[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:

Yeah, it was really funny to hear you expounding on Pirsig's leading edge of the train on the track metaphor while discussing James' essay that explicitly condemned all such metaphors.


dmb says:

James condemned all train metaphors? That's weird. Why would he do that? Since James himself uses images of continuous motion or a leading edges, I have to assume you've badly misread something. Go ahead. Dish it up. Splain yourself.  


Krimel said:
... when you claim an idea as original when someone else has stated it 100 years earlier and richer detail that is just sloppy.


dmb says:

You misconstruing the point. To say they arrived at the same ideas independently is not to say Pirsig's idea was original. In fact, it rules out that possibility. I'm not saying that James was "original" either. The point is simply that they are extremely simpatico. This is unremarkable most of the time because such close philosophical affinities usually involve a thinker and her followers or the schools of thought that follow from his work. But here we have a case of two thinkers developing their ideas without any influence from each other and yet landing on the same spot. It's worth mentioning that, historically speaking, American Pragmatism was all but dead and buried during the period when ZAMM was written and published and the current revival began just around the time Lila was published. Pirsig had his own reasons for dismissing James too, but the fashions of the time were enough to make a dismissal understandable, even justifiable. And it turns out that James isn't quite the Victorian defender of theism that Pirsig took him for. 


Krimel said:

I have not read Rorty nor have I seen anything to suggest that you have either.


dmb says:

Really? There is a paper called "Clash of the Pragmatists" on Ant's site. Rorty plays the villain and is quoted extensively. It's been there for over three years. Rorty was assigned reading at least three times in various courses and he'll appear quite a bit in my thesis too. There are lots of his writings that I haven't read, but it just not plausible to say I've read no Rorty. And I've read a lot of pragmatists who write about Rorty. For some reason, a lot more fun than reading Rorty himself.

Krimel said:
I am pretty sure he would take offense at your attempt to use his [James] name to justify ignoring the literature on neuroscience.


dmb says:

What are you talking about? The James fans I mentioned [Antonio Dimasio at Princeton and Eugene Taylor at Harvard] are both excited about the application of James's ideas to what happening in neuroscience. Your accusation must be directed at my evil twin, who goes around saying the very opposite of whatever I say. 

To accuse you of reductionism is not to dismiss neuroscience. It simply doesn't follow. If you think it follows, then you don't understand what reductionism is or you don't understand how logic works. I suspect the former because you say things like this...

 Krimel said:

I don't think you can understand much about language or culture without understanding their function as natural processes. Since they arise from biological processes those processes are relevant at least as starting points. James would not agree with your position either he was the chief advocate for looking at the function behavior and language play in promoting human survival. He explicitly brought Darwinian agreements into the study of psychology and one of his lasting contributions to the field is within evolutionary psychology.


dmb says:

My position against reductionism certainly does not include a claim that biological processes are irrelevant. This is the kind of construction that makes me believe that you don't understand what "reductionism" means, what the problem is. To say that culture can't be explained in biological terms is not to say biology is irrelevant. Obviously!

Also, my hunch about James has been confirmed. Maybe you remember how you'd pit James's psychology against him radical empiricism? Anyway, there is a very good reason why James says things in the former that he would not say in the latter and it is just as I suspected. When James wrote his psychology book, it was from the point of view of positive science and from within SOM. Doubts crept in during the long process but he put them aside. The book project raised many questions for James and we see their resolution taking shape in his last works, such as the essays in radical empiricism and a pluralistic universe. James the scientist became James the philosopher. You like to quote the former against my quotes of the latter as if James himself did not alter his position. That's another parallel between he and Pirsig. Science raised questions for Pirsig and that's what led him to philosophy as well.



dmb asked some rhetorical questions:
Are butterflies democratic or are they ruled by monarchs? What god does the Mantis pray to?


Krimel replied:

Again not especially social nor would have a large brain to house a complex nervous system serve them very well in their biological niches. They don't do those things because they don't need them to survive. We do them because we do.

dmb says:

We need prayer and kings to survive? See, this is the problem with reductionism. Survival is a biological imperative, worship and political hierarchies are not very well understood if they are seen as tools for survival. That's what I mean in saying the social level has a different purpose. When these are confused you get things like social Darwinsim, where the laws of the jungle are applied to the job market or politics. Just as one might suspect, these leads to brutality and suffering. It's not just bad in theory, you know? 



Krimel said:
... few in the field take Freud's explanations particularly seriously anymore and haven't for decades. I think that means you should study him more.


dmb says:

That's a ridiculous claim. Freud was assigned reading in MOST of my classes and there are still a million Freudian psychoanalysts. Pretty much literally, a million of 'em. Granted, the field has advanced since Freud himself was writing, but that's true of Marx, Darwin, Einstein or any other ground breaker. Where did you get the idea that he's no longer taken seriously?

How many Freudian psychoanalysts does it take to change a lightbulb?

It takes two. One to stab the father (oops), I mean grab the ladder, and one to screw in the mother (oops), I mean lightbulb.

The existence of Freudian slips seems like a sound scientific doctrine, especially when you give it a medical name like "parapraxism", but the idea is just not testicle.


Krimel said:
It may "seem" that way to you but that is largely because you don't understand it at all, have not attempted to look at what is being said and you seem genetically incapable of straying outside your comfort zone. But to paint this "romanticism" as somehow moral or philosophically justifiable is just a form of self delusion.



dmb says:

Your complaints are too vague for me to know what you're talking about, what it is you think I don't understand. The other 90% of that was about the same. But your comments make one thing perfectly clear; you're a dick. I don't think your snarky bullshit is cute or clever or respectable in any way. You're just a dick. You're a grandfather, for Christ's sake. What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously, grow up.





 		 	   		  
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