references to binary opposition in Pynchon's novels

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 01:54, jbor wrote:
> >>>>>> [...] But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something,
> >>>>>> Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico,
> >>>>>> survive anyplace in between . Like his master I. P. Pavlov before him, he
> >>>>>> imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements.
> >>>>>> Some
> >>>>>> are always in bright excitation, others darkly inhibited. The contours,
> >>>>>> bright and dark, keep changing. But each point is allowed only the two
> >>>>>> states: waking or sleep. One or zero. "Summation," "transition,"
> >>>>>> "irradiation," "concentration ," "reciprocal induction" -- all Pavlovian
> >>>>>> brain-mechanics - assumes the presence of these bi-stable points. But to
> >>>>>> Mexico belongs the domain *between* zero and one -- the middle Pointsman
> >>>>>> has
> >>>>>> excluded from his persuasion -- the probabilities. [...] (_GR_, p. 55)
> >> 
> >>>> The behaviourist believes that all human reactions conform to the principle
> >>>> of biological determinism. In the behaviourist paradigm there is no
> >>>> distinction made between physiological and psychological reactions.
> >>> 
> >>> Behaviorism as normally understood means that only the outward
> >>> observable aspects of the psychological are studied. Inner,
> >>> non-observable processes including consciousness are not dealt with.
> >> 
> >> This is inaccurate.
> > 
> > Actually, it's quite accurate enough for purposes of correcting your
> > misrepresentation of what behaviorism means in the context of
> > experimental science. I didn't have time to write a treatise.
> >> 
> >> E.g. "The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do."
> >> (B.F. Skinner)
> > 
> > Is this supposed to relevant to what we are talking about?
> 
> Of course it is. Skinner is the archetypal behaviourist, and that's the
> encapsulation of his theory about human psychology.

It's not the way one would describe what behaviorism is in any kind of
straight forward way. Perhaps you could say it's a foundational belief.
A statement of why one might think the behavioral approach is the most
meaningful and fruitful one. Perhaps the only possible one.

>  Neither Pavlov or Watson
> nor Skinner were operating at the level of "cellular behaviour",

Correct.

>  and nor did
> any of them make any sort of distinction between "cellular behaviour" and
> "animal experiments".

Nor would he have made any distinction between between quantum mechanics
and  animal experiments. He wasn't working at these submicroscopic and
microscopic levels of organization even though both processes were going
on there in his subjects.  He was working at the behavioral level of
organization. That's why it's call behaviorism. I think we are getting
somewhere. 

 

>  The behaviourists saw all human actions (both
> physiological and psychological) in terms of stimulus and response. That is
> what behaviourism meant in the context of experimental science. If not that,
> what else?

Nothing else. You are on a roll.
> 
> I can see why someone who believes in the behaviourist paradigm wouldn't
> approve of it,

Is is possible to believe in something as a fruitful approach to
knowledge and yet not approve of it? Please explain.

>  however, Pynchon's parody of a behaviourist scientist of the
> 1940s in the shape of Pointsman is an accurate one.

Even as a parody, the quoted passage can't be described as "accurate."
It's an impossible portrayal of even a zany pavlovian or behaviorist.
The ones and zeros and the calling up of Pavlov's on and off switches on
the cortex couldn't in sensible way put P at odds with Roger and his
probability. Yet there differences were supposed to be what the passage
is about. Even Pointsman couldn't possibly think that just because an
all or nothing principle is a work at a lower level that such uniformity
would prevail at the higher (behavioral) level. That he could do without
statistics. That would be like saying that just because a computer bit
can only register on and off the only words storable in a computer can
be on and off.  Why is any of this so hard to acknowledge? It's nothing
any of us did. It's something Pynchon did. His cleverness is not
invincible.   

.
> 
> best
>