Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 14:48:29 -0700
Subject: Re[2]: SERIOUS SOKAL/Ross, Aronowitz, and postmarxism...


Peter:

Sorry it's been a few days getting back to you.  I've been trying to arrange our 
department's graduation banquet.  Now that that's over, I can get back to 
important things.

"Frankly, Jeff, I don't recognize this as being particularly characteristic, 
never mind central, to pomo theories."  I was afraid that you'd say that.  I may 
be confusing pomo and post-structuralism or just plain misinterpreting 
post-modernist/post-structuralism/deconstructionism in general; I'll have to go 
back and re-read the Harlan article that I based that on, as well as doing some 
other reading.  Any suggestions?

"What about the problem that if you go back far enough, there are no 'previous' 
cognitions? What about original cognitions?  And what about new cognitions and 
insights that previous generations never had an inkling of?  I mean, take 
quantum mechanics.  The weasel word here is 'determines'.  What does that mean 
in this context?"  Peirce argues for a concept of clarity having three degrees, 
with the creative names "firstness," "secondness," and "thirdness."  Firstness 
is the basic sensory perception of the physical qualities of the object.  This, 
of course, it totally independent of previous cognitions.  Secondness is the 
identification of the object and the association of it with a sign.  Thirdness 
is the association of that sign with other signs, giving the sign practical 
meaning, as opposed to merely identification in secondness.

Secondness and thirdness are determined by previous cognitions.  Secondness 
depends on the preexistence of a particular sign associated with similar objects 
in the past (much like Wittgenstien's "game" or "leaf").  Thirdness, in relating 
one sign to another, gives us information about the use, function, nature, etc., 
of the cognition; this is impossible without previous cognitions.

An example would be a shovel.  Firstness would be our physical description of 
the it--a pole about four feet long made of wood, with a concave metal plate at 
one end.  Secondness identifies that object as a "shovel" based on our similar 
identification of past shovels.  Thirdness relates other signs, such as "dirt," 
"hole," and "dig," to the shovel to give real meaning, i.e., pratical 
consecuences, to the sign "shovel."

One can see the difficulty in having a cognition separate from other cognitions 
by taking the example of a new type of object that one has never seen before.  
When one finds a new object--mental or physical--we tend to describe it when 
someone asks what it is.  We have no sign for the object until we give it a name 
consciously, nor do we have any idea of its thirdness until we have other 
cognitions with the object, attempting to use it for various tasks or taking it 
apart to further examine it.

Regarding quantum mechanics, for example, this came about as a result of 
cognitions that previous generations did not have, namely, the photoelectric 
effect and black-body radiation, if I recall correctly.  Our cognition of these 
phenomenon led us to question the secondness and thirdness of our previous 
cognition (and I use the singular here because the cognitive histories of 
scientists within a scientific community are son similar as to be effectively 
identical for the vast majority of scientific questions) and to form a new 
cognition of quantum mechanics and relativity based on the previous cognitions 
of Newtonian mechanics and the above phenomenon.  In short, a present cognition 
can be determined by the discovery of conflict between two previous cognitions.

"And moving on to premise 2, why should people have different cognitions?  Do no 
two people ever share any cognitions?"  That was a mistake on my part.  What my 
argument should have said is that no two people have the same cognitive 
histories.  This should be quite clear.  "LMU.EDU" has an obvious meaning to 
you.  Because I've neverknown anyone fron that domain, however, its meaning is 
vague to me.  I know from my cognition of internet addresses the ".edu" means a 
school, but does "LMU" men "Loyola Marymount University," "Louisiana Methodist 
University," or another school with which I am unfamiliar?  Our shared knowledge 
of the internet is, because we have had so many of our cognitions in this area, 
essentially the same cognition, because it has the same practical consequences: 
We both know what ".edu" means.  But because we don't have exactly the same 
cognitive histories, my cognition of your e-mail address is different from your 
cognition of that same address.

"This seems extremely far-fetched and implausible, as does the conclusion that 
nobody understands anyone else."  In so far as you refer to the idea that no one 
can understand anyone else, I agree wholeheartedly.  I deny the premise that two 
people need to have the same cognition in order to understand each other.  As my 
argument above anticipates, I believe only that we need have cognitions with the 
same meaning as we exchange ideas, and that, because most people have cognitive 
histories that closely resemble one another's, public language and continuity 
are sufficient to bridge the gap between the relatively minor diffierences in 
our cognitive histories.

"In any case, surely the pomo view is not that there is no mutual understanding 
and shared cognition, but that all understanding and cognition is socially 
constructed."  Here we are, to an extent, dealing with a problem that someone 
brought up last week, that of trying to construct a general pomo argument.  That 
may not be possible, given the variety of pomo views.  Harlan, however, does 
argue this, at least as an approach to intellectual history and the study of 
authors' works.

Even given your interpretation of pomo (which may well be the more relevant one 
to this general discussion), this still, I think, leads to similar problems.  
What are the limits of that society, and thus the shared understanding?  If 
understanding is socially determined, then we should not expect one to be able 
to communicate outside of her society.  I have no problem, however, 
communicating with my Vietnamese friends.

More to the point (given the cultural emphasis of contemporary pomo), a black 
man from Detroit can generally communicate with a black man from rural Arkansas. 
 I would argue that they are at least as different as the latter is from the 
poor white farmer from rural Arkansas, whom the postmodernists claim cannot 
communicate with each other.  The socially determined understanding, if it is to 
be an understanding that prevents communication (which, I should note, is a 
frequent justification for "diversity" in hiring ) must necessarily be limited 
to a vary small social group determined by many more factors beyond merely race. 
 Class, I would argue, would certainly be one such factor and is probably at 
least as important as the standard "diversity" categories in forming this 
understanding.

Most importantly, the basis for these supposed differences in social 
understanding is the different experiences of the different groups.  But what 
are different experiences, beyond different cognitive histories?  If these 
differences do, in fact, prevent understanding, then they must extend all the 
way down to the individual, since none of us have the same cognitive history.

"The sign 'dog' is independent of what it signifies, namely dogs.  But why 
should that mean that competent English speakers cannot all mean the same thing 
by 'dog'.  I mean, if I say "Do you own a dog?", don't you understand that?  
Sure the word 'dog' could be used to mean anything we decide it to mean--it's 
not tied by some metaphysical umbilical cord to dogs--but that doesn't change 
the fact that in the public language, English, it has the meaning it has."  Here 
I believe that we differ over the meaning of "independent."  Metaphysically, of 
course, the signs are independent.  If that was not the case these would only be 
a single language in the world.  By independent, I mean that the sign is not 
attached to any particular signifier even within the common language.  The sign 
"dog," I take the postmodernists to argue, is in fact (and not simply could be) 
attached to whatever one decides it to mean, even among English speakers, and 
this need not be a dog.  This is obviously not the case; we really do all know 
what a dog is.

". . . the ego, the self, are socially constructed, not metaphysically basic.  
Is this not the typical pomo claim?  How then, could a pomo theorist pretend 
that language, that most basic of social institutions, was dependent on the 
intentions of pre-social individuals?"  I'm not sure what you mean, here.  If 
you take this to be one of my own arguments, it's not, and I apologize for the 
confusion.  That claim is, as you correctly observed, inconsistent with pomo, 
and I don't know that pomo would argue that.

Thanks for the comments.  I'm definately in need of some more research into 
pomo; I now think that I may be misunderstanding their argument.  Nonetheless, I 
would stand by the first three statements.  I simply cannot agree that the lack 
of understanding follows from them.  If I am mistaken, and that is not, in fact, 
what pomo argues, then I might be able to become somewhat more friendly to it, 
at least in places.

Yours &c.,

Jeff Johnson			  "Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato,
Undergrad, Political Science		sed magis amica veritas."
Cal Poly Pomona					      --Aristotle



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