File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 121


Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 21:27:57 -0800
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Paralogy


Huechroma-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> I thought some might be interested in a long quote from a paper I wrote ten
> years ago for a graduate course. For those who would rather not suffer through
> the text, just check out the last paragraph. I think it describes paralogy
> “It seems to me that philosophy formulates or at least attempts to articulate
> the epistemologies around which the  sciences and humanities develop their
> projects and methods. That being so, one might look to philosophy for an
> understanding of the past and present presuppositions and methods of those
> disciplines. But philosophy for all its variations and complexities, as I see
> it, splits into two camps and this split is relevant for the points I wish to
> make in this paper. First there are the foundational philosophies which are
> both prescriptive and restrictive. Then their are the anti-foundationalist
> philosophies that are nonprescriptive and open. Where the former make claims
> such as, ‘this is so’, the latter make claims like, ‘that is other’. What is
> implicit throughout this paper is that the former have largely determined and
> continue to influence methods of historiography and that the latter,
> especially of late, challenge those methods as unsubstantiated and often
> unconscious claims to certainty. The schism is by no means new however; there
> has developed over the last two centuries what Paul Ricoeur has described as a
> ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ within the philosophical disciplines. One might say
> that there is a crisis of representation, or in other words a challenge to the
> ways in which reality is socially constructed in the Western world. In this
> century, existential, phenomenological, hermenueutical and Marxist informed
> philosophies have each in their own way mounted this challenge. Enlightenment
> philosophy, in which a knowing subject, through reason, comes to grips with an
> objective world, has in the eyes of many contemporary philosophers, lost its
> efficacy. Nevertheless it is still the traditions of Descartes, Locke and Kant
> that inform the logical positivist position that determines modern
> rationality. From them and others like them we receive our traditional notion
> of knowledge which presupposes: 1) the privileged standpoint of the guarantee
> of certainty, 2) perception as the paradigm case, 3) the universal truth of
> claims to knowledge and 4) the impotence of reflection to disrupt self evident
> tenants (1). The dominant form of structuring reality couples with a
> rationalism which employs a positivist logic in the service of a :methodical
> attainment of ends.. by way of an increasingly precise calculation of means”;
> in other words, an instrumental rationality. (2) The debilitating effects of a
> positivist rationality are summed up by David Helde as follows:
> 
> With positivism, science is no longer understood as one possible form of
> knowledge but is identified as knowledge as such. There is no mode of thought
> left which may criticize the conceptual forms and the structural patterns of
> science. the consequence is Horkheimer maintained, a ghostlike and distorted
> picture of the world. Positivism restricted to a program of investigating
> observable particulars, cannot grasp the self formative process of man as
> process. It hypostecises the abstract concept of fact or datum. By declaring
> meaning to be revealed in sensory observation and in identifying, in the
> social sciences, legitimate scientific experience with the sensory observation
> of manifest and overt action, positivism closes off central aspects of social
> reality. (3).
> 
> I do not take lightly Max Weber’s warning “that a loss of the ability to see
> the world as intrinsically meaningful is a part of the price to be paid for
> the progress of rationality “. If we are not to give up the place of
> rationality as meaning formation, then it seems we must free the term from its
> narrow instrumental usage and develop a more substantive approach for
> determining what is rational.
> 
> In this regard, there are some who would replace instrumental reason with what
> might be called a more substantive rationality, one that would allow for
> indeterminacy and not insist on some ultimate “word, presence, essence, truth
> or reality to act as the foundation of all thought, language and experience”.
> This new rationality  although acknowledging the interconnectedness of things,
> would not insist that all things exist within a field of cause-effect
> relationships. Meanings would be continuously negotiated, not with the
> restricted boundaries of positivist logic but within a radical paradigm;
> radical in the sense that it would insist on a reflexivity that recognizes the
> contingent nature of knowledge.”
> 
> 1. Wachtrhauser, 1986, 398
> 2. Girth & Mills, 1961, 293
> 3. Helde, 1980, 172 
> Don Smith

-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-

Hi Don,

I read it all, but am intrigued by:

"not insist on some ultimate “word, presence, essence, truth
or reality to act as the foundation of all thought, language and   
experience”

This seems so fascist, totalitarian. Furthermore the guilty ones invent
words known mainly to insiders, whose meanings are particularly rubbery.

Paralogy opens up, frees up, to some extent, and is a useful technique.

In dialogue, or group exchange of concepts, we still need understanding
and agreement on the words we hear, speak. 

I took a short trip to Webster and selected (what to me a are logical
meanings) some defintions:

PHILOSOPHY:  2 a : pursuit of wisdom b : a search for a general
understanding of values and reality by chiefly
speculative rather than observational means
 c : an analysis of the grounds of and concepts
expressing fundamental beliefs

WISDOM:1 a : accumulated philosophic or scientific
 learning : KNOWLEDGE b : ability to discern inner
qualities and relationships : INSIGHT c : good sense :
JUDGMENT d : generally accepted belief

VALUES:7 : something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable
or desirable <sought material
values instead of human values -- W. H. Jones>

REALITY:
1 : the quality or state of being real
2 a (1) : a real event, entity, or state of affairs <his dream became a
reality> (2) : the totality
of real things and events <trying to escape from reality> b : something
that is neither
derivative nor dependent but existsnecessarily
- in reality : in actual fact

BELIEF: 1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is
placed in some person or thing
2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a
group 3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of
some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of
evidence
synonyms BELIEF, FAITH, CREDENCE, CREDIT mean assent to the truth of
something offered for acceptance. BELIEF may or may not imply certitude
in the believer my belief that I had caught all the errors>. FAITH
almost always implies certitude even where there is no evidence
or proof an unshakable faith in God>. CREDENCE suggests intellectual
assent without implying anything about grounds for assent <a theory now
given credence by scientists.

CREDIT may imply assent on grounds other than direct proof <gave full
credit to the statement
of a reputable witness. synonym see in addition OPINION 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In summary, I suppose "philosophers" who do not "believe" in "reality",
"values" or "belief" itself wouldn't be interested in dialogue.

Philosophers who do "believe" still have difficulty explaining their
understanding of the meanings of the words they speak in order to
explain their views of the world they witness.

Cheers,
Hugh


   

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