[Xmca-l] Analytical and Continental

[James Ma]

That's amazing, Andy. Whenever I come across your name, I feel something to
do with philosophy keeps cropping up in my mind!

I guess you might be in favour of the German social theorist Jurgen
Habermas - am I right?

At the end of the 20th century, European thought seemed to go back to the
Enlightenment, especially in Germany. Habermas refuted the post-structural
notion of the indeterminacy of meaning, arguing for the role of
Enlightenment ideas in intellectual life, such as public debate, and at the
same time defending the Marxist intellectual tradition. This seems rather
paradoxical because Continental Philosophy initially drew upon the work of
German thinkers like Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. Habermas insisted
that German intellectuals had wrongly moved away from the Enlightenment and
Heidegger was the reason.

Anyway, I can see why you say thinkers "most sympathetic to CHAT concerns
are the Pragmatists". I felt the CHAT paradigm should maintain the dialogue
with the Enlightenment.

Happy New Year!

James

*_______________________________________________________*

*James Ma  Independent Scholar *
*https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
<https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>  *

On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 at 02:40, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> James, according to Wikipedia's entry, Hegel is a part of "continental
> philosophy," but this is an anachronism really, because the tribal division
> is a 20th century phenomenon and affects mainly university departments in
> the Anglosphere. Continental philosophers like to cite Hegel and Marx, but
> I don't think we can count these writers as part of Continental Philosophy.
> In any case, people interested in CHAT are going to be outside of that
> argument.
>
> In the tradition that I identify with Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky we value natural
> science in a way which is uncharacteristic of Continental Philosophy, but
> also value meta-philosophical considerations over formal-logical argument
> in a way which is uncharacteristic of Analytical Philosophy.
>
> As I think I said in the previous message the people we find in philosophy
> departments most sympathetic to CHAT concerns are the Pragmatists. Dewey
> was trained as a Hegelian and James got his scientific education in 19th
> century Germany, still affected by German Idealism. Peirce seems to try to
> unite the virtues of both currents in his own way, too. Hegelian
> Philosophers like Robert Pippin and Charles Taylor recognise their own
> affinity with the Pragmatist school, and recent Pragmatist Philosophers
> like Richard Rorty and Robert Putnam accept the disciplines of Analytical
> Philosophy while making an effort to appropriate Hegel.
>
> Myself, I have never attended a university course in Philosophy, any more
> than I have attended any course in Psychology, so I cannot be part of
> either current. Personally, I remain of the view that it is Hegel and Marx
> who provide the meta-concepts needed to develop Vygotsky's legacy in
> Psychology and Social Theory, and I don't see a lot of prospects in either
> the Analytical or Continental Philosophical traditions in themselves.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 21/12/2018 7:56 am, James Ma wrote:
>
> Andy, thank you for your message. Just to make a few brief points, linking
> with some of your comments:
>
>
> ...
>
>
> Third, on hearing that you are "definitely not an Analytical philosopher,
> but not really a Continental philosopher either", it's not surprising that
> in my last email the paragraph beginning "More specifically..." doesn't
> make much sense to you.  That paragraph reflects a take on consciousness
> and language informed by phenomenology and post-structuralism.
> Phenomenology gave way to post-structuralism in the 1960s, prior to which
> Heidegger and Sartre had taken phenomenology to a direction different to
> Husserl.  However, Heidegger's theory as mainly presented in "Being and
> Time", albeit provocative and much disputed, has long been a landmark of
> modern thought in philosophy and beyond.  Funnily enough, when reading your
> comments, my first impulse was recollection of you remarking that
> phenomenology was not for you and that Heidegger was a flawed personality!
>
>
>
> After all, perhaps we all have a Dasein unique to ourselves. Our different
> disciplinary interests lead to different ontological positions that
> influence our views on how we should know what we know!  Sometimes
> synergistic meaning-making without emotion may be fruitful and illuminating.
>
>
>
> James
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 at 01:50, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> (1) Analytical Philosophy vs. Continental Philosophy
> This is the tribal division which divides philosophy departments across
> the Anglosphere into rival, mutually incomprehensible tribes. My lights -
> Hegel, Marx and Vygotsky - are certainly not part of Analytical Philosophy
> but are not really Continentals either. The Pragmatists - from Dewey, James
> and Peirce to Rorty and Brandom - are not quite Analytical Philosophers,
> but these are the only Analyticals I find interesting. So I'd say I am
> definitely not an Analytical philosopher, but not really a Continental
> philosopher either. All the people I like are "in between."
>
> (2) "Reality as a creation of minds or mental states?"
> This is the absurd claim of Subjective Idealism. No, as a
> Hegelian-Marxist, I am definitively not a Subjective Idealist.
>
> (3) "Consciousness bestows meaning to the objects of the world or that the
> experience of a human subject makes these objects meaningful?"
> Well, yes, I don't know what "meaning" could mean otherwise, so something
> of this kind must be the case.
>
> (4) I can't make much sense of your paragraph beginning "More
> specifically ..." I go with Vyotsky's view of the mutually interconnected
> development of verbal intellect and intelligent speech (whether verbal or
> signed). I don't want to add anything to what Vygotsky said in "Thinking
> and Speech."
>
> (5) Why "consciousness cannot in itself be a sign"?
> I think Peirce's view of consciousness as semiosis is a powerful one and
> can be utilised consistently with Vygotsky's views on the solution of
> relevant problems. But the thing is that consciousness is not something
> which in itself has any impact on the external world, only mediately
> through the physiology of the thinking body and material objects wielded by
> the body. You strangely leap from Peirce's semiotics to Saussure's
> Semiology when you say: "consciousness is the signifying and the
> signified." How can consciousness signify if it is not empirically given?
> Unless you are just referencing an "internal world" here?
>
> (6) How semiotics in the Peircean sense is "not language"?
> As I see it, semiotics is an approach (like structuralism or functionalism
> or behaviourism), an extremely powerful approach, for the objective
> analysis of culture in the sense of a mass of interconnected objects and
> behaviours. The context in which I was speaking was the phylogenetic
> origins of language. Treating language as a natural process subject to
> objective analysis just like geological formations or the structure of
> ecosystems, or whatever, ruled out Semiotics as providing the explanation
> for why language is essentially not just a system of signs,- that a chimp
> screeching in fright and causing another chimp to run away, is essentially
> different from a chimp calling out: "There's a wolf coming!" and another
> chimp responding by calling out "Stop playing games, Charlie! You scared
> the life out of me." Even old Spinoza took the essential issue, not to have
> emotions, but to be able to control one's emotions and one's response to
> emotions.
>
> Whatever your ontological position, there remains a real puzzle: how did
> homo sapiens sapiens evolve? What is it that was the essential driver in
> forming our unquestionably unique species. Many answer that it is language,
> and it is not unreasonable to re-pose the original question: how did
> language-using evolve? If the analytical tools you bring to bear can't make
> a fundamental distinction between language-using and any other semiotic
> process, then that tool is of no use for the task at hand.
>
> Andy
>
>
> On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 at 22:15, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Andy, I'm now back to you after a busy week. You said: "Language is an
>> essential part of a specific form of life, namely human life, in which
>> consciousness mediates between stimulus and response, and that
>> consciousness cannot in itself be a sign". I found this interesting - would
>> it encapsulate an idealistic view of reality as a creation of minds or
>> mental states? Are you saying that consciousness bestows meaning to the
>> objects of the world or that the experience of a human subject makes these
>> objects meaningful?
>>
>> More specifically, linking consciousness with language, do you consider
>> both the intentionality of consciousness and the linguistic structures as
>> described in analytical philosophy (I guess you're more of an analytical
>> philosopher)? I wondered, in your view, what would serve as a foundation
>> for knowledge, if human subjects had no recourse to the narratives of
>> "transcendent being" or "higher being". I'm interested in Wittgenstein and
>> Husserl, both of whom examined language and consciousness. Wittgenstein saw
>> limits in what philosophy could do in terms of explaining and
>> understanding; Husserl stressed limits in articulating or communicating
>> consciousness. Can you comment on this and perhaps how it might be
>> implicated in your position?
>>
>> Can you also explain why "consciousness cannot in itself be a sign"? As I
>> see it, consciousness is the signifying and the signified, both of which
>> evolve as consciousness evolves. In Peirce's terms, consciousness is a
>> semiosis.
>>
>> In an earlier message, you said semiotics in the Peircean sense is "not
>> language". Reading Peirce, I've found it intriguing that a great deal of
>> his pragmaticism (as distinguished from William James's pragmatism) can be
>> packed into his semiosis. It seems that his semiosis might be studied
>> against the backdrop of his pragmaticism (which provides a conceptual basis
>> for his tripartite of the sign). As I see it, Peircean pragmatism is also a
>> theory of meaning, indicative of the role of language in making clear what
>> we mean by what we say (e.g. what it is meant by "going around the tree" in
>> William James's "squirrel on the tree").
>>
>> This discussion is perhaps a most enduring one so far on Xmca-I. I'm busy
>> again from tomorrow but will be joyfully watching how it develops in the
>> background!
>>
>> James
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *____________________________________________________________*
>>
>> *James Ma  Independent Scholar **https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20181231/986da7ae/attachment.html