Carrol I said: HE (Doyle) seems to think that people equate LOGICAL THOUGHT with the Brain. I DID NOT say that Doyle equates logic w/ brain structure. Gad.
Anyway, Doyle does worry about this and after corresponding with him quite a bit I think he now realizes that I don't think this, he just expects that I do and so interprets me as saying this. Our disagreements have to do with whether knowing how the brain actually works makes a difference in how we develop strategies for revolutionary social change.
Doyle worries about dogmatism, too many rules dictating behavior. So do I as I think is quite evident by what I type at LBO. Doyle explains this as resulting from strong attachment to rules and, of course, what reallyl bothers him, rules attached to strong feelings (moralizing?) While there might be a foundation to this, I have argued that he needs to recognize the social a bit more than he does or seems to want to. He does, but the problem is that he always sees 'the social' as the enemy. And I worry about that. Hence I also sent him on the work of a fellow who's trying to develop a social psycho NS.
Also, if you read the article then you'd realize that I was AGREEING WITH DOYLE and arguing against something Fraces typed, though i don't think she meant it quite the way it came out. She wrote that "One cannot think or engage in discourse without logic..." But this, in fact, isn't true as Doyle has explained to me offlist. So, I demonstrated, I hope, that I've learned something from Doyle. That post was a gift for Doyle, see. I would think that Doyle would appreciate this, actually. The point, of course, still remains: Doyle needs to address this issue though, how can conversation and argument take place w/o logic. And, similarly, I have asked him this before though in a different way. I asked him to speculate how things might be different if we were to better understand how the brain works. That is, how might marxist groups operate differently were they to employ the insights of NS. This is what I have to do w/ regard to my discipline: how might things be different if we were to understand basic facets of human interaction, assuming of course that we can do this.
Snit