tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post9190208747046347499..comments2023-06-27T16:51:05.805+02:00Comments on The Pangrammaticon: The Age of Science and PoliticsThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-21599403386516344572015-11-06T12:36:01.049+01:002015-11-06T12:36:01.049+01:00Thanks, fixed it. Will read Carson soon.Thanks, fixed it. Will read Carson soon.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-31654178062930155992015-11-06T12:33:38.804+01:002015-11-06T12:33:38.804+01:00I just got around to reading this. Shortly after y...I just got around to reading this. Shortly after you posted it, my class on verse novels discussed "Justice," the first chapter of Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red", which you can read here:<br /><br />http://rowms.tumblr.com/post/92893536603/i-justice<br /><br />In particular, we considered these two lines:<br /><br />Geryon had no doubt 'stupid' was correct. But when justice is done<br />the world drops away.<br /><br />Anyway, I thought of that passage when I read a parenthetical comment in your post: "Truth is to knowledge as justice is to power." [Aside: not that you have an extra "as" in there after "truth".]<br />Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-40723001072911338752015-10-16T16:51:48.220+02:002015-10-16T16:51:48.220+02:00This should be highly interesting. For some time, ...This should be highly interesting. For some time, I've summed my phd thesis by saying that it argues that social science is (ought to be?) descriptive ethics. To describe the relation you denote as "pressure", I speak of norms. <br /><br />PS: The pangrammatical resistance to very category of a "social science" is, in my estimation, nothing but the awkvard surprise that there is such a thing as 'descriptive ethics'; a concept which seems - from a specifically "modern" but also prejudiced point of view - to be bordering on contradiction. Presskornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03480116067878605339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-7402909483041571032015-10-16T16:15:55.786+02:002015-10-16T16:15:55.786+02:00Thanks for this, Thomas. You are right that pressu...Thanks for this, Thomas. You are right that pressure is vague here. (In my defense, I did say "a <i>kind</i> of pressure", leaving its exact nature open. And you are right about spontaneity.<br /><br />In the past, I have said that receptivity is to knowledge as capacity is power. The object is <i>given</i> immediately in intuition, and the subject is <i>taken</i> immediately in institution. Accordingly, perhaps complicity is to power what spontaneity is to knowledge.<br /><br />That is, there, there always something underdetermined in the representation, something that we contribute to experience in order for there be anything like knowledge or power. Though the object is given, it must also be taken, and though the subject is taken, we must also give in to it.<br /><br />For this reason, it also occurred to me recently that epistemology is prescriptive and ethics (perhaps surprisingly) is always descriptive. Indeed, the normative force of epistemology makes it almost an ethics of knowledge. Similarly, ethics is an epistemology of power.<br /><br />That's how they hook into each other, how they are joined, how they are articulated. (Imprecise metaphors again, perhaps.)<br /><br />Lots of work to do. It's really only just beginning.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-91144687779968379732015-10-16T15:06:59.594+02:002015-10-16T15:06:59.594+02:00That is, "pressure" reminds me a little ...That is, "pressure" reminds me a little too much of legal positivism, which Hart phrases in the following way: <br /><br />“… all talk of rules, and the corresponding words like ‘must’, ‘ought’, and ‘should’, is<br />fraught with a confusion which perhaps enhances their importance in men’s eyes<br />but has no rational basis. We merely think, so such critics claim, that there is<br />something in the rule which binds us to do certain things and guides or justifies us<br />in doing them, but this is an illusion even if it is a useful one. All that there is, over<br />and above the clear ascertainable facts of group behaviour and predictable reaction<br />to deviation, are our own powerful ‘feelings’ of compulsion to behave in accordance<br />with the rule and to act against those who do not.” (Hart, The Concept of Law (1994), p. 11)<br /><br />I read - perhaps wrongly - read your "pressure" as what Hart here calls "powerful ‘feelings’ of compulsion". But Hart as goes on to say (and as Witt on rules showed before him), this view is mistaken. <br />Presskornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03480116067878605339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-28265455786346320632015-10-16T12:49:49.781+02:002015-10-16T12:49:49.781+02:00Resurrection is, in this case though not always, g...Resurrection is, in this case though not always, good news! Cheers! I'm looking forward to this. Yet, I want to challenge you right from the beginning:-) <br /><br />I think the "pressure"-metaphor is too one-sided and apt to create misunderstanding. Surely, Durkheim was right to notice that "let fait sociaux" - which in an instance of pangrammatical neatness translates in both "social act" and "social fact" - exert normative pressure on individuals, i.e. on *us*. <br /><br />Yet, this is too one-sided - as if science and politics, Kantianly speaking, were merely matters of receptivity and not of spontaniety. Science and politics are not just stuff that *happens* to me, outside of my control. Sure, science and politics both contain an imperative of compliance, but that compliance is also something that I, in many cases, take freely upon myself. My intuition of compliance, i.e. my fidelity to, ideas of science and politics can, in spite of being reliant on tradition, even be turned against science and politics as exercised in the mainstream. A blog called RSL have recently - in a series of posts on scientific journalism - exemplified how such obstinate fidelity to the ideas of rigorous science and democratic politics can be used freely and critically. Science and politics are enabling as well as constraining and "pressure" seems an inapt word to capture this. Presskornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03480116067878605339noreply@blogger.com