Ogged emails in response to last night's snark. He vouches strenuously for John McCumber's all around good character. McCumber is evidently not the slack-jawed troglodyte I made him out to be. He is erudite and sensitive and agreeable and I am willing to take Ogged's word, since I have rather a good impression of Ogged's erudite and sensitive and agreeable nature.
[UPDATE: The basis for Ogged's favorable judgement, he now emails me, is a paper and a book. Well, I'll read the paper. I'm not up for a whole book just right now. But if I can find something nice to say about the paper, I'll post yet another update later.]
What can I say? Sometimes a snark turns out to be a boojums. That is, I feel bad for being too mean. I am obviously forgetting my Bene Gesserit training. 'Annoyance is the mind killer.' I should be less concerned with getting a lot of blood churning in the water, more concerned with executing precise, civil take-downs. Then a hand-shake and we are all friends and have learned a little something, maybe. I write these boisterous, lengthy screeds by way of jollying myself along and I sort of lose track of the fact that other human beings are involved. I'm talking to myself while throwing the book at the wall. Cussing and swearing and stomping around. Hyperbolic whinging for sheer glory of it is fine in a small circle of like-minded friends. The egregious and, frankly, mean-spirited errors that usually creep in don't usually creep out to cause trouble. So it isn't really responsible to put such properly small-group stuff on this new-fangled interweb, where it can roll around, get into wrong hands, cry in pained distress. Used to be, I didn't have too many readers; now I've got some. With some power comes some responsibility. Sometimes I think it's time for me to shed my snarkskin and grow up.
Let me state, unsnarkily, the serious case against what McCumber has written. Overall, he has a sort of para-Hegelian line about how, when you are breaking on through to the next level of understanding, you have to expect things to be difficult and unclear - even unnecessarily so; writers flounder around not quite getting it. (Sweet lordy ain't it so!) The trouble with this is that he writes as though anyone would deny it. Specifically, he hints that it is failure to grasp this obvious point that leads to things like accusations of Bad Writing. But it is quite clear that the accusation of Bad Writing - warranted or not - amounts to something like this: a class of writers are taking all the murky, jargony incoherence of their own writings as evidence they are ready to move on to the next intellectual level when properly it is evidence they should be flunked back to some previous level. Their jargon is just pretentious, authoritarian mannerism. This is an approximate statement, of course. But it's a better first draft of the indictment than anything you will find between the covers of Just Being Difficult. McCumber is not one of the more angrily strident contributors. And, let me just add, he is not a bad writer. But he is not taking the really quite elementary steps one could take to clear the air. If the accusations against the likes of Butler and Bhabha are unfounded, or if Bad Writers are unrepresentative of the whole, this is something that can be talked about sensibly. No need to pretend the complaint is something else - something silly that is easily brushed aside. The complaint isn't silly. But it may of course be mistaken, partly or wholly.
What McCumber really does that's wrong, however, is thoroughly misrepresent the state of contemporary philosophy. He thinks philosophy is 'bobbing along in the wake of logical positivism'. That is vague enough it might be let pass with a warning. But he presses the point. He strongly hints, without quite saying, that logical positivism is still a significant force in philosophy. Which is just staggeringly wrong. And: he flagrantly misrepresents what logical positivism is. He makes out that logical positivism involves defining the notion of 'clarity' in manifestly horrible, hopeless fashion: in truth-functional terms (this is very vague in McCumber's paper.) In fact, 'clarity' was not really a keyword for the logical positivists, and certainly it was not a technical term. And if someone goes and proves me wrong by pointing to some out of the way technical usage, I am quite sure no one maintained that whatever that technical usage was, it was supposed to usurp the place of ordinary usage. To see why, consider something like Principia mathematica: Russell gives a several hundred page proof that 1 + 1 = 2. Now it would have pleased Russell to make the joke - he probably did - that he was glad finally to clear that up. But he would not have taken the absurd doozy of a next step of maintaining that 'clarity' be defined in terms of complete logical analysis of meaning. If there is a sense in which PM is clear, there is also a sense in which it is not clear.
Bobbing along in the Russell's wake, the logical positivists focused on truth and meaning and analysis. They took it for granted that a sort of clarity would arise out of getting these things right for the first time (never mind that they were deluded). But thinking that clarity will arise out of proper analysis is not the same as giving a bad and tyrannically exclusive definition of 'clarity' in truth-functional terms. No one ever attempted such a thing. McCumber is, quite simply, making it up. And he appears to be doing it by way of concocting an explanation of why anyone would do something so strange as to accuse certain people of writing badly. So he is not just studiously neglecting to address the actual charges against a certain sort of writing. That would be a sin of omission. He is also significantly adding to the general trouble with a smelly red herring of an explanation as to why these charges would ever have been made.
Wittgenstein, I recall, wrote to Russell that the Tractatus was so clear no one would understand it. How to understand such a paradox? What he meant was something like: there are no hints for beginners in this book. Consider the difference between a blueprint of a machine that is supposed to be read only by a highly-trained expert, and a blueprint that is supposed to be read by a novice just getting the hang of reading blueprints: oversimplified, cluttered with explanatory this-and-that. Which blueprint is clearer? The first is clearer to the expert, and that is what Wittgenstein meant. He had written a book for experts only; and - besides himself - there weren't any. Arrogant joke, but you get it. The second blueprint is better for the beginner, but it causes the expert to tear his hair because it is oversimplified and misleading and he can't tell which lines correspond to machine-parts and which lines are there to help the beginner figure out how to read the other lines. Clarity is in the eye of the beholder.
This gets back to another point from last night's post. McCumber really does not take any significant steps towards analyzing the notion of clarity. He misses the first, most obvious thing: that a text X can be clear to Y and not to Z. (Well, he sort of gets this point, but it only comes out late, in the guise of a sudden discovery.) So clarity has to be defined relationally, if you are going to define it at all. Of course, it might be objected that I am already begging the question in favor of the hair-splitting analytical tastes of my clan. But, frankly, I'm not. Clarity is obviously a workable term as it stands. We all sort of understand it, although it is vague and ambiguous. Not a lot of weight is being rested on it, in any case. I don't insist that it be defined or analyzed at all.
What I don't see is that McCumber has found any way to make the term into a source of deep, abiding philosophical difficulty without undertaking the sort of analytic hairsplitting that obviously does not attract him. What he is saying is really quite simple and could be stated fully and adequately in a sentence or so: sometimes it is necessary to write difficult, unclear stuff because it's still in process, or because you are dealing with a bunch of blockheads who won't find a clear explanation to be clear; so the process of driving a point through their thick heads requires a certain amount of compromise and contortion. That's his point. I haven't left a lot out. He ornaments it with a bit of Aristotle and Hegel and Adorno. But you can strip that off if you don't like it. It isn't necessary, because absolutely everyone will grant the basic thesis without argument. It's common sense, really.
Well, that's the more or less sober case against McCumber's paper, "The Metaphysics of Clarity and the Freedom of Meaning". I can quite believe that Ogged is right that the man does a lot better when he isn't getting tripped up about contemporary philosophy being just logical positivist left-overs. He's probably got some Heideggerian knitting that he knits well when he sticks to it.
'Annoyance is the mind killer.'
Oooh-- that's good. I wish I'd written that. And I wish I could remember it at crucial moments...
Posted by: Jacob T. Levy | November 30, 2003 at 01:19 AM
I made my other comment before reading this, and it seems we're in substantial agreement.
The horrible abuse of "positivism" is one of the most annoying of literary theoretical sins, I agree.
Posted by: Chun the Unavoidable | November 30, 2003 at 02:35 AM
I'm just now reading a chapter in Gerald Graff's book _Clueless in Academe_ that addresses this topic. The chapter's titled "Scholars and Sound Bites"; here's a sample:
"I want to suggest that the reputation for the obscurity of academic writing, though not completely unearned, rests on misperception, that such obscurity is less frequent--and is more peripheral and local--than we tend to think, especially in the work that makes a significant impact on its field."
He doesn't mention the dreaded Butler or the other B-word, but he does defend Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick's _Epistemology of the Closet_, pointing out that while its opening pages are choked with stage smoke, she "reductivizes" her point nicely around page 50 in a vernacular phrase: [as a posited mainstream cultural response to hypothetical questions about the existence of a "gay Socrates" or a "gay Proust"] "Don't ask. Or, less laconically, "You shouldn't know."'
He assigned Sedgwick's book to his graduate students, who unanimously declared it unreadable. When he pointed out the pithy summary on page fifty-um, they said they'd read it, but assumed that it couldn't be as clear as it actually was: "By the time they arrived at the clearer section their expectations had been so colored by the impenetrable earlier part that they did not notice when the writing becaem suddenly accessible [. . .] Like most people who encounter an academic text, they figured that if it seems comprehensible they must be making some mistake." He goes on to argue that Sedgwick should have opened this window earlier in the text, before cranking up the smoke machine.
Graff ends up making a good case for defogging, apart from this bit of "You critics are wrong! Well, except where you're right. But you're still wrong!" (I wonder if he's trying to placate academics who fear he's gone over to the evil D'Souzian side.)
Posted by: Rose | November 30, 2003 at 09:02 AM
Sometimes I think it's time for me to shed my snarkskin and grow up.
No, heaven forfend! I couldn't forgive you.
Might I suggest that each post be a duet--the first a snarky-if-less-than-punctilious takedown; the second a sober statement of the case. I've enjoyed both immensely.
Posted by: Realish | November 30, 2003 at 02:58 PM
He makes out that logical positivism involves defining the notion of 'clarity' in manifestly horrible, hopeless fashion: in truth-functional terms
I must say I think you're being a leetle bit precious about this. Something is clear if it isn't ambiguous, and one way for a statement to be ambiguous is to have multiple truth-conditions. Furthermore, one way for a statement to be unclear is for it to be meaningless, and the positivists certainly did designate large classes of statements as meaningless due to problems with their truth-conditions. So if you take the general content of that sentence as "analytical philosophers are all hung up on truth conditions, and it's got something to do with the legacy of logical positivism", then it seems about right.
And looking at the passage as a whole, it's perfectly clear to anyone prepared to extend even a modicum of interpretational charity that what he's talking about here is the supposed superior status of scientific statements over those of humanities scholarship which is, nine times out of ten in the minds of the supposers, based on some kind of warmed-over Popperism.
I've always tended toward the belief that most of the War On (Some Kinds Of) Theory is based on two destructive intellectual practices; arguing against things which aren't arguments, and trying to take things literally. I'm not finding myself being convinced otherways.
Posted by: dsquared | December 01, 2003 at 08:46 PM
Eve Kossofsky Sedgwick is a brilliant thinker who often obscures her own points by writing in the PoMo style. One of the many useful things I learned from her is that same sex/other sex is not the only scale indivdiual orientation can be plotted on (lots of sex/little sex, avoid bad sex/seek good sex...). Besides, she said that the two most rhythmic things in childhood were poetry and spanking.
Posted by: Arthur D. Hlavaty | December 02, 2003 at 12:13 AM
As opposed to addictive drugs, or to psychedelics not produced by the brain, or being in the DNA synthesis library - taking exogenic Harmine, actually stimulates the Pineal gland to produce more Pinoline for itself, increasing the other essential neurotransmitters recycling.
such as a specific compound that has been given a name from the binomial of the plant where it had been discovered, as in Leptaflorine from Leptactinia densiflora
I look for two clues. The first is a sound that catches my attention immediately, the prefix, "harm-." This demands that there is a methyl group in the molecule and that it is at the 1-position. The second clue is the vowel that follows the harm-. It will usually be an "a" or an "i" or occasionally and "o." The harma- things have nothing on the aromatic ring, and the harmi- things have a 7-methoxy group there, and the harmo- things are usually phenolic, with an oxygen attachment there. And the numbering systems can be totally off the wall.
However, as usually in the older literature but still seen sometimes today, the indole nitrogen is the 1-position (as it still is when a structure is seen as an indole) and then every atom, substitutable or not, is numbered sequentially. This brings the 7-substitution identifier of harmine (which is the indolic 6-position) up to the number 11. This makes harmine 3-methyl-11-methoxy-beta-carboline. Some years ago the general term "tryptolines" was introduced to embrace the family of compounds with no methyl group on the 1-position. The numbering required that the pyridine nitrogen be called the 1-position effectively maintaining the position numbers of the parent indoles
The UDV and the Santo Daime sects are the largest and most visible of several syncretic religious movements in Brasil that have incorporated the use of ayahuasca into their ritual practices. Of the two larger sects, it is the UDV that possesses the strongest organizational structure as well as the most highly disciplined membership. Of all the ayahuasca churches in Brasil, the UDV has also been the most pivotal in convincing the government to remove ayahuasca from its list of banned drugs. In 1987, the government of Brasil approved the ritual use of hoasca tea ('hoasca' is a Portugese shortening of 'ayahuasca' and is sometimes used to differentiate UDV brew from non-UDV ayahuasca) in the context of group religious ceremonies. This ruling has potentially significant implications, not only for Brasil, but for global drug policy, as it marks the first time in over 1600 years that a government has granted permission to its non-indigenous citizens to use a psychedelic substance in the context of religious practices.
During this time, the Vedas were still held in high regard, but this new generation of seekers sought a more enlightened meaning to life. This period is commonly referred to as the Vedantic Age. The collection of teachings generated by the ascetics who meditated on the mysteries of human existence became known as the Upanishads, and the seekers who produced the writings were called Upanishads, which literally means "sitting near" the gurus. Over a hundred Upanishads have survived, but only a dozen, or so, are considered authentic. To lend credibility to the teachings, they were invariably compiled as appendages to the Vedas. Vedanta, then, means the "end of the Vedas." In this respect, the Vedas are considered the foundation of the faith while the Upanishads are considered the vehicle whereby the devotee may attain enlightenment as to the nature of god and man's role in the cosmos.
SELF PINOLINE-DMT PRODUCTION, THROUGH LIGHT ISSOLATION, Access Into Neo-Think:
7 years after the bicycle accident that propelled me into 5meoDMT interactivity online surfing into Neo Think, I sought to test what the Civilisation of the Universe had revealed in Integrated Thinking.
Beginning 6 years ago, I locked myself up, in absolute darkness for 14 days. This floods the brain with Melatonin, and forces the pineal gland to produce and be active.
Once there is a threshold of Melatonin, then Pinoline results. After some 4-7 days 5-meo-DMT awakens. One can see in 3 dimensional Holon pictures, as the thoughts behind language, exactly as in the Civilisation of the Universe lapses I had earlier.
In 1973, Dr. Gerald Oster of Mt. Sinai Medical Center published a paper called "Auditory Beats in the Brain" identifying a characteristic of the brain in which the brain would resonate to the frequency difference between two tones presented to opposite ears. Because the hemispheres are not entirely separate, but connected, they actually respond to these two tones by producing a third tone representing the difference between the two original tones. Here's an example:
Tone of 230 Hz played to right ear
Tone of 240 Hz played to left ear
Difference = 10 Hz. (Alpha State)
So by using the above two tones a calm alpha brainwave state can be created for the listener. ~http://magicalmindonline.com/faq.htm#carrier
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