What’s Happening to Men? | Kay Hymowitz | Cato Unbound:
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Monday, October 10, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Daniel Soar reviews ‘The Googlisation of Everything (and Why We Should Worry)’ by Siva Vaidhyanathan, ‘In the Plex’ by Steven Levy and ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ by Douglas Edwards · LRB 6 October 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Agent-Structure- Part 3, Epistemological Materialism
The second principle of philosophical materialism is that of epistemological materialism. Critical realism directly engages the question of ontology and asserts the possibility for the independent existence and transcontextual causal power of the objects targeted by science. Such a stance directly confronts the epistemologies of positivism, postmodernism, hermeneutics and social constructionism,1 which in general make the error of collapsing what there is (ontology) to the question of what we can know (epistemology), or in other words, an “epistemic fallacy.” For critical realism, there exists a gap between the world and knowledge of the world. In critical realist jargon, this gap separates two domains of knowledge: intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge. The intransitive domain contains the generative mechanisms and structures that operate independently of human existence and underlie the range of phenomena human beings experience, such as gravity, thermodynamics, the biological sphere shaped by evolutionary adaptation and so on.2 Likewise, there exists intransitive objects of knowledge in the social world, which founts the possibility for critical realist social inquiry and critique. The likely candidates in the social sphere qualifying as having ontological “reality” include the powers intrinsic to human agents, the enduring relations that constitute social structures, and the symbolic frameworks,
Ptolemaic geocentric system: Mistakes Happen
ideologies and meanings existent in the cultural sphere. Objects of natural and socio-cultural intransitive knowledge preexist human subjectivity and practice, which establishes such objects as holding temporal priority, relative autonomy and causal powers vis-à-vis the human subject-agent, and consequently, form the condition of possibility for natural and social science. The claim of an intransitive domain of knowledge is a meta-theoretical argument, whose foundational a priori claim is that causal mechanisms are ontologically real and responsible for the phenomena of events. As a meta-theory, it does not make any substantive claims as to which causal mechanisms do and do not exist. The task of identifying causal mechanisms is under the purview of specific scientific approaches (physics, biology, psychology, sociology, interdisciplinary study and so forth). In other words, the claim of an intransitive domain of generative mechanisms and structures is a “philosophical ontology,” which should be distinguished from any substantive scientific ontological claims.
While intransitive objects of knowledge, and the mechanisms sought, are the ontological gold of human inquiry into the world, nonetheless, mechanisms are apperceived always through or mediated by transitive objects of knowledge. Transitive objects of knowledge are the antecedent collection of theories, facts, beliefs, symbolic frameworks, models, paradigms, methods and etc. that form the material base for further knowledge production. Human beings produce scientific knowledge for techno-scientific mastery and understanding of the world, and as such, valuations are inherent3, and must be considered a social process. In formal contexts, scientific practice is preconditioned by study, training, and institutional and financial resources. As an entrenched process, connecting the interests and values of the state, universities, corporations, private foundations and individual scientists, transitive knowledge is conditional on the political, economic and cultural base of its production.
While the contour of scientific practice is shaped by the social coordinates of its practice—that knowledge is relative—this fact does not entail that intransitive objects are human constructs imposed upon phenomena. The gap between the intransitive and transitive domains ensures that epistemological (and methodological) concerns do not dominate scientific inquiry, deciding a priori what can be known, thought, or investigated. For critical realists, the relativity of knowledge production necessitates understanding the scientific process as an inherently “fallibilist enterprise,” performing a continual reassessment of the facticity of any ontological claims about the intransitive domain. The history of science abounds with generative mechanisms considered no more: phlogiston, phrenology, scientific racism, cold fusion and etc. On the contrary, by recognizing the distinction between the intransitive and transitive domains of knowledge, critical realism overturns the two dominant approaches to knowledge production in western philosophy, both which attempt to eliminate the relativity of knowledge by either 1) collapsing the world into the mind such as by positing Kantian-like transcendental categories of the mind—the error of idealism, or 2) collapsing the mind into the world such that knowledge is only of atomistic entities sometimes linked by constant conjunctions at the human experiential level of phenomena —the error of empiricism. A third approach, loosely clustering around the notion of postmodernism, is characterized as an immanent version of Kant's transcendental idealism. Instead, however, of universal transcendental categories, the mind's grid of intelligibility is formed by categories embedded in time and place, which subjects the mind to the contingencies of
The Bright Side of Unintelligibility
experience. Immanent idealists posit various mediating “conceptual formations” (for lack of a better word) between mind and world that are a “given” representational modality of the world that cannot but be displaced, deformed and angled constructions (of reality), and whose veracity to the world is irrelevant according to the logic of the modality. If not “world veracity,” the logic tends towards instituting, on the bright side, cultural particularity, and on the dark side, domination, exploitation and marginalization. Examples of conceptual formations include “collective representations” for Durkheim, “language” for Wittgenstein, “discourse” for Foucault, “text” for Derrida, and “signifier” for Baudrillard. Critical realism rejects all three approaches because they privilege epistemology over ontology, commit the epistemic fallacy, and consequently disavow knowledge of the causal powers of generative mechanisms operating in the intransitive object domain of knowledge.
Ptolemaic geocentric system: Mistakes Happen
ideologies and meanings existent in the cultural sphere. Objects of natural and socio-cultural intransitive knowledge preexist human subjectivity and practice, which establishes such objects as holding temporal priority, relative autonomy and causal powers vis-à-vis the human subject-agent, and consequently, form the condition of possibility for natural and social science. The claim of an intransitive domain of knowledge is a meta-theoretical argument, whose foundational a priori claim is that causal mechanisms are ontologically real and responsible for the phenomena of events. As a meta-theory, it does not make any substantive claims as to which causal mechanisms do and do not exist. The task of identifying causal mechanisms is under the purview of specific scientific approaches (physics, biology, psychology, sociology, interdisciplinary study and so forth). In other words, the claim of an intransitive domain of generative mechanisms and structures is a “philosophical ontology,” which should be distinguished from any substantive scientific ontological claims.
While intransitive objects of knowledge, and the mechanisms sought, are the ontological gold of human inquiry into the world, nonetheless, mechanisms are apperceived always through or mediated by transitive objects of knowledge. Transitive objects of knowledge are the antecedent collection of theories, facts, beliefs, symbolic frameworks, models, paradigms, methods and etc. that form the material base for further knowledge production. Human beings produce scientific knowledge for techno-scientific mastery and understanding of the world, and as such, valuations are inherent3, and must be considered a social process. In formal contexts, scientific practice is preconditioned by study, training, and institutional and financial resources. As an entrenched process, connecting the interests and values of the state, universities, corporations, private foundations and individual scientists, transitive knowledge is conditional on the political, economic and cultural base of its production.
While the contour of scientific practice is shaped by the social coordinates of its practice—that knowledge is relative—this fact does not entail that intransitive objects are human constructs imposed upon phenomena. The gap between the intransitive and transitive domains ensures that epistemological (and methodological) concerns do not dominate scientific inquiry, deciding a priori what can be known, thought, or investigated. For critical realists, the relativity of knowledge production necessitates understanding the scientific process as an inherently “fallibilist enterprise,” performing a continual reassessment of the facticity of any ontological claims about the intransitive domain. The history of science abounds with generative mechanisms considered no more: phlogiston, phrenology, scientific racism, cold fusion and etc. On the contrary, by recognizing the distinction between the intransitive and transitive domains of knowledge, critical realism overturns the two dominant approaches to knowledge production in western philosophy, both which attempt to eliminate the relativity of knowledge by either 1) collapsing the world into the mind such as by positing Kantian-like transcendental categories of the mind—the error of idealism, or 2) collapsing the mind into the world such that knowledge is only of atomistic entities sometimes linked by constant conjunctions at the human experiential level of phenomena —the error of empiricism. A third approach, loosely clustering around the notion of postmodernism, is characterized as an immanent version of Kant's transcendental idealism. Instead, however, of universal transcendental categories, the mind's grid of intelligibility is formed by categories embedded in time and place, which subjects the mind to the contingencies of
The Bright Side of Unintelligibility
experience. Immanent idealists posit various mediating “conceptual formations” (for lack of a better word) between mind and world that are a “given” representational modality of the world that cannot but be displaced, deformed and angled constructions (of reality), and whose veracity to the world is irrelevant according to the logic of the modality. If not “world veracity,” the logic tends towards instituting, on the bright side, cultural particularity, and on the dark side, domination, exploitation and marginalization. Examples of conceptual formations include “collective representations” for Durkheim, “language” for Wittgenstein, “discourse” for Foucault, “text” for Derrida, and “signifier” for Baudrillard. Critical realism rejects all three approaches because they privilege epistemology over ontology, commit the epistemic fallacy, and consequently disavow knowledge of the causal powers of generative mechanisms operating in the intransitive object domain of knowledge.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The Problem with Cote d'Ivoire
http://www.cameroonvoice.com/news/news.rcv?id=3658
Gbagbo after arrest by French Foreign Legionnaires
Newt Gingrich, several months ago, said Obama displays "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." The irony here of course, is the US gave full support to French activities in Cote d"Ivoire to reassert French geopolitical interests in west Africa. The ouster of Gbago and installation of Ouattara, has to rank as one of the most misinterpreted events in journalistic memory- even those darn tootin leftists at NPR utterly failed in their mission to inform and enlighten citizens in democratic societies, passing along, without a single critical glance, the propoganda generated by France, US and the UN to over-code the operation to undermine Gbago.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Agent-Structure- Part 2, Philosophical Materialism
COGITO ERGO MATERIAL GIRL
For the purpose of this essay, in consideration of social ontology, we will assume several general ontological and epistemological features in accordance with “philosophical materialism,” the position under-girding critical realism. (2)
The doctrine of philosophical materialism is composed of three interlocking principles:
First, reality's “being” occurs solely within an immanent plane of possibilities, bounded by its spatial and temporal dimensions. Such immanence entails ontological materialism, which asserts the stratification of reality and emergence(3) of independent properties and causal powers at each level. Higher levels supervene on the lower in a relationship of unilateral dependence, but are not reducible to them in terms of the laws that govern the lower. Consequently, the social unilaterally depends on agental practice and psychology, which in turn is presupposed by more fundamental levels: biology, chemistry and physics. The theory of emergence is an axiom of such a stratified model of reality, and suggests, for instance, psychology is not merely applied biology, nor chemistry applied physics. The stratified nature of reality and theory of emergence counters reductionist models such as “eliminative materialism” in philosophy of the mind and scientific reductionist models that ultimately seek to explain all being in terms of particle physics, string theory or some other master explanans. As well, the reductionist project to link individual and group behavior to natural selection and genetics, undertaken most vigorously within evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, is problematized.
2) The theory of materialism we employ is described in “Materialism.” Bashkar, Roy, from A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Tom Bottomore, ed. 1999. Blackwell Publishers Inc. (369-373).
(3) The term “emergence” has two distinct meanings. The common usage denotes historical emergence, with no implied ontological claim necessary, in the sense of some entity or process coming into existence at a particular time and place. For example-- “fascist ideology emerged in the post-WWI era as a viable political program out of debates over the perceived weakness of liberal democracy and dangers of communism.” In contrast, the theory of emergence examines the conditions of possibility for an ontological emergence of independent existent layers of reality and causal mechanisms that operate there. This second meaning informs the following: “social structures emerge from agental practice, becoming the conditions for the future reproduction and transformation of practice.”
[The second and third aspects are due soon]
The doctrine of philosophical materialism is composed of three interlocking principles:
First, reality's “being” occurs solely within an immanent plane of possibilities, bounded by its spatial and temporal dimensions. Such immanence entails ontological materialism, which asserts the stratification of reality and emergence(3) of independent properties and causal powers at each level. Higher levels supervene on the lower in a relationship of unilateral dependence, but are not reducible to them in terms of the laws that govern the lower. Consequently, the social unilaterally depends on agental practice and psychology, which in turn is presupposed by more fundamental levels: biology, chemistry and physics. The theory of emergence is an axiom of such a stratified model of reality, and suggests, for instance, psychology is not merely applied biology, nor chemistry applied physics. The stratified nature of reality and theory of emergence counters reductionist models such as “eliminative materialism” in philosophy of the mind and scientific reductionist models that ultimately seek to explain all being in terms of particle physics, string theory or some other master explanans. As well, the reductionist project to link individual and group behavior to natural selection and genetics, undertaken most vigorously within evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, is problematized.
2) The theory of materialism we employ is described in “Materialism.” Bashkar, Roy, from A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Tom Bottomore, ed. 1999. Blackwell Publishers Inc. (369-373).
(3) The term “emergence” has two distinct meanings. The common usage denotes historical emergence, with no implied ontological claim necessary, in the sense of some entity or process coming into existence at a particular time and place. For example-- “fascist ideology emerged in the post-WWI era as a viable political program out of debates over the perceived weakness of liberal democracy and dangers of communism.” In contrast, the theory of emergence examines the conditions of possibility for an ontological emergence of independent existent layers of reality and causal mechanisms that operate there. This second meaning informs the following: “social structures emerge from agental practice, becoming the conditions for the future reproduction and transformation of practice.”
[The second and third aspects are due soon]
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Agent-Structure- Part 1, Introduction
I am currently working on an essay considering various aspects of the "agent-structure problem," and I would like to share portions of my work as I generate them. The agent-structure problem concerns several foundational topics to all social theorizing, and hence intertwined with all thinking about human being in the world: What is the nature of human agency? What causal powers do social structures hold, and how do these powers influence agents? Is there a middle point between social theories that tend to efface the possiblity of the subject exercising agency (post-modernism, post-structuralism and social constructionism) and theories that fully "free" the agent-subject from any geo-historical and socio-cultural contextualization (neo-liberalism, methodological individualism and volunteerism)?
I have been grappling with the agent-structure problem since I was a graduate student in cultural anthropology, and I have been influenced by several thinkers on this subject: Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Marshall Salins, Roy Bhaskar, and Margaret Archer. At this stage in my figurin', I find the work of Bhaskar and Archer, who both work under the "scientific/ critical realist" umbrella, as providing the most persuasive account, and I will be drawing heavily from this philosophy of social science.
The agent-structure problem is essentially a problem of social ontology, and consequently, imbricated in the political. As I work through the problematics of the nature of and relationship between agents and structures, I hope to begin a dialectical conversation over human being, ontology and the political especially in relation to the work of Lacan and Zizek.
I have been grappling with the agent-structure problem since I was a graduate student in cultural anthropology, and I have been influenced by several thinkers on this subject: Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Marshall Salins, Roy Bhaskar, and Margaret Archer. At this stage in my figurin', I find the work of Bhaskar and Archer, who both work under the "scientific/ critical realist" umbrella, as providing the most persuasive account, and I will be drawing heavily from this philosophy of social science.
The agent-structure problem is essentially a problem of social ontology, and consequently, imbricated in the political. As I work through the problematics of the nature of and relationship between agents and structures, I hope to begin a dialectical conversation over human being, ontology and the political especially in relation to the work of Lacan and Zizek.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
RSA Smile or Die
http://youtu.be/u5um8QWWRvo
Barbara Ehrenreich on unholy union between self help "positive thinking" and white collar unemployment counciling
Barbara Ehrenreich on unholy union between self help "positive thinking" and white collar unemployment counciling
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