Nate,
I congratulate you on the following accurate description of where you stand:
> But to the point I dislike
> talk of constructionism because it implies intentionally or not some
reality
> as priori. If something is constructed it implies something as a priori. I
> also don't accept the notion that there is a reality out there but because
> of mediation or whatever we can never have access to it. What I do
believe
> is we are in this system in which artifacts transform us and we transform
> them. That is reality.
And clearly this is where we disagree fundamentally. I don't, however,
accept the label "social constructivist" and am quite unaware of who you
include in that category. Do they hold that "there is a reality out there"?
I don't and this is definitely not the position in the Spinoza through
Ilyenkov tradition. There is no out-there out there just as there is no
in-here in here (nor an out-there in here, etc.) For this reason one speaks
of necessity rather than "objective reality". In addition to the artefacts
and ourselves we must include in our accounts a world that we did not
create, that in fact created us and the materials from which artifacts are
created. Furthermore, that world, that includes us and our artifacts but
is not restricted to these, has deterministic structures that can be known.
This is what is affirmed: that there is a necessity that governs both the
out-there and the in-here which are two aspects of conscious experience of
reality. We can have access to knowledge of this necessity precisely
because we are products of it--just as expressed in the quote I provided
from G. Spencer Brown.
You quoted Lakoff who was the object of a series of exchanges last fall.
One of the problems I found reading Star's January paper was the implicit
use of Lakoff's theory of categorization. It's not a problem with the paper,
but with the inclusion of a paper that occurs as a chapter of a book and
presupposes ideas discussed earlier in the book. Although I understand the
Lakovian notion of "prototypical categories" and "prototypical effects",
this theory is not explicitly stated in her paper and therefor, for those
who don't know "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" or later works, the full
force of the argument is lost. In Star's paper, aristotelian categories
are the putatively scientific categories, prototypical ones the common sense
categories, and most of the discussion concerns the interplay between these
in relation to the practice of apartheid. It isn't at all clear from the
paper itself where Star stands on the relationship between prototypical
categories and scientific ones and that doesn't seem to be the point
although there is clearly a warning about the application of categories to
social relations in general.
Peter Jones has two interesting papers that discuss the relationship between
Lakoff's theory of prototypical categories and Ilyenkov's theory of
"concrete universals". At some level the two theories have certain
similarities. The difference, however, is that Lakoff's "prototypical
categories" are based on "basic-level (sensory or embodied) categories" that
do not reflect the essential, concrete, or necessary characteristics of the
categorized phenomena. The mix of aristotelian and prototypical categories
around which STAR's paper revolves is precisely a mix of putatively
scientific (Aristotelian) and common sense (prototypical) categories as I
pointed out in my last post in this thread.
Lakoff seems to deny that there are any scientific categories at all and
that all categorization is eventually prototypical with scientific
(aristotelian included) categories being a special species.
The upshot of Lakoff's idealistic relativism is that it is based on the
"gods eye view" since, inversely, it argues that such absolute knowledge is
required for knowledge of necessity but being impossible it therefor
concludes that knowledge of necessity is impossible. This is a problem for
all relativist idealisms, a position with which I have problems, as you do
with the "social constructionists." I recommend Peter's papers for a more
detailed discussion of the problems with this position and the way it is
avoided in Ilyenkov's account of scientific categories (concrete
universals).
Paul H. Dillon
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