This article is fantastic. I\’m a communications manager for a specialty agriculture media company, and for 15 years I\’ve made many of the same arguments…none of them, alas, in as comprehensive and detailed a manner as Professor DeGregori. This is a battle we must win, and I\’m proud to be on the same side, doing in my small way what I can.
This kind of work is worth doing I think, especially by someone who is, broadly speaking, a co-practitioner. One of the (many) huge difficulties for an empirical scientist in trying to reason with those operating exclusively within “post-modern” intellectual space is finding any common ground from which to commence a dialogue.
If one’s interlocutors fail to grasp the most rudimentary principles of scientific reasoning (say, the need for evidential support, the need for quantification of critical concepts, Occam’s razor, the need for empirical truth/falsity conditions, testability, predictive power, corroboration and so forth) it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere. One can, until one is blue in the face, point out the ways in which such principles are indispensable to their own arguments (not to say living of their very own lives) if they are indeed intended as pieces of reasoning designed to support a proposition claimed to be true, but unless the “penny has dropped” this is futile in the face of question-begging rejection of the whole scientific enterprise itself.
It is not so bad that these individual authors have fatuous views (we can all wish them well on their way to the asylum) but it is so bad that they should influence other, particularly young, intellects by their vacuous and chimerical enunciations.
So anyone from within the field, such as Mr. Standing, who is willing to stand up to the gibberish, is welcome indeed.
The onus is not on Nussbaum to delineate culture. She is arguing that we don\’t need to specify a cultural framework in order to make moral judgments. Nussbaum thinks we can use reason to rise about our backgrounds to arrive at universally applicable moral principles.
Suppose an non-liberal feminist claims that widow-bashing is morally acceptable within a certain culture, despite being abhorrent to liberal feminists. The non-liberal feminist must now explain which cultural framework ought to apply. Should we defer to the norms of the village, the clan, the nation state…? Is it relative to a historical epoch? To class? To gender?
This is a problem for the non-liberal feminist, but not for Nussbaum. She can concede the non-liberal feminist\’s preferred definition of culture. Nussbaum\’s point is that culture isn\’t morally relevant in this context.
I came here hoping for intelligent critique of fashionable nonsense.
Instead, I find a screed from the Cato Institute, filled with right wing fashionable nonsense, prominently displayed.
While more data points are needed, any site that promulgates such flagrant garbage as is contaned in the article on agriculture is one of marginal credibility at best, and open for suspicion of being, yet another, stealth left bashing site funded by far right wing interests.
Several cheers for Richard Evans\’s article on Postmodernism and History.
Mr. Newberry (who fears that this is just a left bashing site) might care to read it. Richard Evans writes from the left. His concern about radical scepticism in history is that it leaves us with no defence against the Holocaust denier.
Briefly, researching parallel and precursive ideas to those developed by Freud into an integrated set of propositions about the functioning of the human psyche is rather like refusing to read or stage Shakespeare plays because he used Holinshed\’s Chronicles as a major source of story lines.
One the reasons Freud is disconcerting is because he put sexual politics onto the agenda of psycho-social theorising. No other research paradigm functions so well to stimulate ideas about what is really going on between men and women.
I agree with many of the criticisms made on the site about Freud; his botched research, the appropriation of ideas from others, the problems with testing the theories, etc.
However, it is disingenuous to contimue to argue that Freud cannot be tested using the standard methods of science (or at least, of psychology). Fisher and Greenberg detail 100s of studies that are at least up to the standard of conventional social science that properly test aspects of Freud\’s theory.
These studies often show Freud to be wrong (e.g., on incest avoidance and disorders) but there is some support for other parts of the theory (e.g., defence mechanisms and the oral and anal personalities).
Much of Freud\’s work is biologically naive and evolutionary psychology has torn apart much of what he had to say about sex, but taken as a set of empirical claims parts of the theory cannot be easily rejected. At the very least plausible alternative explanations for some of Freud\’s observations are required.
For example, there may be an alternative explanation for Jedlika\’s finding that children of mixed race couples are more likely to marry someone of the same race as the opposite sex parent, but it is prima facie evidence for oedipal feelings that cannot be ignored.
Similarly, Adams et al\’s finding that homophobic men are more aroused by homosexual pornography than non- homophobes (with no differences in arousal to other forms of pornography) may be xplicable in another way, but the most obvious explanation is in terms of reaction formation.
If one of the central tenets of this site is that the methods of science are worth defending then the open minded should be willing to consider the evidence relevant to Freud\’s theory with a bit more disinterest than is currently the case.
The thoughts that this article has provoked are beyond explanation. It is remarkable to think that one might challenge the works of poets long dead and say that you don\’t need to know the knowledge they knew in order to express yourself and your thoughts today. Fair enough, maybe you don\’t need to be an intellectual to express yourself, however you need to be articulate enough to convey your message to more than one kind of peron. If there are very few points that you can make that anyone outside of your social group (or genre, if you will) can understand, maybe you need to reconsider your method of articulation. Try educating yourself and expressing yourself from a more efficient/articulate point of view. Old poetry may belong to authors who are long dead, but that only proves their true value and worth. If you can write a hip-hop song that contains lyrics that will haunt people for the next century, then I take all this back, but from my own personal experience in the field of hip-hop, there is nothing more to e said than \”I like money\” \”I like women\”, and \”I\’m gunna beat yo\’ ass down, punk!\” There seems to be nothing worth saying that is coming from the hip-hop scene, so why bother saying it? Like the article said, you seem to be successful in every other sense, so why do you need to be validated. My opinion is just that, my opinion; as yours is your own. Why do you need my validation to be content with what you have created? If this is truly yourself, then you\’ve expressed yourself articulately, so I say: contratulations! However, just because you can articulate the thought on your mind does not make you a poet. In my opinion, there is no set of rules that defines modern poetry, however, that does not make all poetry good, or well-written. Hip-hop poetry has not (thus far) been proved to me as real poetry because it is inarticulate in conveying the true message behind it. The only one song I will acredit with being poetry is called \”Stan\” by Eminem. The lyrics use strong, powerful imagery that is thought provoking, and stimulating. That is what makes it poetry: not only is it articulate, but it is thought provoking and stimulating aswell.
But this is just my opinion, an expression of myself, if you will. I agree with this article.
Meera Nanda makes a dangerous connection between Vivekananda and the neo-Hindu nationalists.
But fortunately her deep scientific shallowness leaves the connection loose and forgettable.
The neurophysiology of Vivekananda\’s concepts on meditation and elevated consciousness is finding familiarity in recent research findings on the dynamics of brain activity. Alpha waves noted during meditation and their probable implications on alternative awareness are EEG recordings, not distorted proposals.
As for the attempts by the neo-Hindu nationalists to acquire and acknowledge any ritualistic hogwash as scientific, they stand as imbecile and over driven as the quick-in-quick-out desirous attempts of an adolescent author.
Dr Shuvendu Sen
Medical Director, Surgical Technology Program, Long Island University, New York
Phil Dore\’s paper on the STWC seems to ignore an important point:
The allegiance of \’far left\’ (e.g. Stalinist/Trotskyite) groups with Islamic imperialists makes the term \’left\’ meaningless.
Here in California, I observed the same phenomenon during the Falklands War. In a matter of hours, the \’far left\’ had transformed Argentina from a military dictatorship with a secret police force organized by nazis, a nation which had murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens, into a \’third world\’ victim of Anglo-American imperialism!
There is nothing progressive or \’leftist\’ about this kind of mental pathology, although its origins may be traced to the Old Left\’s more shameful errors and enthusiasms. The driving force here seems to be a reflexive self-hatred projected onto one\’s own society.
In response to John Coffin\’s comments (below), I would like to state that I agree entirely with him that by allying themselves with Islamists, organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party fatally undermine their own claim to be on the left. In particular, such alliances threaten the ability to pursue key progressive objectives such as secularism, feminism and gay rights. This has already caused problems within the SWP-led Respect Coalition, with issues such as gay rights and abortion proving to be key sticking points. So far the SWP and Respect have shown a shocking willingness to jettison principles in order to keep the Islamists on board.
To quote Nick Cohen in his excellent book Pretty Straight Guys, \”Marx abominated religion. For the crime of preferring feudal theocracy to bourgeois democracy he would have tied copies of Das Kapital round the necks of the SWP leaders and thrown them into the Thames.\”
Each are conceptual constructs. Each are said to try to determine \’what is\’ a priori. When experience does not conform to expectation, then either the experience, or the concept is wrong. That \’science\’ more often conforms to expectation is only to say that is what we as an experiencing social species can agree on. The apple will fall to the ground, that is the logic of that experiential situation. On what occasion would that not occur? In the absence of apples and \’the ground\'[suitable gravitational force – though what is that?]. We always presuppose that our experiencing will be thus and so, but neither the apple, nor the ground can guarantee such an outcome a priori, neither can the transit of Mars, or phases of the Moon -after all they are only concepts.
Neither astrology, nor science, can determine a priori what will occur. Living is not determined but is necessarily presupposed such that we have the freedom to determine \’what is\’ a posteriori [one man\’s freedom fighter is another man\’s terrorist: same situation, different designation]. In effect we are providing a descriptive account, a narrative, of what it is like to be a living, thus socially experiencing person.
To reiterate, science and astrology are conceptual constructs that either have a presupposed value, or not. The value is only a value as it plays a part in our lives – they may, or may not permit us to make sensible choices. I prefer \’science\’ but am very aware of a \’blind commitment\’ to it. Too often the necessary ethical dimension is forgotten in terms like \’pure science\’, we focus on the conceptual tool rather than its application.
As both Wittgenstein and Aristotle noticed, a conceptual commitment forces one to move in a particular direction – the logic of the concept, the move to final causality – but of course both concluded that \’the concept\’ resided in the knowing mind, the person that is \’the psuche\’, thus \’the logic\’ likewise resides in \’the knowing mind\’.
Appreciating this means that neither astrology nor science can determine what we will, or ought to do – determination is a specifically human activity, and that is always ethical.
Re: Green Myth & Green Revolution
This article is fantastic. I\’m a communications manager for a specialty agriculture media company, and for 15 years I\’ve made many of the same arguments…none of them, alas, in as comprehensive and detailed a manner as Professor DeGregori. This is a battle we must win, and I\’m proud to be on the same side, doing in my small way what I can.
This kind of work is worth doing I think, especially by someone who is, broadly speaking, a co-practitioner. One of the (many) huge difficulties for an empirical scientist in trying to reason with those operating exclusively within “post-modern” intellectual space is finding any common ground from which to commence a dialogue.
If one’s interlocutors fail to grasp the most rudimentary principles of scientific reasoning (say, the need for evidential support, the need for quantification of critical concepts, Occam’s razor, the need for empirical truth/falsity conditions, testability, predictive power, corroboration and so forth) it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere. One can, until one is blue in the face, point out the ways in which such principles are indispensable to their own arguments (not to say living of their very own lives) if they are indeed intended as pieces of reasoning designed to support a proposition claimed to be true, but unless the “penny has dropped” this is futile in the face of question-begging rejection of the whole scientific enterprise itself.
It is not so bad that these individual authors have fatuous views (we can all wish them well on their way to the asylum) but it is so bad that they should influence other, particularly young, intellects by their vacuous and chimerical enunciations.
So anyone from within the field, such as Mr. Standing, who is willing to stand up to the gibberish, is welcome indeed.
The onus is not on Nussbaum to delineate culture. She is arguing that we don\’t need to specify a cultural framework in order to make moral judgments. Nussbaum thinks we can use reason to rise about our backgrounds to arrive at universally applicable moral principles.
Suppose an non-liberal feminist claims that widow-bashing is morally acceptable within a certain culture, despite being abhorrent to liberal feminists. The non-liberal feminist must now explain which cultural framework ought to apply. Should we defer to the norms of the village, the clan, the nation state…? Is it relative to a historical epoch? To class? To gender?
This is a problem for the non-liberal feminist, but not for Nussbaum. She can concede the non-liberal feminist\’s preferred definition of culture. Nussbaum\’s point is that culture isn\’t morally relevant in this context.
I came here hoping for intelligent critique of fashionable nonsense.
Instead, I find a screed from the Cato Institute, filled with right wing fashionable nonsense, prominently displayed.
While more data points are needed, any site that promulgates such flagrant garbage as is contaned in the article on agriculture is one of marginal credibility at best, and open for suspicion of being, yet another, stealth left bashing site funded by far right wing interests.
re: Freud returns?
Congratulations on a brilliant hatchet job!
Besides, it\’s a consolation to learn that there is at least one scholar alive who is familiar with the works of William McDougall.
Several cheers for Richard Evans\’s article on Postmodernism and History.
Mr. Newberry (who fears that this is just a left bashing site) might care to read it. Richard Evans writes from the left. His concern about radical scepticism in history is that it leaves us with no defence against the Holocaust denier.
Briefly, researching parallel and precursive ideas to those developed by Freud into an integrated set of propositions about the functioning of the human psyche is rather like refusing to read or stage Shakespeare plays because he used Holinshed\’s Chronicles as a major source of story lines.
One the reasons Freud is disconcerting is because he put sexual politics onto the agenda of psycho-social theorising. No other research paradigm functions so well to stimulate ideas about what is really going on between men and women.
I agree with many of the criticisms made on the site about Freud; his botched research, the appropriation of ideas from others, the problems with testing the theories, etc.
However, it is disingenuous to contimue to argue that Freud cannot be tested using the standard methods of science (or at least, of psychology). Fisher and Greenberg detail 100s of studies that are at least up to the standard of conventional social science that properly test aspects of Freud\’s theory.
These studies often show Freud to be wrong (e.g., on incest avoidance and disorders) but there is some support for other parts of the theory (e.g., defence mechanisms and the oral and anal personalities).
Much of Freud\’s work is biologically naive and evolutionary psychology has torn apart much of what he had to say about sex, but taken as a set of empirical claims parts of the theory cannot be easily rejected. At the very least plausible alternative explanations for some of Freud\’s observations are required.
For example, there may be an alternative explanation for Jedlika\’s finding that children of mixed race couples are more likely to marry someone of the same race as the opposite sex parent, but it is prima facie evidence for oedipal feelings that cannot be ignored.
Similarly, Adams et al\’s finding that homophobic men are more aroused by homosexual pornography than non- homophobes (with no differences in arousal to other forms of pornography) may be xplicable in another way, but the most obvious explanation is in terms of reaction formation.
If one of the central tenets of this site is that the methods of science are worth defending then the open minded should be willing to consider the evidence relevant to Freud\’s theory with a bit more disinterest than is currently the case.
The thoughts that this article has provoked are beyond explanation. It is remarkable to think that one might challenge the works of poets long dead and say that you don\’t need to know the knowledge they knew in order to express yourself and your thoughts today. Fair enough, maybe you don\’t need to be an intellectual to express yourself, however you need to be articulate enough to convey your message to more than one kind of peron. If there are very few points that you can make that anyone outside of your social group (or genre, if you will) can understand, maybe you need to reconsider your method of articulation. Try educating yourself and expressing yourself from a more efficient/articulate point of view. Old poetry may belong to authors who are long dead, but that only proves their true value and worth. If you can write a hip-hop song that contains lyrics that will haunt people for the next century, then I take all this back, but from my own personal experience in the field of hip-hop, there is nothing more to e said than \”I like money\” \”I like women\”, and \”I\’m gunna beat yo\’ ass down, punk!\” There seems to be nothing worth saying that is coming from the hip-hop scene, so why bother saying it? Like the article said, you seem to be successful in every other sense, so why do you need to be validated. My opinion is just that, my opinion; as yours is your own. Why do you need my validation to be content with what you have created? If this is truly yourself, then you\’ve expressed yourself articulately, so I say: contratulations! However, just because you can articulate the thought on your mind does not make you a poet. In my opinion, there is no set of rules that defines modern poetry, however, that does not make all poetry good, or well-written. Hip-hop poetry has not (thus far) been proved to me as real poetry because it is inarticulate in conveying the true message behind it. The only one song I will acredit with being poetry is called \”Stan\” by Eminem. The lyrics use strong, powerful imagery that is thought provoking, and stimulating. That is what makes it poetry: not only is it articulate, but it is thought provoking and stimulating aswell.
But this is just my opinion, an expression of myself, if you will. I agree with this article.
Meera Nanda makes a dangerous connection between Vivekananda and the neo-Hindu nationalists.
But fortunately her deep scientific shallowness leaves the connection loose and forgettable.
The neurophysiology of Vivekananda\’s concepts on meditation and elevated consciousness is finding familiarity in recent research findings on the dynamics of brain activity. Alpha waves noted during meditation and their probable implications on alternative awareness are EEG recordings, not distorted proposals.
As for the attempts by the neo-Hindu nationalists to acquire and acknowledge any ritualistic hogwash as scientific, they stand as imbecile and over driven as the quick-in-quick-out desirous attempts of an adolescent author.
Dr Shuvendu Sen
Medical Director, Surgical Technology Program, Long Island University, New York
Phil Dore\’s paper on the STWC seems to ignore an important point:
The allegiance of \’far left\’ (e.g. Stalinist/Trotskyite) groups with Islamic imperialists makes the term \’left\’ meaningless.
Here in California, I observed the same phenomenon during the Falklands War. In a matter of hours, the \’far left\’ had transformed Argentina from a military dictatorship with a secret police force organized by nazis, a nation which had murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens, into a \’third world\’ victim of Anglo-American imperialism!
There is nothing progressive or \’leftist\’ about this kind of mental pathology, although its origins may be traced to the Old Left\’s more shameful errors and enthusiasms. The driving force here seems to be a reflexive self-hatred projected onto one\’s own society.
In response to John Coffin\’s comments (below), I would like to state that I agree entirely with him that by allying themselves with Islamists, organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party fatally undermine their own claim to be on the left. In particular, such alliances threaten the ability to pursue key progressive objectives such as secularism, feminism and gay rights. This has already caused problems within the SWP-led Respect Coalition, with issues such as gay rights and abortion proving to be key sticking points. So far the SWP and Respect have shown a shocking willingness to jettison principles in order to keep the Islamists on board.
To quote Nick Cohen in his excellent book Pretty Straight Guys, \”Marx abominated religion. For the crime of preferring feudal theocracy to bourgeois democracy he would have tied copies of Das Kapital round the necks of the SWP leaders and thrown them into the Thames.\”
Re: Astrology and Science.
Each are conceptual constructs. Each are said to try to determine \’what is\’ a priori. When experience does not conform to expectation, then either the experience, or the concept is wrong. That \’science\’ more often conforms to expectation is only to say that is what we as an experiencing social species can agree on. The apple will fall to the ground, that is the logic of that experiential situation. On what occasion would that not occur? In the absence of apples and \’the ground\'[suitable gravitational force – though what is that?]. We always presuppose that our experiencing will be thus and so, but neither the apple, nor the ground can guarantee such an outcome a priori, neither can the transit of Mars, or phases of the Moon -after all they are only concepts.
Neither astrology, nor science, can determine a priori what will occur. Living is not determined but is necessarily presupposed such that we have the freedom to determine \’what is\’ a posteriori [one man\’s freedom fighter is another man\’s terrorist: same situation, different designation]. In effect we are providing a descriptive account, a narrative, of what it is like to be a living, thus socially experiencing person.
To reiterate, science and astrology are conceptual constructs that either have a presupposed value, or not. The value is only a value as it plays a part in our lives – they may, or may not permit us to make sensible choices. I prefer \’science\’ but am very aware of a \’blind commitment\’ to it. Too often the necessary ethical dimension is forgotten in terms like \’pure science\’, we focus on the conceptual tool rather than its application.
As both Wittgenstein and Aristotle noticed, a conceptual commitment forces one to move in a particular direction – the logic of the concept, the move to final causality – but of course both concluded that \’the concept\’ resided in the knowing mind, the person that is \’the psuche\’, thus \’the logic\’ likewise resides in \’the knowing mind\’.
Appreciating this means that neither astrology nor science can determine what we will, or ought to do – determination is a specifically human activity, and that is always ethical.