knowledge except this is relative'.
I honestly think it's better you should find something from a specific
text to which you object.
> Gutting in "Michel Foucault's
> Archeology of Scientific Reason" addresses this point, in essence
> backing Foucault away from the strong claim. But once you back
> off from the strong claim, then the strength of the criticism of
> scientific knowledge is undermined.
How does Gutting do this? How does Foucault reformulate his claim? How
do you feel this lets scientific knowledge off the hook?
Dao Jones
Peter H.M. Brooks
dao_...@disinfo.net "Dao Jones" writes:
> In article <920984...@psyche.demon.co.uk>, pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk
> says...
> >
> > There clearly are universals.
>
> Oh, my. Brace yourself for the explosion which may follow. I take it
> you mean by universals something like 'traits of thinking and prefence'?
>
Not quite. I mean universal parts of human behaviour that cross all
cultures and generations that are part of the essense of man, what
de Sade called 'Nature' and what Sociobiology calls evolved behaviour.
>
> > Some are being discovered in more detail. They
> > are connected to how and why we react to art in the way that we do. Analysis
> > of landscapes show that humans almost uniformly like open savanna like
> > scenes that afford hiding places - similar to our ancestral ranges in
> > Africa. Portraits are prefered if they are symetrical. These are the
> > straightforward, untutored tastes that we all share. To move from these
> > to enjoying Escher or Persian carpets is to understand abstraction, and
> > convention in representation.
>
> I'd be very interested if you could furnish me with the references.
>
Most of this is fairly recent research into sociobiology - by fairly
recent I mean in the past 10-15 years. I can dig up some books if you
like.
>
> > What people find acceptable representation has, very clearly, changed. A
> > century ago van Gogh would not have been appreciated by the vast majority
> > of people, now millions flock to see his pictures. I really don't think
> > you can say they are all simply there because of fashion or marketing,
> > there has been a change in accepted representation. The universals are
> > still there, van Gogh paints landscapes that conform to the standard
> > archetypes as do his portraits - only the conventions used differ.
>
> Well, we have learned perhaps to recieve a wider range of signals as
> meaningful and representative. I actually find van Gogh's paintings
> rather weird. I like weird, however. I also do not necessarily
> interpret them as showing actual space - or rather, I do not look to
> them for representations of actual space - much of what I like comes
> from mood.
>
I would agree with most of this - however, I think that if I were the
same biological me displaced by 100 years I wouldn't have any time
for it.
>
> As to why more people go to see van Gogh's paintings, well, we are
> talking about someone who is touted as one of the greatest painters ever.
> Many of us are shown his paintings as we grow up as examples of one way
> of painting - which is another issue - we happily accept varying ways
> of representing the world now. Orthodoxy is not so powerful a force as
> once it was.
>
Isn't that the new orthodoxy?
>
> > > No question, and again, I'm making no personal attacks - I'm simply
> > > intrigued by the pomo point of view and wondering how anyone expects to
> > > make better art by following it.
> > >
> > I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
> > in order to paint?
>
> For what it's worth, take a look at my post in response to Mark's article
> - I went on a bit, but there's stuff in there which might interest you.
>
I did, and it did. Thank you.
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Peter H.M. Brooks
sall...@columbus.rr.com "Sally Porter" writes:
> Peter,
> This was beautiful.
> Sally Porter
>
Thank you very much. I am honoured that you should think that, though
I don't consider it that remarkable myself. I am probably just lucky
to have been around it for a while!
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Ariane
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:
> From: Peter H.M. Brooks <pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk>
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
>
>
> > In article <920984...@psyche.demon.co.uk>, pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk
> > says...
> > >
> > > There clearly are universals.
> >
> > Oh, my. Brace yourself for the explosion which may follow. I take it
> > you mean by universals something like 'traits of thinking and prefence'?
> >
> Not quite. I mean universal parts of human behaviour that cross all
> cultures and generations that are part of the essense of man, what
> de Sade called 'Nature' and what Sociobiology calls evolved behaviour.
=== Sociobiology is hardly a credible resource from which to extract
information on human behaviour. E.O. Wilson was more interested in insects
than in humans anyway and abducting from one to the other seems (to me) to
be little more than scientific thought-sport. In any case the theory
falls when you consider that genotype (DNA protein sequences) cannot be
legitimately correlated with behavioural
phenotypes....sociobiology is pure speculative hypothesis and Nietzsche
is more interesting so......
=== But I agree with you on the existence of cross-cultural
universals...laughter, maternity, war, love, beauty, etc., etc.
> > > > Some are being discovered in more detail. They
> > > are connected to how and why we react to art in the way that we do.
> > > of landscapes show that humans almost uniformly like open savanna like
> > > scenes that afford hiding places - similar to our ancestral ranges in
> > > Africa. Portraits are prefered if they are symetrical. These are the
> > > straightforward, untutored tastes that we all share. To move from these
> > > to enjoying Escher or Persian carpets is to understand abstraction, and
> > > convention in representation.
> >
> > I'd be very interested if you could furnish me with the references.
> >
> Most of this is fairly recent research into sociobiology - by fairly
> recent I mean in the past 10-15 years. I can dig up some books if you
> like.
=== Well suit yourself, I'm invading this thread anyway...
(snip:end)
a la prochaine,
A.
Jim Clark
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote:
> cl...@uwinnipeg.ca says...
> > Scientists and others familiar with science come to believe in
> > objectivity just like they come to believe in other scientific
> > truths. That is, just as facts and well-founded theories are
> > credible to the degree that they correspond with increasingly
> > precise observations of nature, so too "objectivity" is believed
> > in because it corresponds so well with innumerable observations
> > in science (e.g., different scientists independently
> > demonstrating the same effect, inconceivably precise predictions
> > that are supported by subsequent measurement, and so on
> > endlessly) that are otherwise difficulty to explain. If there
> > were no objective way of knowing the external world, then it
> > would seem to be _impossible_ for such correspondences to occur.
>
> Actually, if there was no way of knowing the external world, it would be
> impossible to know that such correspondances did occur.
Ok. But we do know that such correspondences between scientists
do occur. Or are you claiming that it only appears to be the
case that calculations in different labs using different
procedures lead to the same result with quite exceptional degrees
of precision?
> > Or perhaps you have some other explanation?
>
> I don't have to provide one. You do. However, that isn't the point -
> let's not get lost in a metaphysical regress. You used the word
> 'believe' which I think is over-confident. 'Theorise' or 'posit' I would
> have no problem with.
I'm not clear why your "view of science" gets to excuse itself
from explaining all the facets of science. Certainly sounds like
an excellent way to salvage theories that are inconsistent with
observed observations.
> One of the things which one keeps running up against on this newsgroup is
> the phenomenon of someone who wants to judge PM by the standards of other
> ideas of how to address theory. That's like asking for a justification
> of Gallilean cosmology under Ptolomeic rules. It is also a bias, in some
> ways.
But we do need some minimal agreement about what the purpose of
PM verbiage is. I thought it was, in part, an effort to point
out certain deficiencies in science because of intrinsic
limitations to our capacity to understand the world. Isn't this
then a theory or model or characterization of science? What do
we evaluate it against if not observations about the world of
scientific affairs?
> > > Just because evidence is not objective in the hard sense, that doesn't
> > > mean it has to be wrong. And my interpretations most certainly do not
> > > transcend my own biases. I try to track the truth as well as possible by
> > > staying as aware as I can of my biases. One of the best ways of doing
> > > this is interacting with others.
> >
> > I am not too sure what to make of the bulk of this. With respect
> > to the first sentence, I'm not sure what kind of non-objective
> > evidence you are alluding to. Perhaps an example would help.
>
> It's exactly the same evidence with a little more caution in the
> interpretation.
I have little trouble with varying gradations of objectivity.
Science tries to use the most objective evidence available or
conceivable.
> > With respect to the second, if your interpretations do not
> > transcend your biases, then would you say that your
> > interpretations are only correct for people sharing your biases
> > and incorrect for others?
>
> No. They are only partially correct for anyone. There is a sliding
> scale. If you mean 'is there objectivity for other people', then no.
>
> It cannot but be the case that social thinking is imbued with biases,
> because everyone is engaged in social life, and has different experiences
> which will colour their perceptions. You take the 'objective' viewpoint
> because of who you are. I tend to the same thing, and yet I don't see
> how it can be realised, therefore I reject the position of objectivity
> and attempt to find ways of doing the same work without the objective
> observer or theorist.
But I thought above you did accept the idea of degrees of
objectivity?
> I never said it was easy. I just said I tried. What do you do? We're
> engaged in the same project here - I just won't call it objectivity,
> because I don't believe that's sustainable. As I said before, I try to
> track 'truth' as closely as I can.
And how can one track "truth" other than by comparing the
consequences (i.e., predictions) of one's ideas against
increasingly challenging observations?
> > This however is a pretty empty position; that is, bringing
> > "something to the mix." What does it matter if you brought lunch
> > or your breakfast? So I agree, with one modification, with your
> > first statement: "There are just as [few] reasons to believe what
> > I say as there were before."
>
> Breakfast may not be important. Education is crucial to how we perceive
> events and social theory and research. Hence the bitter claim that most
> psychology experiments in the States study the psychology of the
> Sophomore Psychology student.
Sorry to disagree, but psychology is increasingly being carried
out in numerous parts of the world and has always had a strong
representation of applied work in various settings (e.g.,
schools, hospitals, prisons, ...). It is primarily academic
research that is done with psychology undergraduates, but efforts
are often made to test ideas with other populations
(psychologists do learn about external validity and
generalization, you know), especially when it seems that the
selectivity of university students might contribute to the
observed effects. Many many findings generalize quite well.
> As to whether breakfast is important to how we perceive a theory - it's
> open to experiment, I suppose.
That is _my_ kind of thinking! Let me know how it turns out.
> > As a psychologist who has read quite a bit in different social
> > sciences, I agree that agendas abound in the social sciences.
> > But that is because of the _failure to adopt_ a scientific
> > orientation, rather than being necessarily true of the social
> > sciences.
>
> Scientific orientation is just another agenda unless you are standing
> inside it. You must have encountered that idea in your reading.
Encountered and dismissed it. You want to imbue a generic
"agenda" with all kinds of significance that it doesn't merit.
The scientific way to determine whether your "agenda" is
influencing results is to design a study that minimizes the ways
in which it could reasonably be expected to influence the
results. If your findings still hold, if people with different
"agendas" find the same results, if experiments operated purely
by computers replicate the findings, and so on, then the
possibility that the "agenda" is responsible is considerably
diminished. Yes, people with limited imaginations will continue
to challenge you that there is still some unrealized "agenda"
that is responsible, but there comments are pretty vacuous until
they are willing to get their own hands dirty, or tell us what
the residual "agenda" is so that we can try and control it
ourselves. Again, critics are generally willing to do some vague
hand-waving, but fail to provide a reasonable explanation for how
the unidentified "agenda" is producing the observed results.
> > Supposedly social scientists buying into postmodernism
> > and other relativistic views are largely to blame for this
> > situation, which ironically (or sadly, depending on one's mood),
> > is then taken as evidence for the tainted nature of social
> > science.
>
> Do you mean 'supposed Social Scientists...' are responsible, or do you
> mean 'it is supposed to be the case that' PM Social Scientists are
> responsible?
The first. Pardon the ambiguity ... we don't do that
deliberately in science.
> Social science has been fighting a battle for that label for years -
> Weber and Durkheim come to mind. You can't hang it on PM, if that's what
> you're thinking.
But of course, the ideas of PM have been around for a long time
in one form or another.
> And what's the evil of relativism? It doesn't mean nothing is possible,
> it just means a little more respect is required, and a little more
> caution in claiming commensurability.
I'm not too sure why, but the idea of a PM supporter chastising a
science supporter for being incautious strikes me as humorous.
Perhaps it is because science is extremely conservative (i.e.,
cautious) about making claims about truth value (e.g., objective
findings, replication, generalizability, statistical
significance), whereas PM supporters seem to have nothing but the
flimiest of reasons for their beliefs. Do you have a concrete
example where scientists have been incautious in claiming
commensurability? Or better yet, a systematic survey of the
scientific literature demonstrating how widespread this problem
is?
> > Moreover, you need more than the presence of "a tiny bias" to
> > challenge the findings and conclusions of science.
>
> Why? How can you know the effect it might have without testing? Are you
> just going to assume small causes have small effects? Poppycock. That
> isn't scientific method, it is a qualitative judgement about the bias.
>
> > You need
> > sufficient bias to produce the observed results or theoretical
> > conclusions.
>
> Define sufficient. In social science, you don't know until you've
> checked.
>
> > But postmodernists don't seem to feel any need show
> > _how_ such things as "a tiny bias" invalidates a specific finding
> > or conclusion that has been shown to be well-founded in the
> > scientific literature.
>
> There are any number of experiments in your own field showing how small
> differences in experimental practice can result in large variances. I
> recall watching a series of tapes in which a librarian did or did not
> touch a reader in giving them a book. Reports of friendliness varied
> along touched vs. not-touched lines.
Much of the above misses my point. I do not want some vague
analogical reasoning ... yes, butterflies can cause hurricanes
somewhere. I want to see an example of a replicated scientific
finding and well-substantiated theory for which a "tiny bias" in
the experimenter(s) provides an alternative and better
explanation. I would add now that I wonder how you would
demonstrate the effects of such a bias without using the methods
of science. Your example above illustrates nicely how to
scientifically determine whether or not touching influences
people's reactions.
> Jim:
> > With respect to the
> > difficulty of practicing sound social science, I agree entirely
> > with you. But rather than throwing up my hands in despair, I
> > undertake the difficult task of freeing my conceptions about
> > human experience and behavior from the same kinds of narrow
> > constraints that once limited our understanding of the physical
> > world. What would you propose?
>
> Much the same. But I would suggest to you that holding too fast to the
> term 'objective' will prevent you from achieving this goal - PM is not
> intrinsically 'unscientific'. I am reminded again of Terramac, the
> computer made up of faulty parts. It routes around the damaged areas and
> produces valid answers. I'd say that was a good way of doing PM science.
Sorry Dao, but I believe it is those who reject the possibility
of objectivity who have used that as an excuse to not do the hard
work of science. I would say that Terramac is better an
illustration of traditional science than of PM science. You take
a bunch of very fallible human beings and have them engage in
scientific inquiry using some techniques that philosophers have
not yet been able to justify logically, and knowledge of
incomparable accuracy, depth, and beauty results.
> My subjective perceptions and yours may be at fault, but layer enough,
> and we will achieve a decent map of the landscape. It'll still be wrong,
> but perhaps less wrong. Intersubjectivity, I think they called it.
Intersubjective agreement is one of the signs of and/or results
of the striving for objectivity.
> Jim:
> > Science, including the social sciences, has an extensive history
> > of being critical of how it tries to understand and describe the
> > world. Much of what scientists learn concerns the pitfalls
> > that tripped up earlier practitioners and the very imaginative
> > ways in which scientists have avoided those pitfalls and found
> > ways to overcome the limitations.
>
> As you know, the same can be said for much social theory. PM is an
> outgrowth of some of this, and has the same high pedigree. The
> bastardised versions touted are no more useful or relevant than bar room
> quantum mechanics.
Sorry, but we have to disagree here. I would say that much
social theory has simply stagnated and/or led to monstrous
mutations (PM is in the latter category). In some fields it
seems as though they maintain ill-founded frameworks that were
created at far too early a stage (i.e., without sufficient
factual information to support such a theoretical edifice). I'm
thinking here of Marxism, Capitalism, and the like. Perhaps you
have other things in mind. If psychology had acted like such
disciplines, we would still be mired down in Freudian theory
rather than having accumulated much factual knowledge about how
human beings act in and experience the world and being well on
the way towards a well-founded understanding of human experience
and behavior.
> > It is too bad that others do not follow your example of avoiding
> > scientific metaphors and language; it is quite laughable (or sad
> > again) to read some of the metaphoric usage of such terms as
> > energy, uncertainty, quantum theory, and the like.
>
> Obscura par obscuram. I think. These ideas are part of what some would
> call the noosphere, however, and just being farcicle does not make them
> insignificant.
Gross and Levitt ("Higher Superstition") are two scientists who
would disgree with you here about the significance of
metaphorical uses of scientific concepts.
> > > Can you point to an instance where a postmodern writer has ignored the
> > > flaws in their own thinking and language? It would be very interesting
> > > to discuss this.
> >
> > I think that is what we have been doing, although perhaps you had
> > in mind a better known post-modern writer than yourself.
>
> <smile> I haven't ignored them at all. I'm here arguing them with you.
> And I'm not even a card-carrying postmodernist. Best to find a less
> uncertain target - as I've mentioned before on this ng, I expected to
> find myself attacking, not defending, but the attacks which generally get
> launched against PM are such that I share more with PM than with the
> others. My theoretical architecture is subject to radical change - I
> came here to thrash it out, not tout it.
Not to doubt your word, but I'm always leary about those people
touting products who begin with phrases like: "I was initially
very skeptical about the value of ..." It reminds me of the
pseudo-skeptic Scully on X-files whose primary role is to give
the illusion of critical analysis.
> > With
> > respect to your rebuttal above, for example, you fail to
> > appreciate or acknowledge that the presence of "tiny" biases in
> > no way substantiates the kinds of strong claims that have been
> > made about science's limitations.
>
> I haven't made any particularly strong claims about science's
> limitations. All I've done is attack objectivity and suggest you opt for
> a less dogmatic formulation of your relationship with the world, which I
> half-think you already have by another name.
I guess it depends on how radical one's attack on objectivity is.
You sound quite reasonable about this at times, but at other
times talk as though you had undermined conventional science to
such an extent that non-scientific approaches would provide as
accurate a characterization of whatever phenomena were being
discussed as scientific methods could. _If_ the latter is your
position, then you are making serious claim's about science's
limits.
> > Rather than dealing with a particular writer, perhaps I can be
> > allowed to illustrate with a prototypical (if extreme) example of
> > a postmodernist-like claim: "All knowledge about the world is
> > relative." Such extreme statements are self-contradictory. If it
> > is itself a true statement about the world, then the statement
> > itself must be relative, which would make it false. If this
> > statement is false, then there must be statements that are not
> > relative. This means that it is possible, somehow, to produce
> > and distinguish between non-relative and relative assertions
> > about the world. The trick then would be to identify how the two
> > classes of assertion are to be differentiated and that would lead
> > to typically scientific criteria (operational definitions,
> > measurement, objectivity).
>
> Leaving aside for a moment whether or not that's a 'postmodernist-like
> claim', and why you feel more comfortable with a notional postmodernist,
Like most scientists, I could care less about whether particular
people are right or wrong. I want to know whether specific ideas
are right or wrong. Moreover, one of the most common complaints
I have heard about PM writers is that it is difficult to know
exactly what they are saying. So I guess I would say that I feel
more comfortable with clarity.
> this paradox is one which gets thrown into the aether here with
> depressing regularity. You could either construct a tiered system of
> langauge and metalanguage, or object that this is a failure of langauge
> rather than of thought. Or you could just say 'all knowledge we possess
> is relative' or 'all knowledge except this is relative'.
Well I'm not sure that the first rephrasing works. Wouldn't you
end up having to say that you don't possess the knowledge that
"all knowledge we possess is relative." As for the latter, you
would then need to have some criteria by which you have
ascertained that this is the only non-relative knowledge and
those criteria would have to be such that they only validated
this statement and none other. Sounds like an interesting set of
criteria. Perhaps the paradox keeps getting thrown into the ring
because it never gets responded to adequately.
> I honestly think it's better you should find something from a specific
> text to which you object.
>
> > Gutting in "Michel Foucault's
> > Archeology of Scientific Reason" addresses this point, in essence
> > backing Foucault away from the strong claim. But once you back
> > off from the strong claim, then the strength of the criticism of
> > scientific knowledge is undermined.
>
> How does Gutting do this? How does Foucault reformulate his claim? How
> do you feel this lets scientific knowledge off the hook?
Well for one thing, Gutting backs off from the inclusion of the
_hard_ sciences in Foucault's claims. On p. 273, Gutting writes
"There is no suggestion that he [Foucault] thinks his
archaeological method could be applied to sciences like physics
or chemistry to show that their claims to truth and objectivity
are questionable." Later on the same page "Foucault does not
deny all truth and objectivity." and "So the short answer to
these criticisms is simply that Foucault does not espouse the
universal skepticism or relativism they suppose he does." On p.
274 "... he would agree that there are no uninterpreted facts.
But this surely does not entail the skeptical or relativist
conclusion that there are no genuinely objective facts."
Another response to your query is to note that a number of the
criticisms about empiricist views of science simply collapse if
they are not universally true. For example, if "all knowledge is
relative" is _not_ true then some knowledge is relative and
others is not (probably better stated as gradations of
relativeness). But science can then be let "off the hook," as it
were, by showing that it belongs to the non-relative or less
relative class. Which I think would be a trivial demonstration
to make on empirical grounds (e.g., intersubjective agreement,
...), and probably on rational ones as well (e.g., emphasis on
factual observations).
Just one more quick example of this problem. In discussing the
theory-ladenness of observations, some critiques use examples of
ambiguous stimuli that lend themselves to multiple
interpretations (Hanson's ?? ducks and rabbits). But such
observations only permit the conclusion that _some_ observations
are theory-laden, not the conclusion that _all_ observations are
theory-laden. But it is only the latter that is challenging for
science. If only _some_ observations are theory-laden then
science just requires ways to differentiate those observations
from the non-theory-laden ones. Science, of course, uses
procedures to achieve just that differentiation (e.g.,
intersubjective agreement again, machine measurement, ...).
Kay Kane
I guess I DO paint the feeling... I feel like cheerful art belongs on
Hallmark cards.
Kay
>
mark webber
> In article mark webber writes:
>
> > But does this mean that we - that is, people who spend a lot of time with
> > art - don't or can't find ourselves in the presence of some pretty
> > astonishing work from time to time? And isn't it a bit telling that some
> > work is clearly more effective, provocative, imaginative, inventive or
> > beautiful than other work?
> >
> > I guess my point is that when we are in the presence of some terrific
> > art and the best we can do is point out that we have been indoctrinated to
> > see it as wonderful because there are no universal truths, and there is
> > only personal taste... it seems perhaps we're throwing a lot of energy in
> > a lazy direction.
>
> There clearly are universals. (snip)
This is a pretty good example of what I'm responding to. Even if there are
universals there won't be universal agreement as to what they are.
While universals may be beyond us, esthetic experience is not, nor does it
rely on universals.
And, yes, there are going to be similar (perhaps endoctrinated) responses
among varied groups of people to various works of art. That doesn't make
these responses absolute or universal.
> I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
> in order to paint?
Been to NYC lately?
Webber
mark webber
> > I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
> > in order to paint?
>
> For what it's worth, take a look at my post in response to Mark's article
> - I went on a bit, but there's stuff in there which might interest you.
>
> Dao Jones
>
>
Hi Dao,
I haven't seen anything since your first reply to me - looked in dejanews,
too.
Mark
Kay Kane
emat...@tomatoweb.com wrote in message <7c4p68$mdn$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <MPG.114f69479...@news.demon.co.uk>,
> dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
>> In article <920984...@psyche.demon.co.uk>, pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk
>> says...
>> >
>> > There clearly are universals.
>>
>> Oh, my. Brace yourself for the explosion which may follow. I take it
>> you mean by universals something like 'traits of thinking and prefence'?
>
not
>so certain on how far you could push it into the realm of human symbolic
>forms. I remember reading once an paper on Aldolph Hitler's study of human
>facial expressions, in preparation for his speeches -- all those sublte
>manipulations on a crowd for the purpose of mobilizing ideological frenzy.
>I've come across other more 'benign' studies of this, offering the promise
>that what ever facial expressions communicate the 'language' can cross
>cultural frontiers. The newborn human apparently is programmed by nature
to
>recognize the human face.
>
>And then there's a range of studies around the ideas about gesture, Which
>Bronislav Malinowsky coined 'Phatic Communion,' that we employ to
communicate
>with our pets and our peers. Less culturally transcendent, I suppose, but
the
>study does suggest some sort of proto-language.
>
>Recently, a TV clipped was aired about a plastic surgeon in So Cal who has
>studied the aesthetics of the face very deeply, and his claim is that as
>humans, independant of culture, we do respond to phenomena of symetry in
our
>idea of the beautiful.
Orlan has used this idea to reconstruct her face via plastic surgery to find
the artistic "ideal" of beauty for years. (Am not sure if she ever found it
or is still doing it).
Kay Kane
>
>But these things may well belong to our reptile brain, have some sort of
>evolutionary advantage, functionally atavistic and so on. I'm just
>questioning how important they would be in the context of, say, Cassrier's
>three symbolic forms, language, art, (I can't believe it, I've forgotten
the
>third!).
>
>>
>Erik Mattila
emat...@tomatoweb.com
>
> =3D=3D=3D Castaneda, (with a ~ over the `n').
Yes, but apparently my tilde wasn't supported. How did you do it (but's it's
not over the n).
>
> To paraphrase, Don Juan
> > askes Carlos: "Do you think that you and I are equals?" Carlos enters a
> > long argument on cultural relativism, which smacked of the worst brands of
> > paternalism which gratuitiously elevated the Indian to the level of the
> > 'human', concluding that, 'in a way,' they were equals. Don Juan responds
> > "I disagree, I am vastly superior to you."
> >
> > Erik Mattila
>
> =3D=3D=3D Well, within the domain of shamanism, spiritual power, and magic,=
> Don
> Juan was indeed the master while Castaneda was the ex-California
> anthropologist turned apprentice. Within this context, Don Juan was
> correct. My art teacher is also `vastly superior' to me within the domain
> of draughtsmanship. Andre Malraux is `vastly superior' to Berger within
> the domain of Picasso criticism.....(hee, hee I couldn't resist)! These
> things are more or less relative. =20
>
But CC's character is not too different than Menard. But I need to make my
confessional, Ariane. MrKatz taught me something, by defining 'ficciones.'
And that was that I believed erroneously 'Menard, Author of Don Quixote' to
be true. Isn't that rediculous? I can't decide whether to be totally
embarassed or totally delighted, or both. At any rate, it knocks the wind
out of my sails, or, to put it another way, blows my argument out of the
water. At any rate, you'll know that I am gullible.
But there you have it. If you take Casteneda as anthropology, shaministic
wisdom might explain how a stone age Indian could be 'superior.' But that
was Carlos' paternalistic argument. Casteneda as 'ficciones' however, paints
another picture. Don Juan throughout the epic is shown to he 'rationally'
intelligent, and consistently undermining our preconceived notions about how
a stoneage Burjo should talk and behave. He always has the 'better' idea,
throughout the series of novels. As an 'actant' in a narrative, Don Juan
always functions as Carlos' own personal Quixote, destroying the dragons,
disassembling Carlos' faith in reality. It is very autobiographical.
Casteneda' very identiy is in question -- he seems to have been one Carlos
Arana from Brazil (Carlos the Spider). At UCLA he turned the scientific
Anthropology Department upsidedown, by forcing the professors to grant him
his doctorate degree in spite of the fact that he had violated the cardinal
rule of fieldwork by refusing to validate his sources. He did this by
publishing his dissertation in pop culture before he submitted it, and it was
already a best-seller. So his committee had to evaluate a very spongey piece
of anthropology that forty thousand hippies and junior medicinemen had
already taken to heart. UCLA told the department to give CC his degree,
since selling books was more important than academic integrity. Pop culture
anthropology, or more appropriately, ficciones. Being a South American, it
doesn't seem unreasonable to imagine that Casteneda was continuing Borges'
project, without the disclaimer (so idiots such as I would believe the
fictions).
Yes, of course Malraux is vastly superior to Berger. How could it be
otherwise, since to substanciate such an evaluation, you only need to utter
it? It is equally true that Berger is vastly superior to Malraux, evidenced
by my utterance.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
> In article <920984...@psyche.demon.co.uk>, pe...@psyche.demon.co.uk
> says...
> >
> > There clearly are universals.
>
> Oh, my. Brace yourself for the explosion which may follow. I take it
> you mean by universals something like 'traits of thinking and prefence'?
I personally believe that there's some substance to Peter's idea, but I'm not
so certain on how far you could push it into the realm of human symbolic
forms. I remember reading once an paper on Aldolph Hitler's study of human
facial expressions, in preparation for his speeches -- all those sublte
manipulations on a crowd for the purpose of mobilizing ideological frenzy.
I've come across other more 'benign' studies of this, offering the promise
that what ever facial expressions communicate the 'language' can cross
cultural frontiers. The newborn human apparently is programmed by nature to
recognize the human face.
And then there's a range of studies around the ideas about gesture, Which
Bronislav Malinowsky coined 'Phatic Communion,' that we employ to communicate
with our pets and our peers. Less culturally transcendent, I suppose, but the
study does suggest some sort of proto-language.
Recently, a TV clipped was aired about a plastic surgeon in So Cal who has
studied the aesthetics of the face very deeply, and his claim is that as
humans, independant of culture, we do respond to phenomena of symetry in our
idea of the beautiful.
But these things may well belong to our reptile brain, have some sort of
evolutionary advantage, functionally atavistic and so on. I'm just
questioning how important they would be in the context of, say, Cassrier's
three symbolic forms, language, art, (I can't believe it, I've forgotten the
third!).
>
br...@wralaw.com
Jim Clark <cl...@uwinnipeg.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Dao Jones wrote:
: > cl...@uwinnipeg.ca says...
> > > to the first sentence, I'm not sure what kind of non-objective
> > > evidence you are alluding to. Perhaps an example would help.
> > It's exactly the same evidence with a little more caution in the
> > interpretation.
> I have little trouble with varying gradations of objectivity.
> Science tries to use the most objective evidence available or
> conceivable.
To this debate....
First there is no distinct dillema between science and PM, disproof
of one does not yeild the other true, and vice versa each can be false.
Second the debate over objectivity has been carried out by scientists
and so called philosophers of science, to a much further extent than
has gone on here... I enter a comment by Niels Bohr a physicist.
"There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to
think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is.
Physics concerns what we can say about Nature."
The continual assertion that scientists are neither aware nor
worried about their level of certainty, or limitations, is
simply contradicted by what they say. The other prejudices
that people have like 'science' is hostile to the arts, is
as anyone aware of the real problems of Modernism knows, a
contemporary invention continued by remodernism or as it
calles itself Post-Modernism. The spiritualization of the
wave-particle duality will materialise itself in the arts as
will final theories be esthetic and conscience.
Bryn Ayers
emat...@tomatoweb.com
I'm beginning to think that primitivism is an excellent paradigm of post
modernism, or at least the issues discussed. Nowhere do you find cultural
time travel more apparent, and it underscores the very problem of culture,
and how it influences the 'aura' of the work of art.
>
> On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, MrKurtz wrote:
>
> > From: MrKurtz <p...@outrageous.net>
> > Newsgroups: alt.postmodern, rec.arts.fine
> > Subject: Re: Is Postmodernism Wrong? Against PostModernism
> >
Of course the author of the 'Current Anthropology' paper didn't have
Greenberg in mind, and wasn't making Greenberg's argument. He used to term
"art for art's sake to distinguish art for the purpose of ritual magic from
art for the purpose of aesthetic reflection. As Ariane so appropriately
points out, much of this has to be pure conjecture. But we have no basis to
believe that art, or 'all' art, was produced for the purpose of magic ritual
-- it only sustains our own belief system about the general nature of the
'primitive.' This is fertile grounds for the application of Occam's Razor, I
think. Given that we are talking about the works of art of human beings, why
not start the process of assumption with the idea that these people will make
art for the same reason that many other's do, the pleasure of aesthetic
reflection. Much of non-western art is sheer design, quite beautiful, and
valued by their respective groups for that purpose. Another thing to think
about is that of the known magical devices produced by many groups, that
aesthetic investment is absent in the forms, since it is absolutely
unnecessary to make an object look good to perform its intended ritual
function.
A very vivid argument against the modern 'cult of primitive profundity' is
embedded in the extensive footnotes of Edgar Wind's 'Art and Anarchy.' At
issue was the popular idea in modernity that the unconscious mind was the
'ore which would produce great art,' which was posited more or less by the
misapprehesion that primitive art was, as a grand production, the product of
people whose mentality occupied 'the twilight state of consciousness' (Jung).
Wind goes on to challenge that idea, and gathers his troops, largely out of
structural anthropology (Levi-Bruhl and Levi-Strauss and others) who really
thought Jung was quite foolish. No doubt this informed Levi-Strauss when he
wrote "The Savage Mind" which has as its first two chapters a treatment of
concrete thinking among the primitivos, much of which we rationalists could
very well be envious of (I'll hold my taxa up to yours anyday sort of thing).
>
> > So to say that neolithic art would be art for art sake is
> > problematic.
It is problematic, of course, if you throw Greenberg into the stew. But it's
very unproblematic if you just mean that art was created for aesthetic
enjoyment, rather than a ritual magic function. You know, there was one
scholar whose name escapes me now, who stated that the origin of Native
Amerian painting was 'dance' (in reference to mural painting such is found in
the Southwest Pueblos or Bonampak). It went this way: Dancers were in a
Kiva dancing, and their body's were painted with ochre. While dancing, some
of them brushed against the walls and rubbed the ochre off in the sweeping
gestures of the dance, and Viola! Indian painting is invented. This may
well have been in Dorothy Dunn's (the founder of the Sante Fe Studio) on
Indian Painting.
The best resource I know of for understand how the discourse on 'primitivism'
ties in with much of the discussion of post modernism, is the controversy
launched by the MOMA 1984 Blockbuster "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art:
Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Personally, I've read about all the
essays and reviews of this show, and it was incredibly informative. For all
you art historians out there, here is a brief list gleaned from the UC Irvine
Critical Theory web site, compiled by Eddie Yeghiayan:
Bois, Yve-Alain. "La Pensée Sauvage." Review of the exhibition and the
catalogue. Art in America (April 1985), 73(4): 178-188.
Christo, Cyril. "New York et la maschera." Review of the exhibition. Domus
(December 1984), 656: 73.
Clifford, James. "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern." Review of the
exhibition and the catalogue. Art in America (April 1985), 73(4): 164-177,
215.
Cowling, Elizabeth. "Encounters and Coincidences." TLS [Times Literary
Supplement] (September 16, 1985), 4301: 969-970.
Graaf, Vera. "Primitivismus in der Kunst der klassischen Moderne." Review of
the exhibition and the catalogue `Primitivism' in 20th Century Art (1984). Du
(1984), 12: 94, 96, 98.
Hamel-Schwulst, Mary. Library Journal (December 1984), 109(20): 2269.
Haxthausen, Charles W. " Detroit: `Primitivism' in Twentieth Century Art."
Review of the exhibition and the catalogue. Burlington Magazine (May 1985),
127(986): 325-326.
Lehuard, Raoul. Arts d'Afrique Noire (Spring 1985), 53: 51-52.
Penney, David W. African Arts (August 1985), 18(4): 27, 90-91.
Price, Sally. American Ethnologist (August 1986), 13(3): 578-579.
Roy, C.D. Choice (February 1985), 22(6): 805.
Peppiatt, Michael. "Sujet tabou: exposition risquée." Review of the exhibition
and the catalogue. Connaissance des Arts (September 1984), 391: 84-94.
There are others, I believe -- some quite nasty exchanges running through
several issues of some journals. It's all very wonderful.
>
> === Yeah but so is saying anything at all about behaviour in the
> neolithic. Hell, we don't even know why people do what they do today!
>
> There is no class of artisan pushed far away enough
> > from a cultural community to resort to this mechanstic treatment.
Yes, but at least the claim of much of modern theory is that aesthetics
themselves are cultural productions. So a caveman Toulouse-Latrec could
create secular art within a prehistoric cultural tradition, without being
particularly anti-social (let alone mechanistic). But don't get me wrong,
I'm not agruing that art wasn't created for magical purposes, but rather that
the 'art' in the formula belonged to an aesthetic tradition, and could be
addressed on its own terms, without a magic function. How much of a pottery
design refers to the object's 'bowlicity'; how much of a basket design refers
to the object's 'basketicity.' Gene Wheltfish, for example, theorized that a
jumping off place for a tradition in Indian art was weaving, which
historically preceeds pottery in the history of technologies. The
relationship between art and weaving is interesting, because weaving
generates specific design constraints as a media. Wheltfish studied the
weaving of palmettos in Amazon tribes, an 'early' weaving technology, and
catalogs a shopping list of possible designs that each of five different
weaving styles can generate, and these become 'essential forms' of the tribes
arsenal of design devices. It is easy to see how designs generated by
various weaving practices were later transferred to pottery, because these
designs reflect the same constraints that they originally had in weaving (the
possible angles that can be generated, the 'jaggies' etc.) Slowly, the
pottery designs become liberated from the constraints of weaving -- and this
can be traced over a chronological time line. But in my mind this betrays
the peoples interest in the design itself as a valued aesthitic object,
rather than any mythico-magical significance.
When I studied California Indian baskets, I collected all sorts of
'explanations' for the significance of the designs. As my list grew larger,
I first noticed that there was no real agreement on 'meaning.' A shared
design was 'deer guts' for one tribe, a 'stairway to hell' for another. Even
within tribes there was disagreement. Eventually I came to realize that
there was also a vast difference in who was 'interpreting' the design: An
Indian Doctor, a logger, an educated Indian etc. The big division was in
descriptions between weavers and non-weavers. A spiritual man would say
"this is sacred flicker feather' while a weaver would say 'this is up two and
back three.' Hmmm. It's all very wonderful, because in the long run I
ultimatly understood that I was gathering in a very full and rich discourse
about a vital aesthetic tradition. As far as meaning go -- well, the same
people who make and use these baskets spend their time gazing at the clouds
and saying "there's an elephant", "there's Uncle Fred" etc.
>
> === How about trying out a cool piece of ochre you just found on a cave
> floor?
>
> > The idea is anti-social, it balks at tradition, it demands
> > progress... No, there may be a pnatheon of aesthetic
> > consideration involved in Ancient art, but a theortically
> > motivated "emptiness of content" is probably not among them.
> > For the tip-tp of what modernism is, you need only read
> > Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
> > Reproduction." Its the best
As much as I love Benjamin, especially this essay which I have read at least
twenty times, I have to say that his ideas about 'primitive art' were
atrocious. But his error (in my opinion) didn't weaken his essential
argument, even if it did speak of an imagined original 'ritual function' of
art. And it was precisely at the point of describing 'primitive art' as some
sort of container for 'other than art' content, i.e. religious ideology, that
I think Benjamin failed. He was just regurgitating the popular European view
of his day -- and if that view itself became his object of study, I'm sure he
would have come to a different conclusion. If Benjamin had seen Ringo Starr
in "Caveman' I'm certain he would have changed his views.
By the way, anyone interested in Benjamin's essay can get it online here:
http://post-dogmatist-arts.net/museum/collage/benjamin.htm
It's not an easy read, but well worth the effort. I like the title of that web
site: post dogmatist arts.
>
Erik Mattila
MrKurtz
>> >
>> >=== I disagree. Modernism is the point of our 40,000 year existence on
>> >the planet because......here we are. PoMo represents our attempt to
>> >replace Europe as world dominator, politically, culturally,
>> >intellectually, etc. We are still very much within the dialectics of the
>> >Modernist world in my humble opinion. A casual trip to Europe (or Asia,
>> >Africa, South America) should put PoMo into perspective. WE are in the
>> >information age, WE are the administrators of the New World Order as Bush
>> >once said not to long ago. WE are vying for domination. WE have not
>> >learned to heal.....it is not a priority.
>>
world dominator is a fine idea. I think it is the modernist
spirit which compelled colonization and western dominion.
Post-merdernity should posit an equal and opposite reaction of
sorts-- The Empire Strikes back.
But I must repeat, even though we have gotten out of the
way the strutting and posturing of disagreement without much
understanding... that applying "modernism" to all of History,
while it may provoke a few new ways of looking at ancient
history, is beside the point. It creates a similar problem that
distinguishes PM... how do you know this is no longer modernism?
Well, as the name suggests, we describe modernism and then show
how we are now different... how these things no longer apply. By
your definition of modernism ther could be no post-modernism.
I just don't see the point of applying modernity to
ancient history ecxept for shock value. There are lots of
stilted, useless old cenventions of looking at history that
"modern" attitudes can discard, and anyone is welcome to revise
histoircal methods... that's a good thing in PM...
But the idea of modernity cannot and should not apply to
ancient culture. Its apples and oranges.
History as we know it a modern phenomenon, and I mean
modern in the sense of recent, which is quite sane, I tell you
Quite sane. Voltiare was the first to assert that ideas and
facts should be the primary concern of history, instead of famous
battles and bible stories, and that was just a few hundred years
ago. In the middle ages people literally didn't distinguish
between fact and fiction when it came to history.
How is that modern?
The impulses for pre-civilized man to make art is among
the highest things we can imagine, but I think we do that basic
impulse a disservice by applying our modern dispositions to it.
--Ball
"'Till human voices wake us and we drown."
T.S. (The S is for sanity) Eliot
emat...@tomatoweb.com
p...@outrageous.net (MrKurtz) wrote:
> I'm almost afraid you're hoaxing me... you can't be to careful
> these, always needing protection of sort or another...
> If you get a hold of a respectable "dictionary of Literary
> terminology" fascinating reads in their own right, you may find
> the term "Ficcione" credited to one blind argentianian Librarian.
> It is defined as a piece of fiction in the form of a scholarly
> essay.
No, as I explained elsewhere in this thread, I actually came to believe the
Menard story as being true. What do I know? Can you imagine? It took me a
little while to digest your explanation of 'ficcione.' So I wasn't hoaxing
you at all, and if you found that in itself incredulous, you are exactly
correct. And yes, I have three or four of these diccionaries -- but as I came
to Menard through Art After Modernism, not 'Ficciones", it never occured to
me to look up the term. Mondo Bizzaro, indeed.
> I think Borges is intimately relavent to PM in my limited
> understanding becuase he takes fictionializes the academic
> project. The idea that the critical endeavor can be artistic in
> itself is near and dear to me, and if nothing else it is widely
> accepted that criticism should have a broader scope and an
> awareness of itself.
> Its funny becuase Borges is timeless. He deals with images and
> ideas as old and as universal as they come, but the way he
> engages them is unique.
> In the case if Menard, the answer is easy-- he is Simulating
> the work, and I mean the acutal intellectual labor, of Cervantes.
> It's a feast for spatial and temporal dislocation, but its not
> just a breakdown, its an attempt to make something exist in a
> whole nother context, and what that changes...
> PM Questions all. Borges collections include Ficciones and
> Labyrinths. He was very popular in the sixties though, so he's
> not PM canon, he's just... Borges
>
> --Ball
>
> "'Till human voices wake us and we drown."
> T.S. (The S is for sanity) Eliot
>
I'm looking at it this way. I have had the rare priveledge of accepting
Menard as truth. I think the story has more import then. My gullibility may
be my best asset, who knows? Anyway, thank you for your lesson on Argentinian
Spanish.
MrKurtz
>
>Thesis
>> >There is absolute truth.
>
>Antithesis
>> Absolutely not. (!)
>
>I am pointing out a strong tendancy for any statement to automatically
>carry its opposite. Which the antithetical response demonstrates.
>PoMo's cry against absolute truth asserts it.
I know that, I'm not an idiot. But my antithetical postis not
only absolute truth, in knowing something is false, but also the
validity of two opposing absolute truths, as well as some dickity
self refrence just for fun.
>
>The view that everything in the Universe including living things
>behaves entirely mechanically is mathematically equivalent to
>the view that everything in the Universe behaves as living things.
>
But if the universe contains living things, then your method of
equvalency (math) is implicitly on the side that says everything
is mechanical... The Medium is the Message.
To be honest, I am disposed to think that things mechanical are
in fact living, or are better understood when living. But I do
beleive that the yin/yang sort of scenes posits two forces, life
and death, basically working together.
What's a mind Virus?
Puss in Boots
>>>It is riding on the coat tails of relativism which is basically the doctrine
>>>that anything is as good as anything else. So a sentence from a three year
>>>old child is as much poetry as a sonnet by Shakespeare.
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>> Um, no. That's not relativism. Couldn't be: it makes an
>> absolute claim about the value of things -- "anything is as
>> good as anything else" -- and asserts in absolute terms that "a
>> sentence from a three year old child is as much poetry as a
>> sonnet by Shakespeare." I've never heard of anyone who holds a
>> position like that, so I'm inclined to think you've built a
>> strawman. But that strawman is certainly no relativist -- he's
>> not even close.
>> The most a relativist would say is that anybody's _opinion_
>> is as good as anybody else's. I'm not sure anyone does say
>> that, but even if that was just another strawman, it would be a
>> relativist one, at least. It would hold that the opinion
>> which considers the kid's poetry as good as Shakespeare's is as
>> valid as the reverse.
>> I've never met a relativist like that -- in practice, most
>> relativists merely say that while one opinion can be worth
>> more than another, for any number of different reasons, there's
>> no absolute basis for any of them. So while the case for
>> Shakespeare's superiority might be more convincing than the one
>> for the kid's, neither side can claim God's say-so.
Gwen:
> I don't know where gods come into this. Still, I do agree - my example
> was the sort of nonsense that follows from this belief.
No, it wasn't. That was part of my point. The example
you gave wasn't relativism. It said in no uncertain terms that
a three year old's sentences are as good as Shakespeare's
sonnets. That's no more relativist than the statement that
Shakespeare's poetry is better than the kids, or that the
kid's writing is better than Shakespeare's. Those propositions
differ in content, but ain't none of them relativist.
As you said, you were illustrating "the doctrine that
anything is as good as anything else," i.e., the doctrine which
says that everything is equally good or bad. That's not
relativism: it's a firm, unqualified assertion about the value
of things, much like the assertion that this thing is an
awful lot better than that one.
Relativism is something different. If you said, "Anything
is as good as anything else," a relativist would respond,
"Maybe in _your_ opinion." That's what I was trying to explain
before. Relativists are doubtful about that kind of claim.
It's the kind of thing they question. How do you know anything
is good as anything else? What makes you so sure?
Understand, that's not the same as saying you're wrong. A
relativist doesn't deny that you can make valid statements
about value. She just doesn't believe that you can claim God's
on your side.
That's where God comes into it. As far as a relativist is
concerned, "Anything is as good as anything else" is an
opinion you hold: not word from on high. You may be convinced
it's absolutely true, but from a relativist perspective it
holds as much truth as the best argument you can make: no more
and no less.
Gwen:
>>>It is the basis of
>>>political correctness and the idea of the incompetent as hero.
Moggin:
>> Then you deserve a reward.
Gwen:
> I don't understand your point here.
I was making an unkind remark. But an accurate one.
-- Moggin
emat...@tomatoweb.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
> In article <7c1sgj$5qd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, emat...@tomatoweb.com
> says...
> > My favorite is Louis Althusser's 'Ideological State Appuratus' (I think it
> > was Althusser??). But he suffered so much teasing from his peers that he
> > eventually withdrew the term--yet, I recall, there was a period when he sang
> > "Stand By Your Term" (sung to the tune of "Stand By Your Man").
> >
>
> Your point is well-taken - and yet this seems to imply more readiness
> to admit a mistake than the poster was allowing for.
>
> If you have a tape, by the way...
>
> DJ
>
I had to backtrack in this thread to understand you...
Jim:
> What is perhaps most distressing about reading postmodernist
> material is (generally) the complete failure of the writers to
> have any insights into the flaws in their own thinking and
> language processes. It is as though they have lost the capacity
> for self-reflection or willfully choose to ignore the problems
> with their own views.
Yes, my comment was made as an example of an 'insight into a flaw' of
terminology. I made the argument on this thread a few months ago that the
technical language that has evolved in theoretical discourse is the same in
other discourse, theoretical sciences included. I was jumped, that somehow
this was wrong. But I don't see why? Anyone knows the base curriculum for
any science student is learning terminology -- indeed terminology that isn't
useful on the street. Why should it be any different in theory and
philosophy. Go ask your grocer for a dozen monads, a bottle of collodial
hydrocarbons, and a large box of overdetermined isomorphisms and measure his
response.
My sense is that terminology and concepts are under constant scrutiny, and
much of the debate within the discourse is exactly about these things.
Barthes entire essay 'Teachers, Writers, Intellectuals' addresses this
problem, just to cite one example.
But then you have to place yourself in the position of an individual who has
no knowledge of the concepts and terminology to understand how this hostility
arises. It can be frustrating, especially when you go to a reputible
dictionary and you can't find a useful definition (try 'doxa' for example, as
Barthes or Lyotard may use the term, of 'diegises'). I had the experience as
a teaching assistant of participating in the problem of finding a 'jumping
off' place for teaching an undergraduate course, for example, "Introduction
to Critical Theory." CT has no entry level, unlike other social sciences.
If you start with the Frankfurt School, it assumes the student is already
familiar with a hugh body of theory and philosophy. Now couple this problem
with the fact that conceptual thinking itself, in the US, is much less
attended by our educational system than is analytic thinking, the problem
compounds. I think much of the dispargement of theory that we read in this
newsgroup comes from these sources. To counter that, which I couldn't call a
critique by the futhest stretch of my imagination, all you can do is try to
back-track down a historical corridor of thought to bring it all up to date.
A very difficult project, especially when the participants really don't want
to do that in the first place, since they are already convinced at the outset
that the effort won't produce value.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
> emat...@tomatoweb.com:
> | While searching for the latest literature on Sivapithecus (1988) I came
> | across a paper in an anthro journal that argued that paleolithic art was 'art
> | for arts sake.' I didn't have the time to read it, and I was never able to
> | American art extensively, and it is the same agrument that I would like to
> | make, against the idea that it's all spiritual (which I think Frederich
> | Docsteader believed, when he claims that hemitite was valued because it was
> | the color of blood, as opposed to the idea that red is a pretty color that
> | Indians probably liked as such, like the rest of humanity).
>
> If not, they could not have "art for art's sake"; it would
> be something else. From what little I know of tribal
> people, they don't categorize practices and objects in the
> same way we do; when we say one of their practices is
> "religion" or "magic" or "art" or whatever, it's the
> imposition of one of our categories on something which may
> be very different for them, and all the more so for those
> living tens of thousands of years ago.
> --
I don't think you need to have a concept like 'art' to engage in aesthetic
activity -- but I would guess a human group with a language that decorated
and carved had some sort of word or words for what they were doing, beyond a
generic grunt. Personally, when I look at neolithic art itself, I can't help
wondering about the people who produced it. I can't imagine a talented
individual being less that admired by his or her peers, for example. It is
definitely stylized, practiced, conventional -- all which suggests a
full-blown discourse (as well as a high attrition rate of examples).
Certainly you are right if you mean our concept of 'art.' But that concept
also won't carry that far back into European history. (and that's a debated
point in this n.g.).
There's been a lot learned about the taxonomic practices of non-western
people through emerging sciences like ethnobotony, ethnozoology, and of
course lingusitics. While there are vast differences between the ways
various cultures organize the things of the world, the idea that's coming
forward is that people have organized the world for a very long time. This
competes with an older view that saw 'primitive' man as one who sort of fused
everything together into a grand generality of life, a fused existance that
lacked differentiation. So in this art, religion, politics and so forth
would all have a kind of sameness--one thing, described with words like we
still see surviving in ethno-pop culture like 'The Way' and so forth.
It's kind of an 'ontology recapitualtes philogeny' idea. Psychology, which
shows that the early child, before ego formation, does not differentiate him/
herself from the world, is projected onto human evolution. It's no accident
that old National Geographics called Amazonian tribes "Children of the Moon.'
And the list goes on and on in this regard (I won't even get into
'colonialism'). I think those ideas are all falling apart. The older
picture of mesoamerican civilizations, for example, describe complex and
exotic civilizations organized around a unitary premise. Now that
archaeologist have, to some extent, abandoned the quest for treasure troves
and started looking at demographics, another picture emerges of cosmopolitan
cities with ethnic minorities, civil wars, social upheavals -- which
collectively describe a diversity of thought and values. Look at the
Iroquois league, for example, whose bicameral legislature is often cited as
the inspiration for the US constitution and organization of govenment. It
turns out that Europeans discovered the same institution much earlier, when
Spaniards visited the Cuna in the Darien Gap in 1540 or so. If Cuna culture
was organized around a unitary premise, that everybody did the same thing all
the time, obeyed the same taboos, followed the same value systems, adhered to
the 'Cuna way," what is the point of having a bicameral legislature? Such a
political institution has only one function, and that is to reslove conflicts
between special interests and conflicting ideologies, which in itself makes
the unitary premise idea very weak if not impossible. As far as our ideas of
'traditional art forms go,' well, if there was no innovation and experiments,
or synthesis from exotic examples, there would be no art history. And we
know that there is a history, providing we have found enough samples of art
produced by a culture over a significant time span.
The Navajo, for example, linguistically categorize the world by shapes, while
we, in our language, categorize by function. In Navajo, a hill, a turtle,
and a Volkswagon would be related on the level of the phomene or some other
unit of language measure that linguists use (I'm pretty much a lay person in
this). In Hopi the main verb tenses are something that you witnessed,
something that someone told you, or something you dreamed about. In
California Wintun there are five or six types of reality that you can talk
about in the course of using natural language. Cherokee has over a hundred
tenses for most verbs, which divides and categorizes the world into a very
fine pattern. Of course the well known Inuit example, a hundred different
nouns for types of snow. But none of these differences imply that you don't
(or can't) differentiate between making art and praying. They all provide
for concrete, rational thinking about the world, and provide for the
organizing of the world into discrete taxonomic units.
So much for my rant. It's a real advocacy I've adopted. What's really
pitiful about this whole topic is the conspicuous absence of literature about
non- western concrete thought, or maybe better, ethno-epistomology. There is
an abundance of raw material for such literature, so why isn't it there?
Peter H.M. Brooks
da_l...@alcor.concordia.ca "Ariane" writes:
>
> > Not quite. I mean universal parts of human behaviour that cross all
> > cultures and generations that are part of the essense of man, what
> > de Sade called 'Nature' and what Sociobiology calls evolved behaviour.
>
> === Sociobiology is hardly a credible resource from which to extract
> information on human behaviour. E.O. Wilson was more interested in insects
> than in humans anyway and abducting from one to the other seems (to me) to
> be little more than scientific thought-sport. In any case the theory
> falls when you consider that genotype (DNA protein sequences) cannot be
> legitimately correlated with behavioural
> phenotypes....sociobiology is pure speculative hypothesis and Nietzsche
> is more interesting so......
>
I am afraid that things have come a very, very long way since Wilson's
book! These days you are more likely to see it called 'evolutionary
psychology', but sociobiology is absolutely mainstream thinking and
is producing profound insights into human behaviour - that actually
work - with increasing frequency. Nietzche is dead.
>
> === But I agree with you on the existence of cross-cultural
> universals...laughter, maternity, war, love, beauty, etc., etc.
>
That is the main point anyway.
>
> > Most of this is fairly recent research into sociobiology - by fairly
> > recent I mean in the past 10-15 years. I can dig up some books if you
> > like.
>
> === Well suit yourself, I'm invading this thread anyway...
>
You aren't invading! Surely anybody apart from a deliberate wrecker is
welcome in a discussion? I can promise you that, if you do read up
something on the topic you will be fascinated, and learn a lot - but
it is, of course, your choice.
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Peter H.M. Brooks
scarl...@theriver.com "Kay Kane" writes:
>
> I guess I DO paint the feeling... I feel like cheerful art belongs on
> Hallmark cards.
> Kay
>
This reminds me of the discussion that I have from time to time with
my wife. She accuses me of being untidy, I point to the fact that I
can usually find what I need very quickly in the apparently unordered
piles. She doesn't see this as convincing and likes the piles to look
neat and ordered. I describe this as a difference between 'surface
neatness' and 'deep neatness'.
In the same way, I agree with your point about the triteness of most
'cheerful' art that does belong on Hallmark cards, but I would contrast
it to 'deep cheerfulness' that is find art.
Though it doesn't work in reproductions, even good ones, the original
of van Gogh's 'Potato eaters' resonates with 'deep cheerfulness' in
its calm and its tranquil acceptance of a peasant life - it is most
certainly not superficially cheerful, though!
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Peter H.M. Brooks
>
> But these things may well belong to our reptile brain, have some sort of
> evolutionary advantage, functionally atavistic and so on. I'm just
> questioning how important they would be in the context of, say, Cassrier's
> three symbolic forms, language, art, (I can't believe it, I've forgotten the
> third!).
>
There have been a few studies on symetry. The advangate given by symetry,
in the face, in particular, is that serious disease and inherited genetic
defects often result in asymetric features. Choose a mate with symetrical
features and you are going quite some way to being sure you have a healthy
one.
I think that higher order theories of art appreciation are likely to
be empirical responses to consequences of our innate behaviour. They
are likely to be correct, but, where they are less accurate in prediction,
understanding how perception (as opposed to simply seeing) works is
likely to help refine them.
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Peter H.M. Brooks
webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU "mark webber" writes:
> > There clearly are universals. (snip)
>
> This is a pretty good example of what I'm responding to. Even if there are
> universals there won't be universal agreement as to what they are.
>
This used to be the case, but as more and more study is done the facts
are becoming better known so scope for rational disagrement is reduced.
>
> And, yes, there are going to be similar (perhaps endoctrinated) responses
> among varied groups of people to various works of art. That doesn't make
> these responses absolute or universal.
>
No, there is, as I have said elsewhere, certainly a fashion in art, but,
the more 'elemental' the art, the more universal and absolute the response
is likely to be.
>
> > I wonder too. But is there anybody who does actually follow post modernism
> > in order to paint?
>
> Been to NYC lately?
>
No.
--
Peter H.M. Brooks
Dao Jones
cl...@uwinnipeg.ca says...
> > > If there
> > > were no objective way of knowing the external world, then it
> > > would seem to be _impossible_ for such correspondences to occur.
> >
> > Actually, if there was no way of knowing the external world, it would be
> > impossible to know that such correspondances did occur.
>
> Ok. But we do know that such correspondences between scientists
> do occur.
How? Since you bring up the question of the external world, let's pursue
it. How do we know it's there at all, in any way similar to how we
understand it? Where does this objective certainty come from?
DJ
gwen_...@cybergal.com
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots) wrote:
>
> That's where God comes into it. As far as a relativist is
> concerned, "Anything is as good as anything else" is an
> opinion you hold: not word from on high. You may be convinced
> it's absolutely true, but from a relativist perspective it
> holds as much truth as the best argument you can make: no more
> and no less.
>
I am not sure that this is relativism. You describe simple nihilism - which
is defined as the belief that there is no external truth.
Now it may well be that relativism is a sub-class of nihilism which
claims that one can have internal truth if one wants it as a substitute
for external truth of which the relativist is agnostic, rather than
atheistic as the true nihilist is.
Relativists that I have met don't behave like nihilists. They wish
to prescribe their relativism to other people, something that a nihilist
can't honestly do. The also wish to proscribe absolutism which a nihilist
can't do either as absolute truth is a specious a claim to the nature
of external truth as any other.
Relativists also want other people to 'respect' their own interpretation
of reality - clearly they have no respect for the absolutist position on
truth so, with no reciprocity they can't really expect respect in return.
Nihilists don't, or shouldn't care what other people think - of course they
do, which is why there are no honest human nihilists.
Gwen Jones
There is almost nothing Welsh women have not done.
Dao Jones
>
Your objectivity is a curious thing. 'Verbiage' is an emotive term. You
might wish to consider a word which does not imply 'waffle', unless, of
course, you have already come to your conclusions?
DJ
br...@wralaw.com
dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
> In article <7c21cm$9rm$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, br...@wralaw.com says...
(On 'PMs theories self-destruct)
> The interesting thing about this is that where for traditional theories
> this would be fatal, some postmodern theories actually demand that this
> should be the case. I know that's annoying and seems like a cop-out, but
> if any theory which accounts for the world has to die, then any theory
> which claims not to must be a dud... it all depends on your starting
> point. If you try to argue from the traditional dialectic, you will find
> flaws, because that isn't the arena PM plays in, as Ariane recently
> reminded me. Well, she reminded someone. It might even have been you,
> actually.
> > For Instance I can say that .... This moment is the age we live in...
> > Or we are part of the totality of History.
> Both are true. Neither is significant beyond the things we do because of
> it. But what does either term actually mean?
It's a duality, where else does time separate? The particular of a
moment or the fluctuation of history, are the most meaningful
separations.
> > The distinct time period of Modernism or whatever is brought into question
> > as is any possible distinct philosophy or for that matter seperation of
> > Quantum Mechanics and food preference.
> I can't speak for food preference. I've always been prepared to work on
> the basis that Modernity had quite firm boundaries,
Even a singularity is influenced at a distance by other events, the
class or collection of PostModernisms' separation from Modernism is
either ephemiral or of this moment or continual.
If I assert that there is no distinction between gastronomy and
Quantum theory U can not say now Is the postModern since it has
already become an antique or otherwise it is in the seemless flow
of the space-time continium. Hasn't PostModernism contradicted
it's historical context by refering to Neitsche? If we invoke
Zeno's paradox to escape -where are we?
> in as far as it is a
> concept, a construction we put upon historical events, and not a thing in
> and of itself. There were trends, there were things done, there was (and
> is) an ethos. But you can't find Modernity any more than you can find a
> the Circle or the Dog. Interestingly, you *can* find the Metre.
The dog and the circle are of the same system.
> > PMs' solutions to these dillema's are often extremely simular to
> > those used by nominal philosophies(ones that consider philosophy an
> > approximation) and even realist and absolutist philosophies.
> PM writers and thinkers in dispute with traditional theory often use that
> theory to display the failures of more traditional thought. PM
and vice versa
TT=Traditional Theory
> PM: [goes through 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' and 'Postmodern
> Condition' and 'Consequences of Modernity' and so on].
> TT: But that makes no sense!
> PM: Yes, Darling, I know. You said it, not me.
> TT: There has to be another way out of it!
> PM: If you find one, let me know. I'm going out to play Baudrillard!
> TT: Wait!...I don't understand that game!
> See?
FOAM
> > Principals of extreme skepticism or as you called it Radical Nihilism
> > are just assumed to be too weird to be true. Realist muddled nominalism,
> > is not inherently true since on an unfair playing field extremes win.
> I've never even written the words Radical Nihilism until this very
> moment. I rather distrust Nihilism, because of Nechaev.
But according to strong time symmetry you already were going to.
> > > > 4. Its claims against 'absolute truth' are made with significant
> > > > ignorance of the meaning of 'absolute truth' in logic and
> > > > the variance 'highly probable' in both induction and deduction.
> > > Many are. Some are not. You have made a paper tiger. (Bonus points to
> > > anyone who avoids use of the term 'straw man' for the duration of this
> > > debate.)
> > Straw-woman or not.
> Douze points! Ma foi!
A straw-god perhaps?
(the trancendialectic on logic deleted)
> are all different, and have different effects on our reason where they
> are accurate. Where there is contradiction, the statement must be
> regarded as unproven - but also not disproven. That's all we need to
> be uncertain, which is the whole point. The regress is the demonstration
> of the statement. This is where TT gets upset and PM goes and plays
> Baudrillard.
TT invented PM<>
> > > > 6. That failures of “modernism” do not validate PostModernity
> > > > since there is no exclusive controversy(i.e. Modernism is
> > > > true or false independently as is PostModernism)
> > > Since the two are inextricably linked, you may wish to clarify this. Or
> > > you may not.
> > It is entirely concievable that all presently defined historical
> > movements are based on philosophies that contain multiple errors
> > and contradictions. It is possible also that all will.
> That's a very interesting point, but as I am wearing my mental earmuffs I
> can't see where it ties in.
You know exactly where that fits in.
> > > > 7. Postmodernists tend to use unjustified verbal complexity
> > > > (obvious)
> > > A failing not unique to them, and in any case not one which can lead to
> > > summary rejection of the arguements presented.
> > This is of course exactly correct -that we can not disprove something
> > based on its verbal complexity. The question of debate is is the level
> > of verbal complexity justified?
> That's a question about whether PM is cogently argued by some of its
> proponents, and has no bearing on whether the ideas are any good.
The verbal complexity must be either dithyrambic +exclsv+or mystical if
not coherant. Much of PM only wears the emperors clothes.
> > > o in many cases rooted
> > > in Adornian obscurantism, which I personally dislike, but which is a
> > > theory about how to 'do' philosophy. Refute it, debate it, don't ignore
> > > it.
> > Having said nothing about Adornian obscurantism... It may be not
> > refutable. But you having said you personally dislike it I will avoid
> > it to not offend you. (I dont know Adorian Obscurantism from soap)
> I'm afraid one might say I was being Obscurantist even by mentioning it.
> And no, it probably isn't open to refutation. The idea is that by
> speaking in a convoluted manner, one forces the listener (or more often,
> the reader) to go off and research the issue. The core ideas are
> protected from ill-informed attack by a hedge of complexity.
An appeal
> Basically,
> it's a way of forcing people to think it through for themselves;
> I've
> always hated it, but having seen a couple of the arguments which take
> place occasionally here (of the 'PM is a French thing made up by
> unscientific French people to confuse us rationalists' school) I begin to
> see the appeal :) However, it has a quite good effect on the level of
> debate - if an Obscurantist really sticks to his guns, anyone arguing
> with him has to know almost all there is to know about the idea and its
> background. It avoids the 'what's this Modernity everyone's talking
> about?' moment.
Media Prank!
> Popper said 'Adorno had nothing to say, and what's worse, he said it in a
> Hegelian fashion'.
And this says nothing about the Utraviolet Catastrophe!(or the metaphoric
assertion that you still believe in the invisible)
> Rather good, that.
> > The troubles in reason and science may invalidate them. Most of
> > these troubles apply easily to PoMo. PoMo does not escape them
> > by recognizing them, as it has been estabolished that 'reason and
> > 'science' often record their own troubles and potential for error,
> > -this by definition does not independantly validate them and if it
> > did validate them it would invalidate them -get it?
> PM often does not try to escape TT's troubles. That's another thing
> which sets them off with each other. TT says 'look at these monsters I
> found in the basement' and PM immediately adopts them.
TT owns them, PM is TT, a niggard-rig.
The event-horizon between truth and catastrophic skepticism.
The Universe of knowledge has become too massive for another
heavy referent theory to produce freedom.
The fog of skepticism or truth of perception...
> 'The dialectic
> doesn't work? Great, let's lose it and do something else!'
The segmentation fault of the dialectic dumps the core of language.
> From the traditional point of view, that's irresponsible. The thing is
> that there's no reason to stop doing science. PM is looking at the world
> and seeing that there's a bunch of stuff missing, and it makes no
> difference. That's one reason why it's so hard to test. It's about what
> isn't there as much as what is.
The void is filled with force and hence not a void.
> Dao Jones
Bryn Ayers