Quetzil,
These comments BTW are intended as serious exchanges in an attempt to
navigate our relative positions, and not like some of my more playful
rhetorical postings (my apologies for those, well only some of them actually).
Thanks for explaining my position so clearly for me, and also illuminating
what you consider to be the 'nodal point' which makes it impossible for me
to proceed beyond my charge of idealism to, I suppose, what you would
consider to be more 'enlightened pastures'. Unfortunately, its not my
reading of it. Why?
You seem to want to claim some middle position, 'practice' as the locus of
mediation between idea and material. I have no problem with this position,
but would add the caveat that it is only one such position. Moreover, you
also seem to be suggesting that this 'practice' is something that upsets the
simple binary opposition that has weighed so heavily on the minds of western
thought/thinkers. Still, I feel obliged to point out that implicit in your
quote is the assumption that this practice IS a site _between_ ideas and
materials. I have no problem at all with this. But why then when you come to
analyse this practice do you give primacy to only the idea and elide the
material, which by the way on my reading would include the ideational (I am
not wedded to the opposition between material and ideas, both are real).
Practice must be on and with something other than itself to be practice at
all. So, I think I would return the charge and claim that it is indeed an
idealist position if the material, 'the actual past', in terms of the
present discussion, is accorded no role in practice. Consider, for example a
common text book example. A 'fish is only a fish because we say it is' (I
think this comes from Keith Tester, or Hindess, I'm not sure, I can look it
up of course, presuming of course that it is actually there (ooops, sorry I
getting flippant again). In one sense, but only one, of course this is
right. I mean I am not a linguist but I'm fairly sure that there are many
words throughout the world for fish. Still, if a fish is _only_ a fish
because we say it is then presumably untreated sewage is only untreated
sewage because we say it is. This raises the rather intriguing prospect,
that if we call untreated sewage 'fish' we can solve two problems
simultaneously: global hunger and pollution of the seas. It does raise the
rather interesting question of what happened to the previously named fish,
but we'll let that ride for now.
So, I think what I am saying is that the postulation of practice as a
mediating point that does away with logocentric binary thinking, which is
what I think you were implying, doesn't really work. In this respect I want
to return to philosophical geography later in this post. for now I will move on.
>Indeed it is as not existent as the quarks that you suggest killed humans at
>hiroshima. and, certainly the existence of quarks is a totally irrelevant
>to the lives and deaths of those of that died/survived as practice is for
>uyou.
This is an outrageous statement, the splitting of atoms is of central
concern to those that died and survived at Hiroshima, What about radiation
sickness, death perhaps, and the knowledge of it avoidance, ie. 'don't live
here, there are things you can't see that will kill you'. Are you suggesting
that if I just say this to the people that invade my space at supermarkets,
etc. it will keep them away? I think people will question, and rightly so,
what it is and why. Knowledge, even scientific knowledge circulates wider
than Kuhn's scientific communities. Moreover, philosophically, it seems to
me that your position cannot deal with 'real' absence, or the non-existent.
Precisely because what is, only gets its existence in practice, and human
practice at that, back to idealism I suppose. So ontologically your position
is monovalent, all presence in the guise as practice. Real absence can not
exist, nor incidentally, ironically enough, it seems can real presence. With
regard to the latter many seem to have seen Derrida as providing a
justification for denying real presence through his critique of the
metaphysics of presence. However, what I tried to show in using the quote
>from Derrida and in raising the issue of linguistic idealism, is that
Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of presence is best seen as a critique
of the boxing of being into some category in which some atribute of the
human must play a role: ideas, perception, practice, experience etc. ad
naseaum.
those of hiroshima have no interest in whetehr it was
>a quark a split neutron, two "heavier cousins" of the quark or some other
>subatomic matter that killed/maimed them. actually the reality of the bomb
>that destroyed that city was its bomb-iness, if you will. and, i imagine
>that if you were to speak with survivors of the bomb, i wonder how much
>interest they would show for quarks or your concern about the real reality
>of quarks; or for your argument to them that instead of worrying about the
>loss of loved ones, they should instead be concerned with whether or not
>there is actually some kind of sub sub quark matter that is what really
>caused the corporeal scars on a survivor versus radiation....
There is no inference from my position that concern with the (un)reality of
quarks etc., implies a neglect of concern for the loss of loved ones. This
arguement is specious. However, insofar as the survivors are not, I admit,
primarily concerned with whether or not quarks exist, they clearly would
have preferred them not to have. Would the bombi-ness of feathers have had
the same effect, I wonder? The existence of bomb-ness is dependent upon the
knowledge of the possibilities inherent in certain substances to be bombs as
well as in the notion of bombs. Only this explain why bombs as such appeared
at the particular historical juncture they did. That is therewere dependent
upon certain forms of knowledge _and_ certain materials with certain
properties. . More importantly, for the people of Hiroshima, their lack of
knowledge and/or practice of quarks etc., did nothing to stop them being
killed. Existence is not dependent upon human descriptions of it.
Back now to philosophical geography. I think it was Foucault who argued
somewhere something about drawing a line between those who continue to think
in outmoded ways (I can't remeber the exact quote, but agin if it actully
exists I'll hunt it out). Thing is, if we misidentify where we are coming
>from we are in serious danger of ending up at that point we think we want to
move from. In this respect Positivism/modernity is generally presented as as
the foe, the point we wish to reject. But when one begins to read the works
of the positivists themselves, one finds that they held certain things in
common with many of todays so-called radicals, something I have suggested in
previous postings. So what I am actually suggesting is that the denial of
the 'real' or actual is and focussing on the given and/or practices is
essentially a positivist move. There is a direct transmutation route from
sceptism to empiricism to pragmatism and thus onto conventionalism. Have a
look a the works of Schlick, Carnap, Mach, Avenarius et. al., if you get the
time, it comes as quite a shock. But if you haven't got the time try
Kolakowski's 'Alienation of Reason' or David Oldroyd's 'Arch of Knowledge'.
Also, what about the ethics, Malcolm's, claim that the best strategy would
be to simply kill nazis, seems to fly in the face of Foucault's call to
respect differences. When does difference get so problematic that we
dispense with it al la malcolm. Also as should be clear, a denial of
anything indepent of our discourses is an outright denial of difference not
its affirmation.
--------------------------------------------------------
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------
These comments BTW are intended as serious exchanges in an attempt to
navigate our relative positions, and not like some of my more playful
rhetorical postings (my apologies for those, well only some of them actually).
Thanks for explaining my position so clearly for me, and also illuminating
what you consider to be the 'nodal point' which makes it impossible for me
to proceed beyond my charge of idealism to, I suppose, what you would
consider to be more 'enlightened pastures'. Unfortunately, its not my
reading of it. Why?
You seem to want to claim some middle position, 'practice' as the locus of
mediation between idea and material. I have no problem with this position,
but would add the caveat that it is only one such position. Moreover, you
also seem to be suggesting that this 'practice' is something that upsets the
simple binary opposition that has weighed so heavily on the minds of western
thought/thinkers. Still, I feel obliged to point out that implicit in your
quote is the assumption that this practice IS a site _between_ ideas and
materials. I have no problem at all with this. But why then when you come to
analyse this practice do you give primacy to only the idea and elide the
material, which by the way on my reading would include the ideational (I am
not wedded to the opposition between material and ideas, both are real).
Practice must be on and with something other than itself to be practice at
all. So, I think I would return the charge and claim that it is indeed an
idealist position if the material, 'the actual past', in terms of the
present discussion, is accorded no role in practice. Consider, for example a
common text book example. A 'fish is only a fish because we say it is' (I
think this comes from Keith Tester, or Hindess, I'm not sure, I can look it
up of course, presuming of course that it is actually there (ooops, sorry I
getting flippant again). In one sense, but only one, of course this is
right. I mean I am not a linguist but I'm fairly sure that there are many
words throughout the world for fish. Still, if a fish is _only_ a fish
because we say it is then presumably untreated sewage is only untreated
sewage because we say it is. This raises the rather intriguing prospect,
that if we call untreated sewage 'fish' we can solve two problems
simultaneously: global hunger and pollution of the seas. It does raise the
rather interesting question of what happened to the previously named fish,
but we'll let that ride for now.
So, I think what I am saying is that the postulation of practice as a
mediating point that does away with logocentric binary thinking, which is
what I think you were implying, doesn't really work. In this respect I want
to return to philosophical geography later in this post. for now I will move on.
>Indeed it is as not existent as the quarks that you suggest killed humans at
>hiroshima. and, certainly the existence of quarks is a totally irrelevant
>to the lives and deaths of those of that died/survived as practice is for
>uyou.
This is an outrageous statement, the splitting of atoms is of central
concern to those that died and survived at Hiroshima, What about radiation
sickness, death perhaps, and the knowledge of it avoidance, ie. 'don't live
here, there are things you can't see that will kill you'. Are you suggesting
that if I just say this to the people that invade my space at supermarkets,
etc. it will keep them away? I think people will question, and rightly so,
what it is and why. Knowledge, even scientific knowledge circulates wider
than Kuhn's scientific communities. Moreover, philosophically, it seems to
me that your position cannot deal with 'real' absence, or the non-existent.
Precisely because what is, only gets its existence in practice, and human
practice at that, back to idealism I suppose. So ontologically your position
is monovalent, all presence in the guise as practice. Real absence can not
exist, nor incidentally, ironically enough, it seems can real presence. With
regard to the latter many seem to have seen Derrida as providing a
justification for denying real presence through his critique of the
metaphysics of presence. However, what I tried to show in using the quote
>from Derrida and in raising the issue of linguistic idealism, is that
Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of presence is best seen as a critique
of the boxing of being into some category in which some atribute of the
human must play a role: ideas, perception, practice, experience etc. ad
naseaum.
those of hiroshima have no interest in whetehr it was
>a quark a split neutron, two "heavier cousins" of the quark or some other
>subatomic matter that killed/maimed them. actually the reality of the bomb
>that destroyed that city was its bomb-iness, if you will. and, i imagine
>that if you were to speak with survivors of the bomb, i wonder how much
>interest they would show for quarks or your concern about the real reality
>of quarks; or for your argument to them that instead of worrying about the
>loss of loved ones, they should instead be concerned with whether or not
>there is actually some kind of sub sub quark matter that is what really
>caused the corporeal scars on a survivor versus radiation....
There is no inference from my position that concern with the (un)reality of
quarks etc., implies a neglect of concern for the loss of loved ones. This
arguement is specious. However, insofar as the survivors are not, I admit,
primarily concerned with whether or not quarks exist, they clearly would
have preferred them not to have. Would the bombi-ness of feathers have had
the same effect, I wonder? The existence of bomb-ness is dependent upon the
knowledge of the possibilities inherent in certain substances to be bombs as
well as in the notion of bombs. Only this explain why bombs as such appeared
at the particular historical juncture they did. That is therewere dependent
upon certain forms of knowledge _and_ certain materials with certain
properties. . More importantly, for the people of Hiroshima, their lack of
knowledge and/or practice of quarks etc., did nothing to stop them being
killed. Existence is not dependent upon human descriptions of it.
Back now to philosophical geography. I think it was Foucault who argued
somewhere something about drawing a line between those who continue to think
in outmoded ways (I can't remeber the exact quote, but agin if it actully
exists I'll hunt it out). Thing is, if we misidentify where we are coming
>from we are in serious danger of ending up at that point we think we want to
move from. In this respect Positivism/modernity is generally presented as as
the foe, the point we wish to reject. But when one begins to read the works
of the positivists themselves, one finds that they held certain things in
common with many of todays so-called radicals, something I have suggested in
previous postings. So what I am actually suggesting is that the denial of
the 'real' or actual is and focussing on the given and/or practices is
essentially a positivist move. There is a direct transmutation route from
sceptism to empiricism to pragmatism and thus onto conventionalism. Have a
look a the works of Schlick, Carnap, Mach, Avenarius et. al., if you get the
time, it comes as quite a shock. But if you haven't got the time try
Kolakowski's 'Alienation of Reason' or David Oldroyd's 'Arch of Knowledge'.
Also, what about the ethics, Malcolm's, claim that the best strategy would
be to simply kill nazis, seems to fly in the face of Foucault's call to
respect differences. When does difference get so problematic that we
dispense with it al la malcolm. Also as should be clear, a denial of
anything indepent of our discourses is an outright denial of difference not
its affirmation.
--------------------------------------------------------
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------