On Mon, 28 Dec 1998 12:38:55 -0800 Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com>
writes:
>
< . . . >
>> the second issue is that in the
>> anglophone world, the commonplace form of reasoning is logical
>positivism, and the
>> mode of writing, exposition, and argument reflects this. (this i
>reckon is also
>> why many in the 'west' have trouble translating derrida, marx etc.
>as anything
>> more than versions of a debate within positivism. the third issue i
>would note is
>> that difficult writing - or what is regarded as such - can either be
>laziness,
>> pretension, or (what i think comay is pretty good at) a kind of
>flash (at)
>> breaking the bounds of encrusted sense - makes me think of brecht,
>benjamin and
>> adorno - which also makes me think that it is closely (and for comay
>quite
>> consciously) linked to a judaic reading tradition.
>
>Logical Positivism is not the enemy. The Vienna Circle were all
>progressives, Neurath
>was a Marxist. One of the main goals of the circle in trying to purge
>language and our
>conceptual scheme of metaphysics was to purge the world of some very
>unprogressive
>things like nazi ideology and christianity.
I would suggest that people may want to look up the Vienna Circle's manifesto, "The Scientific Conception of the World" which was co-authored by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. Some people might be surprised that Neurath and Carnap specifically linked up logical positivism with socialism and even Marxism. For Neurath, in particular, logical positivism was more than just a technical philosophy concerned with logic and the philosophy of science. For Neurath it had important (and progressive) implications for all phases of human existence including ethics, esthetics, education, and politics.
> I 've always thought of AJ
>Ayer as an old
>tory fart, pacing around All Soul's College gazing wistfully into the
>distance.
Actually Ayer was not a Tory either. Politically he was a social democrat. He was a member of the British Labour Party most of his adult life. He even stood for office once on a Labour ticket. Like his Viennese counterparts he believed that the purging of metaphysics from our conceptual scheme had progressive political implications.
> I
>laughed so hard I nearly fell off my bus seat when I learned he
>reported having an out
>of body experience! Poor guy.
I'd suggest looking up his essay on his near-death experience> It is an excellent piece of a good-humored critical analysis of such experiences. Ayer like many people had such an experience, unlike most people who report having such experiences, he applied his tools of logical and linguistic analysis to it and not surprisingly found that the cognitive claims that people make on behalf of such experiences are not well-founded.
On the other hand I find myself in agreement with just about everything else that Sam wrote.
Jim Farmelant
> Clarity is important if you want to be
>precise, concise,
>unambigious and have your work understood outside narrow
>academic/intellectual
>circles. As the March Hare told Alice "Always say what you mean and
>mean what you
>say." I sometimes suspect that a writer has nothing to say when the
>work is so full of
>jargon. Hiding poverty of thought behind extraneous verbiage. Good way
>to deflect
>criticism too. Its like what they're saying is so profound it can't
>be expressed in
>solid, workmanlike prose.
>
>Sam Pawlett.
>
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