Minefield (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Nepal gays . . . .)

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 23 20:19:03 PST 2007


I find it difficult to believe that even after my exposition of the standard problems with the positions you lay out you repeat yourself as if there were no problems and what you said was obvious, transparent, and simple:

1. You assume that societies come packaged nicely and separately into easily definable sets of mutually exclusive social relations and that we can unproblematically identify what these are and where someone in them falls:

2. You never say that you reject the position that the only legitimate descriptions applicable to a member of a society are those that would be statable and accepted with a society itself; you do not respond to my challenge that it is of the essence of social science that we be able to redescribe people in terms familiar to use (within our theories), and perhaps foreign and incomprehensible to them (thus, e.g., by saying that serfs are a class or religion an ideology).

3. You seem to think that terms have stable meanings such that they cannot be redefined even with explanation, thus, Alexander was gay, but of course in Ancient Hellas that meant something different -- for reasons you do not explain, everything after the "but" doesn't count. This commits you to the existence of "meanings," a sort of entity I thought that Quine and others had long since put paid to.

4. You thus commit yourself, as far as I can see, to the worst kind if linguistic relativity -- basically what people are is defined by a language stable only in a vocabulary determined by social relations describable as they would describe them -- even if their assumptions are utterly false by our standards. In fact, I do not see how you avoid the crudest kind of Kuhnian incommensurability on this account, making communication across these hermetically sealed societies impossible, or comprehension of them likewise, without a la Winch, simple learning and using the language game of the "society" -- if that is possible.

I asked you to explain why these were not consequences of your views, why they were not reductios, or how yo avoided them. You did not do so. I cannot understand how someone as informed, intelligent, and knowledgeable as you can not only wander into this minefield, but not recognize that it is a minefield.

ACHTUNG! TODESGEFAHR!

Nothing I say here has not been a standard objection to the sort of thing you say for at least 60 or 70 years.

--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:


> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > Sounds to me like you embrace the reductio and
> > preclude the application to people in "different"
> > societies (and you don't explain what these are or
> how
> > to tell) of descriptions they would not use; you
> also
> > decree that certain terms mean what YOU say and
> cannot
> > be qualified by explanation. I'd say that is
> extreme
> > linguistic relativism. Also quite wrong.
>
> I find it difficult to believe that you read my
> post. Let me try one
> more time. People can only occupy certain social
> statuses if social
> relations and social conditions make those social
> statuses possible.
> Being a construction worker is only possible in a
> society with building
> technologies; being the president of a nation is
> only possible in a
> society with formal government; being a Catholic
> priest is only possible
> in a society that includes the Catholic church; and
> (again) being a
> capitalist is only possible in a society with an
> economic surplus and
> various other socioeconomic preconditions.
>
> --This argument has nothing to do with "linguistic
> relativism"; c'mon,
> this is Soc 101! Frankly, I don't see how any
> reasonable person can
> challenge this simple sociological insight.
>
> MIles
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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