bad science/bad postmodernism

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 14/10/2005 David Casseres wrote:

> Well, yes, I did misread the context.  Sorry.

No problem. It was a travesty, meant to mirror the travesty of Lacan's 
and Lyotard's work which had been put forward.

Here's the sarcasm neurobiology link, fyi:

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/neu193288.pdf

best

> On 10/13/05, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>