The above is the title of the book published in 2002 by the State University of New York Press, edited by Catherine Keller and Anne Daniell. It is one of the contributions in the Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought. The purpose of this book is to explore the interstices between the two brands of postmodernism in the title, generally represented by Whitehead and Derrida.
Now some might find such a project untenable, as these seem to be two fundamentally opposed camps. On the one hand the process folks might find deconstruction to be destructive of any and all notions of the good, the true and the beautiful, leaving nothing in its wake. It seems Ken is on this side of the street. On the other hand the deconstruction folks might find that such Whiteheadian notions of “actual entities” to be stuck in a modernist position of stubborn fixity and evil metanarratives.
Keller in the Introduction notes some of the similarities of the two projects:
“The profound parallels may still startle those who have the patience to untangle both skeins of arcane vocabulary. Both jubilantly privilege becoming over being, difference over sameness, novelty over conservation, intensity over equilibrium, complexity over simplicity, plurality over unity, relation over substance, flux over stasis. Both repudiate the inherited ‘truth-regimes’ of unifying metanarratives, which objectify reality from the vantage point of a stable, underlying subject. Both deconstructâ€â€or, in Whitehead’s language, ‘criticize the abstraction of’â€â€any essentialized substance of subject. And both accomplish this critique by exposing the Western linguistic structures that fabricate the illusory common sense of what Derrida calls ’self presence’ and what Whitehead calls ‘the subject-predicate form of proposition.’”
Keller also notes that to find some rapprochement between these camps one must not vilify each other. Regarding Griffin’s characterization of deconstruction she says that he never even engaged Derrida, that he “mounted the argument against a ‘deconstruction’ of his own invention.†This sounds a lot like what Ken does with Derrida as well. And from such a perspective there can be no creative hybrid, which is what the volume seeks. I’m guessing it is from this exploration that the next phase of “integral†will grow, not the dogmatic clinging to the postmetanarratives of either. And I will explore this book forthcoming in this thread, as time permits.
In David Ray Griffin’s introduction to the series he notes that we must move on from the modern worldview if we are to prevent the destruction of the planet. But he cautions against a retro-romantic movement to the premodern. He champions a development into the postmodern. However the latter is only discernable by a diffuse agenda against the modern, not by any “common set of doctrines.†And here he draws the line between the deconstructive and the reconstructive varieties. The latter he sees as relativistic, eliminative and nihilistic. In contrast the former saves the day with its revisionary agenda involving “a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious institutions.†Griffin is convinced that it will be a “creative synthesis of modern and premodern truths and values.†Here one might say it is in alignment with Ken’s revisionist AQAL agenda.
Keller in the Introduction is candid about the inherent prejudices of the process camp toward the deconstructive, counting herself among the former. She warns against caricaturing the latter and that Griffin’s analysis ‘suffers from a ‘fallacy of misplaced opposition.’†Griffin does so by contrasting his reconstructive version with the American interpreters of deconstruction, such as Taylor and Rorty, not the French originators like Derrida and Foucault. Hence the quote in the main post about arguing against a deconstruction of his own invention.
After Keller noted some similarities of the two camps in the initial post, she goes on to say that they differ in that process thought tries to recontextualize metaphysical first principles while deconstruction will have nothing to do with them. Or in Kant’s terms, the things-in-themselves can be known by the former but not by the latter. And here Keller makes a distinction that for me has some promise: that between a metaphysical foundation versus ground. When she was studying at Claremont (Center for Process Studies) she was aware of the language of metaphysics used to posit such concepts as “actual entities†or “prehensions.†But do such categories form a “foundation†that leads to a “unifying metanarrative†which process thought is supposed to deny?
Keller then defines foundationalism as “the powerful thesis that our beliefs can indeed be warranted or justified by appealing to some item of knowledge that is self-evident of beyond doubt.†So how does Whitehead get around such a foundationalism with his first principles that he is supposed against? He did so by “melting the unchanging, eternal Reality of its Being into the turbulent flow of an endless Becoming. ‘Creativity,’ as the first principle, cannot constitute a foundation as just defined.â€Â
But what is the ground of creativity? It is the actual ground beneath our feet, not just a metaphor but the real dirt. The earth beneath us and our embodied relation to it must be reinfused in our speculative cognition. Foundationalism arises from a transcendental unity and fixity of the changeless beyond the constant, terrestrial flux and flow. So in this sense Whitehead can be quite literally interpreted as a “dirty†ontology.
One question I have at this point is that it seems that there is reliance on bodily perception in this “process†to ground the “real.†And it seems that such a reliance is based on the myth of the given that Ken so skillfully deconstructed. I will pursue this as I read further.
Richard Carlson said a bit about this book in an ARINA dialogue that mentioned it. The book was just introduced at the end of a dialogue which “closed” before we could explore it. Hence I’m extending the conversation here.
Richard said:
excerpt:
“Toward the end of the second Christian millennium, Western philosophy had unleashed successive and simultaneous waves of resistance to the “self-same”: to the metaphysical premise of “substance,” ousia, as the simple unity of self-identically subsisting subjects and objects. Among anglophone thinkers, Whitehead and his school posed the major alternatie, while the Nietzschean-Heideggerian-French lineage developed a continental antiessentialism. The one fights substance with process, the other with difference. Both have exercised a wide interdiscinplinary appeal largely outside of philosophy proper. And both can claim the title “postmodern” with ancestral legitimacy.”…..
RC:
Differance “is” Process by any other name, although the “is” in quotations maybe a bit misleading since these signifiers relate only within an infinite recursivity of signification. Because one also wishes to resists the metaphysical premise of substance becoming reified in either word, as either “process and differance”, can themselves become problematic if we would ally Being in the single word of either.
Although (as with HK) it may have been through the post-conventional experience of a single (first) word which initiated us into the fourth dimensional curvature of language, the problem with signifiers is their tendency toward imperceptible reification: Even the term: Singularity can come to mean nothing other that -as they say-: “ousia, as the simple unity of self-identically subsisting subjects and objects”.
When Aurobindo introduced the term Supermind it was to signify that whatever “IT” was, it could not be signified by mental processes at all. And although his use of that signifier has evolutionary significance similar language views can be found among other traditions, Dzogs-chen, & Hua-yen, and although as Steve Odin has shown there maybe some differences between cumulative penetration and interpenetration in the latter with Whiteheadean process metaphysics, a bridge can certainly be laid down between these eastern and western approaches, as between process and differance as well.
However, for the purpose of trying to find pathways beyond the mechanistic jargon of academic discourse which reduce easily to the couched agendas of ideologies and re-sacramentalize the world post deconstruction, perhaps harmonizing the languaging of differance and process with the creative imaginative praxis of certain esoteric theophonic traditions can help pry open a bit wider the horizon for an integral communicative action to emerge.
Continuing this idea of a direct communication with the world-as-it-is via our bodily senses, Keller notes that in keeping with the post-Kantian revolution we cannot “know†this consciously through language. However we can “learn to attend to the very filaments of memory, visceral feeling, and mood that make us aware of ‘a circumambient world of causal operations.’†“In this “causal preconsciousness…is embedded the link to the world in its immediacy.†Keller then compares Whithead’s theory of causal efficacy with Kristeva’s concept of the “semiotic†wherein the latter is identified with Plato’s notion of the “chora,†which “precedes and underlies figuration and thus specularization, and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm.†Hence a bodily pre-conscious is how we directly know the world-as-it-is.
But this is not via sense perception. Keller shows how both Whitehead and Derrida present “arguments against the primordiality of sense perception; sense is already inscribed, interpreted, or, in Whitehead’s terms, abstracted.†So how then do we know it? Here Keller relates Derrida’s notion of “’spacing’ as exteriority [that] puts space in time but also temporalizes space†to Whitehead’s “’presented locus’ as a ‘common ground’ between causal efficacy and presentational immediacy (sense perception).†And both of these are “always already imprints and precedes sense perception.â€Â
At this point I’ll have to do further reading in this book as well as pursue outside references, as I don’t know to what the above jargon refers. Can anyone out there elaborate?
Recall from the Postmetaphysical Thinking 4 thread references to Derrida and the khora:
http://www.openintegral.net/blog/?p=107
From Ian Edwards:
What is necessary is to go back “behind†and “below†the origin:
“toward a necessity which is neither generative nor engendered and which carries philosophy, “precedes†(prior to the time that passes or the eternal time before history) and “receives†the effect, here the image of opposites (intelligible and sensible): philosophy. This necessity (khora is its sur-name) seems so virginal that it does not even have the name of virgin any longer.†(Derrida, 1993, p.126)
They differ in that deconstruction does not to speak of anything that is transcendent (It could be argued that the khora is somewhat of a transcendent function). It prefers to speak of différance, the possibility and impossibility of whether or not the indeconstructable space, the khora, can be avoided.
From Martin Morris:
Derrida refers to Plato’s notion of (the) khora…[which] is the space that ‘gives place.’
Here we return to the articulation of the ‘space-in-between’…. But khora is a concept at once non-identical with itself in its very intention ‘as if there were two, the one and its double’, for it opens ‘an apparently empty space’ but is not ‘emptiness’.
For Derrida, by contrast, what is indeconstructable is rather the formless, structureless space in-between, the abyss or chasm ‘in’ which the cleavages between sensible and intelligible, body and soul, can have a place and take place.
Here’s a Whitehead glossary for the above terms:
http://www.hyattcarter.com/glossary.htm
Causal efficacyâ€â€Causal efficacy is the more primitive and fundamental of the two pure modes of perception. (Presentational immediacy is the other pure mode, and both combine to form the mixed mode of perception, symbolic reference, which is our ordinary mode of awareness.) Causal efficacy, as a pure mode of perception, does not involve consciousness or life, but is present in all actual entities whatsoever, including those constitutive of inanimate material objects.
Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is the basic mode of inheritance of feeling from past data, and the feelings it transmits are vague, massive, inarticulate, and felt as the efficaciousness of the past. It is what Whitehead refers to as crude perception, and it arises in the first phase of concrescence as conformal feeling. Conformal feelings have a vector character; they are the agency by which other things are built intoâ€â€i.e., objectified forâ€â€any given subject in process of conscrescence and are therefore also called causal feelings. “The ‘power’ of one actual entity on the other is simply how the former is objectified in the constitution of the other” [PR 91]. (See also PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY and SYMBOLIC REFERENCE.)
Presentational immediacyâ€â€Presentational immediacy is the more sophisticated and complex of the two pure modes of perception. (Causal efficacy is the other pure mode, and both combine to form the mixed mode of perception, symbolic reference, which is our ordinary mode of awareness.)
Presentational immediacy is the perceptive mode “in which there is clear, distinct consciousness of the ‘extensive’ relations of the world. . . . In this ‘mode’ the contemporary world is consciously prehended as a continuum of extensive relations” [PR 95]. Whereas causal efficacy, the mode of inheritance from the past, transmits, into the present, data that are massive in emotional power but vague and inarticulate, presentational immediacy transmits data that are sharp, precise, spatially located, but isolated, cut off, self-contained temporally; there is no power of continuity to them for they are simply an awareness of those extensive relationships that constitute the contemporary world for the prehending subject.
Presentational immediacy is an elaboration upon certain aspects of what is present already in causal efficacyâ€â€this is possible because although perception in the mode of causal efficacy occurs in the first phase of concrescence, perception in the mode of presentational immediacy occurs in later phases and presupposes causal efficacy. In particular, causal efficacy contains sensa, but in a vague, ill-defined, and hardly relevant way. Presentational immediacy seizes upon these vague emotional feelings and transforms them into sharp qualities that are then projected into the contemporary region of that percipient occasion. The result is a flashing awareness of, say, “gray, there,” which is a typical example of perception in the mode of presentational immediacy. This is the kind of awareness one has when a flick of color is noted out of the corner of an eye. It is not until perception in the mixed mode is attained that there is the ordinary awareness of the persisting gray stone. (See also CAUSAL EFFICACY, SYMBOLIC REFERENCE, and CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS.)
Presented locusâ€â€The presented locus of any given actual entity is that entity’s “contemporary nexus perceived in the mode of presentational immediacy, with its regions defined by sensa” [PR 192]. Whitehead sometimes refers to the presented locus as the immediate present of an actual entity, or its presented duration. (See also DURATION, where this concept is discussed under the name presented duration.)
Symbolic referenceâ€â€Symbolic reference is the mixed mode of perception characteristic of fully alert human perception. It is an integration of, an interplay between, perception in the mode of causal efficacy and perception in the mode of presentational immediacy.
Perception in the mode of causal efficacy “is perception of the settled world in the past as constituted by its feeling-tones, and as efficacious by reason of those feeling-tones” [PR 184]. This mode of feeling permeates the physical world and is exemplified in human experience by visceral feelingsâ€â€a nagging stomach ache, for instanceâ€â€or by the brute givenness of memory. Perception in the mode of presentational immediacy, on the other hand, is “perception which merely, by means of a sensum, rescues from vagueness a contemporary spatial region, in respect to its spatial shape and its spatial perspective from the percipient . . .” [PR 185]. Presentational immediacy is the product of bare sight ‗But we all know that the mere sight involved, in the perception of the grey stone, is the sight of a grey shape contemporaneous with the percipient, and with certain spatial relations to the percipient, more or less vaguely defined. Thus the mere sight is confined to the illustration of the geometrical perspective relatedness, of a certain contemporary spatial region, to the percipient, the illustration being effected by the mediation of ‘grey.’ The sensum ‘grey’ rescues that region from its vague confusion with other regions” [PR 185].
Whitehead argues that philosophers, in analyzing perception, have tended to ignore perception in the mode of causal efficacy. “Philosophers have disdained the information about the universe obtained through their visceral feelings, and have concentrated on visual feelings” [PR 184]. The result is that philosophy has attempted to analyze perception in terms solely of presentational immediacy, and this has led to Hume’s skepticism. “Hume’s polemic respecting causation is, in fact, one prolonged, convincing argument that pure presentational immediacy does not disclose any causal influence. . . .The conclusion is that, in so far as concerns their disclosure by presentational immediacy, actual entities in the contemporary universe are causally independent of each other” [PR 188].
But, Whitehead holds, there is a causal influence that permeates ordinary perception. “When we register in consciousness our visual perception of a grey stone, something more than bare sight is meant. The ‘stone’ has a reference to its past. A stone’ has certainly a history, and probably a future, when it could be used as a missile if small enough, or as a seat if large enough” [PR 184-185]. The sensa involved in presentational immediacy have been derived from primitive feelings in the prior animal body, from perception in the mode of causal efficacy; and the vague massiveness of the presence of the past that originally accompanied them in that mode is not totally lost when they are projected onto a sharply defined contemporary spatial region in the mode of presentational immediacy, so that the mixed mode of symbolic reference perceives the stone both as clearly located in a contemporary region of space and yet as also a persisting entity with a past and an efficacy in the future. (See also CAUSAL EFFICACY, PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY, and CONSCIOUSNESS.)
In the current issue of Integral Review is an article by Gary P. Hampson called “Integral Re-views Postmodernism” (www.integral-review.org/curent_issue). He also explores this edge between the cosmological and deconstructive postmodern. He says on pp. 119-20:
“One branch leads to the poststructuralists (“poststructuralist postmodernismâ€Â), the other to a high-order quest for coherence (“cosmological postmodernismâ€Â).
“In addition to the dialectical nature of the philosophy that lies at the root of the two branches, the branches themselves can be seen as a dialectic between Schelling’s alignment with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the one hand, and his critique of Hegel, on the other.
“The branch that proceeds from Schelling’s critique of Hegel includes Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault (largely influenced by Neitzsche), Jacques Derrida (largely influenced by Heidegger) and Gilles Deleuze (who retains more influence from Schelling than the others). Somewhat resonant with Roland Benedikter’s (2005) seminal work on postmodern spirituality, Gare proffers that, “poststructuralists require Schelling’s earlier philosophy or developments of it to sustain their arguments†(Gare, 2002).
“The branch which is more aligned to Hegel leads to Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead via Charles Peirce and also via Karl Ernst Von Baer’s evolutionary theory of nature. Gare identifies this thread as a high-order quest for coherence. Such a quest for coherence is surely central for any integral theory. But surely a greater integral quest would be to attempt to respectfully honour both branches? Although the branches may seem somewhat incommensurable from a formal perspective, a postformal perspective on integral might better facilitate such a quest. But what is integral? A postformal approach to answering that question might well address the conceptual ecology among different (connected and contested) uses and interpretations of the word.”
Regarding Derrida’s position on Cook-Greuter’s scale of ego development he says on p. 135:
“A plausible hypothesis, then, would be to consider that these comments from Derrida centre around the perspective of The Magicianâ€â€a level beyond Wilber’s Teal / Integral / “post-postmodern†/ Yellow vMeme. In short, this evidence supports the hypothesis that the above text from Derrida is operating from the construct-aware stage.
“Derrida rationally differentiates deconstruction from destruction and indicates that deconstruction is a constructive activity. He also explicitly reflexes upon its subtle dialectical quality. His writing demonstrates a high level of developmental maturity, in which deconstruction is recognised and reflexively enacted in a post-relativist, dialectical, construct-aware mode. Derrida and deconstruction are clearly something Other than that signified by Wilber in his use of the term, deconstructive postmodernism.”
He also explores Wilber’s agenda around placing Derrida as a mean green memer, as well as critiquing Wilber’s overall treatment and misdiagnosis of the green meme in general.
I’ll be using this reference a lot more, both here and probably starting a new thread on it soon. I also look forward to dialoging with the author should ARINA open one with him at their site.
As an aside, the above article references both Ray and Alan. Homeboys do good!
Returning to the issue above about causal efficacy (CE), presented locus (PL), presentational immediacy (PI) and Derrida’s “spacingâ€Ââ€â€they don’t seem analogous or even related ideas. CE is “primitive feelings in the prior animal body,†which precedes perception proper by PI, or “sensation.†And this vague, undefined animal perception is supposed to allay the myth of the given of perception? And not only that, there is an intermediary between CE and PI called (PL) that is supposed to be akin to Derrida’s spacing, which appears to relate to his notion of khora. But PL is an immediate present “defined by sensa,†so I don’t see 1) how it’s outside the above myth and 2) how this in any way relates to Derrida’s khora, which in not anything “sensible or intelligible.†It does bear some relation to Kristeva’s chora, which is “analogous to vocal or kinetic rhythm,†but not Derrida’s per the above quotes.
Mooney, Timothy (1999), “Deconstruction, Process and Openness: Philosophy in Derrida, Husserl and Whitehead†at http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/staff/Mooney/decproopen.pdf
Whitehead calls the most primitive form of perception causal efficacy. It is the vague, ill-defined awareness of the wider environment and of our living bodies as its receptors which is involved in all seeing or hearing or touching. This level of awareness is responsible for our sense of continuity with nature and identification of our bodies with ourselves.
What we usually take as perception has the form of presentational immediacy. This is relatively clear and distinct, but only because it is an ‘active forgetting’ which filters out most of the vagueness and complexity of causal efficacy. On Whitehead’s account, the abstractive world of presentational immediacy has its origin in the inherited world of the immediate past, as mediated by the still more immediate past of antecedent bodily functioning.
Like Derrida, however, Whitehead notes that this immediacy does not amount to simple presence. For one thing, perception involves ‘symbolic reference’ – whatever is presently experienced goes beyond itself, invoking a proximate future of anticipation as well as the proximate past. For another, it is invariably interpreted through a complex of ideas or conceptual scheme which of itself alone precludes our chancing upon a pure given. And we can no more have an adequate conception of a worldly thing than capture it in intuition. Our conceptions of worldly objects are inadequate, he argues, in that they lead us to concentrate on some of their characteristics whilst passing over others, and in that novel experiences hold out the possibility of modifying these very concepts (which informed previous perceptual acts).
Whitehead understands consciousness as a complex outgrowth of more basic, embodied experiences – it presupposes such experiences and not the other way round. By the same token he avoids the term ‘mind’, which he regards as carrying unfortunate connotations of independence. On his account, moreover, self-presence is given no primordiality – we do not initiate thought by an effort of self-consciousness – it is rather the case that ‘[w]e find ourselves thinking, just as we find ourselves breathing and enjoying the sunset’. So far as I know, Whitehead has no worked-out doctrine of reflexive and pre-reflexive self-acquaintance (though the latter could easily be read into the notion that we feel ourselves in causal efficacy). When he considers consciousness in general, however, he rules out any possibility of undifferentiated awareness:
Much of the above, despite its naturalistic reference to measurable time, is in accord with Derrida’s description of self-presence. Further agreement is found in Whitehead’s claim that there ‘is no definite area of human consciousness, within which there is clear discrimination and beyond which mere darkness’. Whitehead might not fully concur with Derrida’s argument that the admission of the other into the present moment is the admission of nonevidence as well as nonpresence, but he certainly anticipates the latter in denying any privileged zone of transparency in consciousness.
And a bit more from Mooney, which is just prior to the above quote:
The relations which enable an actual entity to develop are called ‘prehensions’, a neologism used by Whitehead to convey his claim that they are found at all levels of reality and need not involve consciousness or life.48 Prehensions are the various ways in which actual entities register data from their fellows in other times and places. This can involve the inclusion of a datum, which is the preserve of a ‘positive prehension’ or ‘feeling’. It can also involve a specific act of exclusion or ‘negative prehension’. Even here a minimal relation is established between two entities, since a datum must be encountered in some way in order to be excluded. According to Whitehead:
“Each actual entity is analysable in an indefinite number of ways. In some modes of analysis the component elements are more abstract than in other modes of analysis. The analysis of an actual entity into ‘prehensions’ is that mode of analysis which exhibits the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities….. …..any item of the universe, however preposterous as an abstract thought, or however remote as an actual entity, has its own gradation of relevance, as prehended, in the constitution of any one actual entity: it might have had more relevance; and it might have had less relevance, including the zero of relevance involved in the negative prehension; but in fact it has just that relevance whereby it finds its status in the constitution of that actual entity.â€Â
Actual entities might never absorb other entities in their entirety, but their prehensions are nonetheless internal relations that hold within as well as between them.50 There are similarities discernible here between the network of prehensions constituting each thing and the structure of différance, and in Derridean fashion Whitehead does not regard a prehension as a simple operation of productive spontaneity or passive receptivity – the character or ‘subjective form’ peculiar to each prehension is a product not just of the prehending subject but also of those determinations in the object prehended.51
Every actual entity enjoys subjectivity in that it prehensively emerges from a background world and possesses a unique perspective on that world.52 Now within the confines of this essay I cannot give an account of the differences between the more basic actual entities and the complex ‘societies’ of such entities which compose animals and humans.53 But what is found throughout Whitehead’s work, as already intimated, is a rejection of soul-substantialism – subjectivity is an ongoing process of becoming in which no being can lie underneath or endure apart from its experiences or thoughts.54 When he turns to the topics of sense-perception and consciousness, he makes it clear that these are derivative operations precluding simple presence.
>”Whitehead understands consciousness as a complex outgrowth of more basic, embodied experiences – it presupposes such experiences and not the other way round. By the same token he avoids the term ‘mind’, which he regards as carrying unfortunate connotations of independence. On his account, moreover, self-presence is given no primordiality – we do not initiate thought by an effort of self-consciousness – it is rather the case that ‘[w]e find ourselves thinking, just as we find ourselves breathing and enjoying the sunset’.”
Whitehead’s ideas remind very much of the mechanistic and reductionist approach of the Watsonian Behaviourism in psychology. The behaviourist doctrine denies purpose and driving force in psychology just as the neo-Darwinist doctrine does in biology, both living – or rather happening to subsist – in a chanceful and mindless universe. Matching, or even outdoing its biological counterpart, this credo bluntly and categorically declares, that “mind”, “consciousness”, “love”, “ideas”, “creativity”, “introspection”, “ethics”, “responsibility” and all other non-material aspects of the universe are “invented entities” and do not exist. “Since mental or psychical events are asserted to lack the dimensions of physical science, – wrote one of the most notorious high-priests of this credo, B. F. Skinner – we have an additional reason for rejecting them.” Hunter treated the subject’s report as “just another bit of verbal or non-verbal behaviour intimately related to the conduct of the organism but not symptomatic of consciousness. As a form of behaviour, the verbal report indicated the presence of any stimuli or internal conditions which have been conditioned to arouse that response.” According to some others, “Behaviour is a forced movement determined by stimuli affecting symmetrically located sense organs.”; and “No experimental or observational results have ever been secured which have revealed anything other than behaviour and the stimuli and organic conditions which elicit it.”
Regarding artistic originality, here is what the proper J. B. Watson had to say: “One natural question often raised is, how do we ever get new verbal creations such as a poem or a brilliant essay? The answer is that we get them by manipulating words, shifting them about until a new pattern is hit upon. … How do you suppose Patou builds a new gown? Has he any ‘picture in his mind’ of what the gown is to look like when it is finished? He has not. … He calls his model in, picks up a new piece of silk, throws it around her, he pulls it in here, he pulls it out there. … He manipulates the material until it takes on the semblance of a dress. … Not until the new creation aroused admiration and commendation, both his own and others, would manipulation be complete – the equivalent of the rat’s finding food. … the painter plies his trade the same way, nor can the poet boast of any other method.”
What I find surprising is that ‘my dear Watson’, having had discovered all the secrets of how great art and literature and, I suppose, also music are produced, did not put all this valuable knowledge of his in practice, and is not celebrated now as the new Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Beethoven, all in one. But what surprises me even more is that the printer’s ink can support so much utter nonsense; that so much senseless blubbering can be accepted as scientific thought under the label of “behaviourism”; and that so much un-reason is able to get followers representing a “scientific movement”. Or could it be, that all this “danger-zone-intelligentsia”, devoid of even the smallest grain of creativity, is just using – the most arrogantly, I must say – its infernal rights bestowed on it and aided by a degenerative Zeitgeist, to dissect, ‘manipulate’ – that is, ‘pull it in here, pull it out there’ – and deliver ex cathedra declarations about subjects and beings that they haven’t got even the slightest making to reach; declarations that would offend the intelligence of a moron. Should they have only the slightest creative inclination, they would know, through personal experience, what an utter trash they are representing and divulging.
To entertain further with the absurd, I reproduce here one paragraph from Arthur Koestler’s Janus:
“In case the reader should be in doubt, this is not a parody but a quote from Skinner’s book Verbal Behaviour, published in 1957. He also informs his reader that ‘a man talks to himself . . because of the reinforcement he receives’; that thinking is in fact ‘behaving which automatically affects the behaviour and is reinforcing because it does so’; that ‘just as the musician plays and composes what he is reinforced by hearing, or as the artist paints what reinforces him visually, so the speaker engaged in verbal fantasy says what he is reinforced by hearing or writes what he is reinforced by reading’, and that the creative artist is ‘controlled entirely by contingencies of reinforcement’.”
Amazing what conclusions a man can arrive at just by watching a rat pushing a lever in order that a juicy food pellet should roll out for him. To these kinds of conclusions he really only needs to ‘pull some words in here, pull some others out there’, and out rolls a juicy theory for his reinforcement. He can even make good living on it as an additional and worthy fortification. The moronifying Zeitgeist thanks him for it.
“Let us face the fact: – wrote Ludwig von Bertalanffy – a large part of modern psychology is a sterile and pompous scholasticism which, with the blinkers of preconceived notions or superstitions, doesn’t see the obvious; which covers the triviality of its results and ideas with a preposterous language bearing no resemblance to normal English or sound theory, and which provides modern society with the techniques for the progressive stultification of mankind. It has been justly said that American positivist philosophy – and the same even more applied to psychology – has achieved the rare feat of being both extremely boring and frivolous in its unconcern with human issues.
“Basic for interpretation of animal and human behaviour was the stimulus-response scheme. So far as it is not innate or instinctive, behaviour is said to be shaped by outside influences that have met the organism in the past: classical conditioning after Pavlov, reinforcement after Skinner, early childhood experience after Freud. Hence training, education and human life in general are essentially responses to outside conditions: beginning in early childhood with toilet training and other manipulations whereby socially acceptable behaviour is gratified, undesirable behaviour blocked; continuing with education which is best carried through according to Skinnerian principles of reinforcement of correct responses and by means of teaching machines; and ending in adult man where affluent society makes everybody happy conditioning him, in a strictly scientific manner, by the mass media into the perfect consumer. Hypothetical mechanisms, intervening variables, auxiliary hypotheses have been introduced – without changing the basic concepts or general outlook. But what we need are not some hypothetical mechanisms better to explain some aberrations of the behaviour of the laboratory rat; what we need is a new conception of man.”