d63 i came upon Rorty’s 'contingency, irony, and solidarity-(he coined the word -irony) in ref. to Nietzche, and Heidegger, and others. Will try to relate, am writing this in deference, to Your request, to fill into Deleuze’s vs. Rorty’s possible mirror interpretation? Probably worth to look at, -no e-book, and the text is expensive, but maybe there is something available on it.
I hope not, but if i am, well…the better to see You, dear.
In essence the mirroring here, is kind of a reverse image, between utility and pragmatism, where the only difference is where one functions on an infantile-mirror of identity-Deleuze, and the other, a more realistic(pragmatic) , natural mirror-Rorty. The undertow of moral justification, separates one from the other.
I will explain my loose associations in the former, less thought out blog, with an undifferentiated, loosely defined wordage where the term ‘schizophrenia’ may not have the negative connotations psychologically described, as in the text-Capitalism & Schizophrenia may imply. As tenuous this connection may be ascribed, into the text, it may be useful in gauging connections,in both ways:
Other than that, other loosely connected ideas, would fare no better, and a decision as to interpretation would have to be made, regarding the intent of the meaning.
This is where the above cited text becomes interesting, and i think a good starting reference point , as to how he (Rorty) came to innovate two useful concepts: irony, and hermeneutics. These play into his studies of Proust, and Nietzche.Nietzche is seen as more of a deconstructionist than Proust, and Rorty’s work is basically an attempt to deal with their (especially) Nietzhe’s resulting nihilism.
The basic tenets of irony relate to the thinking of not only Nietzsche, but to Rorty, the latter, using Nietzsche as his example in defining irony as an appropriate concept.
Again, i did some work, in response to your comment, above, that You have not read much Rorty, and since we are partners in crime in this study, i hoped it will help, or at least augment it.
There are a lot of fill ins but the two mirrors can be contrasted, vis that of Deleuze, and of Rorty, one being with a moral undertow, the other without. This is the basic difference, and Deleuze uses the infantile - identity construction for pre verbal formation, whereas Rorty’s approach is post verbal.
I hope this made more sense, in developing a more coherent set of associations between the two forms of reflection. Nietzsche’s sense of irony, as developed by Rorty, has relevance here, and it would be interesting, if we could come to some idea as to how these could hang together. (For Nietzche and others)
That ‘schizophrenia’ is used generically does not detract it’s clinical significance, and the connection is there as a way to show the tenuous dual way the mirror works one way (pragmatist/utilitarian) in the US and on the continent. That does not mean, You or I are schizophrenic. However, as Your blogs indicate, Capitalism may literally drive some people out of their mind, and be a causative agent of serious mental derangement.
Something that has been kind revolutionary for me in my recent studies of Rorty and Deleuze is their twist on the materialist position (myself having been, and still being to some extent, a property dualist (and the practical ends towards which they use it –their common ground if you will. Rorty basically dismisses the mind/body problem as a waste of time when we could focus on what has basically always determined the worth of an assertion: discourse: while Deleuze (even though he describes the human condition as a complex interactions of machines (makes no real effort (as far as I know (to make any final declarations on the existence of free will or the self.
(?:And haven’t we exerted a lot of energy on these boards on heated debates over the existence of self and free will, energy that could have been exerted on more practical matters such as how to make a better society(
As Rorty points out: nothing we could say about the mind or brain or how they accumulate knowledge could give any real clue as to how to clearly distinguish between a true or false statement in the general scheme of things. All we can truly know is what we agree on through discourse.
And in this sense, we can see the common revolutionary aspect of Rorty and Deleuze in that what they are arguing for is not a search for some ultimate truth, but an acceleration of our natural evolutionary heritage that started with simple organisms that evolved simple nervous systems that evolved into central nervous systems that eventually evolved the base of the brain that evolved into the cortex and our higher intellectual functions that, in turn, evolved into philosophy, art, and the sciences. As Rorty points out: our culture is as much a product of our evolution as we as physical beings are.
In other words, what both sought to accelerate was a kind of natural bricolage (Rorty through discourse and Deleuze through creativity (that has played a crucial role in our cultural evolution. So while the result of many materialist perspectives has been one of a metaphysical atheism in which all there is is what we can observe (nothing transcendent (the primary end of Rorty and Deleuze is self transcendence (which can translate into cultural transcendence (through engagement with the world without the burden of some epistemological system (the block in the exchanges of energy( by which all true statements must be underwritten.
And from my perspective, Rorty’s and Deleuze’s agenda is underwritten by the very bricolage that the mind/brain complex is engaging in when it dreams: a kind of mental inventory that takes pleasure in juxtaposing one mental element on the other until it finds patterns that resonates with and seduces it and that it, in turn, stores (assimilates( as a repeatable pattern that it can, in turn, use as yet another mental element that it can juxtapose with other mental elements and repeat at its pleasure.
The revolutionary and profound thing about this as concerns Rorty and Deleuze is that science has, as of late, posed the possibility that what happens during dreams serves a function in the process of brain plasticity –a concept that, as far as I know was not available to either Rorty or Deleuze. Yet both of them wanted to accelerate that very process before that process was scientifically explained.
For them, it was about evolving and understanding and the understanding that all attempts to find the ultimate truth could only serve as obstacles to that process.
Good point, and therefore Rorty goes the way of other materialists,of signifying truth in terms of statements about the truth, whereas, Deleuze deconstructs, cuts up the truth into the various parts.
“Christ! Obe… Are you schizophrenic?”
“d63 i came upon Rorty’s 'contingency, irony, and solidarity-(he coined the word -irony) in ref. to Nietzche, and Heidegger, and others….
I hope not, but if i am, well…the better to see You, dear. “
First of all, I was just fucking with the man/woman/not sure: I never really ask or assume. And I have, with a good tap of hash oil, been impressed with the poetics of this particular peer’s writing style even though I have yet to understand a lot of what they’re actually saying. And they are right in pointing to Rorty’s concept of irony in that it encourages a more human approach that gives beauty equal privilege to “The Truth” and the cold mathematics of the analytic/scientific approach we’re told will get us to it –a coldness, BTW, that not even the scientific approach always shares with its analytic cheer squad. Take, for instance, the work of Brian Greene or even Einstein.
And I see, yet again, another connection in that Rorty’s irony (especially since he associated it with Heidegger and Neitzsche (seems to work in a similar spirit of the free indirect discourse associated with Deleuze in that both embrace the literary possibilities of Philosophy. What is interesting to me is how many people (many of which I assume to be younger than me (are embracing the method despite the pressure from university and academic circles towards the marketability of the more analytic approach. To give you some examples:
“In essence the mirroring here, is kind of a reverse image, between utility and pragmatism, where the only difference is where one functions on an infantile-mirror of identity-Deleuze, and the other, a more realistic(pragmatic) , natural mirror-Rorty. The undertow of moral justification, separates one from the other. “
“America is somewhere in between
Microcosmic Vision and Microcosmic Action on the one hand and
Macrocosmic Vision and and Macrocosmic Action on the other –
Libertarianism and New Deal respectively, Hard Work free from Government (human free will?) versus Coca Cola and Damascrucaeh. Damascruciaciticy? Democrisisiphusphoracity -plutokratzi -
Pluto was never meant to be here.
That is his meaning. His course distorts the flat plane of the original planets and creates a wobble, Maybe Pluto caused the wobble in the Earths axis.”
“I see each personal ‘method’ as a particular iteration on common themes and ideas, rooted in the psychological substratum which, to the degree this substratum is not absolutely malleable with respect to those themes and ideas, is always going to be generally similar from one person to another. Applying synthetic understanding we can grasp these particular methods and observe how they are similar and dissimilar to each other, form them into larger series of objects where given that series it becomes possible to analyze, predict, and judge these methods. Of course our general simply language already has some basic conceptual divisions to acknowledge these different methods; religion, mysticism, lust, the poetic, the political, philosophy, barbarism, etc.”
Now it is kind of hard to disagree with any of these since it would take a lot of decoding to know what you were reacting against. The best you can do is read through it and react to what it is you think they are saying. And I have done so only to have them respond in the same stream of consciousness style. But at no point have I ever had them berate me for not understanding them correctly or demand that I so. And to me there is a kind of sincerity in it in that you get the feel of someone taking pleasure in the command of a particular semiotic system (with its individual set of rules and meanings ( they are immersed in much as a guitarist takes pleasure in their command of musical scales. Much like Deleuze (or even Derrida (you have to take pleasure in what you feel: their enthusiasm about what they’re doing. And you have to work from that, through repeated encounters (along with the osmosis that might result from the feel (until you get where they’re actually coming from.
And this is why I give them more credit than stuffier perspectives like this:
“I think the notion of philosophy as ‘the mirror of nature’ is a very natural assumption that extends the human default naive realism.
And I think Rorty is completely mistaken to suggest that the fact of this presupposition of perception ‘mirroring’ reality is somehow arbitrary.
Also I don’t really understand why you think the Continental philosophers require the services of us poor simps to “champion” them. Many of them are so ‘clever’ that just to understand them seems to require years of study. ( And well might one wonder whether the return would be worth the investment).
When I have at times tried to read Derrida or Lacan, for example, before fairly soon giving up in disgust I am reminded of Nietzsche’s criticism of the German Idealists that they “muddied the waters to make them appear deep”.Personally I think that clarity is a virtue in philosophy. Deleuze, Foucault and Badiou are admittedly not as guilty in this, and Meillassoux is a paragon of clarity (at least i am able to determine that I disagree with him).”
Now I am a big fan of the Nietzsche quote from Thus Spake Zarathrusta. I’m quite sure a lot of shallow poets would do so. The problem is, it is one thing to write a poet off because they happen to be obscure, and quite another to take the effort of digging deep enough to find out how shallow it actually is. And while I am a fan of that quote (and have even used against others myself (I am also a fan of another ironic quote from Barthes’ Mythologies:
“I do not understand. Therefore, you are ignorant.”
Too often, the Nietzsche quote is used as an excuse for laziness as was the case with Sokal and Brickmont when they pulled their little prank on postmodernism and celebrated their “victory” in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science. As Joe Hughes points out in his reader’s guide to Difference and Repetition: much of their argument against Deleuze was peppered with references to what they did not understand. It would be like me arguing that since I don’t understand quantum physics, it must be a sham.
Anyway, more on this quote tomorrow.
d63-
The muddy waters really become clear, once the mud settles. Something stirs things up, and for a while it just seems as if it’s a waste of time to get to the bottom of it, the very messy, but settled bottom. The identity is of issue here, that is the modicum of not only clinical schizophrenia, where there is an inference to loose writing, and it really started with Joyce, where impressions, reflect from the surface, breaking up the image into partial images, and it is the reflection of the viewer, (reflection in the sense of ‘thinking about’).
The reflections(sense data), impress the viewer, so as to reflect(think about it) The modicum lies in this double meaning, and in that sense that he was able to use the primal image, the one which have had no cognitive reference, or frame, and construct identity.
Rorty, on the other hand uses the reflection as a naturally, formative concept, and sees no necessity to differentiate the image from the concept , he does not find it useful or necessary. He has no use for ‘truth’ as a self prescribed ontology, and this is where Continental philosophy albeit, utility, is different from American pragmatism.
You do not have to dig into the ego’s problem of self valuing, for Rorty, since his starting point reflects on givens. This is why pragmatism is not reductive in that sense, Deleuze’s debt is to and the existentialists in that respect.
It’s not ironic that it was existential psychiatry, Binswanger , Laing et al, who delved into the ontological analysis of the relationship between gross econo-political schizms, as they relate to individually, reflecting cognitive content, and it is the acute analyst who can re-associate the various data fragments from their reflected sense.
You do have to dig deep between the lines, accordingly, and the depth which has a lot to uncover.
Freud could not do it, but Jung could, his archetypes transcended the imminent field.
In the gross sense the identity is caught betwixt the reflection as image and that of the concept.
I do not see a need to exclude a psychology from the philosophy, thereby moving it to the psych forum, because, was not psychology it’s self included as part of philosophy, prior to becoming a separate field?
“I think the notion of philosophy as ‘the mirror of nature’ is a very natural assumption that extends the human default naive realism.
And I think Rorty is completely mistaken to suggest that the fact of this presupposition of perception ‘mirroring’ reality is somehow arbitrary.
Also I don’t really understand why you think the Continental philosophers require the services of us poor simps to “champion” them. Many of them are so ‘clever’ that just to understand them seems to require years of study. ( And well might one wonder whether the return would be worth the investment).
When I have at times tried to read Derrida or Lacan, for example, before fairly soon giving up in disgust I am reminded of Nietzsche’s criticism of the German Idealists that they “muddied the waters to make them appear deep”.Personally I think that clarity is a virtue in philosophy. Deleuze, Foucault and Badiou are admittedly not as guilty in this, and Meillassoux is a paragon of clarity (at least i am able to determine that I disagree with him).”
Just a couple of more respectful jabs at this, then I want to balance it out with some of the common ground I have with it:
First of all I would note the contradiction involved in debasing the continental method then basically turning to it in the Nietzsche quote. Granted, some historians of it start with Husserl and work through Heidegger, Merleu Ponty, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, then Zizek who is really not as obscure as this poster describes. Still, Nietzsche (given his poetic approach (worked clearly in the continental manner. I mean he clearly didn’t work in the more sterile analytic manner. Nor did he muddy his waters much as Jaspers or Barthes (both within the tradition (didn’t either.
My second point wouldn’t have been mentioned were it not for a profound reminder from a peer:
“Not everything is meant to be deep.”
Sometimes a thing, such as a love song or poem, a work of abstract art, or a dream can be of value simply for the experience they have given us. As Archibald MacLeish points out in Ars Poetica:
A poem should not mean but be.
Beyond that, all there is is the pragmatic criteria of the discourse that goes on around it.
That said, I am not totally unsympathetic with the above. I, myself, have thrown down Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition in disgust and frustration. I was only able to get through it after several readings of Joe Hughes’ and James William’s studies that gave me enough tools to do so. And I have yet to get through The Logic of Sense and probably won’t until I engage the secondary text on it. And as far as Lacan, given the limited time I have, I don’t ever see myself approaching him through anything other than the vast secondary text available, but will still do so because a lot of the concepts I get through the secondary text are useful to me: they pass the pragmatic test of working. And I see the case being the same with Heidegger and Being and Time.
Nor am I opposed to the analytic approach. For me, it is all fuel for the fire. And I’m quite sure the analytics have a lot interesting things to say about how things hang together. And if I don’t read them as much the continentals, it is not so much a matter of indifference as my individual sensibility and what reading wish list that particular sensibility has given privilege to. The only motivation for my venom against it is its propensity towards elitism and the lack of a live and let live approach to the general discourse: its obtuse dismissal of the continental approach.
And while I have issues with the above post, I have to give them credit for admitting to what they do not know. It gets even worse when that smug dismissal consists of a claim to know exactly what the continental is talking about. I saw this recently with Raymond Tallis when he claimed, in a recent issue of Philosophy Now, that the whole of Derrida’s philosophy broke down to the distinction between reality and the language we use to describe it. “Nothing to get terribly excited about,” as he summed it up. Really? Thousands of pages written on what Derrida actually meant (by people every bit as educated as Tallis (wasted on what could be summed up in so few words?
Not everything is meant to be deep, right, but depth is not intended. It is not a reduction, as laid out eidetically, by Husserl as an inducement, or a willful intent, to forward a program. It is ‘there’ , where? ; and if you dare to look into it , it will stare back at you, ; not as a retort, a sought after justification, as to it’s content. It is there simply and formally, because it is there. If it’s a staring down, into the cave, then you are likely to fall, to fail, since the cave is where it is. You can also look up or away from it, so the transcendental be humbled into an immanent existence, and the depth , as it were disappears, but then, you cannot re-capture it. The main proponent of this idea is Proust.
So there is no contest, and it does not dissolve into the issue of value, or what’s it worth, or is it worth pursuing, - because that question ties in with the paradox of what comes first, the existenz or, the essential element which postsribed it, strictly a product of formal arrangements and perceptions thereof.
More likely, questions of focus, of where to look, that satisfies the conditional qualifier of it’s reason d’etra. The unity sought after, is redeemable up to t’s probable limit, but as has been beat to a pulp, that limit escapes at the ever vanishing horizon of sensibility. Ultimately, it’s not what we can apprehend, but what we can sense. And that sense, is inherent in the unity, the commonness of what is inherent in the common sense of intelligibility. That is Rorty’s mirror, reflecting exactly what you are implying: It’s not an attack on Continental philosophy, but a shift in focus to common sense.
Is this satisfactory as a solution or even as a reply? Probably not, but unity has been approached from the point of view of synthesizing both elements, and the question of which focii would be most appropriate, is i am afraid more a question of who proposes it, and why, which are of secondary importance.
The propositions themselves are primary within their own structure, regardless of whether they are understood, or not, regardless of the fields of association. Communication fails at certain levels is not the fault of the communication, but the transcription.
If a computer were programmed to write a totally disassociated narrative, it would fail, because there could occur a re-association of propositions, from the available memory, to establish a meaning to it. The question of whether that particular interpretation was the intended one, would seem more likely be the one Rorty would shift focus away from. That is pragmatism and the only qualifier is, it the application works or not. If it works, than it can adapt to any specific application, and the secondary task of finding out whether it was the intended one , or not, becomes a further effort of remixing other possible re-assembliges. Usually the one which works best, is the key to this type of program.
d63
we too have an ironically different representation of pretty much the same narrative, and another mirror in the mirror here. Your approach is pretty much teleological, outside in, whereas i the opposite. The irony is, that Rorty’s irony is that narrative. Therefore it’s cyclically pathetic, that content and pro-forma serve as outlines, rather than efforts to dwelve into intent and outcome of the difference.
Inferences are just that, we can never be sure what was intended by the effect the French symbolists have, and but the totally reduced intention can be evaluated by only one criteria----good/bad, and it seems, that that’s the very minimum, once that’s established, everything falls into place.
Indifference, is just as important, it serves to create space, aesthetic distance, to from perspective, and interpret the outline of the object within that frame. (of reference)
ref: Rorty: Ironism as theory , Harvard ed. ‘self creation and affiliation’
“I share your frustrations with the continental dark arts. Parts are like poetry that might be better understood by not trying so hard but allowing ideas and impressions to flow into conscious thought.”
The best advice I got on this was on an interview concerning short fiction in which the guest described as a kind of meditation. What is being suggested here is that work in the spirit described by Zen Buddhism as engaging in an activity with no expectation of results. And that is the manner in which I tend to work with philosophy. Pretty much every day I do the same the same thing: read through about 20 pages of a book in the same way I would a popular novel, quite often at the risk of either vaguely understanding what I’m reading or not understanding anything at all while my mind wanders on to other things, then go to the bar where I go back to a previous point, read slower, and take notes which I will often use when I come back home and get on here. And it seems to work as well as I could hope it to. But to fully understand what I am getting at, I would also bring in a quote by Keats:
“Poetry is an axe by which we penetrate the frozen sea of knowledge.”
The point here is that even though poetry does not always offer up its benefits (its meaning (in any immediate sense, it can, if we stick with it, take us places we may have never gotten to without it. It is as has been pointed out to me elsewhere: revelation is a kind of spontaneous overflow of experience; therefore, the more experience we have, the more likely we are to experience revelation; therefore poetry ,being a kind of concentrated experience, can make us more open to revelation. And I think the same can be said of the other arts as well as philosophy: that which lies in the no-man’s land between science and literature. Oblique approaches to philosophy (such as that of the French and free indirect discourse (if we approach it in the spirit you describe (can only be an extension of that understanding.
“[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:] We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. - Niels Bohr”
Was it Bohr that really liked American western novels and actually made an attempt at it themselves? It was some quantum physicist, so regardless it goes to the point of how actual scientists are more open to a creative approach to understanding than a lot of its philosophical/analytic champions (most notably the TlBs (the troll-like behaviors we tend to encounter on these boards who go around using terms “objectivity” and “the scientific method” like a badge of authority (would give it credit for. I do know that Einstein was very explicit on this point.
“The quote about poetry is key here. The french post-heideggerian obscurity is connected to heidegger’s conclusion, for several reasons, that only a poetic language can talk meaningfully about being. Badiou, who rejects this conclusion, and finds a different solution, speaks very clearly.”
You I had to save till the last because your grasp of the history involved here (your historicism and hermeneutic (is really impressive. And had I started with you, it would likely be at the neglect of the previous posts. This may actually take me into tomorrow. Anyway:
I would also note, in reference to the above, the French sensibility (the French having a noble and highly evolved tradition of dissent (that sees clarity as a form of tyranny: a manner of imposing meaning onto the reader. We can see this in Roland Barthes’ privilege given to writerly text (that which leaves it to the reader to extract their own meaning (over readerly text (that which requires that the reader accept the meaning of the author. The underlying concern at work here was articulated by Layotard in the appendix to The Post Modern Condition in which he points to the terroristic potential of the human gravitation towards the accessible and easily communicated. And we don’t have to dig that deep into the hegemony of tyrannical belief systems (The Nazis, Communist Russia, Republicans and pro-Capitalists, etc. (to understand the role that simplistic nomenclature (sound bites and fixed systems of meaning (can play in them.
And note before I go (I ran out my window and will get back to this tomorrow (that Layotard saw the avant garde as the antidote to this very real danger –a danger I have been short on examples here but hope to get to on later postcards. And it is avant garde approaches to philosophy that we are defending here.
agreed, but as that postmodern trend shifted focus to the extreme and the absurd,(now dated);
where to from here?; associations have been cut up, beyond the absurd? My guess is, that is why re-presentation turned to the plastic arts, the television, the film, which can be literally cut, and re-assembled.
The shift to optical representational art, would it seem to favor painting over any other, namely modern abstract expressionism and three dimensional installations, but the problem here is, mass media is stuck on real and meaningful images.
If visual fine art is what can be accepted as a forecast of coming attraction, virtual reality doesn’t seem as a very attractive common vernacular.
“ The french post-heideggerian obscurity is connected to heidegger’s conclusion, for several reasons, that only a poetic language can talk meaningfully about being. “
Not to mention that poetry is the primary means by which language (being that which always falls short of the reality it is trying to describe (attempts to overcome its limitations in the face of reality (i.e. : Being (or being if you will.
We can also attach this to Lacan’s distinction between the symbolic order and the real: that which overflows the symbolic order and seeks (radiates towards (the pre-symbolic of the imaginary. Having come to this point: my addiction to philosophy: from the starting point of a musician, I can only see this as complimentary to my main goal as an artist: depth, intensity, and lightness of touch. John Lithgow, in an interview I once saw, described it in terms of ballet with a French term that meant literally lifting one’s self into thin air. Art, poetry, philosophy (name your poison (is always a matter of trying to pull some aspect of the real into the symbolic order.
“Badiou, who rejects this conclusion, and finds a different solution, speaks very clearly.”
Let’s do a little self scrutiny and truth telling here: isn’t there the possibility that the same effects could be achieved through clear exposition? All I’m saying is that it might be that one could arrive at the same transcendent effect and conclusion through a step by step and clearly stated process.
At the same time, isn’t there value in asserting the value of philosophy as a form of art (a form of beauty (that leans towards the more poetic side of that no-man’s land between science and literature?
As Camus points out: all arguments for beauty are, ultimately, arguments for freedom. And I believe the reverse to be true: that all arguments for freedom are, ultimately, arguments for beauty. Why should a philosophy that aims for “the truth” (that is given how many tyrannies have propped themselves up on the so called “Truth” (be given privilege over a philosophy that just wants to be beautiful?
“Deleuze’s language is also connected to his commitment to immanence. A language that only references to something outside itself is bound to transcendence. For him language must work performatively, not only refer to but be experienced.”
Yes: language must be a machine that interacts with the machine at work between the body and its environment and the self machine that emerges between them. Once again:
depth, intensity, and lightness of touch
Transcendence, as you point out, is like a power hungry referee that stands outside of that dynamic and attempts to control it.
Yes, I appreciate Lacan’s distinction, and that the overflow gravitates toward the imaginary, as different from that of clarity as a step by step process, however i think here , the point not being appreciated by positivists, is that art is by nature is built up on the notion of imagination, of filling in the missed points, which have become over-aboundedly (or should have) clear, by now.(the unusual spelling is mine, since i could not come up with anything else to describe what i meant to say.
“As Rorty points out: nothing we could say about the mind or brain or how they accumulate knowledge could give any real clue as to how to clearly distinguish between a true or false statement in the general scheme of things. All we can truly know is what we agree on through discourse.”
“I’m not getting this…is not anything “we could say about the mind or brain” just one part of “what we agree on through discourse”?”
I think you’re a little off course. But that may be as much (if not more so (my fault than yours. As Voltaire says: if you want to talk to me, define your terms. And sometimes defining our terms, given the linear and, consequently, transitory nature of language as well as the temporal (that which only serves as a momentary stay against confusion (character of meaning, consists of elaborating on what we have said:
To approach it from another angle, if you look at what logic actually does, all you really see are descriptions of how it is the mind/brain actually works at bottom. If I say: A is B, B is C, therefore: A is C: all I am really describing (as true as this statement might seem (is how the mind/brain puts things together. And in that sense, it serves the same pleasure that a mathematician might experience from seeing how numbers work together. And in this sense, what we are mainly working with are the underlying structures of the brain that, in turn, influence how we think in terms described by both Chomsky and Pinker. And they are, in this sense, evolutionary legacies of how the mind/brain complex has evolved in the face of its changing environment.
However, what it cannot do is tell us much about the truth value of statements we make about the complex environments the mind/brain complex deals with in the general scheme of things. If it does, it is only to the extent of a kind operationalism that says a healthy respect for the analytic/logical approach will necessarily equip us with the tools to move from statements about simple systems, such as 1+1=2, to the more complex of how to best organize society –such as Rand attempted to do with objectivism. At this point, no assertion about how the mind/brain complex works can tell us anything about the truth value of assertions about how reality works. That must be left up to the only criteria left to us: discourse and what comes out in the wash.
That said, I agree with you when you say:
“It seems to me that to expect knowledge about the physical workings of the brain to enable distinctions between true and false statements to be made would be to expect the impossible based on a conflation of two discourses; the discourse of causes and the discourse of reasons.
So, we can say we believe things because of neural activity and this might be elaborated in the form of a description of a succession of neural processes resulting in a specific active neural network correlated with ‘holding a belief’. This might tell us how we came to hold a belief, but it cannot tell us why we hold that belief.
To understand why we hold beliefs we need to understand the reasons that we hold them, not the causes.”
I mean you’re pretty much saying it for me. I almost have to wonder, given the difficulties I’m still having with the more technical aspects of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (I mainly take to the more social/political aspects (if there isn’t something in there that approaches the very point you are making. You may be doing a better job of that than I am.
“There is a parallel with contemporary jazz. There is a certain amount of education and familiarity with the tradition before it becomes accessible, one needs to understand the language. But even then one might wonder whether the return was worth the investment. And as with modern jazz, sometimes I get the sense that they are displaying their chops, their technical prowess. It often seems that many jazz musicians today play for other jazz musicians rather than a general audience, for those who appreciate their technical skills and command of theory. The same might be said of many contemporary philosophers. I don’t think this last remark holds only for Continental philosophers.
Those who are trained in Analytic philosophy may feel out to sea when reading Continental philosophy, but the same may be true of those who are trained in Continental philosophy when they read Analytic philosophy.”
Throughout the book (PMN (Rorty, copping off Wittgenstein, refers to them as different language games. In fact, one of his main arguments is that we cannot hope to find some kind of meta-language game that will bring all the various language games into a commensurable and coherent whole. This is why Hermeneutics (the Deleuzian creation of and play with concepts (the free play between different language games (is offered as a useful tool in the philosopher’s toolbox: the pragmatic truth test (that which just works (along with the truth tests of correspondence and coherence.
Anyway, just finished with Rorty’s PMN and am preparing to move on to Zizek. And I still regret not having gotten a little deeper into the more technical aspects of it (the critical analyses of the mind/body problem –along with not getting a chance to respond to a lot of the excellent feedback I’ve gotten on this. I can only summarize it, as I understand it now, as an issue of the mind/body division having led to a hierarchal approach to understanding rooted in Plato’s division of society based on Mind, Emotion, and Body. Hopefully: next time.
That said, one thing I have arrived at a possible answer to a question that has haunted philosophy since its beginning: that of what philosophy is. And I think it works within the Rortian and pragmatic in being practical (the 2 terms being different but closely connected (while alleviating a lot of the contention that tends to come out of this issue.
I would eliminate all the idealistic hubris we tend to naturally surround it with (out of a need to justify it (and simply describe it as an act in which we read the work of other established philosophers and form our own perspectives based on those readings (in discourse with.
This, I think, might solve several problems. For one, it addresses an issue that emerged in a conversation with a friend when I told him I was reading philosophy. He responded by asserting that the cool thing about it was that anyone could have a philosophy. The problem for me with this was that there is a big difference between having a philosophy and actually engaging in philosophy which is a matter of reading and studying the works of those who have had an impact in the discipline. And to see how this bleeds into other disciplines, I have had a similar experience with people who, when I told them I have written poetry, considered themselves poets without having any idea of what was actually going on or had gone on in the field of poetry.
And while this might please the elitists among us, it also pre-empts a problem created by the elitists themselves: the smug dismissal of other approaches to philosophy that do not fit into their particular criteria based on their dogmatic assumptions about what constitutes philosophy. For example: I harp, yet again, on the intellectual arrogance of many neo-classicists and analytics and their smug dismissal of more continental approaches as can be seen in the prudishness of Raymond Tallis and Sealre’s assertion that Derrida was for those people who knew nothing about philosophy or even Hawking’s assertion that physics would make philosophy obsolete.
The danger of the latter (and to me this is the most important contribution (that is as check and balance (that the pragmatic approach has to offer (is that it assumes some kind of corporate ladder that we can climb (that which starts with the personal, works through the social, then can claim the authority of the god’s-eye perspective of the Academic (is that the elitism and reinforcement of the powers that be (corporate sponsorship (tend to put it in the position of lip service to the powers that be: little more than state philosophy. Those who lean towards the science side of that no-man’s land between science and literature too often tend to follow the money and the power that comes with it. And too often, it allows them to think they have the authority to tell the unwashed (the un-properly-schooled (masses what their reality is.
“It only describes the underlying structures by which we might understand our reality.”
“Is this what you got form your reading of Rorty? If so, slow down. According to Rorty there is no logical structure underlying the world or structuring our attempt to understand it. That is the priory point of the book.
You can read philosophy any way you want but it is not about rushing through difficult and dense texts in order to put notches on your belt and drop names.The dilettante can read philosophy but that does not make him a philosopher.”
First of all, I’m really not interested in being a philosopher. I’m more interested in being a writer who happens to read a lot of philosophy and likes writing about his experiences with it. Perhaps if you had looked a little more into what it was I was actually doing (for instance: my description of what I was doing as a kind of postcard (you might have avoided the utterly despicable and misguided representation you presented here. But the ignorance and pretentiousness of it runs deeper:
“You can read philosophy any way you want but it is not about rushing through difficult and dense texts in order to put notches on your belt and drop names.”
If you had been as interested in what I actually said rather than snubbing down your nose and presenting yourself as some kind of wannabe guru, you might have noticed that part of my process is going back to an earlier part of the book and reading it slower and taking notes. But then you really didn’t care about what I was doing as much you were establishing your status in the pissing contest you seem to think philosophical discourse consists of. You might have, for instance, noted the common ground between my point about logic:
“It only describes the underlying structures by which we MIGHT [uppercase added] understand our reality.”
and your point:
“According to Rorty there is no logical structure underlying the world or structuring our attempt to understand it. That is the priory point of the book.”
Allow me to post another quote from my text:
“However, what it cannot do is tell us much about the truth value of statements we make about the complex environments the mind/brain complex deals with in the general scheme of things. If it does, it is only to the extent of a kind operationalism that says a healthy respect for the analytic/logical approach will necessarily equip us with the tools to move from statements about simple systems, such as 1+1=2, to the more complex of how to best organize society –such as Rand attempted to do with objectivism. At this point, no assertion about how the mind/brain complex works can tell us anything about the truth value of assertions about how reality works. That must be left up to the only criteria left to us: discourse and what comes out in the wash.”
So what exactly is it that you are telling me that I didn’t already know? That I failed to get because of my inferior method? You basically cherry-picked for a gotcha moment, brother.
And while being a dilettante, dropping names and putting notches in my belt, may not make me a philosopher (which I really don’t want to be anyway, neither does resorting to clichés (socially programmed responses to socially programmed clues (such as “name-dropping”, “putting notches in one’s belt”, or “dilettante” :the equivalent of big word dropping: a little like saying “raison de etre” when one could just as easily say “reason to be”. Nor does cherry-picking for gotcha moments.
But the most satisfying aspect of this for me is the irony of you, given your obvious embrace of a hierarchal approach to understanding, being the primary target of philosophers like Rorty and Deleuze (and please excuse the name-dropping (and acting like you are some kind of expert that is going to set me straight.
That said, Fooloso4, the main problem for me is that you seem too interested in heckling me than actually adding anything productive to my process. And I thought this board was working to avoid that kind of thing. So I’m going to politely ask you to not post on anything I am doing because, for one, it can only go bad and usually ends up with me getting kicked off, and, for another, I really don’t care about anything you have to say. Outside of a social phenomenon (that of the TlB (Troll-like Behavior (that I can study, you clearly have nothing to contribute to my process in any respectable sense of discourse.
I was hoping to get to a postcard on my readings of and about Zizek, but a couple of issues have emerged concerning my method that I want to address. And while I try to make sure that a particular postcard is relevant to the board before I post it (I don’t, for instance, want to be posting some random thought on a Deleuze board that has nothing to do with Deleuze (I consider this a little universal in that it applies to the 3 main FaceBook boards I am currently working with (Rorty (Pragmatism, Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri, and Zizek: the three philosophers that I’m certain will be at the backbone of my process in the little productive time I have left.
And before I get to the first point here, I should also point out this individual has proven them self a little more reasonable than the previous post I responded to and I will try to do this with a little less venom than my previous response to them. Anyway:
“My advice to stop rushing from text to text was sincere. To use your postcard analogy, it is like going from country to country spending an hour or so, dashing off a postcard and rushing on to the next country. “
While I empathize with this point, I think it misrepresents what I have been doing. Granted, my approach has been a little rhizomatic in that I don’t commit to years of study on one philosopher so as to become an expert on them. Once again, I really have no designs on being thought of as a philosopher in that capacity. I am far more comfortable with being a writer who happens to be reading a lot of philosophy and likes writing about the experience. And up till recently, I have been organizing my reading into about 6 to 800 pages on a particular subject or writer which I limit by starting my day by reading the book section by section then going to the “library”, getting a mini of beer and a shot of Jager/Rumple Minz, and going back to a previous point and reading more slowly and taking notes (along with reading the footnotes if so inspired (and coming back home to write around 500 words (usually based on those notes…. Hence, what you see me do every day on here. It’s the only routine (my Einstein’s wardrobe (that makes sense to me given the limited amount of productive years I have left and the enormous reading wish-list I have built.
And while I may bounce around; I also always bounce back. I have books I have gone through several times and hope to go back to several times more. And I do so with the expectation that I will never likely become an expert on any one of them. The thing is: this poses no problem for me since what it ultimately comes down to for me is what my mind can do in the point A to point B it has. The books I read, at best, are supplementary to that process.
And excuse the perhaps vulgar indulgence in semantic play (I just came up with this perhaps placeholder today (but I like to think of it as a relationship hermeneutics based on the assumption that all relationships are a process of turning content into form via form. We do as much with people we come to know and love. And we do it with philosophical text in that we start with what immediately presents itself to us and keep returning to it until what is hidden from us (the content (becomes more clear to us (becomes form (and transforms the thing itself and transforms our understanding in the process. But what it never is (or involves (is knowing the thing fully.
And speaking of which, a respected peer, with whom I am gratefully engaged in a relationship hermeneutic, brought up another legitimate concern/complaint which inspired me to add yet another technique to my bag of tricks. I tend to cross pollinate between the different boards I am engaging with: post dialogues from other boards on to other boards with no reference to who is saying what. But more importantly, as my peer pointed out, this can lead to confusion in that it fails to offer the context in which the dialogue is working in. Therefore, the least I can do is offer a link (a footnote (that will allow the reader to go deeper into it if they want to: to offer a 3rd dimension to the 1 to 2 dimensional experience of the postcard. Not only does it address my peer’s point (thanks again, Greg! (I think it can only accelerate the momentum and magic of discourse: that which gets us beyond ourselves: what we’re actually here for in the first place.
I was hoping to get to a postcard on my readings of and about Zizek, but a couple of issues have emerged concerning my method that I want to address. And while I try to make sure that a particular postcard is relevant to the board before I post it (I don’t, for instance, want to be posting some random thought on a Deleuze board that has nothing to do with Deleuze (I consider this a little universal in that it applies to the 3 main FaceBook boards I am currently working with (Rorty (Pragmatism, Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri, and Zizek: the three philosophers that I’m certain will be at the backbone of my process in the little productive time I have left.
And before I get to the first point here, I should also point out this individual has proven them self a little more reasonable than the previous post I responded to and I will try to do this with a little less venom than my previous response to them. Anyway:
“My advice to stop rushing from text to text was sincere. To use your postcard analogy, it is like going from country to country spending an hour or so, dashing off a postcard and rushing on to the next country. “
While I empathize with this point, I think it misrepresents what I have been doing. Granted, my approach has been a little rhizomatic in that I don’t commit to years of study on one philosopher so as to become an expert on them. Once again, I really have no designs on being thought of as a philosopher in that capacity. I am far more comfortable with being a writer who happens to be reading a lot of philosophy and likes writing about the experience. And up till recently, I have been organizing my reading into about 6 to 800 pages on a particular subject or writer which I limit by starting my day by reading the book section by section then going to the “library”, getting a mini of beer and a shot of Jager/Rumple Minz, and going back to a previous point and reading more slowly and taking notes (along with reading the footnotes if so inspired (and coming back home to write around 500 words (usually based on those notes…. Hence, what you see me do every day on here. It’s the only routine (my Einstein’s wardrobe (that makes sense to me given the limited amount of productive years I have left and the enormous reading wish-list I have built.
And while I may bounce around; I also always bounce back. I have books I have gone through several times and hope to go back to several times more. And I do so with the expectation that I will never likely become an expert on any one of them. The thing is: this poses no problem for me since what it ultimately comes down to for me is what my mind can do in the point A to point B it has. The books I read, at best, are supplementary to that process.
And excuse the perhaps vulgar indulgence in semantic play (I just came up with this perhaps placeholder today (but I like to think of it as a relationship hermeneutics based on the assumption that all relationships are a process of turning content into form via form. We do as much with people we come to know and love. And we do it with philosophical text in that we start with what immediately presents itself to us and keep returning to it until what is hidden from us (the content (becomes more clear to us (becomes form (and transforms the thing itself and transforms our understanding in the process. But what it never is (or involves (is knowing the thing fully.
And speaking of which, a respected peer, with whom I am gratefully engaged in a relationship hermeneutic, brought up another legitimate concern/complaint which inspired me to add yet another technique to my bag of tricks. I tend to cross pollinate between the different boards I am engaging with: post dialogues from other boards on to other boards with no reference to who is saying what. But more importantly, as my peer pointed out, this can lead to confusion in that it fails to offer the context in which the dialogue is working in. Therefore, the least I can do is offer a link (a footnote (that will allow the reader to go deeper into it if they want to: to offer a 3rd dimension to the 1 to 2 dimensional experience of the postcard. Not only does it address my peer’s point (thanks again, Greg! (I think it can only accelerate the momentum and magic of discourse: that which gets us beyond ourselves: what we’re actually here for in the first place.
“….and I would hope if he were alive today, would applaud today’s co-mingling of the Humanities and the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Sciences today, and would agree with me on that it can only be a synergy of intellectual activity.”
For me, Anthony, you’re kind of hitting the nail on the head with the term synergy, and in a way that refers not just to Rorty, but Deleuze as well –and perhaps the continental method as a whole. On top of that, it gives us a little more shine and clarity on how misguided Haack’s criticism (as well as those who share her sentiment: and it is a sentiment (is in its manipulative tunnel vision and obvious propensity towards confirmation bias.
What Haack focuses on is Rorty’s method of putting into question all previous claims (that is throughout the history of philosophy (to having found “The Truth”. And Rorty does so by pointing out the role that the notion of mind and language as mirror that can perfectly reflect reality if it is tweaked just right. And what he is mainly opposed to is the hierarchal approach of thinking one can find some all purpose epistemological system that will underwrite all true assertions while filtering out all false ones….
(And we can see as much in Deleuze’s rebellion against Representation: the notion that the mind can somehow perfectly represent reality when all it is really doing is interacting with it….
(And where Haack goes wrong is gerrymandering Rorty’s method with his agenda and, thereby, completely misrepresenting the agenda part. As Adrian points out:
“… It seems that every accusation (~‘Rorty wishes to see philosophy and reason end’~) that she makes….”
What we should first note here is the use of the term “reason” as a kind of buzzword: doxa: an appeal to a socially programmed response to a socially programmed cue. I mean: My God!!! How can any philosopher be opposed to “Reason”?
The problem is Haack, in her dogmatic glee, completely overlooked Rorty’s agenda (as well as that of Deleuze who has suffered similar attacks: Sokal, for instance (which was pretty much what Anthony rightly points out: synergy.
To put Rorty in Deleuzian terms (and their common agenda: the point (the one Haack completely missed (is to tear down the blockages (the pockets of fascism (to the flows of energy that occur between the intellectually and creatively curious: that which assures our evolution as an intellectual species.
As far as I’m concerned, it is all fuel for the fire: in both a positive and a negative sense: such as that of Haack on me right now. Even the analytic method, as much as I bitch about it as an ideology, clearly has value. And if I never get to some of its hardcore practitioners such as Ayers or Putman, it will only be because of a lack of time. I only take issue with it when it smugly dismisses other more continental approaches. And when I’m hating on them, it’s pretty much like Bill Maher would say about the republicans:
“I only kid the analytics.”
“I always liked Rorty’s description of ‘knowledge’ as a widening on a horizontal plane rather than a vertical (hierarchical) plane. Always stuck with me as a great image. “
A jam, I think, is the ultimate expression of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition in that in order for it to work we have to bounce off the other by repeating what we know (what we are comfortable with (in the hope that the momentum (via the bounce (that can escalate between bodies in motion can push us beyond ourselves: turn that repetition into something different.
And this, Adrian, offers me an opportunity to bring out an old riff (to me: an oldy but a goody (that I’ve likely repeated a thousand times by now: something that appears to satisfy the pragmatic truth test in that it keeps working.
That said, my take on your point, concerning the horizontal, goes to the 3 main forms of input we work with in order to achieve the output that we, as the intellectually and creatively curious, share as a common goal (our reason to be: the personal/anecdotal, the social, and the academic or god’s eye view.
The personal/anecdotal, of course, is where we always start. We are born into a world that gives us experiences (whether we want them or not (that we have to articulate in order to deal with them. This is our evolutionary inheritance in that our brains have evolved into what allows us to do this out of a need to adapt to its physical being to its physical environment in order to survive.
The social can be equated with Lacan’s Symbolic Order in that it is a product of language and a means of getting information about our environment via what others tell us. And along with the input we get from our conversations with the others in our environment, we can associate this with the info we get from newspapers and artists of all mediums. In fact, what we are engaged in on the boards is centered on the social: the jam.
The academic/god’s eye view, of course, is the product of having developed the technology (and I want you to retain the term “technology” in that it is important to the point (to interrogate reality in ways that neither the personal/anecdotal or the social can.
Now it would seem perfectly natural to assume that the relationship between the 3 would be a vertical/hierarchal one in that it could be seen as some kind of corporate ladder (“corporate” being another term I want you to retain (in which one starts with their day to day experiences and works their way through the social to reach the ivory tower of the god’s eye view of the academic where one has earned the right and authority to proclaim judgment on those who have not “made the climb”.
And setting aside the stench of Capitalist values (the corporate ladder (involved in this vertical perspective, we who work from a more horizontal perspective can see a blindspot in the vertical perspective in that it fails to recognize the overlap at work: that which suggests a more horizontal “expansive” approach. For instance, while we can mainly attribute the arts to the social (along with the field of journalism (we must also note the role the academic god’s eye perspective plays in it while it must also appeal to the personal in order to work. And what good would any academics be if they didn’t trickle down (a concept I hate to use (to common everyday experience?
But more than that, taking the horizontal perspective somehow assumes that once one has reached the height of the god’s eye view, they have somehow freed themselves of their personal disposition. But this is delusional in that anyone who achieves the academic level cannot do so without carrying with them their personal disposition. Their so-called god’s eye view must always be rooted in their personal disposition. There is simply no way around that.