dredmond at efn.org wrote:
>
> Quoting dave dorkin <ddorkin1 at yahoo.com>:
>
> > How is Foucault's theory any different
> > in principle from vulgar marxism if you want to call
> > Chomsky's work vulgar marxist?
>
> Chomsky has no theory of the subject -- i.e. why millions of Americans
> desperately want to believe that Saddam Hussein = Osama bin Laden, despite
> mountains of evidence to the contrary. Foucault, by contrast, spends lots of
> time tracing out how power works *within* subjects, i.e. why it is that so
> many people end up extolling their oppressors and identifying with their
> conditions of captivity. That's very far from Plato's cave, which assumes the
> sort of equivalency of all cognitions which needs to be explained in the first
> place.
>
Expand on this -- particularly, explain what you mean by the "_sort_ of equivalency of all cognitions."
I'm willing to assume the fact that millions of people _believe_ that S=O. I'm not willing to assyne without further argument that those millions actually do have access to the "mountains of evidence." Evidence does _not_ impose itself on anyone, but has to be actively sought out.
I am also not willing to assume, without further argument, that a shared belief is evidence for a shared psychology. That is, different people can believe the same proposition but have radically different "psychologies."
X believes P.
Y believes P.
Psychological evidence establishes Q as X's 'motive' for believing P.
We still know nothing at all of Y's motive for believing P.
Hence if 10 million believe P, we have to assume the possibility that, in psychological terms, there are 10 million different motives for that belief.
The preceding is for fun rather than wholly serious, but I would still like to see an explanation of why it is wrong.
But more seriously.
Millions believe X.
It is not obvious that they either want or don't want to believe X.
There is _not_ evidence whatever that they _desperately_ want to believe X.
Why is it not rational for people to believe the simplest available account for their shared belief in X, namely that within the framework they have available, X makes sense.
Carrol
> -- DRR
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