From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 23:30:39 BST
Hi John,
Ah-ha, to say that I'm a bit overwhelmed with the recent onslaught of
e-mails is an understatment. I remember just a few weeks ago when I would
just sit around waiting for somebody to continue the conversation. Now, I
have to many conversations going. I was going to start to elaborate a
position on the moral value of the MoQ, but I don't think I have time now,
so as not to leave any of the threads I already have going hanging. I
promised myself to start with yours John, because you've been very kind,
balanced, and perceptive.
Overall, I think your formulations of the debate are very keen,
particularly with the "lumping" of worshippers of the intellect with those
of God. Rorty certainly thinks we must get rid of "God and his doubles."
Your critique of postmodern consequences are balanced, but lets see if I
have any responses:
JOHN:
The key to this option [the linguistic turn] is that we cannot speak of a
reality separate to our language, since even if one exists, and Rorty seems
to accept this, if his endorsement of Davidson is any guide, this reality
is not known outside our language, however much it might manifest in causal
pressures'.
MATT:
Rorty would say that we must be careful not to take this skeptic
formulation ("even if one exists ... this reality is not known outside our
language") too seriously. The problem with it is that it presupposes
language as medium between us and reality. Rorty's pragmatism and
antiessentialism hopes to alter this conception of language. He suggests
we conceive of language as a tool to deal with our causal pressures, just
as a monkey might use a stick to fish for ants to deal with his. He
suggests that we become post-Darwinian, that we view cultural evolution as
continuous with biological evolution. That the only difference between
humans and the rest of the animal kingdom is that we use a highly complex
language to deal with our causal pressures and other animals (so we know
of) do not.
The problem with this skeptical formulation is that it causes problems
later with threats of nihilism and malleability.
JOHN:
The postmodern attempt to view everything through the lens of language is
not all bad. It has forced us to think more carefully about the role of
language in our understanding, and points to a creative role in shaping the
world we inhabit through the language we adopt. It has some fundamental
weaknesses, though.
Firstly, it is unable to account for human development, from a
pre-linguistic infancy to early language use and the later sophisticated use
of language in adulthood.
MATT:
On this count, I am untrained. Your briefness suggests a large body of
work elaborating such a position, plus your confidence in this body of
work. As far as I can see, there isn't a problem. Rorty develops his
Davidsonian picture of language like so:
"...Davidson tries to undermine the notion of languages as entities [read:
mediums between us and reality] by developing the notion of what he calls
"a passing theory" about the noises and inscriptions presently being
produced by a fellow human. Think of such a theory as part of a larger
"passing theory" about this person's total behavior--a set of guesses about
what she will do under what conditions. Such a theory is "passing" because
it must constantly be corrected to allow for mumbles, stumbles,
malapropisms, metaphors, tics, seizures, psychotic symptoms, egregious
stupidity, strokes of genius, and the like. To make things easier, imagine
that I am forming such a theory about the current behavior of a native of
an exotic culture into which I have unexpectedly parachuted. This strange
person, who presumably finds me equally strange, will simultaneously be
busy forming a theory about my behavior. If we ever succeed in
communicating easily and happily, it will be because her guesses about what
I am going to do next, including what noises I am going to make next, and
my own expectations about what I shall do or say under certain
circumstances, come more or less to coincide, and because the converse is
also true. She and I are coping with each other as we might cope with
mangoes or boa constrictors--we are trying not to be taken by surprise. To
say that we come to speak the same language is to say, as Davidson puts it,
that "we tend to converge on passing theories." Davidson's point is that
all "two people need, if they are to understand one another through speech,
is the ability to converge on passing theories from utterance to utterance.""
As far as I can tell, this would be how babies learn speech. They see the
people around them make one set of noises, then make another set or perform
a certain set of behaviors, and the baby picks up on this and begins to use
language to cope. But, again, I'm not certain to the specifics of the
challange you are enunciating, so I'm not certain if this fits as a response.
JOHN:
Secondly, it is very vulnerable to a form of nihilism, which views us as
meme machines, determined by the success or otherwise of the memes we
contact in our society. As Susan Blackmore points out, there is no guarantee
that the memes are good for us. This is in effect a refutation of Davidson,
above, who assumes that "we are, always and everywhere, 'in touch with the
world'." The world of memes is not the world of genes, and vague hopes that
our language is helpfully constrained by the 'environment' seem hopelessly
naive.
MATT:
I initially did not receive the notion of a "meme" very well. I basically
enuciated this same criticism of memes in my essay "Mechanistic Philosophy
and the Yellow Brick Road of Science," posted on moq.org. However, I've
since changed my views on a lot of things, including memes.
First, you are quite right that with memes, it seems that no particular
meme is intrinsically good for us. As I said in my essay, "No meme, be it
democracy or equality, has any intrinsic value to it, aside from its
survival value in the meme pool. Democracy's only value, according to meme
theory, is its ability to "convince" brains to think about it." I'm not
sure yet how to respond to Blackmore's, John's, and my own charge. But I
think it has something to do with why a meme survives in the meme pool:
because we like it. We like equality and democracy. There's nothing
intrinsically great about equality or democracy, but they help us cope with
our environment. They allow us to form groups where avoidance of bloodshed
is a foregone conclusion.
On your second charge, that "vague hopes that our language is helpfully
constrained by the 'environment' seem hopelessly naive," I don't see why
they are naive. But, I think this may be a problem that arises when we
keep the picture of language as a medium of expression between us and
reality. If we toss this picture, and adopt Davidson and Rorty's picture
of language as a evolved tool continuous with the evolution of our genes,
then the our evironment doesn't helpfully constrain our language, it common
sensically does seem constrain our language.
JOHN:
Thirdly, language is easily manipulated. Someone like Cupitt seems happily
able to float along in a postmodern pot-pourri of constant change, then in
the last paragraph of the book suggests that somehow it is all going to
Hell! I don't understand his logic, but I can understand his concern. When
the Rupert Murdoch's of this world can insidiously shape how we all think
about things, we have cause to be concerned. Cupitt assumes that change will
be for the better, ultimately, and that manipulation will be ineffective. I
doubt both assumptions.
MATT:
Language can be manipulated and changed, but I doubt we should use the word
"easily." If people don't agree to your change of language, then it is
effectively shut down. If people just changed the way they spoke
willy-nilly, nobody would understand them and communication would shut
down. But if people changed certain parts of their language, and others
thought it well to change these parts, then it might catch on. I don't
assume that all change will be for the better, nor do I assume that
manipulation will be ineffective. However, I don't want manipulation to be
ineffective if we take manipulation to mean the convincing of people to use
a new set of descriptions or words. For instance, the redescription of
black people in the Fourteenth Amendment as citizens. Abolitionists had to
convince people that black slaves count as people, too. As citizens (taken
in a cosmopolitan sense) we must be wary of the manipulation of language,
but we must not fear it because we must use it, too.
So, those are my responses to your critique of "the other options." The
linguistic turn effectively cuts down the old mystic view of language as
hampering our understanding of reality, and I don't know yet how it would
be rehabilitated. I still find good things in some mystics. The other
thing to notice about my responses is that 'cultural evolution as
continuous with biological evolution' does some damaging things to Pirsig's
discrete levels built in Lila.
But these were excellent points and insights, John. Very balanced and
reasoned. I hope to hear from you John on why "the mystic assertions of a
reality prior to language are surely correct if we look at human infancy."
This is the one place I'm not quite sure about, specifically why the
assertion is correct.
Matt
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