If Mort Divine ruled the world

[SentinelSlain]

To be fair, sometimes it's the other way around, some right wingers use some other example of slavery from history, barbary pirates, early white slaves in America, or whatever, to argue against leftists somehow. I don't particularly think it makes any sense when they do it, but they do.

I suppose it's a bit like this, if you are white, you should still be 'woke' to the fact that you can be in effective slavery quite easily and that is how most of your fellow white people probably lived at some point, as peasants in some lord's estate or worse.

Does that mean you should be against coloured people? Not really.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

 

[zabu of nΩd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/...-whiteness.html#click=https://t.co/hJwN6cA4qD

I'm not sure exactly what Padilla's goal is without looking into this more closely, but if he's just trying to carve out a "critical theory" branch within classics academia then whatever, fuck it. There's merit to studying history from either the antiquarian perspective or the critical perspective, and I can see how classics departments might be one of those enclaves where antiquarianism has held out longer than elsewhere.

My bigger concern is that academia as a whole may be going all-in on critical theory, and in the resulting moralistic fervor abandoning an appreciation for the aesthetic value of things like classic literature (but I'm not in that world, so I wouldn't know).

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not sure exactly what Padilla's goal is without looking into this more closely, but if he's just trying to carve out a "critical theory" branch within classics academia then whatever, fuck it. There's merit to studying history from either the antiquarian perspective or the critical perspective, and I can see how classics departments might be one of those enclaves where antiquarianism has held out longer than elsewhere.

My bigger concern is that academia as a whole may be going all-in on critical theory, and in the resulting moralistic fervor abandoning an appreciation for the aesthetic value of things like classic literature (but I'm not in that world, so I wouldn't know).

Definitely not "as a whole," since critical theory is virtually absent in the corridors of STEM. The humanities often push variations of critical theory, but even then it's not a universal or homogeneous trend. Departments such as classics, philosophy, and history still hold fast to more traditional approaches to their disciplines that eschew critical theory.

And for what it's worth, "critical theory" has grown into an unclear and inconsistent chimera in popular media discourse, primarily as a tool to level accusations at "left-wing academia" (i.e. the humanities writ large). It's an unfair characterization since plenty of humanities scholars don't import critical theory into their classrooms; and for those that do, good! It should be taught to students so they have the capacity to reflect on their "appreciation" for canonical texts/works.

If we admit that all artists are conditioned in some way by their cultural milieu, then there's no way to fully separate aesthetics from politics. Maybe it's a bummer, but it's an indissoluble tension. That doesn't mean certain works aren't worth studying for what they can tell us about our culture, its history, and for the ways that art pushes back against the cultural milieu (even if conditioned by it, art often achieves subversive ends, even without doing so).

I read the NYT piece and find the professor's ideas compelling, albeit radical. But classics needs these kinds of thinkers in its midst. It needs people upsetting the order of things. It might be true that ancient Roman and Greek culture are foundations for Western thought and society, but the reasons for that aren't apolitical. There are distinct historical circumstances that led to Rome and Greece being seen as the West's cultural roots. It wasn't an organic evolution (by which I mean, it wasn't an undisturbed, seamless flow of influence).

Finally, non-Western cultures have also informed crucial institutions and cornerstones of our modern way of thinking. Hell, if it weren't for Ibn Rushd, Western Europe might never have imagined itself as a descendent of ancient Greece. I don't think it's ridiculous to redefine "classics" as a discipline that includes non-Western texts and thinkers--and maybe even centers them.

 

[SentinelSlain]

I'm not sure exactly what Padilla's goal is without looking into this more closely, but if he's just trying to carve out a "critical theory" branch within classics academia then whatever, fuck it. There's merit to studying history from either the antiquarian perspective or the critical perspective, and I can see how classics departments might be one of those enclaves where antiquarianism has held out longer than elsewhere.

My bigger concern is that academia as a whole may be going all-in on critical theory, and in the resulting moralistic fervor abandoning an appreciation for the aesthetic value of things like classic literature (but I'm not in that world, so I wouldn't know).

But outside of the ivory tower, what effects do these changes in approach actually have on the wider world? Does it change politics in West? How so?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Definitely not "as a whole," since critical theory is virtually absent in the corridors of STEM. The humanities often push variations of critical theory, but even then it's not a universal or homogeneous trend. Departments such as classics, philosophy, and history still hold fast to more traditional approaches to their disciplines that eschew critical theory.

And for what it's worth, "critical theory" has grown into an unclear and inconsistent chimera in popular media discourse, primarily as a tool to level accusations at "left-wing academia" (i.e. the humanities writ large). It's an unfair characterization since plenty of humanities scholars don't import critical theory into their classrooms; and for those that do, good! It should be taught to students so they have the capacity to reflect on their "appreciation" for canonical texts/works.

If we admit that all artists are conditioned in some way by their cultural milieu, then there's no way to fully separate aesthetics from politics. Maybe it's a bummer, but it's an indissoluble tension. That doesn't mean certain works aren't worth studying for what they can tell us about our culture, its history, and for the ways that art pushes back against the cultural milieu (even if conditioned by it, art often achieves subversive ends, even without doing so).

I read the NYT piece and find the professor's ideas compelling, albeit radical. But classics needs these kinds of thinkers in its midst. It needs people upsetting the order of things. It might be true that ancient Roman and Greek culture are foundations for Western thought and society, but the reasons for that aren't apolitical. There are distinct historical circumstances that led to Rome and Greece being seen as the West's cultural roots. It wasn't an organic evolution (by which I mean, it wasn't an undisturbed, seamless flow of influence).

Finally, non-Western cultures have also informed crucial institutions and cornerstones of our modern way of thinking. Hell, if it weren't for Ibn Rushd, Western Europe might never have imagined itself as a descendent of ancient Greece. I don't think it's ridiculous to redefine "classics" as a discipline that includes non-Western texts and thinkers--and maybe even centers them.

Good clarifications. I agree that critical theory should be taught in the humanities, though I wonder about the extent to which it's presented as "the truth" rather than as one perspective among several. How often do professors address the objections to critical theory, and which do they address? Without that kind of even-handedness, I see it serving as an intellectual justification for things like "cancel culture" and the various censorship efforts pointed out in "The Coddling of the American Mind".

The other big issue I have with viewing aesthetics and politics as inseparable is that it stifles artists' creativity. I totally get them being inseparable in an academic context (and maybe that's the only context you were applying the statement to), but my sense is that Marxist aesthetics and related views are pretty popular outside of academia as well, and serve as a justification for a broad "policing" of creativity throughout society. I'm not sure I could find a good example of what I mean, but I'd suggest that some of the themes that come up in metal (i.e. misanthropy and glorification of violence) are indications that a lot of great art arises from a headspace where the artist is detached from concerns about the political implications of what he's creating.

But outside of the ivory tower, what effects do these changes in approach actually have on the wider world? Does it change politics in West? How so?

I think it does. See above re: the possible link between critical theory and cancel culture / censorship.

 

[Einherjar86]

Good clarifications. I agree that critical theory should be taught in the humanities, though I wonder about the extent to which it's presented as "the truth" rather than as one perspective among several. How often do professors address the objections to critical theory, and which do they address? Without that kind of even-handedness, I see it serving as an intellectual justification for things like "cancel culture" and the various censorship efforts pointed out in "The Coddling of the American Mind".

I don't see anything wrong with trigger warnings personally, as no material is being censored.

The other big issue I have with viewing aesthetics and politics as inseparable is that it stifles artists' creativity. I totally get them being inseparable in an academic context (and maybe that's the only context you were applying the statement to), but my sense is that Marxist aesthetics and related views are pretty popular outside of academia as well, and serve as a justification for a broad "policing" of creativity throughout society. I'm not sure I could find a good example of what I mean, but I'd suggest that some of the themes that come up in metal (i.e. misanthropy and glorification of violence) are indications that a lot of great art arises from a headspace where the artist is detached from concerns about the political implications of what he's creating.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but don't want to ramble endlessly.

To be brief, I would say that aesthetic efforts absent any political or social considerations whatsoever don't qualify as art. Art connotes something more than mastery of craft/technique. Someone can paint an immaculate landscape piece that looks like a photograph, but that technical proficiency alone doesn't make it art.

That being said, I don't think there's any such thing as a piece of aesthetic craft that you can't historicize (i.e. read culturally/politically). That doesn't mean that artists are inhibited by culture or politics. In fact, I'd say that those works we look back on as foundational pieces of art usually push against and exceed what are often seen as the limits of their craft. There was a time when painting a near-photographic rendering of the landscape was really something special. Today, not so much. It might look pretty, but it's not doing anything interesting.

 

[CiG]

Critical theory is self-fulfilling/circular, because if your method seeks to politicize everything ("there's no way to fully separate aesthetics from politics") than nothing can be apolitical in the first place.

 

[Einherjar86]

That is one of critical theory’s axioms. All theoretical frameworks have axioms on which their entire practice rests.

 

[CiG]

Sure, which is why diversity of critique is important. Critical theory in and of itself is not a problem, but the increasing popularity of its application is a concern to some degree going forward. A framework which reduces all questions to a small set of explanations with an infinite ability to co-opt anything and everything into its worldview for this purpose is eventually redundant. If God explains everything, God explains nothing.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

To be brief, I would say that aesthetic efforts absent any political or social considerations whatsoever don't qualify as art. Art connotes something more than mastery of craft/technique. Someone can paint an immaculate landscape piece that looks like a photograph, but that technical proficiency alone doesn't make it art.

That being said, I don't think there's any such thing as a piece of aesthetic craft that you can't historicize (i.e. read culturally/politically). That doesn't mean that artists are inhibited by culture or politics. In fact, I'd say that those works we look back on as foundational pieces of art usually push against and exceed what are often seen as the limits of their craft. There was a time when painting a near-photographic rendering of the landscape was really something special. Today, not so much. It might look pretty, but it's not doing anything interesting.

"Social considerations" sounds like a much broader category than politics, so I'm not sure my objections apply there, but they may still. I mean, a lot of art conveys deeply private or mystical experiences that simply cannot be put into words, even if its cultural impact can be put into words. How does critical theory address the limits of language itself, and hence the impossibility of grasping the aesthetic essence of many artworks through analysis?

 

[Einherjar86]

Sure, which is why diversity of critique is important. Critical theory in and of itself is not a problem, but the increasing popularity of its application is a concern to some degree going forward. A framework which reduces all questions to a small set of explanations with an infinite ability to co-opt anything and everything into its worldview for this purpose is eventually redundant. If God explains everything, God explains nothing.

From my perspective, I don't see critical theory being this over-applied, homogenizing trend. I see it as one practice among many, but one that pop culture and especially right-wing culture warriors have latched on to as the explanation for academia's evils. I think it gets misused by people of all political persuasions, and I think its perceived "damage" is inflated by its detractors.

"Social considerations" sounds like a much broader category than politics, so I'm not sure my objections apply there, but they may still. I mean, a lot of art conveys deeply private or mystical experiences that simply cannot be put into words, even if its cultural impact can be put into words. How does critical theory address the limits of language itself, and hence the impossibility of grasping the aesthetic essence of many artworks through analysis?

I love these questions because they're calling to mind a lot of shit, haha.

First, I would point here to Wittgenstein's critique of the notion of private language--i.e. that it makes no sense to imagine a kind of "deeply private" experience that isn't translatable in some way to the social. Granted, all biological organisms have experience of some kind; but we're talking about people, and people's internal experiences are inseparable from their acquisition of social language. It's no coincidence that we begin forming coherent and lasting memories around the same time we begin acquiring language. Artists may have deeply personal/private experiences that they express in art; but those experiences are always already going to be tied to some kind of consciousness toward the social world. The very premise of expressibility implies communication. Aesthetics isn't the same as language, but we can understand and appreciate aesthetics by thinking about them linguistically. Barring the entry of the supernatural, even the most private experience is communicable in some fashion.

Now, complicating this a little--critical theory (and I'm using the term somewhat loosely) is very interested in the unspeakable. In psychoanalysis, it's the kernel of a dream, which no amount of analysis will ever fully unravel. In Foucauldian epistemes, it's what he calls the "unthought," or dark obverse of knowledge. In deconstruction, it's the guiding concept of différance, in which language always marks a departure from perfect meaning (i.e. a one-to-one correspondence between word and thing). It's debatable whether all these fall under the umbrella of "critical theory."

Critical theory isn't usually interested in the unspeakable as such, however, but in its relation to the speakable. In itself, the unspeakable has nothing to say (no pun intended); but it can tell us something about what we can say and think.

Finally, let's entertain the possibility that something truly unknowable is expressible. How would such a phenomenon be relevant to any kind of aesthetic study? In order to appreciate something aesthetically, we have to consider it in relation to other works; so already it's in conversation with tradition and practice. If it isn't, then appreciation becomes entirely subjective, which is emphatically not education. Anyone can find something pleasing, beautiful, impressive, etc.; but aesthetic appreciation only derives from situating art in a field of other works.

So in short, I don't really see how we can even approach a work of art aesthetically without also considering its communicative elements--or else all we're left with is "that's pretty." Great--but so what? For personal purposes, sure prettiness is fine. But it's not the point of aesthetic education.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I love these questions because they're calling to mind a lot of shit, haha.

First, I would point here to Wittgenstein's critique of the notion of private language--i.e. that it makes no sense to imagine a kind of "deeply private" experience that isn't translatable in some way to the social. Granted, all biological organisms have experience of some kind; but we're talking about people, and people's internal experiences are inseparable from their acquisition of social language. It's no coincidence that we begin forming coherent and lasting memories around the same time we begin acquiring language. Artists may have deeply personal/private experiences that they express in art; but those experiences are always already going to be tied to some kind of consciousness toward the social world. The very premise of expressibility implies communication. Aesthetics isn't the same as language, but we can understand and appreciate aesthetics by thinking about them linguistically. Barring the entry of the supernatural, even the most private experience is communicable in some fashion.

Now, complicating this a little--critical theory (and I'm using the term somewhat loosely) is very interested in the unspeakable. In psychoanalysis, it's the kernel of a dream, which no amount of analysis will ever fully unravel. In Foucauldian epistemes, it's what he calls the "unthought," or dark obverse of knowledge. In deconstruction, it's the guiding concept of différance, in which language always marks a departure from perfect meaning (i.e. a one-to-one correspondence between word and thing). It's debatable whether all these fall under the umbrella of "critical theory."

Critical theory isn't usually interested in the unspeakable as such, however, but in its relation to the speakable. In itself, the unspeakable has nothing to say (no pun intended); but it can tell us something about what we can say and think.

Finally, let's entertain the possibility that something truly unknowable is expressible. How would such a phenomenon be relevant to any kind of aesthetic study? In order to appreciate something aesthetically, we have to consider it in relation to other works; so already it's in conversation with tradition and practice. If it isn't, then appreciation becomes entirely subjective, which is emphatically not education. Anyone can find something pleasing, beautiful, impressive, etc.; but aesthetic appreciation only derives from situating art in a field of other works.

So in short, I don't really see how we can even approach a work of art aesthetically without also considering its communicative elements--or else all we're left with is "that's pretty." Great--but so what? For personal purposes, sure prettiness is fine. But it's not the point of aesthetic education.

I appreciate your knowledge on this, and your ability to lay out the intersections where these questions come up in the various threads of philosophical discourse. I can imagine how long it might take to educate myself on these sources and develop the vocabulary needed to speak more coherently on the subject, but I'll take a stab in the meantime.

Regarding the idea that "it makes no sense to imagine a kind of deeply private experience that isn't translatable in some way to the social," that strikes me as a lazy assertion that avoids an honest admission of the utter weirdness of conscious experience, and if my half-assed knowledge of the history of philosophy serves me, I believe one of phenomenology's notable achievements was to show that there's more to conscious experience than the "dead end" view Wittgenstein proposed. There's a kind of argument from ignorance in the claim that "there's nothing to say" about deeply private experience, as if our primitive monkey brains are somehow perfectly equipped to describe reality as we perceive it. I mean, have you ever seen a review of progressive / avant-garde music that did anything but utterly fail to capture the essence of the listening experience, or a trip report that served as an adequate substitute for being on a psychedelic drug? What about the evidence of the limits of the mind Peter Watts lays out in that lecture "Reality: The Ultimate Mythology"?

It seems quite obvious to me not only that the breadth of conscious experience far exceeds the capacity of language, but that the inexpressible part of conscious experience has a profound impact on our lives. That's pretty damn relevant to me, and reason enough for a broader definition of relevance than "that which meets the criteria for academic study."

There's a passage from Aldous Huxley's "Literature and Science" that characterizes the relationship between language and private experience in a way I think does the latter justice:

There exists in every language a rough and ready vocabulary for the expression and communication of the individual's more private experiences. Anyone capable of speech can say, "I'm frightened," or "How pretty!" and those who hear the words will have a crude but, for most practical purposes, a sufficiently vivid idea of what is being talked about. ... In good literature--good, that is to say, on the private level--the blunt imprecisions of conventional language give place to subtler and more penetrating forms of expression. The ambition of the literary artist is to speak about the ineffable, to communicate in words what words were never intended to convey.

Getting back to the conflict I alleged earlier between critical theory and creativity, I want to mention that although a level of (amateur) academic study has always been an important part of my creative life, I've grown to recognize that academic study isn't just a process of knowledge acquisition: it's also a process of perspective-shaping. There are times in my life that call for a degree of naive commitment to a certain perspective (i.e. that aesthetics and politics are separable), regardless of how sound the objections are, as long as I do it in a self-aware and undogmatic way. By committing to a perspective, I program my mind into a particular process or "track" that allows a kind of idea-generation unique to that perspective. Given my experience with that, I wonder how much awareness there is within academia of the possibility of losing the ability to see from a perspective after dissecting it under the critical lens.

 

[Einherjar86]

This is great Grant, thanks. I also don't want to seem like I'm suggesting that what I'm writing is "the way it is," or anything like that. It's just that a lot of people have written about this topic, and so these are the things I resort to.

Regarding the idea that "it makes no sense to imagine a kind of deeply private experience that isn't translatable in some way to the social," that strikes me as a lazy assertion that avoids an honest admission of the utter weirdness of conscious experience, and if my half-assed knowledge of the history of philosophy serves me, I believe one of phenomenology's notable achievements was to show that there's more to conscious experience than the "dead end" view Wittgenstein proposed.

You may be right about phenomenology, it's not a methodology I'm well-versed in. Here I'm also betraying some of my analytical preferences, as I generally subscribe to anti-phenomenological views, like those of Jacques Derrida. I wouldn't call Wittgenstein an anti-phenomenologist per se, but I do think his emphasis on language signals a turning away from phenomenological interests. But his later writings were very interested in psychology and philosophy of mind, so there's probably some overlap.

I also may have done a poor job of conveying Wittgenstein's ideas. His isn't a dead-end view, as he doesn't think that language ever really fails. In fact, his interest in language is that it continues to work despite being imperfect. His Philosophical Investigations are really quite something to read, unlike any other philosophical text I've ever read. He argument is also specifically that of private language--not experience as a whole. I may have conflated the two. But what he would say, I think, is that if individual people do have deeply intimate personal experiences that exceed the possibilities of language, then these experiences can't really matter for anyone except the person who has them. If our institutions of social meaning can't get a handle on these intimate, "mystical" experiences, then there's no way to convey them. A piece of art (which Wittgenstein doesn't really write about) might be inspired by an artist's deeply personal experience, but that experience won't be a part of the work's social meaning.

There's a kind of argument from ignorance in the claim that "there's nothing to say" about deeply private experience, as if our primitive monkey brains are somehow perfectly equipped to describe reality as we perceive it. I mean, have you ever seen a review of progressive / avant-garde music that did anything but utterly fail to capture the essence of the listening experience, or a trip report that served as an adequate substitute for being on a psychedelic drug? What about the evidence of the limits of the mind Peter Watts lays out in that lecture "Reality: The Ultimate Mythology"?

A couple things here:

1. if there is something to say about a deeply personal experience, then it doesn't exceed language. Maybe you can talk around the experience, but this raises the question of where exactly the boundary between language and experience lies. This is a debate that still goes on in neuroscientific and cognitive philosophy circles, and I don't think anyone has provided a suitable answer. I tend to fall toward the end of the spectrum that thinks all experience is, although maybe extra-linguistic on some deep level, almost immediately absorbed into what Jacques Lacan called the "symbolic" as soon as we have the experience. In other words, we're so fundamentally conditioned into language as soon as we're born that, by the time we can form memories and reflect on our experiences, the line between them and language is so fine as to be virtually nonexistent.

2. I have seen reviews that fail to capture the music, but then I also usually think that I have the language to more accurately describe them. I'm also probably over-confident in my writing abilities.


I started this but ran out of time to finish, lol, so I'll come back later to address the rest of your comments.

EDIT

It seems quite obvious to me not only that the breadth of conscious experience far exceeds the capacity of language, but that the inexpressible part of conscious experience has a profound impact on our lives. That's pretty damn relevant to me, and reason enough for a broader definition of relevance than "that which meets the criteria for academic study."

There's a passage from Aldous Huxley's "Literature and Science" that characterizes the relationship between language and private experience in a way I think does the latter justice:

That's a great quote.

I agree completely that the inexpressible has an impact on our lives; I guess I'm just skeptical of how separate these things are (I say more about this in my reply to Dak below)

I'm fully on board with Huxley's notion of literature as a way to work through non-linguistic experience. But this also introduces the weirdness of language itself. It might be true that conscious experience is weird, but language is also weird! And experiments in language can be great for working through private experience; but then, isn't language expressing something about that experience? When I read James Joyce or William Faulkner, I certainly don't think to myself "this is how people talk." But there's still a linguistic/textual element to the expressionistic impulse. There's something experimental and strange going on with language in these kinds of writings, and they're framing private experience in a particular way. I'm not sure how to draw the line between extra-linguistic experience and the linguistic framing of experience. I'd venture that artistic expression is as much a construction of experience as it is a re-presentation of it.

Getting back to the conflict I alleged earlier between critical theory and creativity, I want to mention that although a level of (amateur) academic study has always been an important part of my creative life, I've grown to recognize that academic study isn't just a process of knowledge acquisition: it's also a process of perspective-shaping. There are times in my life that call for a degree of naive commitment to a certain perspective (i.e. that aesthetics and politics are separable), regardless of how sound the objections are, as long as I do it in a self-aware and undogmatic way. By committing to a perspective, I program my mind into a particular process or "track" that allows a kind of idea-generation unique to that perspective. Given my experience with that, I wonder how much awareness there is within academia of the possibility of losing the ability to see from a perspective after dissecting it under the critical lens.

I can respect that. I'm definitely less creative these days than I used to be. Not sure I miss it, though; it's a different way of producing knowledge.

 

[Dak]

1. if there is something to say about a deeply personal experience, then it doesn't exceed language. Maybe you can talk around the experience, but this raises the question of where exactly the boundary between language and experience lies. This is a debate that still goes on in neuroscientific and cognitive philosophy circles, and I don't think anyone has provided a suitable answer. I tend to fall toward the end of the spectrum that thinks all experience is, although maybe extra-linguistic on some deep level, almost immediately absorbed into what Jacques Lacan called the "symbolic" as soon as we have the experience. In other words, we're so fundamentally conditioned into language as soon as we're born that, by the time we can form memories and reflect on our experiences, the line between them and language is so fine as to be virtually nonexistent.

Language absolutely mediates the experience, or therapy wouldn't be a thing. However, it's a fundamental error to assume any map ever fully represents the territory in accurate fashion, and this error is widespread in and out of academia. Deep learning is continuously acquiring and mutilating maps as they fail to accurately represent the territory. Most people just go through life with only a couple of maps which they generate functional epicycles for to explain deficiencies.

 

[Einherjar86]

Language absolutely mediates the experience, or therapy wouldn't be a thing. However, it's a fundamental error to assume any map ever fully represents the territory in accurate fashion, and this error is widespread in and out of academia. Deep learning is continuously acquiring and mutilating maps as they fail to accurately represent the territory. Most people just go through life with only a couple of maps which they generate functional epicycles for to explain deficiencies.

I agree 100% that map =/= territory. But this incongruence also invites the counterintuitive realization that the map precedes the territory. There's a feedback loop between map and territory such that as soon as we start mapping, we change the territory.

An explicit example of this would be European exploration of the Americas. During this process of mapping and knowledge acquisition, Europeans didn't passively observe and chart the land. They also actively altered it, so that the maps they drew were of a territory that didn't preexist their arrival. It was a map of their arrival. The mapping manufactured the territory, basically.

I think we have to admit that something similar occurs between language and cognition, too. We may have some kind of obscure, pre-linguistic mental experiences; but the influence of linguistic cognition ineluctably changes those experiences. As soon as we enter into language, we're no longer describing or expressing pre- or extra-linguistic experiences. Our linguistic mediation is part of the experience (or if it isn't, the distinction between the two is so fine and granular as to be virtually inconsequential).

 

[Dak]

I agree 100% that map =/= territory. But this incongruence also invites the counterintuitive realization that the map precedes the territory. There's a feedback loop between map and territory such that as soon as we start mapping, we change the territory.

An explicit example of this would be European exploration of the Americas. During this process of mapping and knowledge acquisition, Europeans didn't passively observe and chart the land. They also actively altered it, so that the maps they drew were of a territory that didn't preexist their arrival. It was a map of their arrival. The mapping manufactured the territory, basically.

Well there are different maps (to press the metaphor), and they change variably. Maps that precede the territory are plans for action. Their accuracy depends on earlier map accuracy and ability to implement the plan as planned (all rare). The map manufactures nothing though. It's a blueprint.

I think we have to admit that something similar occurs between language and cognition, too. We may have some kind of obscure, pre-linguistic mental experiences; but the influence of linguistic cognition ineluctably changes those experiences. As soon as we enter into language, we're no longer describing or expressing pre- or extra-linguistic experiences. Our linguistic mediation is part of the experience (or if it isn't, the distinction between the two is so fine and granular as to be virtually inconsequential).

Well there are things that we experience which "can't be put into words". Words are an attempt to share experience by some approximation and do mediate the experience through shared linguistic mechanisms (hence no private language). But when we think about "intersectionality" of linguistic mechanisms at the individual level and the degree to which they mediate each experience, also perceptually altered by any other number of biological/developmental/relational/etc factors, each experience is intensely private.

Edit: To be clear, I reject the rejection of distinction based on the ever present vague or continuous spectrum gradient of states of phenomenology.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

You may be right about phenomenology, it's not a methodology I'm well-versed in. Here I'm also betraying some of my analytical preferences, as I generally subscribe to anti-phenomenological views, like those of Jacques Derrida. I wouldn't call Wittgenstein an anti-phenomenologist per se, but I do think his emphasis on language signals a turning away from phenomenological interests. But his later writings were very interested in psychology and philosophy of mind, so there's probably some overlap.

I also may have done a poor job of conveying Wittgenstein's ideas. His isn't a dead-end view, as he doesn't think that language ever really fails. In fact, his interest in language is that it continues to work despite being imperfect. His Philosophical Investigations are really quite something to read, unlike any other philosophical text I've ever read. He argument is also specifically that of private language--not experience as a whole. I may have conflated the two. But what he would say, I think, is that if individual people do have deeply intimate personal experiences that exceed the possibilities of language, then these experiences can't really matter for anyone except the person who has them. If our institutions of social meaning can't get a handle on these intimate, "mystical" experiences, then there's no way to convey them. A piece of art (which Wittgenstein doesn't really write about) might be inspired by an artist's deeply personal experience, but that experience won't be a part of the work's social meaning.

Cool, I'll have to check out Philosophical Investigations - I'm way ignorant about Wittgenstein. On the subject of Derrida, I made a half-assed effort at reading Speech and Phenomena a year ago (with an accompanying explanatory book in plain English), something I need to get back to.

1. if there is something to say about a deeply personal experience, then it doesn't exceed language. Maybe you can talk around the experience, but this raises the question of where exactly the boundary between language and experience lies. This is a debate that still goes on in neuroscientific and cognitive philosophy circles, and I don't think anyone has provided a suitable answer. I tend to fall toward the end of the spectrum that thinks all experience is, although maybe extra-linguistic on some deep level, almost immediately absorbed into what Jacques Lacan called the "symbolic" as soon as we have the experience. In other words, we're so fundamentally conditioned into language as soon as we're born that, by the time we can form memories and reflect on our experiences, the line between them and language is so fine as to be virtually nonexistent.

2. I have seen reviews that fail to capture the music, but then I also usually think that I have the language to more accurately describe them. I'm also probably over-confident in my writing abilities.

Good points. While I'm compelled to take the side that there's a substantial boundary between language and experience, I do see how the opposite view is a persuasive one.

I can also imagine a possible future where language goes much further in "catching up" with private experience, and honestly I hope that doesn't happen, for the same reason you mention about the act of mapping "rewriting" the landscape. I worry about what we might lose (or have already lost) in the ongoing territorialization of experience by language. Even if there are always linguistic "hooks" in our experiences the moment we have them, they're not always well-refined ones. Sometimes it takes a great philosopher to refine language enough to move it deeper into the uncharted territory. It might be nice to just persist in a state of confused inability to coherently describe our experiences, rather than actively using our intellectual firepower to dispel the magic of the un(der)known. Lovecraft feared that insanity would result from the mind "correlating all its contents" - I fear that we'll become too sane!

I agree completely that the inexpressible has an impact on our lives; I guess I'm just skeptical of how separate these things are (I say more about this in my reply to Dak below)

I'm fully on board with Huxley's notion of literature as a way to work through non-linguistic experience. But this also introduces the weirdness of language itself. It might be true that conscious experience is weird, but language is also weird! And experiments in language can be great for working through private experience; but then, isn't language expressing something about that experience? When I read James Joyce or William Faulkner, I certainly don't think to myself "this is how people talk." But there's still a linguistic/textual element to the expressionistic impulse. There's something experimental and strange going on with language in these kinds of writings, and they're framing private experience in a particular way. I'm not sure how to draw the line between extra-linguistic experience and the linguistic framing of experience. I'd venture that artistic expression is as much a construction of experience as it is a re-presentation of it.

Yep, language has a weirdness all its own. I recently heard a point similar to yours in an episode of the Weird Studies podcast discussing whether performed music ever really conveys the original idea in the songwriter's head, since the idea must pass through the medium of instruments. Like an instrument, language has its own "voice" which sometimes generates original content that was neither intended nor even conceived of by the speaker.

 

[Einherjar86]

Cool, I'll have to check out Philosophical Investigations - I'm way ignorant about Wittgenstein. On the subject of Derrida, I made a half-assed effort at reading Speech and Phenomena a year ago (with an accompanying explanatory book in plain English), something I need to get back to.

I think you'd like the PI! It's a joy to read, and is very different from the Tractatus (Wittgenstein's first book, which made him famous). I prefer the PI because, unlike the Tractatus, it's more exploratory and inquisitive. You can tell in the Tractatus that he's trying to drive home a point, while in the PI he's really just mining a complex and confounding topic (i.e. how the hell does language work?).

As far as Derrida goes, he's a more frustrating and perplexing writer. Personally, I think he's brilliant and some of his work is actually gorgeous to read; but a lot of people can't stand him, understandably. I prefer his material in Writing and Difference and Margins of Philosophy, but all his stuff is interesting.

I can also imagine a possible future where language goes much further in "catching up" with private experience, and honestly I hope that doesn't happen, for the same reason you mention about the act of mapping "rewriting" the landscape. I worry about what we might lose (or have already lost) in the ongoing territorialization of experience by language. Even if there are always linguistic "hooks" in our experiences the moment we have them, they're not always well-refined ones. Sometimes it takes a great philosopher to refine language enough to move it deeper into the uncharted territory. It might be nice to just persist in a state of confused inability to coherently describe our experiences, rather than actively using our intellectual firepower to dispel the magic of the un(der)known. Lovecraft feared that insanity would result from the mind "correlating all its contents" - I fear that we'll become too sane!

Someone else you might find interesting here is Gilles Deleuze, who writes about territorialization in language. He and F. Guattari also came up with the concept of "control words," which I think you'd find interesting. They write about this in the language chapter in their book A Thousand Plateaus (which you might be able to find as a pdf online somewhere).

Yep, language has a weirdness all its own. I recently heard a point similar to yours in an episode of the Weird Studies podcast discussing whether performed music ever really conveys the original idea in the songwriter's head, since the idea must pass through the medium of instruments. Like an instrument, language has its own "voice" which sometimes generates original content that was neither intended nor even conceived of by the speaker.

I should check out this podcast/episode, sounds really cool.

Well there are different maps (to press the metaphor), and they change variably. Maps that precede the territory are plans for action. Their accuracy depends on earlier map accuracy and ability to implement the plan as planned (all rare). The map manufactures nothing though. It's a blueprint.

Ah, the good old days.

I'm using manufacture in a slightly metaphorical sense, but I don't agree with you that blueprints/maps have no productive capacity. They shape thought and perception, and condition the way people internalize a territory. In that sense, they participate in the actual physical alteration of a world.

Well there are things that we experience which "can't be put into words". Words are an attempt to share experience by some approximation and do mediate the experience through shared linguistic mechanisms (hence no private language). But when we think about "intersectionality" of linguistic mechanisms at the individual level and the degree to which they mediate each experience, also perceptually altered by any other number of biological/developmental/relational/etc factors, each experience is intensely private.

Edit: To be clear, I reject the rejection of distinction based on the ever present vague or continuous spectrum gradient of states of phenomenology.

In a strictly bio-physiological sense, all unspoken experiences are private, since we can't read each other's minds. But the point of something like Wittgenstein's private language argument is that we still conceive of our internal experiences as sharable/translatable. It makes to sense to think of them as happening in a language that's all our own.

Sorry, I don't follow your final sentence.

 

[Dak]

Ah, the good old days.

I'm using manufacture in a slightly metaphorical sense, but I don't agree with you that blueprints/maps have no productive capacity. They shape thought and perception, and condition the way people internalize a territory. In that sense, they participate in the actual physical alteration of a world.

Arguably, but I don't take that stance. If I create a map, blueprint, what-have-you, and I use it, it's just me using me. If someone else uses it, it's someone else using me (to be clear, not in the negative sense of the word "use"). The map is merely an extension of the creator, not a thing by itself.

In a strictly bio-physiological sense, all unspoken experiences are private, since we can't read each other's minds. But the point of something like Wittgenstein's private language argument is that we still conceive of our internal experiences as sharable/translatable. It makes to sense to think of them as happening in a language that's all our own.

Sorry, I don't follow your final sentence.

My point is that there are experiences which aren't linguistic, or words don't do justice, etc. Emotions are probably the best example. Our words for emotions, at least in english, are pretty generic and don't sufficiently capture the energy or the variance.

As far as my last sentence, I'm referring to the tendency of yourself or others to claim the lack of a clear point of demarcation means there's no differences whatsoever, or at least no important distinctions to be made or capable of being made.

EG: No clear point of demarcation therefore this picture is one solid color.