bad science/bad postmodernism

[David Casseres]

I'm no fan of Skinnerian psychology, but you grossly mischaracterize
Skinner's use of the Skinner Box with his daughter.  It was by no
means a "sensory deprivation" box and he didn't "shove her in and out
of it."

And neurobiologists aren't thinking about sarcasm, and they don't
weild scalpels except on cadavers.  What the hell is the matter with
you?  You're like some anti-abortion freako waving a poster of bloody
fetuses outseide a clinic.  Enough already.  Get a grip.

On 10/12/05, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> On 12/10/2005, at 11:10 AM, Sean Mannion wrote:
>
> > When i say horseshit i'm generally thinking about Lyotard's clumsy
> > appropriation of Wittgensteinian Language-Games and/or Lacan on
> > voyeurism and the male gaze -- when asked to imagine a male voyeur
> > looking at a woman taking a shit, i'm far more likely to be wondering
> > whether he pays by cash or american express than registering the
> > 'symbolic exchange' or 'unconscious manifestation of the desire to see
> > a woman with a prick'.
>
> There's no question that some of what comes out of Critical Theory is
> as wrongheaded, irrelevant or just plain indigestible as some of what
> gets pumped out of The Lab. Let alone the misappropriations ... But
> wouldn't it be just as easy to reduce "Science" to ol' B.F. Skinner
> shoving his infant daughter into a sensory deprivation box day in day
> out or bloodied gangs of scalpel-wielding neurobiologists seeking to
> isolate the brain's sarcasm receptor? Neither Lyotard nor Lacan --
> especially Lacan -- are so easily dispensed with. Nor, either, is
> "Science" in its totality, but that's never been the argument.
>
> And I'll keep coming back to Pynchon -- Brigadier Pudding's coprophilia
> scene resonates far more with Lacanian psychoanalysis than with ...
> what, the materialist theory of porn? And what about Kekulé in GR --
> another example of Pynchon jabbing pins into the bubble of Science's
> grand metanarrative.
>
> "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
> (1941)
>
> best
>
>
>