File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-06-08.010, message 110


From: ROSSERJB-AT-jmu.edu
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 12:26:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re:  waiting for Godel


To Good Old Ralph:
     Well, I don't think that we are going to resolve this.
If Hofstadter's book smells suspicious to you, irrespective
of anything Rahul or I say to you, so be it.  I fully agree
that parts of it are somewhat farfetched.  But I would also
say that Rahul's judgment of it was fairly on beam.  The book
is serious and most of the actual science in it is OK, even
if it is essentially a pop-schlop piece.
     I am not surprised that you would find Smullyan suspicious.
He used to pull dimes out of my ears when I was a kid.  But he
sure could make me laugh too.  Saunders MacLane lives to uphold
the banner of purity.  Well, good for him.
     Before the Baroness gets on our case too much about what is
all this stuff really about, let me say that I am taking a "moderate"
position on pomo here.  There is a spectrum between cowshit (hard
facts) and bullshit (soft non-facts).  Just because something is
not pure cowshit does not immediately mean therefore that it is
pure bullshit.  And it does not hurt to engage in some "thinking
about how we think about how we are thinking about thinking," etc.
This used to be known as philosophy.
     You're just a little too hard-nosed about all this, Ralph.
I am greatly amused that Sokal pulled off his hoax and there is 
plenty of bullshit out there to be exposed, but my point was (and
is) that you were overdoing it, the inclusion of Hofstadter's book
in a category with _Social Text_ vaporizations being such an example.
Barkley Rosser


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