Comments on: Paul Feyerabend punks Francis Wheen

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 05:18:58 +0000

Follow the links. You’ll find my comments. Elizabeth Anderson is a woman without a mind.

By: pierre

pierre — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 02:03:17 +0000

Call it whatever you want, it’s the only question. And people have been struggling with it for a lot longer than any contemporary theory.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 22:07:35 +0000

You lost me from the point of saying it’s “a religious question.” No it isn’t.

By: pierre

pierre — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:48:23 +0000

postscript to my last—yes, I know it’s an act of charity to confidently assert that what Social Text et al are doing is addressing the question of how to communicate subjective humanity. However, as Kierkegaard said, we can never know the subjective intention of another. (Unless of course they display no facility with irony, which proves them to be incapable of understanding eternal matters.) OK, Social Text is disqualified. Sorry. Well, take them as a sort of synechdoche for the whole project …

By: pierre

pierre — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:28:47 +0000

Seth, yes, much better. Thank you! Back to your starting point then: (from s.e. first comment) It is in fact very hard to tell what part of any structure is irrelevent to its function. So, when somebody automatically dismisses a sentence which introduces an article about satanism in Trier by mentioning Karl Marx was born in Trier, this is for you indicative of a general propensity among academics to treat sentences as if they are only supposed work one way. And you connect this propensity, in one leap, with the loss of affect among young surgical residents at NY Eye and Ear. Do you expect other than a hostile and incredulous general response? Believe it or not, I agree with you completely that there is a connection! But surely this particular rhetoric cannot be expected to convince anybody that is not yet convinced? The question How do you measure that shiver? [of subjective humanity] How do you define its worth? How can it be taught? … is an essentially religious question. And one that has been attacked again and again from all over the map. Kierkegaard spent a lot of time on it, for example. Hell, the sentence from you I just quoted is just about verbatim from one of the Zen gathas. Rightly or wrongly, Social Text et al have tried to address the question in a novel fashion, by creating their own impenetrable jargon. Rightly or wrongly, this jargon has not convinced outsiders that there is a problem with language or the use of language (let alone the possible implication that there is subjective humanity outside language that has great significance), it’s just convinced outsiders that the users and defenders of that jargon are crazy.

By: Ken C.

Ken C. — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:47:56 +0000

“In math, like in ordinary language, the meaning of words can depend on the context (which is fine as long as the context is clear). In some contexts, “finite” may include zero, and in other contexts, it might not.” More tersely, “Walt Pohl is one of those people” (for whom zero is sometimes not finite). I’ll ask again at more length. What meanings do “finite” and “zero” have for you, such that sometimes zero is finite, and sometimes it isn’t? Beyond the present one, what contexts can you adduce where zero is not finite?

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:25:09 +0000

For the files. And again A Buddhist? No. Although I’ve played at being one for purposes of argument (but not this time) It’s an old problem, the problem of being an anti~~intellectual: either shut up or admit defeat. But I’m not being so simple minded, and I’m not being anti~~intellectual; I’m criticizing a tendency among a certain group of people. Let’s call that group: Those who take libertarian ideas seriously enough not to break out in laughter at the mention of the word. I was unlucky enough to get a shard of steel in my eye twice in one year. Both times I went to NY Eye and Ear Hospital to have the splinters removed. The second time the procedure was performed by a resident under the supervision of an attending surgeon. The resident was a young and attractive woman, born in this country. The surgeon was an eastern European immigrant. The young woman was intelligent and professional, but emotionally sort of blank. She spoke without affect. She did what she needed to and then went to her supervisor to get him to sign off. He asked her if she was sure she’d removed everything. She seemed a little surprised at the question, and he decided to reexamine me himself. “It’s his eye” he reminded her, and then explained that what she assumed to be a rust stain might still contain particles that could cause future damage. He repeated the procedure, and I went home. I won’t fall into the trap of saying simply that to the attending surgeon I was a person and that to the resident I was merely an idea (I’m sure someone here would try to catch me on that). But I will say that when he asked her that question I know he had felt an empathetic shiver for what might happen to me if she had been wrong. How do you measure that shiver? How do you define its worth? How can it be taught? Johnathan Goodwin mocked something as ‘irrelevant’ without first asking why anyone might consider it otherwise. He made an assumption based on what he thought was logical. He was arrogant, but his logic was wrong. Is that better?

By: pierre

pierre — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:21:17 +0000

The Seth Edelbaum Experience writes: I find very little difference between any of you, and your arguments, between Sokal and the idiots at Social Text. All of you are trying to find ways to turn ambiguity into something managable, something concrete, something to which you can apply simple numbers and/or rules. and Most scientists like to solve problems, and once they’re solved, they go to the next one. … Their language is defined in terms of ‘advance’ and ‘progress’. … And many in this country at least extend this logic to their view of the world at large … Rules sing for most of you, like music. and then You think generalizations are the highest form of thought. They’re not. Why so many generalizations from you then? I am perfectly willing to agree with what you seem to be saying, that educated people, here and elsewhere, are caught in the grip of language(s) that they employ without fully understanding, like counters in a game that have more ritual significance than anything else. But you describe your project as emphasizing: the form of intelligence that fosters a respect for judgement as opposed to mechanism. It should be obvious that the generalizations you make about “you scientists” are expressions of ideas that you have about social mechanism. In other words, they are not expressions of judgment. Judgment would discriminate individuals and understand that each individual here has a very specific, idiosycratic relationship to their own misunderstood kaleidoscope of linguistic rituals. So your basic ideas, if followed properly to their conclusion, would seem to undermine your current rhetorical position just as much as theirs. Shouldn’t you be turning into some kind of Buddhist? (I consider that to be a respectable option for any thinker holding your premises.)

By: Walt Pohl

Walt Pohl — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 01:26:58 +0000

In math, like in ordinary language, the meaning of words can depend on the context (which is fine as long as the context is clear). In some contexts, “finite” may include zero, and in other contexts, it might not.

By: Ken C.

Ken C. — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 18:21:40 +0000

“necessarily usual to insist that zero is a finite number in situations like this” “if you allow for finite to include zero” I’m curious: are there people for whom the status of zero as a finite number is open to question or interpretation? I think I’ve heard physicists say “finite” when they mean “nonzero”, as in, “a finite probability”. This seems strange and wrong to me (and has kept me up nights). Are they thinking that zero is infinitely small, and therefore, non-finite in its own way? Or what?

By: cliu

cliu — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 02:16:03 +0000

As one of those panicked humanities professors who browses here occasionally I’d like to interject that Julia Kristeva is fundamentally flawed as a psychoanalytic thinker, but not because of her prowess or lack thereof in math. I am not able to follow the intricacies of your mathematical discussions here, and I can’t get into a detailed refutation of her theoretical interventions here, but I would like to say in all fair mindedness that her importance to the development of French linguistics was very important because being Bulgarian, she was able to introduce and work with many of the concepts of Greimas and integrate them with the work of Saussure. That said, her book on Chinese Women is a terribly misleading account of the emancipatory power of the Chinese Cultural Revolution for the fair sex, and her presentation of pre-linguistic experience is fairly schematic. She is also a terrible novelist. Do not read her autobiographical roman a clef, The Samourai. It is self-congratulatory.

By: s.e.

s.e. — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:53:15 +0000

Though I said otherwise, the comment above is a bit flabby. But only a bit. I’m done.

By: s.e.

s.e. — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:09:47 +0000

I still don’t know what you mean. The absurd argument between logic and ‘soul’ is what got all us here in the first place. And I’m not interested in any form of religious/metaphysical argument. The problem is simple, and although I return to it again and again, I get better at articulating it the more I try. I have my stubbornness (and CT I suppose) to thank for this . I do not focus on problems that can be solved. I am not interested in such things. I am interesting in aporias, in conflicts that recur, in different forms, again and again. What is justice? What is obligation? What is the relationship of the individual to the collective? There are no right answers to these questions, but there is a certain form of intelligence that centers on them, though they’re ruled by ambiguity and contingency: the form of intelligence that fosters a respect for judgement as opposed to mechanism. The history of organized religion is the history of formal structures, as in a book of stories and laws that foster debate and define the rules for it to follow. Is it any wonder mysticism is always represented on the fringes of society? But simple faith is not the point. The point is the system of language, of order and community. The existence of God matters no more or less than the guilt or innocence of any one man who comes before a judge. In a courtroom the lawyers perform soliloquies. Isn’t it odd that life and death decisions are made this way, by formal rite? What does ‘due process’ mean anyway? Most scientists like to solve problems, and once they’re solved, they go to the next one. Their language is defined in terms of ‘advance’ and ‘progress’. And many in this country at least extend this logic to their view of the world at large (one of the few exceptions in print these days is Richard Lewontin) This is not a paradigm that I would want for my children to follow. I would not want to think that my children would choose to see the dilemmas of human life as problem to be solved. There’s a lot of tragedy to life. It can be cruel. I’ve seen weak people crushed and strong one’s oblivious. I’ve also seen people very aware of the results of their actions. What does it mean to fire someone for being incompetent, if it means he won’t be able to pay the rent? What does it mean to for an officer to send an enlisted man to his death? None of this has anything to do with religion. It is about the weight that accrues to specifics; a weight about which the hard sciences, as generalization, can say nothing. Reading Brad DeLong I’m not convinced for one minute that he understands this notion of weight. He’s a mechanic, an engineer. Rules sing for most of you, like music. You think generalizations are the highest form of thought. They’re not. The highest form of thought is the ability to communicate specifics. But then once they’re communicated they’re no longer specific are they?

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:35:52 +0000

I described the anecdotes upon which my assertion was based. The point was more about familiarity breeding contempt. No one escapes maths in the baccalaureate whereas in the UK you can get a degree in economics without calculus. At a guess a majority of UK philosophy students will not have any maths from beyond 16. I suggest that might make a difference. In grad school I would pretend to be an egyptologist so that people would talk to me about my subject. People quite happily say that they barely passed their GCSEs. I know a tetralingual , multiple prize winning lawyer who still feels intellectually inferior because she wasn’t in the top stream in Maths. She’s not English. I report you decide. In any case the person who introduced me to Kristeva was indeed a mathematician. I imagine most mathematicians ignore her, some will have read Sokal for laughs. This one was interested in Rilke and thought she had good things to say.

By: P.

P. — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:14:42 +0000

Short comment: I born, raised and educated in France, now live and work (largely in molecular biology) in Canada, and deny that there is a more respectful attitude toward mathematics in France than in the so-called anglo-saxon countries. In my view that is just nonsense—indeed, I have no idea on what people are basing this assertion. My experience/impression is that French mathematics is middle-of-the-pack. And, btw, Kristeva has no standing at all in (serious) French maths or physics (my PhD) circles, any more than she has in North America.