4 ms·

Do you care to cite the supposed gobble-dy-gook in the GP's recommended 'Discipline and Punish'?

by thwest 11y ago

cromwellian 11y ago
I don't know about Discipline and Punish specifically, but you can read Chomsky for a critique in general of Foucault, Lacan, etc In general I find much of the writing to be obscurantism around simple ideas, or just generally incomprehensible. Like I said, Popper's concept of critical rationalism predates Foucault and makes the argument far more straightforward and clearly. Here's what Chomsky had to say, who can say it far better than I: "Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out. Again, I've lived for 50 years in these worlds, have done a fair amount of work of my own in fields called "philosophy" and "science," as well as intellectual history, and have a fair amount of personal acquaintance with the intellectual culture in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. That has left me with my own conclusions about intellectual life, which I won't spell out. But for others, I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of "theory" and "philosophy" to justify their claims --- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames. "
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  For a rebuttal by a programmer, see "Chomsky can't be bothered to learn C" http://byfat.xxx/chomsky http://byfat.xxx/chomsky
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    I don't find that a convincing analogy. A more convincing analogy would be something like the theoretical treatise put forward by Shinichi Mochizuki to solve the ABC conjecture. He invented entirely new fields of mathematics so obscure, that no one can really be able to fully evaluate his theory yet, and it resists simple explanation even by experts in the field, or Shinichi himself. Peer review relies on peers being able to predictably understand the terminology in a clear manner without ambiguity. You get this in traditional Western philosophy, even as people define new terminology, that adorn axioms and logical rules to buttress its meaning. But if you invent an entirely new terminology that most people don't understand, which is hard for any two people to come away with the same meaning, I'd argue you have not put forward a theory, you've put forward ideas dressed up in technical jargon giving the aura of precision. This isn't a C programmer refusing to learn Haskell. This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL.
    - thwest 11y ago
      > This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL. Right, and refusing a Brainfuck's assumptions does not deny it turing complete status, or render it unable to produce ELFs. For some, it illuminates the nature of an abstract turing machine. For others it appears to be nothing but sound and fury.
      - cromwellian 11y ago
        But it does render its usefulness or utility lower than a simpler construct which offers all of the same benefits, but with lower logical depth. I'm not saying Foucault's wrong, I'm saying that there are other philosophers who have put forward similar ideas in a much more straightforward fashion without the Brainfuck.

Do you care to cite the supposed gobble-dy-gook in the GP's recommended 'Discipline and Punish'?

by thwest 11y ago

Do you care to cite the supposed gobble-dy-gook in the GP's recommended 'Discipline and Punish'?

I don't know about Discipline and Punish specifically, but you can read Chomsky for a critique in general of Foucault, Lacan, etc In general I find much of the writing to be obscurantism around simple ideas, or just generally incomprehensible. Like I said, Popper's concept of critical rationalism predates Foucault and makes the argument far more straightforward and clearly. Here's what Chomsky had to say, who can say it far better than I: "Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out. Again, I've lived for 50 years in these worlds, have done a fair amount of work of my own in fields called "philosophy" and "science," as well as intellectual history, and have a fair amount of personal acquaintance with the intellectual culture in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. That has left me with my own conclusions about intellectual life, which I won't spell out. But for others, I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of "theory" and "philosophy" to justify their claims --- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames. "

steveklabnik 11y ago
For a rebuttal by a programmer, see "Chomsky can't be bothered to learn C" http://byfat.xxx/chomsky http://byfat.xxx/chomsky
- cromwellian 11y ago
  I don't find that a convincing analogy. A more convincing analogy would be something like the theoretical treatise put forward by Shinichi Mochizuki to solve the ABC conjecture. He invented entirely new fields of mathematics so obscure, that no one can really be able to fully evaluate his theory yet, and it resists simple explanation even by experts in the field, or Shinichi himself. Peer review relies on peers being able to predictably understand the terminology in a clear manner without ambiguity. You get this in traditional Western philosophy, even as people define new terminology, that adorn axioms and logical rules to buttress its meaning. But if you invent an entirely new terminology that most people don't understand, which is hard for any two people to come away with the same meaning, I'd argue you have not put forward a theory, you've put forward ideas dressed up in technical jargon giving the aura of precision. This isn't a C programmer refusing to learn Haskell. This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL.
  - thwest 11y ago
    > This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL. Right, and refusing a Brainfuck's assumptions does not deny it turing complete status, or render it unable to produce ELFs. For some, it illuminates the nature of an abstract turing machine. For others it appears to be nothing but sound and fury.
    - cromwellian 11y ago
      But it does render its usefulness or utility lower than a simpler construct which offers all of the same benefits, but with lower logical depth. I'm not saying Foucault's wrong, I'm saying that there are other philosophers who have put forward similar ideas in a much more straightforward fashion without the Brainfuck.