I’m off to see Das Rheingold on Saturday (or, rather, since the production is by English National Opera , The Rhinegold ). The anticipation of this set me off googling for a hilarious passage from a Jerry Fodor review of Steven Pinker. I’d have liked to have found the whole thing, but the money quote is there in this review of a Fodor’s In Critical Condition :
The literature of psychological Darwinism is full of what appear to be fallacies of rationalization: arguments where the evidence offered that an interest in Y is the motive for a creature’s behavior is primarily that an interest in Y would rationalize the behavior if it were the creature’s motive. Pinker’s book provides so many examples that one hardly knows where to start.… [H]ere’s Pinker on why we like fiction: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?” Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance. (p. 212)
UPDATE: Thanks to commenter C.P. Shaw. The whole Fodor article, which I’d failed to find using Google is available on the LRB website .
Is there anyone more urgently in need of having Lévi-Strauss’s collected works dropped on their head than Steven “Just So” Pinker?
I am available, incidentally, for a very modest fee.
I normally find Fodor tiresome, but this is unbelievably funny! Thanks…
Would this by any chance be the review you were referring to?
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/fodo01_.html
Thanks for posting that - a passage to be quoted over and over.
I agree that Pinker’s rationalization has little or nothing scientific behind it…
But concerning the Rhinegold, a literal recounting of the plot is scarcely the point.
Also, Fodor is incorrect on several details of the plot. Wotan already, before he gives it up, knows that the Ring can bestow the ability to rule the world, but he has also witnessed Alberich’s curse on it. Wotan is already immortal, through eating Freya’s golden apples daily, but the Giants had kidnapped Freya once Wotan first defaulted on the payment. So Wotan has a choice between ruling the world (albeit possibly under a curse) and eternal youth (albeit the Giants get the ring).
Corrupting, unstable power or an easy life? This is actually a rather common psychological dilemma, for example in Richard II (Uneasy lies the head, etc.) and The Tempest (Prospero choosing to give up his magical powers). So, Fodor 0, Wagner 2. One for having a better plot that Fodor’s wrong summary, one for having psychological insight.
I am in two minds as to whether to tell Chris to read Shaw’s (that’s G.B.S., Bernard Shaw) ‘The Perfect Wagnerite’ which tells the undercover story, with Marxist overtones of the advent of capitalism. Gold, you know. Rheingold is the opera that fits Shaw’s allegory best, which makes sense because Wagner was rather a socialist at the time. Perhaps his most attractive hypothesis is that the Tarnhelm is a Victorian factory-owner’s top hat.
Myself, I favour a Wild West interpretation of the Ring. Horses, gold, big hats, shootouts, er, swordfights, Wotan as the Sheriff who’s not averse to a little lootin’ himself. Hasn’t been done, to my knowledge.
Phyllida Lloyd (creator of the hit musical Mamma Mia!) sounds like an odd choice, but who knows. Anyway, wish I was there.
On a semi-related note - it seems to me that the number of people familiar with this story is much larger than the number of people who have sat through all 4000 hours of the Ring cycle. Does everyone else know the plot through allusions in other people’s writing (who in turn, etc)?
msw
I haven’t read the Pinker work in question, but it seems to me that in fact part of the reason people enjoy fiction is because it helps us think about and deal with our fears. For example, plenty of children’s lit is exactly this - kids getting into bad situations and finding ways to cope. I suspect some of the popularity of the dead-child genre comes from parents wanting a controlled environment to ponder “What would I do?”.
Tomd: I knew that. I suspect Fodor does too.
But if it’s in English, shouldn’t it be “The Rhine Gold?”
The plot of the Ring cycle was featured in one story arc of Mighty Thor comics, a decade or so ago, if we’re looking for ways to account for its spread. And then there’s What’s Opera, Doc…
Pinker is decidedly eccentric. He chooses to devote an entire chapter of “The Blank Slate” to arguing the thesis that the present crisis of funding for the arts in the west is due to the fact that modern artists do peculiar stuff which is at variance with the genetically predisposed aesthetic tastes of the public.
If everybody painted nice pictures like the Inpressionists, now, people would flock to see them and there’d be oodles of boodle for everyone. Presumably Pinker is unaware that the Impressionists provoked riots when they first exhibited, and he has never visited Madrid and stood in the queue to see “Guernica”.
OK, I’m assuming I don’t have to explain to CT why this is nonsense. But it is a pity, because the understanding that the human mind is not a tabula rasa ought to be self-evident to any kind of Darwinist. It’s unhelpful when such a straightforward idea becomes associated in the public imagination with arguments which are so obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
…narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?
When I first read that passage from Pinker, my reaction was “Ah; so that’s why, for one century after another, from one nation to another, such reverence has been paid to the name ‘Saxo Grammaticus’!”
Well, if both Fodor and Bertram know better, why celebrate Fodor’s snark? It’s undeniably good for a brief chuckle, but there doesn’t seem to be any insight behind the chuckle.
With Shakespeare, people have some habit of taking him seriously; Wagner enters popular discourse almost exclusively as the butt of jokes. Super-long operas (shorter than Hamlet, though), dwarves, giants, magic rings, dragons, how quaint, how silly! And that, plus Ride of the Valkyries, is the sum total of most people’s knowledge.
Fodor is playing to this 1860 vintage philistinism, reinforcing the stereotype of Wagner as a laughable archaic fantasy. If most of his readers actually knew Rheingold, this were no crime. But alas, cheap jokes may actually dissuade people from getting to know Wagner.
Some alien archaeologist is going to find this Ring and the LoTR kitsch and gay marriage arguments in the same stratum and confuse at least two out of the three.
Thanks, tomd, I learned something there.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review