From: "Andrew Brown" <Andrew-AT-lubs.leeds.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:56:08 +0100
Subject: Re: BHA: Identity -- one last thought


Hi Mervyn,

> Andy wrote:
> 
> >Random remark: if I remember rightly DPF explicitly denies
> >'achieved identity', as well as other forms of identity.
> 
> I take it this doesn't include 'constellational identity' (and 
> specifically the constellational identity of thought and being) and
> 'constellational unity', because you've acknowledged DPF's acceptance
> of them previously.

Correct. Constellational identity doesn't seem to help our 
contradiction though. That is why DPF is against identity thinking, 
against even achieved identity, as far as I can tell.

Many thanks,

Andy

> 
> Mervyn
> 
> *****************
> Let's just take science for a moment. Consider what happens when
> Newton is painfully working away and is getting very close to the
> concept of gravity but hasn't quite got it, takes a walk in the
> afternoon, isn't thinking, sees an apple fall to the ground, and wow!
> gravity: it's not the apple falling to the ground, the earth is
> pulling the apple. Things are constituted by fields of force in virtue
> of which heavy bodies are pulled to them. So you have that huge shift
> from the Aristotelian world view there. This comes out of the blue. Do
> you think I'm teasing you when I say that this is absolutely necessary
> for science? I certainly believe that science does follow a pattern
> which is roughly that in the transitive dimension as described by
> Kuhn. You have an absence--I'm dialectizing it--an incompleteness, it
> generates a contradictory problem field, and these contradictions
> mount to the point where they become intolerable. Whenever a period of
> revolutionary science begins, a sublating concept--this is the
> co-existence of positive contraries and negative sub-contraries--which
> couldn't be induced or deduced from the existing problem-field comes
> out of the blue, in a flash. This is the really important thing.
> There's no algorithm for this magical logic, this transcendental
> moment in which something comes out of the blue. All creativity is
> like that. It wouldn't be creativity if it could be induced or deduced
> from what was there before! That's just why you need a revolution, why
> you need a transformation, why you need the production of something
> new, something that wasn't there before. But does this epistemic
> transcendence, this moment of transcendence within the epistemological
> process, mean that it's ontologically transcendent? No, because if it
> was ontologically transcendent it would not belong to our cosmos.
> Newton and gravity would be members of non-intersecting cosmic fields.
> What I conjecture happens when a moment of scientific breakthrough
> like that occurs is that the scientist, who has worked very hard, gone
> as far and as close as he can to the point of breakthrough, comes into
> alethic union--comes into contact with the alethic truth of the
> phenomenal field. He actually comes into a relationship of identity
> with the truth which is going to revolutionize and transform the
> conceptual field. Of course, that's only the beginning; he then has to
> recast the whole of the knowledge structure in the light of this new
> concept. But, at that moment of breakthrough, there's a point of
> identity or union between the scientist and what he has discovered.
> *******************
> 
> 
> 
> In message <3EEDCE2D.30178.563A86-AT-localhost>, Andrew Brown 
> <Andrew-AT-lubs.leeds.ac.uk> writes
> >Hi Ruth,
> >
> >I think the quote about Newton was brought up in one of Mervyn's
> >earlier posts, possibly an interview with RB?
> >
> >Your description of Aristotle's notion of identity sounds like
> >isomorphism, i.e. identity of form. I take CR and DCR to deny this,
> >not least via SEPM [RB is explicit about this in SRHE]. I take it
> >that Adorno denies this too?
> >
> >Random remark: if I remember rightly DPF explicitly denies
> >'achieved identity', as well as other forms of identity.
> >
> >Many thanks,
> >
> >Andy
> >
> >
> >> Hi Andy,
> >>
> >> You wrote:
> >>
> >> >I guess my intended meaning was the one about the special case of
> >> >talking about knowledge claims. I was, and still am, trying to
> >> >grasp what Jamie has in mind by 'identity' (and also Mervyn and
> >> >RB, e.g. on Newton becoming identical with his Law's)
> >>
> >> I haven't read the claim about Newton -- where is it, by the way? 
> >> Do you or does anyone else know?
> >>
> >> I do think that some of this way of thinking can be traced back to
> >> Aristotle. Even though I associated his theory of knowledge with
> >> the "epistemological" sense of the concept of "identity" that you
> >> and Jamie were considering in relation to SEP Materialism (whew),
> >> Aristotle's theory of knowledge does, as I understand it, involve
> >> the idea (no pun intended) that in the act, or moment, or whatever,
> >> of knowledge-production, the FORM of the object and the conceptual
> >> form in the mind of the knower really are, in fact, identical. 
> >> Part of why this is perhaps marginally less problematic than it
> >> might seem at first is that the claim is not that matter and
> >> thought are identical; the claim is that the FORM of the matter and
> >> the FORM in the mind of the knower are identical.  But still, it's
> >> an ontological identity that is being achieved, or better,
> >> actualized, via the activity of cognition.
> >>
> >> Anyway, although for later dialectical thinkers you get the
> >> Aristotle via Hegel, I think that this is helpful in understanding
> >> the general approach.
> >>
> >> If you (or others) are interested in Adorno, there is a secondary
> >> source that is a very good place to start.  It's Simon Jarvis'
> >> book, 1998, called *Adorno*.  It is very clearly written, and
> >> unlike others he doesn't fudge by just quoting Adorno when the
> >> going gets particularly tough.  In terms of reading Adorno himself,
> >> I think that the very best place to start is the recently released
> >> (though available now in paperback) *Lectures on Kant's Critique of
> >> Pure Reason* (Stanford, 2000 or 2001).  The problem with Adorno is
> >> that, because of how he writes (at least in translated), he is one
> >> of those thinkers whose work you can really only understand once
> >> you already undertand it.  The thing about the lectures on Kant,
> >> though, is that (for better or for worse) his rhetorical style
> >> there is absolutely crystal clear.  So even though it's still
> >> easier to pick out the part of the content that is unique to him
> >> (and which shows up in more detail in his written work) if you
> >> already know what he thinks, still, there's no comparison with the
> >> written material in terms of accessibility.  Nowhere in his
> >> translated written work is utter transparency his rhetorical
> >> objective.  (This is also true of the lectures on moral philosophy,
> >> though less so in the lectures on metaphysics and not so, in my
> >> view, of the lectures on Hegel.)
> >>
> >> Blah, blah, blah ... sorry.  It's a rainy Friday afternoon.
> >>
> >>
> >> Warmly,
> >> r.
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> 
> 
> 
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