references to binary opposition in Pynchon's novels

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 17:14, jbor wrote:
> > I think this discussion has probably gone on long enough.
> 
> I agree. You haven't really been willing or able to engage with the passage
> from Pynchon's text in a coherent way. What Pynchon presents is how
> Pointsman's worldview is being shaken by the possibility that the Pavlovian
> "all-or-nothing" principle doesn't in fact hold true in the realm of human
> behaviour, that there is a realm between the "one" and the "zero" of neuron
> functioning which he can't account for. It's not the statistical calculation
> of mean saliva output which Roger is working on, or which is troubling to
> Pointsman. It's Poisson distributions ("random" events forming into weird
> statistical patterns), the problematic "ultraparadoxical phase" &c where
> stimulus doesn't cause response, or causes a different response, or produces
> a range of different responses in the same individual, and the fact that
> Slothrop's response (erection) occurs prior to the stimulus (rocket). The
> one lemming that doesn't jump etc. Of course these aberrations are worrisome
> for a behaviourist. And of course they throw the behaviourists' whole basic
> conception of how the brain works into question.
> 
> It's not possible to separate out the philosophical foundations of
> behaviourism from its experimental methodology. They are complementary,
> unavoidably interlinked. But I'm glad to see that you're backpedalling now
> from the analogy between the human mind and a computer, which is the dead
> end to which behaviorism inevitably leads.


I don't think you've understood a word I've said. 




> 
> best
> 
> > In our last go
> > around we were at least in the same language group. I would have liked
> > to convince you, or anyone, that the subject passage has "problems" but
> > that was not to be.
> >
> > One last thing. I follow John Searle with regard to similarities between
> > the computer and the human mind. They are completely unlike.  The
> > computer example I used was merely to illustrate how an "organism" at
> > it's lowest level of organization can be extremely simple and at its
> > higher levels extremely complex. There is nothing more complex than
> > animal behavior.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 07:01, 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)
> >> 
> >>>> 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.
> >> 
> >> I'll take neuroscientific understanding in the 1940s for 50 thanks Regis.
> >> Seriously, the point of the passage is that Pointsman, a behaviourist,
> >> following Pavlov, "imagine[s]" the brain and all its functioning as a
> >> "mosaic", or constantly-changing pattern, of tiny on-off light switches.
> >> It's this mechanistic analogy which underpins his work and his view of human
> >> psychology, and it's based on the principle that if you were able to
> >> eliminate completely all extraneous variables then behaviour (the
> >> stimulus-response relationship) could be predicted (and manipulated) with
> >> 100% certainty. That's why Skinner put his pigeons (and his infant daughter)
> >> in sensory deprivation boxes -- it's why Pointsman administers Slothrop with
> >> Sodium Amytal at St Veronica's.
> >> 
> >> Mexico is a statistician, and his probability analyses raise the possibility
> >> that Pavlov was wrong (he was), that brain functioning at the neuron level
> >> *in terms of transmission* -- of data or energy or whatever -- might not be
> >> "like" an on-off light switch after all, but more like a dimmer switch, or
> >> even a timer switch; i.e. that there are gradations, or levels of
> >> functioning (speed, intensity, duration, delay), between the hard and fast
> >> limits of zero (off) and one (on). The excluded middle. The troubling thing
> >> in all this for Pointsman is that once the mechanistic analogy starts to
> >> fall apart -- inferring back, from Mexico's statistical collations of
> >> aberrant behaviour to brain functioning ("mind") -- so does everything he
> >> has worked for and had faith in.
> >> 
> >> You keep deferring to the analogy of the human mind as a computer. But it's
> >> actually not an apt analogy at all. That's the point. However, it *is*
> >> precisely where behaviourism ultimately led (cf. Skinner: "The real question
> >> is not whether machines think but whether men do."), it's the model of
> >> intelligence upon which cybernetics and computing is based, and it's
> >> precisely the idea which Pynchon has contested throughout his work. It's
> >> also precisely the idea which Chomsky was able to debunk in his review of
> >> Skinner's _Verbal Behavior_ back in 1959, which is where that later
> >> interview comment of his comes in (Chomsky: "As soon as questions of will or
> >> decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.").
> >> Not that Chomsky's "innatism" came any closer to the mark in terms of
> >> language acquisition, but what he did show was that behaviourism was
> >> off-beam. He demonstrated its fallibility, in other words.
> >> 
> >> Hope this helps.
> >> 
> >> best
> >> 
> >>> 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.   
> >> 
>