Nate,
I really don't know how to be much clearer but you nevertheless continue to
misconstrue what I've been saying and also, as far as I can tell, what Peter
was saying in his paper. Your defacto litmus test on 'constructionists'
goes right past me since I don't know to whom you're referring, so I'll
repeat my earlier request for you to describe who you include in this and if
possible explain to me what you see their basic position to be.
I'll go through the relevant parts of your message to try to clear up where
I feel you misunderstand what I've been saying.
> I disagree with the the embodied view of Lakoff. For me it is
> "constructivist" in that knowledge is embodied. In this light I found
> Alterman's (1999) article, The Closed Room, in MCA awhile back very
useful.
> I also see Lakoff pointing toward this "reality" out there that we don't
> have access to which I also disagree with.
>
No problem there Nate. The quote that you mention comes from Ilyenkov's
discussion of Spinoza where he praises Spinoza for overcoming the cartesian
dualism of thought and substance while at the same time pointing out that
the Spinozist conception did not involve an adequate notion of human
activity but relied on a position not dissimilar to the embodied view you
disagree with except that intelligence was everywhere, not just in the human
body, but also in the rocks, streams, birds, stars, etc. Quite Zen in that!
> Peter then states,
>
> "The “embodied” view is premissed on the impossibility in principle of
> unravelling this experiential complex (which would entail a “God’s eye
> view”), while Materialism is based not just on the possibility of doing
so,
> but on the theoretically and empirically verifiable fact of so doing in
the
> course of history"
>
> Yet, from Peter's quote above I would see the hybridity itself as the
> material and am not convinced science can unravel this "experential
> complex".
This is quite a jumble for me. The "embodied view" refers to Lakoff, the
"hybridity" comes from the earlier quote and refers to Ilyenkov's
description of how people who adopt the cartesian dualism end up with the
problem of our body being at the same time external and also the locus of
thought--yielding either the need for disembodied consciousness or the
recognition that thought isn't separate from materiality (an
internal/externality?) Of course science can't unravel the "experiential
complex" as long as it is conceived as something that contains materiality
and consciousness (substance and thought) as separate moments since only
some god sitting totally outside of it all could see that.
>
> Does science speak of some truth about the world, of course it does
because
> its part of it. Is its knowledge independent of social relations as you
> argued earlier, I don't believe so. I don't think the boundries can be so
> easily seperated and find a danger in reifying them "in there" or "out
> there".
>
That knowledge is not independent of social relations does not mean that it
is reducible to social relations. The recognition of necessity does not
imply the acceptance of mind/substance or internal/external dualism.
That's the key to the BBC program's interpretation of european advances on
islamic science: the christian tradition's underlying realism and the
possibility of knowing God's design (the necessary relations of the world)
which is precluded in the Islamic world view. Thus we get scientists
arguing about what God is doing, "not playing dice", etc. Such talk would
be blasphemous in Islamic society -- hello Salman! Such talk was
blasphemous to the medieval Catholic church as well as the modern one as
evidenced in the fate of Teilhard de Chardin.
> You mentioned earlier that "scientific concepts" are not constructed
> artifacts. For me, for them to be constructed would imply a seperation
that
> I don't believe exists. My real concerns though is how if its scientific
> concepts or classification their naturalization or reification is an act
of
> power.
>
I never said that "scientific concepts" are not constructed artifacts.
Scientific theories are most definitely artifacts. Rather I said that the
world (including ourselves) whose necessary relations they model is not a
constructed artifact.
> I guess how I would define our differences is via necessity you see
> scientific concepts as knowledge that is independent of social relations
> whereas I see them along the lines of reification and alienation.
I do not see scientific concepts as independent of social relations. But I
also most definitely do not see them as reducible to social relations; ie,
the validity of scientific theories cannot be accounted for in terms of
human activity alone but refer themselves to a reality which human agency,
whether individual or social, does not determine.
I'd like to know what do you mean by reification and alienation? (the
Marx-Lukacs tradition, Sartre, Camus, the 1844 Manuscripts??) I ask
because I am still not clear how you see scientific concepts to be different
from non-scientific ones which of course makes me wonder how you explain the
fact that you're reading this message on the screen you're sitting in front
of.
Paul H. Dillon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:01:52 PST