File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 71


Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:58:25 -0500 (EST)
Subject: paralogy


> Lois wrote:
> One might ask, "How can paralogy legitimate?"  Just as science never 
> presents a conclusion that is beyond falsifiction, so paralogy does
> not require access to apodictic truth in order to
> legitimate.  The legitimation is a judgment that the move
> is proper within the language game.  And within the
> language game of paralogy, which is our postmodern
> conversation, what is legitimate is a move that takes the
> conversation forward, that presents us with a fertile
> perspective, or destabililizes the status quo
> taken-for-granted explanation and allows he generation of
> new ideas. 
> 
> Don smith replies:
> Lois, your explanation is very clear but if the rule of parology is that a
> move in the game must take the conversation forward and present a fertile
> perspective or destabilize the status quo and allow the generation of new
> ideas, then why isn't that rule, which is universal to the game of parology,
> a metanarrative or at least a part of the old metanarratives? 
> Don
> 

The only meta- here would be at the level of prescriptive: the rules of 
paralogy. That doesn't make it a metanarrative, since it has nothing to 
do with how the game of science is played, for example (or tennis for 
that matter: playing tennis would be quite different from a paralogical 
approach to tennis).

--mark


   

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