A debate for framing debate

Back in 1971 Foucault and Chomsky got together for a debate. The debate, in and of itself, is interesting, as one might guess from the parties involved. I have also loved to go through the debate with people in order to clarify positions relative to the stances expressed in the debate.

A transcript of the debate is available here: http://criminyjicket.tripod.com/chomfouc.html

One would probably guess that i would generally agree with Chomsky and disagree with Foucault, but that often turns out not to be the case. (That will become more apparent in future posts ... this is a many part project ... it is a fairly lengthy debate.) Chomsky's focus on the creativity of the individual agent is where he and i go astray. My focus on the flows of scientific logic (and history) punctuated here and there but rarely by great individuals, often puts my thoughts more in-line with (at least my interpretation of) Foucault's thought process.


more to follow ...

away

(suddenly ... trapped in military history readings. Unable to write philosophy. I will be back soon.)
Keegan's "Intelligence in War" and a breakdown of the Iraq insurgency(ies) current history. I was hoping for a little more from Keegan, but it is solid ... and the latter is a breakdown that is just hard to get from "either side" ... what an excellent intelligence officer would be telling his commander about the situation on the ground "over there".

And yes ... i am one of them, at least, was ... Captain, Military Intelligence, Iowa Army National Guard, S-2 for an Air Assault Battalion. I left the army went i went to Boston (Tufts U.) in 1999.

The Age of Art as we know it

In Philosophy of Science we the beginning of modern physics is generally dated by the work of Newton. There were profound changes in how physics was done during this time (late 17th century to early 18th century). Physics as we know it started somewhere between the early 1600s and 1700s.

Now certainly the scientists (natural philosophers) did work in these fields before this time, in fact back to the beginning of our human writings about the world. But reading the works of Kepler andDescartes is very different from reading Newton. There is no one day that it happened, one can see the progress in Kepler and Gallileo and Mersenne and Gassendi, but somewhere in there the ideas shifted, Newton mastered them and explicated them, and the world of physics followed suite. By about 2 generations after Newton the battles were all but over.

I see a similar beginning to art, around the time of the Enlightement and the old masters of Italy. Sure, there was work done before then that shares many of the same physical properties of art ... but the relational properties: of artist-to-art, artist-to-society, art-object-to-society and the like, these changed drastically during this time. It was the beginning of art as we know it.

Both art and physics also went through transformations in the early 20th century. With revolution of physical relativism (Einstein's theories), the way we think about science, the fact that we think about scientific truths within a framework, that was a huge change ... though the science of today still "looks like" the science of the late 19th century.

Art had a revolution too, and related. Art also became aware of its frameworking ... of the media itself of which the art objects were made.

In both cases the old form did not go away. The physics taught in highschool is still Newtonian, as the physics useful in day-to-day life still resides within this framework. In art, too, the common living room picture stayed fairly solid throughout the 20th century ... A. Adams, Painter of Light, the nature photos and paintings. But the art of consequence to the art class, and to the art educated layman, was different ... as above ... often deal with the content of the media itself rather than the representation (Aristotle's "mirror of the world" or "mimicing the world" notions).

[Oddly? ... physicists don't show a disgust for people who declare they have a 'fast car' that can hit 170 mph the way that artists show disgust a having an Ansel Adams photo over the fireplace ... though i guess the new Rothko-esque painting genre to match interior design work might have a similar quality.]

My instinct, then, is to go back and study, historically, the period leading up to and then through the old masters ... and then maybe to rationally reconstruct that era(s) as well ... to see what can be learned of the then, to see what might be valuable now.

{For those familiar with A. Danto, i think his influence on my thinking is probably apparent in this and the last post ... and his way of moving from talking about art to science to ethics using the same tools ... that comes from him and also from N. Goodman. ... just to site my sources, i claim no original work here.}

And apparently today, no conclusions are claimed either.

Jnana yoga

Another perspective on rational reconstruction ... jnana yoga.

I have always been much interested in religions. One of my favorites, intellectually, is the Hindu path called jnana yoga ... the way to god through knowledge. I would describe this path as the way to god through intellectual dettachment, where the 'higher order' brain processes try to stay outside (and 'look down in on') the being 'me' moving through the world. Perhaps ... one thinks of oneself like Tolstoy views his "War and Peace" characters, little boats of consciouness amid oceans of forces at play (albeit without the 'benevolent' one overseeing the outplaying).

If one looks down in on one's animal and physical being from somewhere else, then one too is involved in Lila from the gods' vantage point. (If one has to be involved in Lila, the gods' vantage is the one one wants.)

Now, what actual type and degree of dettachment one can get within the Jnana yoga system i do not care to debate at the moment, though my inclination is to say 'not much'. However, across the gap of time from where one really does gain perspective as-if one were, in some ways, looking back at someone else's life, not there own ... the idea makes sense to me there ... and that is the tie between Jnana yoga and rational reconstruction ... an attempt to get a better perspective of what you are in relation to the forces at play in the world, whatever those may be ... in order to from there move forward.

Move forward?
"Further!"

But that is another topic.

Statements on Art

1) An art object has non-physical properties.

The object has relatioanl properties, perhaps to any or all of the following: artist, viewer, potential viewer, critique, local art culture, art culture at-large, general population, and probably others.

2) Art is not a natural kind, art objects need not be a member of a natural kind set.

I take the tell-tale sign of a natural kind to be that the members of the natural set have physical properties (for viewers of a given culture/age) that make them part of the set. Most of the time these are readily transparent to the viewer (such as mammals having fur), but it may be that the viewer has to go through training to learn how to see the physical property (a theory-laden-ness that can be problamatic, but is beside the current point, so will be avoided). The main elelment here is that the object has the property, it is not the relation of the object to something else that has the property. (There is nothing you can look at in/on Boston to know that it is 40 miles from Providence. That is a relational rather than a physical property of the city of Boston. Such properties often make poor natural kind sets.)

3) Art has many relational properties. It is the explication of these properties (for our culture) that seems to me the primary need in the philosophy of art today (though certainly not the only need). The explication of these properties, the creation of un-natural kind sets, is a task for psychology, sociology and logic.

4) That explication is a future project.

quote

"If a writer has chosen to be silent on one aspect of the world, we have the right to ask him; Why have you spoken of this rather than that? And since you speak in order to make a change, since there is no other way you can speak, why do you want to change this rather than that? Why do you want to alter the way in which postage stamps are made rather than the way in which the Jews are treated in an anti-Semitic country? And the other way around. He must therefor always anser the following questions: What do you want to change? Why this rather than that?" - Sartre

Rational reconstruction

I have always been very interested in why i believe the things i believe. As a younger man, words like "bildung" existed in many of my paper titles. That spirit is still there, though today i am more likely to call it a 'ratioanal reconstruction'.

I do not know if there is a standard definition of 'rational reconstruction' or no. In philosophy of science we often use the term to distinguish what we are doing from the history of science. I do not know of a precise differentiation, both fields work with a lot of the same material, but i think history is more concerned with what can be confirmed to have happend and what can be deduced from that, and what people said about that ... where-as rational reconstruction is more concerned with approximating the period's body of knowledge and assumptions and its epistemological considerations.

'Bildung', for me, has always been something of a merger between the two ... necessarily, i think, due to the closeness of the subject material (i.e. me).

At its best, the rational reconstruction of my thoughts is an honest accessment of them, a real wanting to know how i moved from point A to point B ... more than just what i was moving toward, and thinking about, and acting against at any given point in time, but also a reflection of my metaphysical and epistemological committments (and changes there-in).
There is another word, rationalization, which is obviously etymologically related. One has to be careful with this word, however, as it is a loaded word ... as it is a negative psychological technical term ... one must be careful that one is using it properly. I think there is a good deal of rationalization in philosophy, that is, the search for (often bad) reasons to believe what we already believe. Given the negative connotations of the word i generally restrict the usage of it to cases of 'defense mechanism' speech. Those people who are not afraid to throw their opinion out there into the world, they often need to defend the opinion against attack. They rationalize it against the attack.
However, to the extent that one is a teacher, there comes a time when one needs to explain what one believes and why one believes it ... a descriptivist task. Often what the student wants to see is a rational reconstruction, not an actual history. They want to know why "someone" might want to believe this thing. When the teaching response is an open and detailed look into this why ... not an attempt to convert or to show the view is right ... but an true assesment of the assumptions and deductions and in some cases real world hostory of what goes into the idea or belief, there we have a rational reconstruction, and, i think, a very different thing from a rationalization.

Often, as in the case of a Bildung piece, one is trying to teach oneself. Some think such an attempt is really just fooling yourself, that you can only, effectively at least, rationalize. I happen to be amongst those that grant the self a lot more power of introspection. It takes time to learn how, and a lot of cases studies of others, and certainly will never be as thorough, or at least not the same kind of project, into which a well trained depth psychologist might endevour ... but it can certainly be very useful to oneself.
In this way: take an axiom or deduction one holds ... write 3 papers attacking it using at least two thought processes from other times and cultures. Really get into understanding the alternate thinking processes of those who oppose your axiom, understand why opposing it is important to them (honestly so) and what parallels you have in your life that could make it important to you. Then re-access the assumptions you hold that you think outweigh these other concerns.
That is 'Bildung' for me today. (No real papers, actually, moreso a set of bullet comments.) The proper use of Bildung, in this sense, arrives at an (more) honest rational reconstruction of belief, and less of a rationalization. This is not a movement from the latter to the former ... from one category to another, but more of a movement along a pole.

It might be being honest with oneself about oneself, and sometimes even about others.

Philosophy Statement #3

The Duhem-Quine Thesis ... the results of an experiment do not necessarily (that is, the necessity of logic) confirm or refute the hypothesis tested. Any background assumption can also be altered to fit a theory to the experimental result.
That is, no physical theory should ever be considered either confirmed nor reputed by any experimental result ... at least not in any absolute sense. (Commonly phrased as ... in terms of logical truth, there are no crossroads experiments. That is, experiments that necessarily force you to choose one physical theory over another.)

The interesting questions begin when we start analyzing why we choose to keep certain assumptions and throw out others given any experimental results.


"Data underdetermines reality." Mathematically/geometrically speaking ... there are uncountably many 'curves' that can be drawn through (or fitted to) any finite set of points. Scientifically speaking ... there are uncountably many internally consistent physical theories that can account for any finite set of experimental facts.

There is no "higher" objective stance (at least for humans) from which to look down and determine, absolutely, which physical theory or curve fitting is the correct one. There is no reason to believe that humans have access to any such vantage point.

But this is OK. "Luckily" (?), scientifically, the question before us has little to do with choosing one system over another. First we have to complete one system against the countless facts at hand, and have one completed theory of how the physical world works. Then we can work to create a 2nd or 3rd system and argue between them.
Until we have at least one system we have not even the first notion of how to argue between them. We can not even ask the right questions, more or less give the right answers.

Further Quine ... lets say we do have a complete system. Once this is the case we can change the accepted truth or falsity of any axiom we want and correct for this somewhere else in the physical theory ... and we can have a new complete physical theory to sit beside the first. (Even completed physical theories will still have unprovable axioms, at least for us humans.)

What remains of the "rational and principled" phrase i often use, when fully explicated, might be something more like Neurath's 'pduedorational idea' ... it helps us to keep our physical and metaphysical frameworks consistent, but the notion of 'correct' or 'incorrect' does not really apply, or only so relative to another framework.

It might be claimed that such completed theories already exist. Such as ... "All is one, there is no real division in the world, all distinctions are illusions." Can all appearence-facts be accounted for in a logically consistent manner in this way? Apparently yes. Its a pretty dull theory though, not much else to do. (How does one win an argument with a young solipsist philosopher? Go away and return in a couple years. The philosopher will have moved on to something more interesting by then.) So lets falsify an assumptions, the one about all distinctions being illusions, and try to account for 'everything' again.

That is essentially my view of the joy before us in the world. Take whatever assumptions seem best to you. Check them for logical consistency (not even that if you don't care for that assumption) and then extend the metaphysics as far as you can.
When you can go no further, or even if your just bored of that theory/tool/toy, put it down and pick up another set of metaphysical assumptions. Start over. Enjoy.


To paraphrase Nietzsche ... the idea thus conceived, extended and completed ... they may be beautiful arts, but, still, one must let them go. They are stone. Do not carry around every graven image you have ever made. Drop them on the ground where you complete them and then climb higher.

a little day poetry

But no hocus-pocus of green angels
Damasks with dazzle the threadbare eye;
'My trouble, doctor, is: I see a tree,
And that damn scrupulous tree won't practice wiles
To beguile sight: E.g., by cant of light
Concoct a Daphne;
My tree stays tree.
'However I wrench obstinate bark and trunk
To my sweet will, no luminous shape
Steps out radiant in limb, eye, lip,
To hoodwink the honest earth which pointblank
Spurns such fiction
s nymphs; cold vision
Will bave no counterfeit
Palmed off on it.
- Sylvia Plath


... i should have been among those who see visions,
but i am not. I see math.
... the jaundiced eye see yellow,
but i do not. I see deductions.

Freedom

I always keep before me the notion of the difference between "freedom for" and "freedom from". The former, in my heart, is more Pierce-ean than Nietzschean, but it has elements of both. The latter has little worth in my eyes, and in fact it seems to me more of an escape than a goal. "Freedom" (from), that is what Avoiding Responsibility calls itself.

"In the name of the former, and the latter, and the [will to free] ... all men." - Joyce

On Value-laden observations

"All observation is theory-laden"

I believe this to be true. I do not, however, find this axiom to be problematic. I think most cases are like this ...

You look out your window on a winter day in Omaha and read the thermometer., it says 20 degrees (F). You also look at a little wind gage you have setup next to the thermometer, do a quick calculation, and determine that it will feel like 2 degrees (F) outside. You dress appropriately, you head to work.

"Temperature" is a term that, in the history of science, at least in the last 500 years, has never been exactly straight forward. It has been measured different ways which, at the margin, can give different results. The standard today deals with measuring the kinetic energy of a thing, but your average mecury thermometer is, relative to scientific standards of measurement, pretty inaccurate.

But so long as we remember what we want the measurement for (here the term "for" is used more in-line with Pierce than with Nietzsche), e.g. knowing what we need to wear to stay warm on the way to work. The measurement is non problematic. That is, even though the theory behind the mecury themometer and wind-chill calculations are not in any precise sense correct, the error caused by the theory is not problematic because we do not require the degree of precision, in this case, that the theory-laden observation cannot give us.

So ... we keep our eyes open to the potential for trouble, but rarely are we, even in day-to-day scientific work, working in a environment that needs to added precision ... that needs instruments derived from the most up-to-dat and most accurate scientific theory.

Philosophy Statement #2

"Do you have an open space on a table, or any flat surface. I need to do some work on my laptop," say my friend.

"Here," i say, as i grab a chair from the kitchen and place it in front of her and the couch.

Another friend peers over the counter from the kitchen and states, "Oh, that's not 'really' flat. Nothing in your apartment is."



There are many things which are true, but irrelevent.
... especially when it comes to use of language.

Philosophy Statement #1

1) There is no principled means available to us to choose between internally logically consistent metaphysical systems.

2) We can think no thoughts outside of some metaphysical system.

3) These two axioms, defensible only within my metaphysics (and other metaphysical systems significantly similar to mine), lead me to proclaim myself a nihilist.

Withered Fields

Ill while traveling
My thoughts go wandering
Across the withered fields
- Basho