bad science/bad postmodernism

[jbor at bigpond.com]

David, David, David. It was framed as an hypothesis, not as a statement 
of "fact".

Bigotry is bigotry whether it hides under the name of Science or of 
Religion.

best

On 14/10/2005, at 6:54 AM, David Casseres wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>>
>