<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: the Butler did it (was cheap computers)</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <TT>Hello everyone, Kelley writes to Chuck Grimes: </TT>"As for whether there are common experiences that can be understood across time and space, wouldn't that be a claim the cultural theory crowd would reject? Isn't that universalizing--is that a better word to replace transcendence.  Chuckster, I'm not a art/lit type so I don't have a klew here.  I could only ever countenance a wee bit of aesthetic theory.  I read you and learn." Doyle Concerning the words universalizing and transcendence, one word, transcend, seems to me to refer to the "ideal" of some essential beyond ordinary events continuing.  Whereas universals refers to the material world.  One you can know directly, universals, and one you canšt know until time passes, if at all.  Actually knowing transcendents has seemed to me an elite project.  Just thought I would give you a sense of why I would not replace one with the other.  In this case in the way you use them synonymously then I infer you think of universals as "ideals" in the same sense as one might think of transcendent? Doyle As to aesthetic theory, have you ever read Rosalind Krauss (The Optical Unconscious, MIT Press 1994)?  She is a former associate of Clement Greenberg, when Krauss was a grad student, and who did a little work for him as a trusted aide.  Greenberg was the art critic of the Nation Magazine.  Anyway, Krauss wrote this POMO book on Greenberg and art theory.  It is the first book I encountered on POMO theory.  I guess about four years ago is when I saw it.  I find Krauss interesting though difficult at times. Doyle In the sense of cultural theory, I think also of your remarks to Paul Henry Rosenberg concerning the simplicity movement.  I feel sort of like you that I don't need to hear what someone thinks is simplicity living.  I then was just thinking back to the Beats, and their eschewing of western culture.  There is a frequent religious thrust toward renunciation of material possessions in American culture which is a puritannical strain in our religious culture.  Funny to hear you take on the old working class thinking about them hippies.   Kelley to Chuck Ob jectivism and relativism are parasitic on one another. Doyle You really donšt like relativity do you.  I look at objectivity as a Cartesian concept of separating the mind from the world.  Relativity would be a form of saying the mind is embedded in the world.  I presume then that you mean they parasitize each other because the two positions need each other.  Brings to mind leeches.  How could you explain this to me, so I could understand their need for each other?  I could see Cartesian thinking dying out as we understand the brain, whereas since neural networks are by definition and function relative engines I could see relativity growing more important as time goes by.  (Neural Networks are interconnected and act in the whole in a way that any single neuron is affected by all the rest of the neurons in the network).  This can be technically defined in an engineering sense.  If you desire.  I would refer you to Michael Cohen (formerly of this list) who is an expert in neural networks for engineering views of neural networks. Regards, Doyle Saylor </BODY> </HTML>