File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0206, message 112


Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 20:16:56 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: 44 and 38



Eric/All,

Comments at **


> Hugh,
>
> Part of the tension I see in the first chapter derives from what might
> be called the 'is/ought' dichotomy. Hume argued that an ought cannot be
> deduced from an is and this was picked by a Kant as well. It is the
> difference between pure and practical reason, science and ethics.

** I assume "ought" refers to ethics and "is" to pure and practical reason
and science.

> This was further developed by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus, which derives
in
> many ways from Kant by way of Shopenhauer. According to this, the world
> consists of everything that is the case; atomic facts in logical space.
> A proposition is a picture of this state of affairs. However,
> metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical judgments are literally nonsense
> because they regard the world as a limited whole, our attitude towards
> the facts rather than the facts themselves.
**The world of humans is ls/is not limited by their powers of perception?

There are things that can  be said and things that can only be shown. As
Wittgenstein argues the  world of a happy person is different from the world
of a sad person.
**Or two happy people, since they have different powers of perception,
different experiences, life-histories.

> This may seem like a pedantic preamble and name-dropping to you, but I
> think this whole philosophical tradition is very germane to the basic
> argument Lyotard is making in the first chapter. I know it is
> fashionable to say that postmodernism reduces all science to rhetoric.
**Seems extreme.  A common view is that for post-modernists,  practically
everything is thought be be relativistic, yet you keep referring to science
as postivist.

> The position, however, is not one that Lyotard ever argued.
>
> What he seems to consistently say, in my reading at least, is that there
> is a genre we call science which follows certain rules of cognition, a
> game which is paralogical because it permits developments to occur that
> may overturn its assumptions. However, this genre is limited because it
> restricts itself to the interpretation of empirical facts.
**Disagree.  Scientists continually invent new theories, modify old
theories, and accuse each other of bending the facts to fit the theories.
>
> Lyotard distinguishes ethics and politics from science because they form
> a different genre. Both deal with Ideals in the Kantian sense, which is
> to say that they are universals that cannot be affirmed or refuted in
> the empirical sense.

**To show that universals cannot be refuted, one would need to describe the
content of the universal and the conditions for its refutation.  With
examples, we could give it a try. .

> However, because of the very condition, such Ideals are susceptible to
differends > because the argument of Gorgias can be  applied to them.
>
> 1. The Ideal does not exist.
**Can I or anyone else prove that an Ideal in your mind or the mind of any
other person does not exist?  When asked, you might lie and say no.  If you
describe the Ideal it obviously exists (for you).

> 2. If it exists it cannot be known
**If  it cannot be known it cannot be named, so how could Addressor speak of
it?.

> 3. If it can be known it cannot be communicated.
**Unless you can find the words, and the addressee understands the words.
>
> Thus, the differend is always somewhat paradoxical in nature and it
> derives from the fact that reality is not a given, but can only be
> established by certain procedures or protocol.
**The differend is a concept, a general term for all the differends of all
the peoples of all the world.  Reality requires an instance, a happening, a
wrong to give meaning to the concept.  Presumably Lyotard experienced such
an instance, and that led to his invention of the concept/term/word.

> Furthermore, a differend  can be considered negative, in the sense of
Holocaust
> revisionism,  positive in the sense that oppressed groups call upon
another tribunal
> than the one that the litigating state allows, and even paralogical or
> aesthetic in the sense that the differend, like art, attempts to present
> the paralogical.
**I wouldn't think the rules of most tribunals would admit paralogy.
Perhaps making  choices between conflicting testimony would be a kind of
paralogy.

> I think this is the basic argument of the first chapter, simplifying
> vastly. Of course, the structure of the differend is such that it too
> can be denied, but if it is denied, then Lyotard wins, as the Protagoras
> Notice makes clear.
**Some parties to a litigation will do almost anything to win. Its difficult
to imagine
winning a trial with Protagoras' rhetoric and logic or convincing a jury
that "The barber who shaves everyone who does not shave himself,  does or
does not shave himself".
The differend would be wronged, the plaintiff should demand a new tribunal.
Of course he might wind up with the situation L. describes in No. 9.

> I hope this makes things a little clearer. The abstract-concrete
> distinction you are making fails because it does not say how values
> originate or how we should deal with them and this is the central
> concern of Lyotard in the first chapter. He radically distinguishes
> between Ideals and cognition.
**Ask  yourself how your values originate, and I'll probably find my
situation is much the same.

"Ideals" is a generalization, cognition is a process.

When  Kant or Lyotard, or you or I ponder the word "Ideals" a certain state
of mind is induced, a different brain-state for each cognizer.

The brain-state would depend on the memory-machine (experience/life-history)
of each the brain's person.

I think we read LD first to understand, second to agree or disagree with its
content.

We haven't talked about the problems of translation, but most of the Notices
come from Greek and German authors, and I don't know if L. read Greek with
the same interpretations as Kant and Hegel and Wittgenstein whose native
languages were German, or how accurately Lyotard translated those who wrote
in German, assuming he read German.

And we're reading a translation form the French original.

We readers (all native speakers of English?) are having enough trouble
communicating and understanding relatively common English words. However,
that's the kind of problem the theory of Phrases in Dispute prepares us for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of hbone
> Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 7:19 PM
> To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: 44 and 38
>
>
> Eric/Steve/All,
>
> I'm willing to take time to discuss and, hopefully, understand in more
> detail (off-List, if necessary) the words and phrases we read
> differently.
> After a review of the four silences and the Plato Notice, I'll try to
> answer
> the question.
>
> But, in the meantime some comments at **
>
> regards,
> Hugh
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> > Hugh wrote:
> >
> >
> > The trouble with the Kantien Ideal is the trouble with other
> > abstractions.
> > Sometimes the abstract words do not relate to real objects and real
> > events;
> > i.e.the thing-in-itself  is not a thing and not a self.
> >
> > Hugh/Steve/All:
> >
> > Yes, but isn't this simply the dream of positivism once again. If a
> way
> > can be found to reduce the abstractions to the concrete, to reduce the
> > Ideal to the cognitive, then the differend will not emerge.
> **IMO the concrete precedes the abstract.  Time and space,objects,
> feelings,
> hungers ,satisfactions are experienced repeatedly  by infants infants
> before
> they learn and communicate their first abstractions, words.
> >
> > Lyotard's argument in the first chapter, as I understand it, is that
> > this ends in merely being another form of terror.
>
> **Yes, there are wrongful actions (concrete events) , some of which
> inspire
> terror.  The idea of the differend is an abstraction.  The aim is tofind
> an
> idiom which is acceptable to both plaintiff and defendant.
>
> > The communist  political system that he described saw communism as
> merely
> > concrete and  cognitive in that sense. The whole problem is that a
> hidden
> tribunal is
> > required to provide the judgment necessary to reduce the genre.
> **Public individuals, communist or facist, judged and disposed of
> Holocaust
> and other victims, whether communist or fascist, and hidden tribunals as
> well.
>
> > Otherwise, the danger is such that the situation described in the
> Plato
> > note emerges.  The dialogue as communication becomes reduced, note
> > merely to agonistics, but to monologue.
> >
> > Part of the issue, as I see it, with the recent conversation between
> > Steve and I is that we are talking across genres, from different
> levels.
> > He is arguing for an Ideal of humanism that incorporates the animal
> > without the elevation of the one over the other.  I am arguing that
> his
> > case is not special and the situation of the differend described by
> > Lyotard still applies to the case he mentions.
> >
> > In other words, as I read him, Lyotard is not speaking of particular
> > concrete issues of injustice as much as he is describing the
> > transcendental conditions of possibility that allows the differend to
> > emerge and how this remains as both a latent and constant possibility.
>
> **The "transcendental conditions" are brain-states, mind-sets of living
> human beings.
> As judge and jury these persons attend to and act as tribunal to resolve
> actual, concrete, disputes.  Communist or Fascist dictators may have
> used
> "hidden tribunals"
> as a pretense.
> >
> > Perhaps I am misreading your comments, Hugh and Steve, but it seems
> that
> > at some level you are arguing the differend can be transcended by
> either
> > a more positivist (Hugh) or a more Hegelian (Steve) philosophy. My
> > question back to you is how do you manage to avoid the dreaded four
> > silences.
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
>
>



   

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