On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:36:50 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
<kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> writes:
>Someone wrote:
>>>>> Thus, Lacan is busted for "confus[ing] irrational
>numbers with imaginary numbers, while claiming to be
>'precise.'" Golly, doesn't that prove that Lacan is a
>worthless faker!
>
>Someone else wrote:
>>>> I pondered this question and came up with the following
>answer:
>
>>>> Yes.
>
>And an other someone else wrote:
>>> I would second that.
>
>And yet another other wrote:
>> Hear, hear! What he said. And pretty goddamn obvious,
>too--Doug, far as I'm concerned, to wax this way (what,
>fey and catty?) regarding lacan's charlatanry with math
>when one of his supposed achievements is to have laid a
>legitimately "scientific" basis for Freudianism is just
>too typical of pomo arrogance, which is unaccustomed
>to being challenged since so few of its premises
>are susceptible to *any* kind of falsification.
>
>First - Lacan didn't want to establish a scientific
>discourse for Freudianism.
>
>Second - Lacan wasn't a postmodernist.
Perhaps not since he preceded most of them generationally but I think it is fair to say that he has been influential in pomo circles. Furthermore, his attitudes to science seem very much in line with pomo views.
>
>Third - Lacan used numbers not because they meant anything,
>but because they *didn't* mean anything. Also, because he
>got kicks from doing so.
Well bully for him but why then should the rest of us bother to read his musings on mathematics? And what significance do they have intellectually, especially since he didn't have a good grasp of basic math concepts?
>
>Fourth - In order to accept the principle of falsification
>you have to accept the principles of science as valid.
Which would bring him close to the pomos.
>
>Fifth - There is no fifth.
I am sure that was funnier in the original French. -:)
>
>Six - "the unconscious is structured like a language" is
>perhaps one of the most misunderstood Lacanian concepts
>floating around, right up there with "there is no sexual
>relation" and "There is no whole. Nothing is whole."
>
>On Numbers. Lacan has some 20,000 unpublished notes with
>graphs, charts, numbers and such. He regarded these things
>as "recreational mathematics." In other words, he did it
>for fun - as a kind of mental challenge. In the late
>1950's and 60's he made a considerable effort to formulate
>and abbreviate psychoanalytic concepts in the guise of
>symbols or "mathemes" - something like the smallest unit of
>speech. Lacan quickly notes that the "mathemization" of
>psychoanalysis is an independent scientific discourse...
>one of many discourses. So nothing about psychoanalysis
>stands or falls on this single discourse. In other words,
>this particular aspect of Lacan's work, which moves in one
>direction instead of another, is subject to its own rules
>(see his work on the four discourses).
>
>On science. Lacan wrote, in 1977, that "psychoanalysis is
>to be taken seriously, even though it is not a science."
>So he's not providing a scientific basis for the field.
That would of course put Lacan very much at odds with Freud. Freud thought that when he was developing psychoanalysis that he was laying the foundations of a scientific psychology. Freud who was originally trained as a neurologist, hoped that psychoanalysis would one day be shown to be reducible to neuroscience. Freud was very much an avowed positivist in his philosophical views, indeed he put his signature on a positivist manifesto that was drawn up by the Ernst Mach Society in Vienna in 1910. Many leading scientists signed it Albert Einstein. Also, many of the logical positivists (such as Rudolf Carnap and Philip Frank) later on were quite sympathetic to psychoanalysis which they regarded as a scientific psychology in embryonic form.
Of course many people including Lacan have argued both psychoanalysis is not a science and that it is nevertheless a valid inquiry into human nature. This was not Freud's understanding, many people, however, think that Freud was in error on this point and they argue that his praxis was in contradiction with his professed philosophical views.
>Lacan's point is that science is not yet equal to the task
>of accommodating psychoanalysis. In other words, science
>isn't up to the task of *theory building* (I'm inclined to
>agree, which is why we don't find too many Popperians in
>marxist, feminist, or hermeneutic circles).
Concerning Marxism, I would disagree with the contention that it or at least historical materialism is not a science. If there is one worthwhile contribution that G.A. Cohen and the other Analytical Marxists made and that was to show that Marx's materialist conception of history could be shown to past muster as being a legitimate scientific theory even under rather the relatively narrow criteria of logical positivism. Returning to psychoanalysis, the philosopher Adolf Grunbaum, himself very much a critic of psychoanalysis, has rebutted Popper's contention that psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory. Grunbaum has given some pretty strong arguments as to why Popper was wrong even if we take falsifiability as the criteria for delineating what is scientific (and Grunbaum does argue that is not in itself a completely satisfactory criteria). Grunbaum on the other hand while finding psychoanalysis to be a scientific theory, finds it to be very much a flawed one because of serious weaknesses in psychoanalysis' methodologies for validating hypotheses.
>
>On language. When Lacan stated the the unconscious is
>structured like a langauge, he basically mean that language
>makes up the unconsciousness.
Well, I always assumed that he was trying to merge together the insights of Freud and and Sassure. Other structuralists too like Levi-Strauss made similar moves, although I am not sure whom influenced who in this regard. Both Lacan and Levi-Strauss seemed to believe that the principles of structural linguistics could be extended beyond the conventional concerns of linguistics to the analysis of psychological and cultural phenomena in general. In this sense I think that Lacan can be said to have read Freud in light of Saussure. Even Saussure seemed to think that his structural linguistics could be generalized into a theory of signs.
> No, the unconsciousness is
>not like a dictionary. It is filled with images,
>representations, associations, links, pauses, dreams,
>words, symbols, and so on. There come *from* somewhere.
>Where? Language, communication, symbolization and yes,
>sometimes even "nature." The unconscious has a grammar.
>No, not like English or French or German, but a logic that
>runs through it. In other words, some associations are
>*structurally* impossible to make. In other words - the
>unconsciousness is finite and contingent - ie. the
>unconscious is *dialectic* and *dialogic* - no more needs
>to be read into this.
>
>On Lacan. There have been three primary respones to
>Lacan's work:
>
>1.If I can't figure him out myself, then he's not worth
>thinking about.
>2. If he can't express himself clearly, then it must be
>muddled thinking.
Of course the failure of a writer to express himself clearly does not prove that his thought is muddled but it does give us good grounds for suspicion when this does occur.
>3. I never thought much of French "theory" anyway.
I think that much of what is known as French "theory" is quite problematic. Some writers like Foucault seemed capable of mixing deep insights with a lot of nonsense. Lacan may well have had some worthwhile ideas but anyone who goes about teasing out what is valid or worthwhile from what is not has her work cut out for her. It should be noted that what is known as French "theory" is only a subset of the kinds of theorizing that the French have done over the years. Historically, French theorizing has more likely followed in the footsteps of Descartes, emphasizing rationality and clarity. It was France where the Enlightenment reached its fruition. France was where Positivism was born and which produced scientists like Poincare and Duhem who developed positivist ideas with considerable sophistication. Postmodernism while certainly having French roots that can be traced all the way back to Pascal, has very much draw upon German thought including Hegel, Nietzsche, and most importantly Heidegger.
>
>Which is reminiscent of the threefold denial concocted by
>the person accused by their neighbor of having returned a
>kettle in damaged condition:
>
>1. I returned it undamaged.
>2. The kettle had a hole in it when I borrowed it.
>3. I never borrowed the kettle in the first place.
>
>It's a game, figure out where you belong in the three and
>then enjoy your predictability.
>
>I don't care if anyone like or dislikes Lacan. But if your
>going to aim at him, just recognize that this says more
>about the shooter than the target.
In other words Lacan is impervious to criiticism. Anyone who criticizes him is automatically assumed to have misunderstood him. Isn't this really the old children's game "I am rubber, you are glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you" transferred to intellectual discourse?
Jim Farmelant
>
>ken "the other" mackendrick
>
___________________________________________________________________ Get the Internet just the way you want it. Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.