theoretical Application

[a_priori]

I put together this list more than a month ago, when perpetua54 advertised at academics_anon. Then I sat on it for awhile, until the early semester crazy faded and I now am just a bit more available to parry your challenges, quench your queries, and prostrate my intellect for your procrastinatory amusement. So have at it!

Comments

First dibs

[knut_hamson]

Please define "theory." In particular, please define it in such a way that connects Dower, Eliot, and Wittgenstein.

Re: First dibs

[a_priori]

There are two ways to go here. One is to take your request very literally, to gesture at a univocal sense of 'theory' that unifies Dower, Eliot and Wittgenstein. (Or, for that matter, Spinoza, Fricker, and Nisbett and Wilson.) I don't think that's likely to work for any list that's not super-specialized.

The other route is to suggest that 'theory' is a fractured concept, one consisting in a cluster of loosely connected forms. (If you like, we can call it a family resemblance.) On this account, the best we'll be able to do for a "definition" is to point at some common traits, acknowledging that not every theory will demonstrate every trait. Some good traits are systematicity, the linking of instances via formal principles, highly general scope, openness to dialectical challenge (call that 'publicity'), some evident means of application to novel instances, and perhaps a bit of distinctive intellectual style (whatever that means

Re: First dibs

[knut_hamson]

"There is nothing more theoretical than that!"

If theory is a fractured concept (which I like as an answer, by the way), then how can one text be "more theoretical" than another? How can we have relative, comparative categories without a notion of stability in definition?

Further, if "general scope and systematicity" unify texts under the umbrella of "theory," then why isn't the U.S. Tax Code - if it possesses those traits, not a theory? On what principle are you excluding it?

Re: First dibs

[doctorex]

I'm also interested in the general scope and systematicity categories you identify here. It would seem to me that a lot of very good theory is partly about challenging scopes and systematicity of previous frameworks. Would you agree or disagree, and what does that do to your answer above?

[owl_of_minerva]

I'll bite, though I won't have a chance to offer any follow-up questions for the rest of the day --

I've read the Tractatus, but I'm not an analytic philosopher and my memory of the scholarship around the Tractatus is dim (and not something I've looked at since undergrad). Having said that, it's a text I really enjoy.

So -- first: what's the "resolute" interpretation?

Second: How does the form or style of the Tractatus interact with its content? Does it? are there are interesting things to say there?

And a possible branch-off from the second question: Are there interesting things to say about the connection(s) between form & content in theory/philosophy in general?

[a_priori]

The resolute reading: A couple of times in the TLP, Wittgenstein declares that everything he's written is "nonsense". This is supposed to be a logical consequence of the view defended in the book (that, due to the picturing model of semantics, we cannot sensibly speak about such totally general things as semantics itself). Famously, he then says (late in the 6s, I think) that one must treat his words here as a "ladder" to be climbed, then kicked away once one has reached new heights.

There's clearly something crazy going on here. How could his words simultaneously be nonsense, and yet (he hopes) convince us of his view? The traditional interpretive move is to just ignore his "nonsense" remarks, or give them a deflationary reading (he doesn't really mean that they lack comprehensible semantic content!). The 'resolute' reading, in contrast (advocated most forcibly by Cora Diamond and Jim Conant), takes Wittgenstein at his word. He's serious - the book is just a bunch of nonsense

aside

[ceciliaj]

Have you read David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress? He's presumably taking the resolute reading a step further.

Re: aside

[a_priori]

I have not, but I've met some grad students who study the resolute reading, and they seemed really excited about that book!

Fair warning--I'm off to class and won't be back until this evening

[perpetua_redux]

I know nothing about Fricker except that she co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, and that she has been characterized as a philospher who values feminine insights rather than a feminist philosopher. Does the work you list inform or illuminate that observation?

Re: Fair warning--I'm off to class and won't be back until this evening

[a_priori]

I can't honestly say that I understand the difference between "a philospher who values feminine insights" and "a feminist philosopher". I know there are cases where such distinctions are important, but too often they look like academo-political CYA or conceptual make-work.

But I don't know about this case; this book is the only thing I've read from Fricker. The best I can say, perhaps, is to mention some ways in which this book is relevant to the question you've framed. Epistemic Injustice is not explicitly concerned with feminism as such, nor is it limited to issues regarding gender and sex oppression - but it does touch upon both, and employs concepts with some currency in feminist theory (e.g. standpoint theory

[ceciliaj]

I am excited to see Eliot on your list, as I am currently on the last book of Daniel Deronda, and it is one of the best books of any genre I have ever read.

So, I'd like to hear what led you, as a philosopher with cognitive interests, to list Eliot here. Are there other writers of fiction who could equally have qualified as sufficiently theoretical?

[a_priori]

My favorite aspect of the philosophy of cognitive science is its attempt to get a grip on a terrific conceptual duality. We each have internal experience, conscious experience, through which we regard the external world. But that external world provides feedback in the form of information about how our minds work - that is, why/how our internal experience is what it is. This becomes especially thrilling when cognitive science points to ways in which the functioning of our minds turns out to be not what it appears internally. (the Nisbett and Wilson paper on my list is a hallmark of this

[ceciliaj]

Okay then. What do you you think of the chapter/book-opening epigraphs of which Eliot is so fond? Are those (when they are written by her rather than quotations from literature) to be counted as philosophical propositions? Do they contribute to the theoretical or philosophical project of the novel, or is it primarily the interplay between characters' actions and the representations of their interiority that enables the book to contribute to such a project?

[a_priori]

Hmm... good question... I'm inclined to say that most of the theoretical work is done by the aspects to which I've already alluded, but I'm sure some of the epigraphs serve an auxiliary role. If they are philosophical propositions, they're not especially satisfying ones (in my personal opinion). They don't have much argument behind them, except in the limited sense that the events of the story constitute an argument. But then the real conceptual work is being done by the story after all.

What do you think? Do they strike you as especially interesting?

[max_ambiguity]

I have a house guest for the weekend so I may not be able to play much, but I did want to ask at least one easy question. Is your interest in Dower purely related to the integration of history, psychology, and cultural analysis that you talk about in your answer to Knut, or are you also interested in Japan in general?

[a_priori]

Thanks for the easy question! (which I'll answer on my way out the door)

I am fascinated by Japan, especially Japanese history. I spent an undergrad semester in Tokyo; I have almost as many books about Japan on my bookshelf as works of philosophy. The Dower book happens to be one of my favorites (alongside Walter LaFeber's The Clash), and probably one of the few that approaches 'theory'.

[max_ambiguity]

Okay, then, I'm going to ask a completely unfair question: Could you please explain mono no aware to me?

[a_priori]

Can I explain it? That is an unfair question!

But I'll try to say something about it. I doubt this will add much that you haven't thought of, since you've obviously thought about it at least some. But perhaps other folks, less acquainted, are reading along.

Mono no aware refers to a sort of sad-but-unperturbed resignation at the impermanence of things, where 'things' includes objects, human lives, and nations. It seems to be deeply set in Japanese culture, appearing in the 'floating world' ephemera of the Edo period, the complex quasi-spiritual justifications given to kamikaze trainees, and arguably in contemporary Japan's obsession with prettily wrapping absolutely every product. And, of course, there's the cherry blossoms, whose beauteous death is a national obsession