tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post6667088875190094742..comments2023-07-04T03:53:40.171-07:00Comments on Matt Kundert's Friday Experiment: Do We Need a Center, or Generalities?Matt Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-31691032390465788552011-11-14T07:17:07.639-07:002011-11-14T07:17:07.639-07:00Fair enough, it's kinda what I meant anyway. T...Fair enough, it's kinda what I meant anyway. There need to be many possible standards for judgement (by a community of many). Clearly the "popularity" of various such standards will come and go in cycles, but none can ever be seen to be "the single" standard.<br /><br />Sorry, just my usual style of attempting to boil down your considered essays into a couple of sentences. Nasty habit ;-)Ian Glendinninghttp://www.psybertron.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-62705568662634822162011-10-28T11:12:21.041-07:002011-10-28T11:12:21.041-07:00Doing away with the notion of "fashionability...Doing away with the notion of "fashionability" is what's behind Rorty and Brandom's favored slogan, "let a thousand flowers bloom," but it's easy to forget the purpose behind letting all those flowers bloom: some of them are going to be crap, and turned back over into the earth as compost for the next crop. (The phrase, of course, originates from Mao's China, referring to a campaign that was probably a front to get dissidents to expose themselves.) Speaking of fashions without fashionability is the spectre of exponential specialization again, which whittles away into practical solipsism.<br /><br />Think about it this way in the abstract: a fashion is always relative to a community who judges it to be fashionable. The real possibility is that you will not <i>have</i> a community to judge you--that's not desirable. Hegel will say that that's not even real freedom. Without a community judging you, there's no merit at all on the Hegelian model.<br /><br />Or think of it as Pirsig would: the notion of a "single central standard of arbitration of the relative merits" is the notion of static latch. Fashions like symbolic logic in Philosophy Departments in the 30s and literary theory in English Departments in 70s had the effect of people in power establishing institutional footholds for these things, like requiring philosophy graduate students to take at least one symbolic logic seminar or there being a theory component in English PhD comprehensive examinations. This "single central standard" is never a dictatorial fiat-maker, for a community doesn't judge that way--a community, being made of individuals, is always in flux. <br /><br />(No less, I might add, than that no academic discipline <i>has</i> a "single central standard of arbitration" that is like, say, the central authority of a dictator. There are myriad institutional apparatuses that, while they overlap, also are too complex for anyone to point at a single source of control--which means there isn't, which is good. Think of, on this score, individual departments, national institutions like the APA, book presses, and journals. None of them are so tightly bound as to create what I think you're imagining as a "single central standard.")Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-33708200866943292122011-10-27T06:12:35.307-07:002011-10-27T06:12:35.307-07:00Hi Matt,
Is it not possible (and worthwhile) to t...Hi Matt,<br /><br />Is it not possible (and worthwhile) to talk of fashion in terms of different fashions / flavours with different attractions from different viewpoints, without bringing in "fashionability" - in terms of being in or our of fashion - with some single central standard of arbitration of the relative merits ?Ian Glendinninghttp://www.psybertron.orgnoreply@blogger.com