Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 06:18:34 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Paralogy continued


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> Judy wrote:
> >
> > Lois, re paralogy you said
> > In my interpretation, too,
> > >"consensus" is not its end, (and Rorty at least says that this is the
> > >distinction between Habermas and Lyotard).  But it does seem to me that
> > >it can have its place.  I agree that part of the place of consensus has
> > >to do with the consensual use of language rules (and I hope we are
> > >working towards that here)
> >
> > This captures my attention.  What value legitimates the consensual use of
> > language rules here?
> 
> Paralogy, as I understand paralogy, is what legitimates the consensual
> use of langauge rules.  We need consensual use of language rules,
> locally and provisionally, and always subject to revision, in order to
> create little narratives together.  (see page 67 PMC)
> 
> >
> > , but are you saying that in paralogy there is
> > >no place for agreement at all?  that doesn't make sense to me.  Please
> > >explain what you're thinking.
> >
> > p.65 "...Even discussions of denotative statements need to have rules.
> > Rules are not denotative but prescriptive utterances, which we are better
> > off calling metaprescriptive utterances to avoid confusion (they prescribe
> > what the rules of language games must be in order to be admissable). The
> > fucntion of the differential or imaginative or paralogical activity of the
> > current pragmatics of science is to poihnt out htese
> > metaprescriptives...and to petition the players to accept different ones.
> > they only legitimation that can make this kind of request admissable is
> > that it will generate ideas, in other words, new statements..."
> >
> > to extrapolate from this model of postmodern science, Lyotard doesn't seem
> > to say there is no place for agreement--if there were no agreement, there
> > would be no paralogy.
> 
> that's how I see it. We need, at a minimum, local and provisional
> acceptance of the rules of langauge.
> 
> > Paralogy functions to undermine agreements by
> > questioning the metaprescriptive presuppositions, to ask "Why should only
> > those denotative statements be admissable?  Why not these other ones?
> > These other ones seem quite persuasive,"
> 
> I see this as putting the cart before the horse.  I see the incredulity
> of metanarratives preceding the need for local and provisional
> definition of the rules.  Idon't see Lyotard as recommending that we try
> to undermine our faith in metanarratives.  We have just lost our belief
> in them.  I think this might be what Mary was trying to say tonight when
> she said:
> 
> <<1. Does Lyotard prescribe or describe postmodernism, whatever this
> lovely chameleon might be?  Personally, I would vote for the latter.  In
> the PMC, he is analyzing a condition.  He is not playing cheerleader for
> the Jetsons.>>
> 
> that's my sense, too.  Lyotard is largely being descrptive when he talks
> about our loss of faith inmetanarratives.  Now, I think he is
> prescriptive at times, too, but I have not found a place where he says,
> "Let's go out and destroy metanarratives."  Have you?
> 
> > and so, for me this says that
> > paralogy is not supportive of, but undermining of consensus,
> 
> I don't see it as particularly supportive of consensus or particularly
> undermining.  These are just phases in the discussion.  There are times
> that we reach consensus and times that we don't.  If we never ever reach
> consensus, then it is just cacaphony.  If there is nothing but
> consensus, then there is no movement.  We are all just chanting
> slogans.  But if some people reach consensus sometimes after they talk
> for a while, then we have something.  Of course, it must be possible for
> even these people to move to other topics where there is less consensus.
> 
> but the role
> > of consensus in paralogy is, first, to be the occasion for it without which
> > it has no sense,
> 
> I think so. I think this is what I said above.  Right?
> 
> and second, deconstruction is effectively
> > reconstruction--the questioning of the basis for one consensus is presented
> > in some genre which is to say, the basis of another potential consensus:
> 
> then, you, too, feel that there is a place for consensus?  So the
> question is for us to study when and how consensus fits into paralogy.
> Right?
> 
> > paralogy is enacted in language. But the paralogical activity, as I read
> > lyotard, is not related to the nurturing of any agreement except as is
> > expedient for the winning of converts away from what is currently
> > hegemonic. Beyond that, consensus is immediately suspect and "outmoded."
> 
> "nurturing of agreement" versus "winning of converts."  These are two
> possibilities.  There are many other ways to reach consensus!  Does
> Lyotard talk anywhere about "winning converts aaway from the
> hegemonic"?  I would appreciate you showing that to me.
> 
> ..Lois Shawver

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Consensus means what?  Agreement of more than two participants?

Agreement implies content, faith that there will be a future, that the
agreement will be "kept", "honored", that the one(s) who agree will not
renege, but also the possibility that they will renege.

Are the above implications "rules" of the "game"? are they "all" of the
rules, and are they fully understoond by all of the players?  Have the
players democratically voted to accept them: a) by consensus, or b) by a 
predetermined majority, say two-thirds, after which all players consent
(consensually) to abide by the vote without further disagreeemnt?
Do the rules allow feints, deception, trickery?

Humpty Dumpty words have meaning in use?  Players try to use any
and all rules which are part of the game in a way which will achieve
their goal of winning.  A chess player or football team might say to an
opponent:  "that was a clever strategy which completely deceived me/us;
but enabled you to win the game within the (consensual) rules.

Discoveries are not "science" until members of the scientific community
who are authorized, explicitly or implicitly, to accept them as
"science"
do so.  They reach a sort of consensus.  Some of the community may
persist in dissent until time and a new generation erases and replaces
them.

Hugh