Re: [xmca] Re: Development and the Strange Situation

From: Andy Blunden <ablunden who-is-at mira.net>
Date: Sat Oct 25 2008 - 17:22:19 PDT

Sorry again Martin! With you and Michael Roth on the job, I
feel I have to be cautious in using modern (i.e., not
postmodern) terminology. Your dictionary takes it that the
notion of "progress" is inherently modernist. I.e., people
who criticise the grand narrative and the postmodern loss of
belief in progress identify modern illusions with the very
idea of progress.

But the context was actually "development" of course not
"progress". I said (beginning with a quote from you):

"The very terms 'development' and 'learning' are normative":
yes these terms are 'normative' but in an objective sense of
the word 'normative' in that they refer to a process between
a universal (or genus, community) and an individual. This
may be quite 'objective'. There is no need for any
connotation of 'progress', or "getting better", etc.

When you objected to the looseness of this use of the word
"objective" we got into this tangle about "progress" which
I, like your dictionary, took to be inherently modernist,
but I offered a caveat - "unless you have an (in that sense)
objective notion of progress". Clearly we find that that
"unless" is closed, and is really a red-herring. So without
introducing "progress" my point is that:

The notion of development is a process between an individual
and its genus, and carries no necessary notion of
transhistorical betterment.

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
> Sorry Andy, I'm still not getting this. Development is objective, but it's
> not progress unless one has an objective notion of progress? My dictionary
> tells me that progress is "forward or onward movement toward a destination,
> or advance or development toward a better, more complete, or more modern
> condition." What would be a notion of progress that doesn't involve a value
> judgment?
>
> Martin
>
> Apologies Martin, for the loose and unexplained usage of the
> word "objective", by which I just meant that no value
> judgment is required. And of course, if you have an (in that
> sense) objective notion of progress, then OK. But I mean
> there is no need to believe that "progress" means getting
> better or stronger or more advanced or fit or anything such
> thing. I think in the almost forgotten context of this
> discussion we were talking about the socialisation of an
> individual organism within its genus. That's all.
>
> Andy
>
> Martin Packer wrote:
>> Andy,
>>
>> Help me with this, please. Do you mean objective as opposed to subjective,
> a
>> personal evaluative judgment? I think I can by that. By why does an
>> objective development not connote progress or improvement? Could these not
>> be objective processes too?
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On 10/23/08 7:28 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>> "The very terms 'development' and 'learning' are normative":
>>> yes these terms are 'normative' but in an objective sense of
>>> the word 'normative' in that they refer to a process between
>>> a universal (or genus, community) and an individual. This
>>> may be quite 'objective'. There is no need for any
>>> connotation of 'progress', or "getting better", etc.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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>>
>

-- 
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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
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Received on Sat Oct 25 17:22:39 2008

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