A blog, of sorts, intended as a place to experiment, struggle, question, and play with whatever research I am currently working on. The themes will thus change over time as my projects change, and the entries may be quotations that strike my fancy, attempts to puzzle through hairy problems, notes on sources, experiments, musings, dead ends, odd angles of looking at things. It is a voice to my frustrations, discoveries, curiosities, and confusions. It is thinking out loud. ...More 
action, foucault, freedom, truth —
25 May 2010
Foucault is kicking my ass. I can't tell if this is because I legitimately do not understand Foucault, because Foucault and I think differently, or because I think differently than everyone else in my class and it's throwing me off the scent.
This is, of course, something that every academic experiences and I probably shouldn't fret about it too terribly, but figuring out how to understand other people when they are speaking another language is part of the job and it pisses me off when I can't do it. Usually this is a fascinating and enjoyable part of the challenge. I'm infinitely intrigued, for instance, by the very different ways that all my colleagues have for going about writing, because I think it reveals something fundamental about the way their minds process information. Or that some people are really expert at identifying all the moving parts of an argument, where others are good at separating the parts that matter from the parts that don't, or that still others have an especial knack for anticipating the implications of an argument. And I love when they do it and you see where they're going with something and all of a sudden they make a thing clear that you would never have thought of on your own, because your own particular way of doing something is better at X than their Y.
But there is this one thing that I absolutely cannot grapple with, and that is when people suss out all the fine little details and individuals parts of a concept or argument without first identifying what the argument is! I liken this to the old parable about the blind men and the elephant, where each of them has a different part of the elephant and describes the particular part, but none of them knows what the elephant itself is or what it does, nor do they understand how the parts fit together. I feel like this every time I go to class on Foucault, with everyone talking about the trunk and the tail and the feet, but we never actually identified that we're talking about an elephant or understood what an elephant is. Maybe some people are actually good at thinking this way (or maybe they already know Foucault and so the point of his elephant is already known and taken for granted by everyone but me), but I simply cannot make heads or tusks of a single class discussion and they inevitably leave me doubting that I understood the reading, even though the night before it seemed just fine.
This happens to me every class (and I do mean every), but there was an especially pronounced moment today where the class somehow ended up discussing whether, in a situation where a person has two choices (they are plea bargaining and they can either go to jail for 4 years or 10 years), the ethical/resisting position would be to refuse the plea bargain and go to trial, thereby gumming up the system, or whether it would be simply to take the plea bargain. This hinged on whether the resisting position was a dramaturgical act. Because, by this logic, it is performing, and it is choosing, that opens up a space for freedom.
Now, perhaps I have completely misunderstood Foucault, but this question does not even make sense to me at all given what I understand the larger overall project to be, or the foundational assumptions, or the situation itself. It seems to be assuming that any sort of action (acting, drama, statement of truth) is ethical and thereby free. Which I guess would make sense taken wholly out of context (though even out of context concocting such a question seems inexplicable to me?) or if one were to conflate choice with freedom. But given the things I thought I did know, I do not see how we even went down this road. Let us consider, first, the foundational claim that power is a form of mastery. How does one achieve mastery? By controlling what happens. Well, if one knows everything, has infinite knowledge, then they can control all outcomes—if one removes all uncertainty and can make things happen exactly as one desires—then one is masterful. The state of subjugation or slavery, as opposed to this, is a state in which one does not have the ability to exert such control. The outcome of events is out of one's hands. This can come about either because one has no knowledge at all and does not know how to make things happen to desired effect, or because the options in front of one are wholly outside of control. A slave, for instance, might be given choices, but those outcome of those choices, and the choices themselves, are already predetermined by the master. There is neither control on the part of the slave nor uncertainty on the part of the master concerning the outcome (choose A or B, either way I know what will happen to you).
Within such a system as the plea bargain, then, I see no way whatsoever in which the "choice" presented equates to freedom. Not even a little wiggle room, frankly. Choice and freedom are not the same, though it is the brilliance of such a system that it could make them appear as though they were.
Well, then, what might Foucault actually be trying to tell us about this question? What would a free or ethical situation look like? Here I think is where the concept of drama comes into play, but only if you consider it connected to truth, and not as completely separate things, as we were trying to do in class. First, truth. Foucault seems (seems) to be trying to find a way in which truth telling can be a way of finding ethics, but given the above foundational points, we should be very wary of saying that absolute truth as is constitutes a way out of the power dilemma. It was, after all, the ability to have absolute truth that gives one absolute control. So having the slave reclaim total truth for himself just turns him into the master, which is a decidedly unethical position. So Foucault cannot sensibly want us to keep striving for truth.
So now we can ask what relation, what pattern, or similarity, or whatever, is there that connects truth to drama? Let's think GRE analogies here. Truth is power because it shuts down all options and removes uncertainty. It is a stopping point. It is the end in other words. But drama is acting. It is means or, better yet, action. It is always unfinished. It is in the present. It also, by definition then, cannot know the outcome. It requires a level of uncertainty to remain definable as dramaturgy. So Foucault is not speaking here of "performativity" in the shallow way we use it today. He is talking about a very rich and deep action in which one retains, not the guarantee, but the possibility of altering the outcome of events.
The example of the plea bargain is an example of the most craven understanding of freedom imaginable, the kind of freedom that a performing monkey has (you can dance this way for your supper or you can dance that way for your supper, but just so long as you dance). So, then, is the court itself. The master is not any freer that the slave, because, in knowing and controlling everything, he has no possibility for meaningful action. His own actions are just as predetermined by his total knowledge as are the slave's, because nothing will happen which he does not already forsee. The key, then, is not merely choosing. The key is not merely telling the truth. And the key is not merely performing. Freedom involves doing all of those things so that they work together simultaneously and in harmony. None can do all the work of being an elephant by itself, or it becomes a grotesque and deformed thing that cannot be called an elephant at all.
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authority, decision making, legitimacy, morality, truth —
27 Aug 2009
Morality not absolute in sense that to kill is always wrong, rather, morality involves submitting to legitimate authority. Should authority be legitimate, its demands are by definition legitimate and to be moral is to follow them (it just occurred to me when writing this that "morality," generally and in all cases, might be best defined as that which allows us to interact most cooperatively within society or groups). This would seem to be the thought process happening behind the phrase "the difference is, we're right." Morality is not subjective per se, in that this one rule is absolute to all peoples, but it is subjective in the sense that each believes their own authority to be legitimate and others to be illegitimate.
Those on the other side might ask whether a legitimate authority would ever make the request to kill other people because they see not killing as a higher level moral imperative than submission, and those in the middle would ask whether a strict set of guidelines might not be laid out defining when killing could be considered just and unjust (ie - just war theory).
I'm currently leaning towards the last idea myself. Possibly even the second. I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that the first makes any sense at all. Of course, the authorities that I tend to align myself with most are that of humanity first and the law second. Aligning oneself with a smaller subset of people inevitably leads to conflict with other groups that would make the first proposition (killing to protect the authority system) logical in certain instances. Of course, logical decisions do not always turn out to be correct decisions, given that the foundations of any decision are inevitably based on an incomplete set of information.
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archetypes, necessary fiction, rebel, stories, truth —
9 Apr 2009
I am currently visiting the University of Chicago in the hopes that I might join the ranks of its students next year and correct my gross ignorance of the world by actually learning a thing or two. Part of this invariably involves making nice with other prospective students and current faculty, shaking a few hands, pretending to be generally erudite, and otherwise giving the impression that I don't actually need to come here and correct my gross ignorance, but that it would merely be nice to come here and add to my already vast stores of knowledge.
In order to pull off this ridiculous farce, I found myself visiting the local coffeeshop to refill my system with charm juice. Upon walking in the door I found myself unexpectedly taken aback by how very studied the bohemian, rebel air of the whole place was. Each student had a very consciously tousled, punky look, with their clothes just so, their look of bored indifference...well...boring in its exact likeness to the look of bored indifference on each other "unique" and "alternative" face. The furniture was expensively decrepit. The coffee stains on the carpet just like all the coffee stains on all the carpets of all the underground coffee shops I have ever been in. Terrible memories of my pretentious youth came flooding back, and which point I practically threw my change at the disapproving barista and beat a very hasty retreat.
As I walked out with my cup of coffee in hand, I suddenly realized (why is it that all my stories about sudden realizations start with the phrase, "cup of coffee in hand?") how farcical the whole thing was. By definition, the whole idea of the "rebel" is that one is unlike others. Unique. Indifferent to their outsider status. The archetype is defined by the rebel's very inability to be defined based on normal social types. And yet, in absolute contradiction to that definition, here were many rebels all defined very precisely by one another and also by their perceived opposition to the normal (whatever that is), obviously caring very much to fit this existing story and role. The rebel was codified.
The rebel is not a rebel, I realized. Certainly I have heard this before, but I admit I have never really been struck by it quite as forcefully as I was this afternoon. The rebel is a story we have concocted. A fantasy. Those who look at rebels and sneer that they ain't nothin' but a bunch of self-important little bitches and they aren't all that rebellious have hit the truth of the matter, and it pained me to realize that I was just a boring old fart that could now count myself among their ranks.
And yet...And yet. The rebel, as the story goes, provides a corrective to society by acting in opposition to its most taken for granted values. And I suppose I wouldn't disagree with this entirely—by defining itself as the direct opposite of whatever the current norm happens to be, the rebel does, in fact, keep society from veering too far in one direction. An old maxim of group dynamics is that the more isolated a group is, the more extreme it becomes. By putting itself on the opposite side of normalcy, then, the rebel forces the norm to stay exactly where it is, rather than slowly veering off to its most extreme form.
But the only way the rebel could accomplish this is by actually believing they are rebellious. The moment a rebel suspects they are just the pathetic imitator the normal sees them for, they lose the ability to become rebellious. In other words, the rebel is correct to say that they are rebellious, but only as long as they tell themselves they are. And, likewise, those who say the rebel is nothing of the sort are also completely correct. It is not the act of being rebellious, nor the trappings of rebellion, nor even the theory of rebellion that makes this so. It is the story told of rebellion. As long as the story remains believed, rebellion happens. But as soon as the story is seen for what it is—a story—rebellion becomes impossible.
The rebel is not a truth, it is an idea. And ideas, unlike truth, work only so long as the mind lends credence to them.
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academia, books, solitude, truth —
19 Feb 2009
Just finished up the first set of Sontag's journals (1947-1963, age 15-30).
journal is narcissistic + speech is social + erotic + has more incentive in the feared
Also, interaction has more opportunity to alter thought? Public vs. private decision making. Similar to C. Sunstein or JS Mill ideas on the public commons, social as a corrective, truth will out, etc. This, of course, assumes the Platonic view that there is some sort of absolute truth that can be attained, no?
One must distinguish "the truth" from "the truth about." It is true that 1) it was snowing and 2) Aaron Nolan put milk in the coffee he brought me. But the truth about, e.g., I.'s and my relationship is not an inventory of what has happened, what was said, done. It is an interpretation, an insight.
...There are degrees of "truth about."
and
The Platonic view of Kant is right. I saw this in my Descartes lecture at SLC this morning.
Truth as correspondence to the facts means that the model of truth is conceived of as information.
It is true that:
"It is raining outside."
""Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan."
+ these statements are true statements because it is, Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan. Introspection will never get you these results. [emp. mine]
So truth is physical and cannot be known through thinking...only experiencing (ie - you would not discover the thing that is Kabul through thought). Everything else is idea/abstraction. Logic, therefore, cannot discover truth. Philosophy cannot discover truth.
Also, her fluctuations on doing academia or doing human interaction were heartbreaking. I've already been struggling with this. If she could not figure out how to balance doing those two things at once, I do not possibly see how I can.
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tradition, truth, updates —
4 Jan 2009
Internet is supposedly coming into my life again on Thursday. In the meantime, I continue to hup over to the Slope where I can sit for endless hours on coffeeshop wifi while I file my unemployment claim and curse life. I have become obsessed with pathetic RPG computer games as a way to while away the hours. It's embarassing, really, but I suppose useful credentials for trying to become a techie again.
In other exciting news, I have my first bitty research goal. Happened across an interesting description of Protagoras (one of the Sophists) that made his conclusions sound an awful lot like some of Hannah Arendt's work in Promise of Politics, particularly the emphasis on tradition as a way to resolve the problem of multiple functional truths. I shall wander about the classics section of the Rose Reading Room next week poking through some of the Sophists' texts. She was quite taken with Socrates in the work, but it'd be interesting to discover her influence really came from elsewhere. In that nerdy sort of way. I guess. Okay, just shut it, okay?
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certainty, error, truth —
11 Oct 2008
Ah, excellent. I believe I was just talking about wanting to read something like this.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not. Robert Burton.
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diversity, error, extremism, truth —
24 Sep 2008
I had a badly needed haircut over the weekend (just a trim, really). It was the first haircut I got since I've been back in NY.
At any rate, the woman who was cutting my hair was....interesting. She was reading a book on the history of astrology, and, although the book was purportedly written by a PhD and gave all appearances of being an academic study for the average reader, I got the impression that it was a little on the dodgy side. I suppose I should look up more about it online just to be fair. It was all about how astrology used to be considered the height of scientific, and how these great leaders (Nero, Augustus, Alexander, Napoleon, Socrates, etc) would use astrology to guide them. But I got the impression the author was sort of leaning towards saying, "isn't it a shame that now it's seen as so silly, when clearly better minds than ours believed in it and used it successfully." At any rate, that's certainly how Jessica was interpreting it. She was telling me all about several related things. Astrology. How I should only get my hair cut during a full moon (to make it thick) or a new moon (to make it grow fast). I should beware of hot showers because they could kill me (the pores open up and then you go outside and all sorts of terrible bacteria go into the open pores, and then the cold closes the pores with the death trapped inside). Hurricanes are caused by sun flares entering holes in the atmosphere. And once man is finished destroying the earth, the rich billionaires will use spaceships to fly to other planets. Also, Sarah Palin is an evil, crazy bitch.
What was so fascinating to me was that she was right about many things (there are holes in the atmosphere, heat causes pores to open, rich billionaires currently fly to space), but then used these facts to draw what I would consider incorrect conclusions. How do people draw conclusions from things? Do they just "feel" right? Do they seem to inherently make sense based on the handful of facts we know—for instance, if I know that heat causes pores to open, and if I know that there is bacteria all around and that it can cause illness, would it be pretty natural for me to say, "Oh! I never thought of that, but it makes total sense!" when told a theory like her own? Do you mainly draw inferences when your existing knowledge fits a theory? Or is there something more that goes on?
Of course, there was also something terribly disconcerting in the encounter. Because not only did she believe these things (harmless enough in itself...not everyone has to be right all the time, and, frankly, I'm glad that people are often wrong, including myself), but she was getting really, really riled up talking about them. I got the feeling that if one of these space flying billionaires or Sarah Palin or George Bush walked in the salon right then she would have taken her shears and stabbed them right in the eye. One of the things that I am most moved to understand is whether there is a way for people to temper what they believe with their decisions to act on those beliefs. At what point does a person cross the line into becoming a zealot? How can one stay true to their deepest beliefs without becoming a fascist? How does one balance the need to be right with the need to be just, in other words? For that matter, how does one balance the need to be just with the need to be just?
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democracy, diversity, extremism, freedom, grand unified theory of everything, truth —
5 Sep 2008
Okay, fine. I can't help but notice some readers would like some actual content. Here is the terrible ugly mess that is my brain, put down to paper. Or computer. Whatever.
I'm currently working on making it prettier and better defining the connections, this is just the shit I scratched out at the coffeeshop.
____god ____learning___intelligence_____AI
____________truth____science /______play_| |
| | | /_rigidity_|___ _______logic
_hope | |___________/ | | |
| | |___error__/|____democracy__|______|__inconsistency
| | | | | | |
| reformers____extremism________| | | |___self-correction
| | | | | | /
| | (arrogance) | | | | /
| |__paternalism_|_fascism______|_______|_______| /
| | | | || | /
|__equality_____freedom_______diversity_|_______________/
|_________|_____________| |
|_________|_____________________|
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criticality, history, misinformation, quotations, sources, truth —
18 Feb 2008
I've been doing a little research project recently on the origin of a particular quotation, and I've found that most sources out there are maddeningly terrible for this particular effort. I mean, truly, truly maddening. In my crankier moments, I ask myself how we as humans can expect to solve any of our problems if we can't even remember our own history. Theoretically easy history. Like who said what when. In my more charitable moments I remind myself that identifying the reality of a situation is actually damn hard, even if it doesn't make it any less frustrating. Sigh.
To take an example, I came across an unrelated quote today and Googled it out of curiosity. I ended up with the following ridiculous hodgepodge of crap attributions:
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
- Doris Lessing
- Just Lessing , not Doris (and another, from 1886)
- Louisa May Alcott
- La Bruyère
- Charles Seymour
- Dorris Tessing (yes, I'm serious)
- Jean Toomer
Doris Lessing is the most popular choice, but the quote was attributed to la Bruyère in a publication printed before Doris Lessing was even born. That, of course, doesn't say anything about the accuracy of the la Bruyère attribution - around the same time period, the quote was attributed to a Lessing, just not the Lessing. Basically, in this entire list, the only three possibilities that fit the time frame of the earliest quote I found are "Lessing," Alcott, and la Bruyère. "Lessing" could apply to Gotthold Lessing, Karl Lessing, or Otto Lessing, but I'm putting my money on Gotthold, based on the subject of most of his work. In an irony of ironies, the quote is attributed to Doris in a book right next to other quotes attributed to Gotthold.
And people ask why I question everything. An apt quote, indeed.
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artificial intelligence, boundary objects, cooperation, flexibility, knowledge, learning, play, rigidity, translation, truth, understanding —
31 Aug 2007
Agh, 50 things going on in mind at once, don't want to lose them. Sorry for incomprehensible shorthand:
Boundary objects & boundary spanners as tools for Understanding. Acts of Translation. Data v. information, meaning & importance & relevance v. facts.
Why are we so stuck on "truth" anyway? Notion of truth. Useful or not so much? Conversation at UChi, re permanence of truth, & Chang's Inventing Temperature - is a more reasonable and useful (and attainable) goal progress instead of truth? How is progress related to learning, understanding, or knowledge?
Flaws in western logical system.
Above ties in with other thoughts on why current AI will never work, see Picard, Affective Computing, but expand beyond merely being emotional to being flexible - computers, and humans, can't learn if they can't make free associations on existing/growing knowledge base, and if one can't learn, one can't be intelligent...learning also requires ability to make mistakes and be creative, and creativity requires ability to resolve (accept) contradiction
Above all, flexibility in understanding. Creativity, adaptability. Lose rigidity. Allow to be wrong, change mind, make new connections.
Rigidity result of lack of play. "Speaking of faith" NPR week of August 27.
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