Some JVB

Jill Vance Buroker in her introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason:


a. Introduction to transcendental logic (A50-66/B74-91)

Kant describes transcendental logic as the science of the rules of the pure understanding required fro cognition. This conception presupposes two distinctions: first, between the understanding and the sensibility; and second, between the real as opposed to logical uses of the understanding. Kant first reminds us that understanding and sensibility play distinct roles in knowledge. Sensibility is merely passive capacity for receiving impression s through the senses. The understanding, by contrast, is a spontaneous power to think of objects through concepts. THus each capacity has a disticnt function and produces a characteristic type of representation. Sensations given in intuition and the concepts that depend on them are empirical representations known a posteriori. The pure forms of intuition and the pure concepts arising solely from the activity of the understanding (if there are any) are a priori representations. Just as pure intuition represents only formal features of sensible objects, pure concepts would represent only the most general features thougtht in any idea of an object.

The 100th Post - Some Spinoza with Stoicism

I was told by the theologian Dr. Jorgenson, MA-Divinity, from the Baptist Student Union at NCSU that Philosophy in Latin is literally Bios. That is, the Romans saw philosophy as a way of life.

Sometimes people ask me what I'm going to do with philosophy. My impulse is to play with them. My gut reaction is to tell them that I plan on doing philosophy with my philosophy degree. The truth of it is, I'm hoping that I can use this everywhere, almost all of the time.

Burke says people, when reading the things that they were supposed to do in 7 Tips for Success books and so on, rarely actually do what the books tell them. He says the people really only read these books in order to be close to success, not actually apply the strategies.


Back in the day, people really set their passions for success, but it was really bad success. People were so passionate that they ended up getting themselves in trouble back in the day. For example, Spinoza's philosophy partially deals with the passions. The passions are almost exactly what you would expect. He thought that by ditching these passions we could get back to reality and truth. He saw that people who were abusing religion, and this goes specifically for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews of the day, were just too passionate. What was too passionate back in the day? Two of Spinoza's friends, who were handing out Spinoza-Pamphlets, were beaten up and then, I'm not making this up, eaten. They were beaten up and eaten.

Spinoza, as the rogue and rebel that he was, wanted to put a big painted sign in the street of his apartment that said, "Ultimi Barbarum" that is, it was a sign that called the mob Ultimate Barbarians, but no one knows if the mob in its rage would have been able to figure this Latin out. They might have thought Spinoza was the greatest hair cutter in the whole world. Mobs have no reason about them and we can rest assured that really good haircuts at affordable prices would have really pissed them off. Damn you, ultimate barber. We'll never know for sure because Spinoza's roommate locked him in his room for a couple of weeks, without putting the sign up.

Anyway, I just found this quote from Jarrett's Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed. Spinoza used the Stoics, who were a school from the Ancients who opposed Epircureans. I cannot remember all that I'm supposed to about the Epicureans, but I remember that it seems like the two schools are the same.

The Stoics thought that this world obeys a natural order, and that we have to get rid of our passions. Spinoza took this to heart in a big way, and these are cornerstones of his greater Metaphysics. He believes, to semi-religious adherence, that this world is causally organized and determined, and that we have to get rid of our passions.

Here is the quote from Jarrett on Spinoza, where Jarrett talks about Epictetus (presumably a Stoic but I haven't looked it up):

"Epictetus reminds us in Enchiridion [literally handbook - Jake] that a ceramic cup is the sort of thing that can break. So to avoid distress, it is best not to become too attached to any particular cup. his point, however, is that people, including your spouse and child, are like this as well (98)."

I've also got a note on here that 81-101 are on Spinoza's concept of mind, and pages 152-153 are about Spinoza on suicide.

Quote from Buckley

Christopher Buckley, in this week's NYT Magazine, quotes Herman Melville, saying, "The truest of all men was the man of Sorrow, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe."

I couldn't help but think of my brother.


On another note, the only person to have so far commented on this blog is my Professor Ben Devan. If any of you (now 5 declared followers, and however many undeclared followers) want to comment, please comment. A lot of this is (semi)controversial stuff, so feel free to chime in.

Concentration Tips from Encarta

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=ConcentrationIsKey>1=27004


Quote:

There's got to be more. People with phenomenal powers of concentration reveal it most dramatically when the context doesn't favor them. I'm thinking of a chef I knew years ago when I worked in a gourmet restaurant as a waiter. The dining room at that place was always whisper quiet, the kitchen always a madhouse. One night, I stepped into that chaos -- the ice machine had broken, a fight had erupted between two sous-chefs, someone was waving a knife -- and there was June, calmly stirring a sauce. Suddenly a pot of something caught fire. Pandemonium ensued; everybody rushed to douse the flames, but June never took her eyes off her sauce -- it wasn't her pot on fire. Later I asked if she had noticed the fire. She had. How then could she just ignore it? "I was making hollandaise," she said. "You have to watch it or it breaks."

That, my friends, is concentration on the hoof: It's not the ability to focus in the absence of distraction, but the ability to focus in spite of distraction.

Now we must pack up every piece

Here's a quick question: What motivates you? What crawls under your brainstem and preys upon it like some sort of dark terror?

Crying in class, I had a teacher in High School for English who would just sort of bawl at the Holocaust. This is strange, or this was strange because she was born after World War II, is white, and of Scottish descent. You tell me.

Now on the other hand, we get going with how the Holocaust does not have anything to do with anything and you are up a creek again. They were a lot like us. The Jews and the Germans. More than 6 million people died. Judaism is an open religion. The Jews let anybody in after they try to turn them down a number of times. It is okay if you don't learn Hebrew. Meanwhile, the Japanese Internment in the United States, while not anywhere near the ballpark of the concept of the Holocaust, is very much a case study in fear and racial scapegoating.

That is, my English teacher was using the Holocaust in order to transcend the simplicity of teaching. It is a human occurrence to make efforts toward this goal.

To turn the point one more time, she was using the teaching of the Holocaust as a motivating force for herself. It was the waking up point for her, and she thought it was the greatest mark of transcendent awareness that she could give anyone. Unfortunately I had no idea what she was talking about at the time. It just seemed like a raving bleeding heart.

So to wax philosophical, she was motivating herself by motivating the class to understand the Holocaust. It's important we do not do stuff like, uh, kill mass amounts of people because they, uh, think in different ways. A nice kicker is that we have to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. The classes were provocation toward action.


Thus I present our first motivational theory: Hylomania (literally mania for materials), whereupon in reaction to our surroundings, we are intrinsically motivated.

I'm borrowing the term, which is really a term for materialism (Hylas was the fictional philosopher in Berkeley's dialouges who argued for materiality of reality, Philonous was his fictional opponent).

But for us we can use it this way I promise.

Waking up is really legitimate

Immanuel Kant used David Hume to wake up. In fact, he said something that all Kant Scholars and wannabe scholars have mentioned 100% of the time. He said, "David Hume woke me up from my dogmatic slumbers." I've ended up saying this so much to myself this semester that I've realized its syllabic structure.

You kids can play at home:

words syllable count
David Hume
1 2 3 3
Woke me up
1 2 3 3
from my
1 2 2
Dogmatic
1 2 3 3
Slumbers
1 2 2


Let it be known that this is a bastardization. Firstly, because I think the actual quote appears three or four times in The Critique of Pure Reason and various writings that Kant has. Secondly, because this is of course translated from the Prussian or German.


In Eastern Philosophy, waking up means growing awareness. This growing awareness is at best knowing what you are thinking and controlling what you are thinking. For people like me, I think in a stream of consciousness, which I might describe as a series of words and phrases. It's not always complete thoughts.

The hope is that when you realize you're thinking, you can realize how silly or stupid what you think is. So if your brain thinks, "I want to stab that guy," you might be able to stop your brain from doing that. The other thing is that if you do this you might be able to, hey presto, control your mind. So all of that eating to fill a void that you do is now gone.


There are mixed results always until you master the practice. How do you master the practice? 1 way is to just do it a lot. The other way is simply to stop the mindflow. This can be done by breathing, or taking in sense data. It's hard to think about how hard your day is when looking a really nice work of art or if you are being punched in the stomach. Good times!

How does this fit in to Western Philosophy? Well it turns out, at least in the way that I see it, that Empiricism has created a foundation for what is known as the American-English or Analytic School of philosophy. These people think you can solve life like a math problem. The alternate school , branching off from Descartes, is called the Continental School, where they think you can solve stuff with essays. Double dipping arises on both sides, however, and you're up to your neck faster than you are down to the meaning of life so to speak.....

But I might say that Eastern philosophy crops up in weird ways in Western Philosophy. I'm not really sure what else the Eastern School is all about. It has foundations in Buddhism and Confucianism, but after that I really don't know what it does.

Shout out to waking up

Waking up is pretty legitimate. I've been saying in my head recently, "Unlucky" or "lucky" depending upon the a) things that happen to me, and b) my reactions to them. Remember Nozick's thought experiment poses a man who is destitute and in jail who is happy and a man who is rich with amazing success and is still unhappy. This is supposed to prove that it is somehow great to have happiness even though you are destitute and so on. But I still think the miserable successful life is okay! Look at Wikiquote.org sometimes for a good time. If you type in Wittgenstein, you might see his quote that he doesn't think we're put on earth for a good time. The philosophical concept of doing whatever you want, or getting what you want immediately is called Hedonism.
My philosophy club buddies have a counterargument from definition. That is, if you get going with the talk of how bad Hedonism is, how you should not just do what you want to do at any given time, my philosophy club buddies will just say that hedonism is ever present. That is, even if you are shying away from some other option, you are doing what you want. Even if you go for the bad apple, you're doing what you want to do. Before you weirdos get your underpants in a bunch about if this is such a bad thing, consider that if we all lived in backwards land where everyday is opposite day, and we always went for the worse option, things would get pretty bad pretty quick.
One of the Moderns we're into is Francis Bacon. I found out through wikipedia that Kant was the one who separated out Rationalists and Empiricists, and in the spirit of putting everything into 3's he had Hume, Berkeley, and Locke on one side, and Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes on the other. Supposedly Rationalists do thinking stuff and Empiricists do experimentation stuffs. But of course there was double dipping on both sides. Leibniz thought that you could get to real stuff (sort of un-noumena) through both logic and experimentation, and Berkeley thought that everything exists in the mind, which somehow makes it real outside of us.
Bacon is cool, because we can sort of see him as an Empiricist (experimentation) with Rationalist (reasoning) tendencies. Bacon thought that we should use rhetoric in order to amplify reasoning. That is, it is by reason that we avoid the negative aspects of our lower drives.
My professor of rhetoric gave an example in class of a nice, glazed doughnut. The fact that we are not Homer Simpson means that we are able to avoid the doughnut by choice. How do we make that choice? Reason. In some ways I think this is the only way to do it.

Research Paper for IPE

Seemingly commonsense experience predisposed me toward the belief that discrimination and acts of racism go up during times of economic upheaval. However, through theoretical and scientifically critical readings, I realized my view was mistaken. This is because, while the nature of discrimination is very real, its creation and manifestation in policies and social norms accrue over the course of time, and are ultimately more complex than a theory that would say the natural disposition of man is to enact racist or discriminatory policies in reaction to a short economic downturn. This paper will explore some theoretical background and then move toward criticism and review of a meta-analysis of certain case studies.
Kenneth Burke was a philosopher of rhetorical studies in the twentieth century. His analysis of Hitler's rhetoric was meant as a guide against discrimination and scapegoating and to find the roots and causes of the war crimes the demagogue committed. Kenneth Burke outlines the theoretical definition of scapegoat in contemporary settings where he says that scapegoating is a “Projection device” where “The 'curative' process that comes with the ability to hand over one's ills to a scapegoat,” is the society attempting “thereby getting purification by dissociation” (Brummett 749). Thus, Burke declares that, “the greater one's internal inadequacies, the greater the amount of evils one can load upon the back of “the enemy” and in this way any spiritual inhibitions to purification are exorcised. By identifying the outward vessel, societies might make what is immaterial that much more material. Thus scapegoating is using an outward vessel as a projection of inner turmoil, and, considering economic strife in the world so common, this is the definition of scapegoating this paper will use in order to understand racism during such strife.
But Burke's model of scapegoating does not inherently depend on economics. Hitler was fighting against a spiritual malaise that the demagogue fought against with pseudo-religious principles; religious principles applied to the greater intangible spiritual malaise. Therefore, Burke's fundamental theory of how Hitler used antisemitism in order to mobilize his country is that Hitler's practices were rooted in cultural and religious discriminations, and therefore not necessarily economic crises. Burke says, “If a State is in economic collapse, you cannot possibly derive dignity from economic stability,” (Brummett 750). This means that in order to transcend the economic depression, Nazis needed the scapegoat function to be built; which in turn means there was no intrinsic scapegoating reaction from the spiritual malaise from the economic downturn.
In summation of his arguments, Burke says, “As for the basic Nazi trick: the “curative” unification by a fictitious devil-function, gradually made convincing by the sloganizing of repetitiousness of standard advertising technique- the opposition must be as unwearying in the attack upon it” (Brummett 756). Burke therefore believes there was a systematic doctrination of the people who were weakened by economic downturn. Furthermore, “Above all, I believe, we must make it apparent that Hitler appeals by relying upon a bastardization of fundamentally religious patterns of thought” but quickly adds that “There is nothing in religion proper that requires a fascist state” (Brummett 756). Therefore, I infer from Burke's argument, that the Nazi government had to systematically build up discrimination and antisemitic practices from established religious patterns. Because of the nature of the creation and expansion of discrimination was a harvesting instead of a harnessing, according to Burke's theory I infer that discrimination and racist practices do not stem from inherent or intrinsic reactions within human beings. In lay, Burke's case study is indicative that there was a systematic effort to control the people's will through propaganda and so, economic downturn alone is not necessarily the causal relation that downward economic activity results in racism; without this extra step of propaganda and rhetoric, scapegoating and discrimination would not have been possible.
In Scott Cummings' article he takes a position of general acceptance but greater specification of Neo-Marxist perspectives in order to conclude that scientific evidence limited toward the correlation between discrimination practices and the economic downturn of 1970-1975. In other words, Cummings does not argue against the fact that minorities are statistically more vulnerable during a recession. He argues that “it is reasonable to conclude that neo-Marxist crisis theory only partially clarifies the differential impact of recessions on minority and female workers” (852). One of the fundamental premises of the article is that a recession does not affect all parts of the economy equally, and that women and minority groups are unevenly distributed in this dis-unified system which is not affected evenly by a recession. Cummings said, “Despite lower scale scores overall in the competitive sector, selected industries within that sector also revealed significant market distributions during the 1974-1975 recession, especially textiles and apparel” (Cummings 847). That said, Cummings' conclusion is not that the recession did not cause harm to nonwhite and female workers, but that the recession was not the cause of their economic vulnerability to begin with.
The centerpiece of Cummings' article is a presentation of a series of sociological surveys on the effects of the recession on workers. Cummings first analyzed with bivariate analysis of women and minorities, and then analyzed with a further specified multivariate analysis of occupational status, race, gender, and industrial sector (Cummings 850). This multivariate analysis reveals that, “even in female-dominated spheres severely disrupted during the 1974-75 crises (e.g., textiles, apparel), men and women were affected alike. In these sectors, presumably, male and female secretaries were as negatively affected by the recession as were male and female equipment operators...In all three sectors, however, minority workers suffered significantly higher levels of disruption than their nonminority counterparts” (Cummings 850). Later, he says, “In summary, the data in Table 4 show that race and occupational status had strong independent effects on labor market disruption” (Cummings 851
In his summary, Cummings specifies what happens in the economic downturn does not happen equally across class structures, saying, “Blue-collar workers suffer more frequent and prolonged labor market disruptions than white-collar workers” (Cummings 852). More importantly toward my thesis, Cummings explains, “Despite the apparent mesh between selected aspects of crisis theory and some of the evidence presented in this study, the neo-Marxist model appears deficient in ability to explain higher rates of labor market disruption among minority workers. Female workers reveal rates of labor market disruption consistent with those reported by workers generally, or within specific industrial sectors....Furthermore, minority rates of disruption consistently exceed statistical norms within and between industrial sectors” (Cummings 852). Fully supportive of my thesis that discrimination transcends recession is Cummings' conclusion that “Because of discrimination within trade unions, minority workers have acquired less seniority than majority workers. Workers with limited seniority are typically the first to be laid off or terminated when an industry encounters crisis” (Cummings 852). That is, workers who have less seniority are laid off first, and the Recession was surely a catalyst for this, but it is an oversimplification to say that the proximate policy was discriminatory. On the contrary, the process of progression of seniority within unions, and company experience seems to be entirely licit when viewed proximately. Cummings says that this is the same in the civil service sector, as “many of those jobs have only recently opened to racial minorities” seniority works the same way. Cummings says, “While some neo-Marxist scholars of labor markets maintain that racism and sexism are intimately tied to the dominant relations of production, the evidence and argument appearing in this study suggest that this assertion needs further clarification” (Cummings 853). The intimate correlation is an oversimplification of problems of discriminatory practices as resulting from recession or economic downturns.
Finally, in terms of my own argument, the fact that economic vulnerability of women and minorities based on greater factors such as seniority means that indicators of discrimination are more deep-seated than what happens during an economic downturn. This is almost verbatim what Cummings says, when he writes, “Perhaps most important to the present study is the implication that racial discrimination appears both to transcend and to be shaped by the structural features of economic life” (Cummings 854). Racial discrimination, while it does seem to be affected by economic downturns, is a greater part of the political economy at large.
The ultimate weakness of science is what people do not know. While Burke's theory is historically accurate and Cummings' modest thesis is that there needs to be more research into the claim that economic downturn causes discrimination, there obviously needs to be more research into the relationship between economic downturn and scapegoating or prejudiced actions within a given society. There are many articles, such as one by Markham and Fong, for instance, which state that recession increased competition and therefore scarcity of resources and jobs, and that the white ethnic group were obviously “Of the major factors initially identified as leading to incidents of ethnic conflict and successful institutionalization of discrimination, the most significant turned out to be (1) poor economic conditions and scarcity of jobs; (2) the acceptance of racist ideology; and (3) a highly effective organization among native workers” (Markham, from the article's abstract). Another one notes that France in recession has been more discriminatory on immigrants (Glazer). Nevertheless, I believe that my thesis holds granted the two theoretical perspectives of discrimination during recession, these studies do not take into account sociological precursors and dispositions when they assert that the recession was part of the reason that the people were acting this way.
From Burke's perspective, I believe that sociological preconditions of a given society and the way that it is manipulated during times of economic recession are the cause of discrimination and not the other way around. I affirm that economic recession does not inherently cause discrimination so simply. The reason why popular culture leads us to believe that economic downturn causes discrimination is based on a misconception of both discrimination and economic downturn. It ignores both the cyclical nature of economics from recession to boom times, but also the wide scope of recessions. Discrimination runs largely predisposed before recession events, and has to do with cultural and societal norms such as warped religion, some of which can be shaped by propaganda. In order to show this, I firstly reviewed Burke's theoretical analysis of Hitler's systematic contortion of German society into a discriminating and prejudiced society. This was to show that economics alone would not have caused people to act racist and discriminatory. The society had to be transformed in order to practice systemic hatred. Burke's handling of Hitler emphasizes that the social norms alone, such as in a “religious state” would not have caused the scapegoating. I then showed a specific meta-analysis of Cummings' argument based on statistical evidence that a multivalent recession across industries would not make theoretical sense in understanding the vulnerability of social groups during recessions.
The implications of my critique of the commonsense logic that poor economic cause increase in discrimination incidents has applications for the study of how we implement theory. This firstly provides a contest of the status quo. People should not use economic distress, or wait for economic distress in order to pursue social progression and equal rights programs. Further considering my thesis, I believe social action programs such as affirmative action should be implemented, especially in light of the seniority problems that Cummings mentions specifically. These should be implemented regardless of downturns. I also believe that there should be more conclusive studies should be made as to whether or not one could find that people are more susceptible to propaganda when there are times of recession.


Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth, and Barry Brummett. Reading Rhetorical Theory. Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando FL: Harcourt, 2000.
Cummings, Scott. "Vulnerability to the Effects of Recession: Minority and Female Workers." Social Forces 65.3 (1987): 834-857.
Fong, E., and William Markham. "Immigration, Ethnicity and Conflict: The California Chinese." Sociological Inquiry 3 (1991): 471-491.
Glazer, .. "France to Immigrants: Go Home." France 57.10 (1993): 10.

Essay Test For Rhetoric

Nobody has this blog address in my class and the test has already been handed in, so here this is!


True/ False Questions

1 True

2 False

3 False

4 True

5 False

Burke uses slaying as a “special case of identifying in general” (767). Burke believes that rhetoricians, which for Burke are anyone who practice identifying, in this case poets, used imageriy of slaying as identifying what that thing is before and after the gthing is slayed. While Burke specifically uses poets here, the reader or student of Burke could apply this concept to other instances of rhetoric. Says Zburke, “We begin with an anecdont e of killing because invective, eristic...are so pronounced in rehetoric” (764). That is, the act of identification and its correpsonding branch of slaying-imagery, is so ever present in rhetoric that it makes a very good introduction to the very nature of identification of imagery and symbols as sesssential to rhetoric. The use or value of slaying imagery is the identification of what is being slain and what has been lsain. The use of slaying as representaional of human rhetoric and conduct, to Burke, is powerfual because we can then see “how such temptations to strife” arise; as opposed to believing differently, whihch is a perversion tof reality ot Burke. I would say obvcious examples of emnity or hatred and vitriolic rhetoric aboudn in all human cultures, but a more specific “eristic” pracitice is esooused by the President of Iran.

2 Campbell says, “a woman learned the crafts of housewifery” because she was deprived of formal education and, “if the process of craft learning is applied to the rhetorical situation (and rhetoric itself is a craft), it produces discourse with certain characteristics” (901a). It seems that the basis of craft-learning as a rhetorical sturcture is the dialectic nature and how it incorporates the audience according to authority. Campbell says, “It will invite audience participation,” and, “recognition of authority based on experience” (901b).

The value of this critique of rhetoric is firstly that it describes a unique aspect of both female arhetroric and craft learning situations. While Campbell is talking about women, here this take on rhetoric has much to do with any given experts in a field. It is therefore very useful to consider craft learngin as both a way to view women's rhetoric and all rhetoric.

I think almost any commonsense rhetrocial scenario could certainly be viewed using Campbell's critical lens, but since she emphasizes the rhetorical nature of Feminism in craft learning I might note that in many of my classes taught by professional women have a more active audience role. Another example is of women such as Oprah and Ellen utilizing and fueling their audiences' excitement as ways of establishing authority.

3. Bakhtin said, “There is no theme without meaning, and no meaning without theme” (687). He therefore sees the two as inseparable. He also ses the two as complementary and built as such. On 687b he states that with very little theme a proposition is mostly made up of meaning, and something with very little meaning is mostly theme. Meaning is a particular implementation of a theme, and a theme is a given set of signs, that “attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative processes” (687a).

The “significance of of a whole utterance” is a meaning's theme. Bakhtin uses the individual, “what time is it?” as an utterance, but its meaning in time and theme are individual and have a different theme depending upon other historical contexts. Bakhtin's point is “only an utterance taken in its full, concrete scope as an historical phenomenon possesses a theme.” (686). The point Bakhtin makes here is that the value of utterance, meaning, and theme cannot be known unless the historical context is taken into account. Bakhtin says, “A distinction between theme and meaning and a proprer understanding of thei rinterralationhips are viatl steps in constricting a genuine science of meanings.” (688).

I might use another utterance of “I'm hungry,” as an utterance, needing food as one of the meanings at the time, and the greater theme or significance of the utterance as perhaps an instance of starvation due to mass famine as the theme. This is Mikhail Bakhtin's argument that individual consciousness is metaphorically speaking a “tenant” in the house of social “edifice” of ideological signs. The argument stems from semiotics, which is mentioned in this passage, and Brummett explains is the study of how language has meaning. Bahktin believs that the esential nature of his theory is Marxist, in that it is wholly dialectical. In this way, there is an inherent nature of conflict and relolution in his work, but also that the very nature of meaaning and understanding could not exist without the dialogical nature of communication at large. By communicationg in any way, man is expressing it to another man. Furthermore, ideologies form based on signs and symbols from repetition of the meangings that words represent. Therefore, the entire dialectical nature means that no single individual consciousness is”the architect of the ideological superstructure” and in fact there is no way that it could be. If the nature of consciousness is rooted in communication and means that any communication must be dialectical and therefore ideological, any isolated individual, any person, would be necessarily misconceived.

This is essential to Bakhtin's arguments because he wishes to argue that “language is always addressed from one person to another –it is always dialogical” (Brummett 680). This is because Bahktin thinks there are unsolvable problems in any studies when it is defined as the opposite. Bahktin once argued, “In rhetoric there is the unconditionally innocent and the unconditionally guilty; there is complete victory and destruction of the opponent” (Brummett 679). He also says, “A sign does not simply exist as a part of a reality—it reflects and refracts another reality” (Bahktin 682).

Bahktin's arguments for the dialogical nature of language itself are a change from rhetorical theories that do not accommodate audiences. Although some Ancient Rhetorical theories considered dialogue as essential to teaching, almost all of the twentieth century theorists included the inherent communicative aspects of their writings. Bahktin's theory is very much similar to these later theories, but differs in important ways.

This theory has immense implications for the theory of rhetoric as a whole. Rhetoric has historically been viewed as what the rhetorician does, be it in writing, speaking, or communicating in general. Bahktin's theory of the audience as intrinsic to communication is indicative of the greater movement in 20^th century rhetoric to establish how rhetoric is even possible in the first place, let alone what it means to be rhetoric. The simplest analysis of rhetoric seems to confirm the necessity of this more contemporary evaluation. Bahktin then goes farther to say that because the nature of language is communicative as such, and because all of reality is rooted in the enjoined communication of that reality, the nature of such a previously supposed rhetoric, given by a supposed individual, could not happen, and therefore does not. While this has implications for a more Western or American Philosophy of the self, Bahktin's most fundamental point means that language itself could not exist without an audience to agent back and forth, and not simply the basic affirmation of the 20^th century rhetorical theorists that the audience matters more than the ancients asserted.

The nature of ideological signs in Bahktin's theory should not be overlooked. Ideological signs are the symbols of everyday living that all humans have access to through language. The author says, “Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality” and continues, “the reality of the sign is fully objective and lends itself to a unitary, monistic, objective method of study” (682). Bahktin goes so far as to argue that the identification of ideological signs, by nature of their communication in the first place, makes these same signs objective. In other words, it is by the nature of its communication, its unity of consciousness, that the concept is objective. I agree with Brummett when he says that this is a contrast with Locke, who believes that language must conform to objects and the eloquence of rhetoric must be eliminated. In this opposition, Bahktin argues that it is necessary to conform the symbols to the material embodiment in order that we might have communication in the first place. Woman suffrage was so controversial that tis was feared it would take suffrage for Afro-American males down to defeat. As a result, in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment for the first time introduced the word 'male' in to the U. S. Constitution....During this period a major impetus toward woman suffrage came from an unexpected source – the temperance movement.”

This passage is from Campbell's works. In her works, she argues that female rhetoric has been kept down by society which pays tribute to men. The greater argument of this passage is that women had to find different ways to pursue rhetoric in order to argue for equal rights. Specifically, the author in this specific passage makes note that in order to argue for women's rights, the women's rights movement had to ally itself with other causes as a perfect example of her argument. Nevertheless, Brummett says, “Campbell is not attempting to theorize distinctly female patterns of rhetorical discourse” and therefore there are logical connections between the nature of all rhetoric as ethically motivated, and socially progressive.

The jump from the African American suffrage movement of the nineteenth century to the temperance movement of the early 1900's meant that women meant to ally themselves with these causes in order to gain the right to vote themselves. By allying themselves with these movements, women were still able to maintain their roles while covertly fighting for women's rights and eventually transcend them for greater social status. If society is against women speaking, that woman orator will not be able to succeed in engaging the audience. In order to get around this, Campbell says, “Women who struggled against [alcohol's] abuse were affirming their piety, purity, and domesticity” at the same time they were struggling against alcohol, and therefore were building and expanding their right to fight for these goals in the first place (Campbell 898). In addition, the author says that the Women's Christian Temperance Union “often grew out of existing church-women's organizations” (Campbell 898). The women's rights movement therefore was a composite of step by step expansion of rights. Each previous constituency propelled the next constituency and they expanded in that order.

The necessity of the specification of Campbell's audience here is what makes this an important study in overall rhetoric. The audience of the women's rights cause had to be built up from very little. I contended in discussion during class that women, as representing more than half of the population and also having clear leadership precursors such as Queen Elizabeth, meant that the social constraints that women needed to fight against were included in women themselves. I argue that this is part of what Campbell was arguing with her call for feminine style in correspondence with a united normative rhetorical theory. The progression of Campbell's audience here is essential, and I emphasize that especially because I think some of the women that the women's rights activists and suffragettes had to persuade were the women themselves because of their population and precursors. The way that they did this is by uniting with the African American suffrage movement and later the Temperance movement. The fact that Campbell mentions the church groups, which were certainly around before any particular temperance group united with them, probably did not explicitly support women's rights. Generally, there is an ethical motive that pervades through rhetorical literature. This is because people wish to argue for what is right at times. Campbell says, “The potential to engage another is the aesthetic or symbolic power of a piece of persuasive discourse” (Campbell 896) and that there is a benefit to this even if someone does not agree with the points argued; and this benefit is implied where she says that the engagement of the audience is put down if the audience consists of “men opposed to the very idea of a woman speaking.” By arguing about the audience to agent ratio in this way, she implies a pulpit of engagement, a position where that engagement of the audience can take place with the ability to succeed in the persuasion. In this way, it is a specification of 20^th century rhetorical theory which argues for a greater awareness of the agent to audience relationship.

Bernays and Burke differ in their trust that persuasion is moral. To Bernays, it is moral to persuade people to buy things and trust their motivations, which they might not recognize. To Burke, it is the nature of man, if he is lost in mis-identification, to err on the side of “perversion” (768). to Bernays, the uses of propaganda unite people in the way that they allow people to identify the products and then relate themselves to those products. Readers might just as easily see the identification of ideas or ideologies in Bernays' use of propaganda. Opposite this, Burke says that identification naturally implies division, which in turn is part of the process of realizing truth. Ultimately, Burke thinks that an effective understanding of true identification will lead to a moral decision, but that still does not mean people will unite in the utopian ideal that Bernays wishes for.

Bernays thinks the process of persuasion leads people to what they want, where Burke is not so quick to say such a thing. Bernays says, “Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions” (698), and continues in this vein, saying that man, “imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment” when in fact, “his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped...by outside influences.” In one example, Bernays says, “these activities of the railroad, besides creating good will, actually promote growth on its right way” (701). The point is that Bernays thinks the outside influences get the person to believe they are getting what they want. Burke says, “who is to say, once and for all, just where “cooperation” ends and one partner's “exploitation” of the other begins?” (770), which implies that there is some exploitation at some point.

Burke says, “The wavering line between the two [partners] cannot be “scientifically” identified; rival rhetoricians can draw it at different places, and their persuasiveness varies with the resources each has at his command” (771). Generally speaking, Burke thinks more “often we must think of rhetoric not in terms of some one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull daily reenforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill” (771). That is, from these two quotes, Burke sees a larger competition between markets going on, and that ultimately the purchase of a given property might not rely on the single identification of a single person to a single product, but rather social norms from a given repetition. Perhaps this is a turn from Bernays, who says, “if you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway” (Bernays 698) because, as shown, Burke does not think that the leader is the solely the one who influences outcomes. But certainly Bernays allows for this, weaving intricate patterns of salesmen, advice, events, and authorities in order to secure the norms that people need in order to identify with a product.

With this assured, large similarity between the two theorists in mind, Burke's contrast is best seen. Burke's system of complexity extends beyond Bernays in that, while Bernays allows for the use of propaganda as a persuasive tool, it seems as though Burke's system specifies what is going on when a person buys into such a deal. For the example that Burke points out, he says, “We usually take it for granted that people who consume our current output of books on “How to Buy Friends and Bamboozle Oneself and Other People” are reading as students who will attempt applying the recipes given. Nothing of the sort,” saying later that what the student “wants is easy success; and he gets it in symbolic form by the mere reading itself. To attempt applying such stuff in real life would be very difficult, full of many disillusioning difficulties” (759). Readers can take from Burke the sense that the buying of the aura of success, of easy success, is not the same as achieving success.

The void that Bernays presents as fillable is not. In the way that Bernays says a product line might answer for a product, Burke would argue that that particular need might not be able to be filled by a product or a product line. In the case of the lines of “inspirational literature,” Burke says, “It is a strategy for easy consolation” and “It 'fills a need,' since there is always a need for consolation” (Burke 759). I think Burke would say that buying this literature would not fill the need that Bernays argues it would. Critically, Bernays' theory is governed by group motivations, when ultimately reality is not that simple. Bernays' theory would suffice to say that yes, these people are buying the books to fill a need, but Burke's theory is more specific. Burke would say that the nature of the need for consolation cannot be found in these self-help books. Burke does not go into much detail about the “disillusioning difficulties” but readers can imagine just as well. The reason why such literature can never be made into the feeding frenzies that Bernays theorizes that they can is because people face the realities.

Burke does not believe that some things can be persuaded in the basic formulation that Bernays presents. Bernays argues that by controlling the various incarnations of persuasion on people, you would persuade them of anything. I do not think this is the case in real life, and I think Burke supports the more accurate view. When Burke talks about “disillusioning difficulties” with the self-help literature, he means the myriad of identifications that also include the difference between when an attitude is appropriate and when it is not. Burke supports the idea that people will certainly buy products to suit a given belief at the time, but inevitably when these difficulties arise, people will not be satiated by the counterfeit of success.

Personal experience from my life supports both Bernays and Burke's rhetorical theories, but ultimately agrees more with Burke's. For a personal example, I think of fads that have gone in and out of existence as full support for both of these theories and my ultimate support of Burke's greater theory. Examples of fads in my life have been tickle me Elmo dolls, Pogs, television shows such as the biker mice from mars, and yo-yo's. In each of these cases, there seemed to be an application of some of Bernay's theory. That is, these products attempted to sell the happiness, the status, or something else that was not in the product. Tickle me Elmo's attempted to sell happiness to children, pogs attempted to sell their own originality as a new game. Yo-yo's were sold as happiness, perhaps for parents to buy in reminiscence of their own childhood. Biker mice from mars were sold as a television show and an action figure line, as if directly out of Bernays' theory of implementing daily life with propaganda. Did it work at the time? The answer is a resounding yes. Over time, however, these fads ran their course because people were able to identify the greater principle of happiness, originality, or other concepts from their actual products. In Burke's terms, perhaps the product, while “consubstantial” with happiness, can never be happiness, or whatever other concept propagandists push together.

I'm Published!

Realistic optimism cures recession

Jake Goldbas

Staff Columnist

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Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

© NCSU Student Media 2009

Jake Goldbas

Optimism literally means belief in the best good. According to the Economist, we also know that optimism is related to the release of serotonin, the brain chemicals that make us happy. When asked whether the glass is half empty or half full, scientists might tell you that the beaker is really 220 milliliters. It always ends with realism, the affirmation of true knowledge against delusions.

So, against real-life problems we come into a problem of where to apply optimism. I, therefore, advocate your personal acknowledgement of “performative” truths. That is, there are certain positions of authority in our lives that we recognize their judgment as the analytic truth, the real truth. In this way, when a ball crosses the plate, a baseball player swings and the umpire says that it is a strike, it is his declaration that this event was the strike that makes the event a strike, which makes the proposition that ‘it is a strike’ true. In these situations, it would not be true if, say, you or I did it.

I am not advocating any delusional thinking. Some performative truths can be the individual’s own recognition of herself. When someone hands you an orange, he or she really did hand you an orange, but the only person who has the authority to say that you like oranges is the person who holds that orange, just like the priest’s authority to do what he does, just like the umpire’s authority to do what he does. There are quite a few times where you personally decide what matters in life.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. He was talking about the run on the banks that everyone made when they lost confidence in the banks’ abilities to pay things back. Everyone is talking about his or her opinions but forgetting the necessary distinction between optimistic, performative truths and realistic analysis. No one is really sure how to deal with what really matters because we have all forgotten our own emphasis on the reactions. People get their wires crossed really quick when they try to make a bad math test grade into a good one with just their will. Your reaction is as real as the test, but you should use that to change real outcomes in real life rather than changing what is.

Personal recognitions are true to this extent and that truth is not relative in the least. Your performative truth to yourself is 100 percent true for all of us; everyone will acknowledge that the fact you, like the orange, is true. Your individual personal stuff is true for you. In this same way, you very much have the authority to say what are appropriate reactions for yourself at your time. This is what everyone is talking about when they say that you decide what matters to you.

Go out there and do what matters to you, what strikes you as true on analysis, then make the best possible beliefs about your future actions and work as hard as you can toward making things happen. It’s only when you realize that life matters that you can fight for life. That’s the truth.

Life is hard versus life is easy

The classes at NC State, I reckon, are similar to those everywhere. I always have a problem if the teacher teaches a class with just an overhead the whole time. It's acold class to me that does that. I haven't escaped those at State and I think I'm going to have to deal with dark rooms for the rest of my life.

Here's the kicker about one of them: I was the kid who asked for the lights off. I was sitting next to this girl Bridgette who is cool, and she was talking about the nasty zinging sound from the lights. They were fluorescent lights. I said I heard it too and I raised my hand and asked the professor to turn them off and he did.

Here is a philosophy of kindness, boosted by my gut intuition from experience that happiness and sadness are not on the same axises in our bodies and mind. The philosophy reads to help people no matter what, and to be kind for no reason, to everyone.

It's easy for me to say, hard for me to do. I have a friend who last night, picked me up from my dorm, took me to run an errand at food lion, and then we went back to his dorm to have cookies and tea and coffee. I didn't pay anything and I was given these gifts for free.

When I got out of that, and I was hanging out with my suite mates, they got me soda and pizza.

If you asked any people why they did this, they really would not have an answer for you. I am predisposed to dislike people, and it's partly the chemicals in my brain compounded and concatenating over and over which sets me up for this stuff. I am that person who takes everything to heart and it just is not this way.

Last Kenneth Burke Entry....For Now

Still from all of those before, Grammar of Motives, as excerpted in Reading Rhetorical Theory by Brummett, under the new subheading: The Identifying Nature of Property.


Metaphysically, a thing is identified by its properties. In the realm of Rhetoric, such identification is frequently by property in the most materialistic sense of the term, economic property, such property as Coleridge, in his "Religious Musings," calls a

twy-streaming fount,
Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and
gall.

And later:

From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War
Sprang heavenly Science; and from
Science, Freedom.

Coleridge, typically the literary idealist, goes one step further back, deriving "property" form the workigns of "Imagination." But meditations upon the dual aspects of peoperty sas such are enough for our present purposes. In the surrounding of himself with properties that manme his number or establish his identity, man is ehtical. ("Avarice" is but the scenic wor "property" translated into terms of an agent's attitude, or incipient act.) Man's moral growth is organized through properties, properties in goods, in servic es, in position or status, in citizenship, in reputation, in acquantanceship and love. But however ethical such an array of idnetificaiont may be when considered in itself, its rlelation to other entities that are likewise forming their identity in terms of peroperty can lead to turmoil and discord. Here is par excellence a topic to be considered in a rhetoric having "identification" as its key term. And we see why one should expect to get much insight from Marxism, as a study of capitalistic rhetoric. Veblen is also, from this point of view, to be considered a theorist of rhetoric. (And we know of kno better way to quickly glimpse the range of rhetoric than to read, in succession, the articles on "Property" and "Propaganda" in the The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.)
Bentham's utilitarian analysis of language, treating of the ways in which men find "eulogistic coverings" for their "material interests," is thus seen to be essentially rhetorical, and to bear directly upon the motives of property as a rhetorical factor. Indeed, since it is so clearly a matter of rhetoric to persuade a man by identifying your cause with his interests, we note thae ingredient of rhetoric in the animal experimenters' ways of conditioning, as animals that resond avidly at a food signal suggest, underlying even human motives, the inclination, like a house dog, to seek salvation in the Sign of the Scraped Palte. But hte lssons of this "animal rhetoric" can mislead, as we learn from the United States' attempts to use food as an instrument of policy in Europe after the war. These efforts met with enough ill will to suggest that the careful "screening" of our representtattves, to eliminate reformist tendenceies as far as possible and to identify American aid only with conservative or even reactionary interests, practically guranteed us a dismal rhetoric in our dealings with other nations. And when Henry Wallace, during a trip abroad, began earning for our country the genuine good will of Europe's common people and intellecutal classes, the Genius of the Screening came into its own: our free prese, as at one signal, began stoutly assuring the citizens of both the United States and Europe that Wallace did not truly represnt us. What did represent us, presumably, was the policy of the Scraped Plate, which our officialdom now and then bestirred themselves to present publicly in terms of a dispirited "idealism," as heavy as a dead elephant. You see, we were not to be identified with very resonant things; our press assured our people that the outcome of the last election had been a "popular mandate" to this effect. (We leave this statement unrevised. For the conditions of Truman's reelection,. after a campaign in which he out-Wallaced Wallace, corroborated it "in principle.")
In pure identification there would be no strife. Likewise, there would be no strife in absolute separateness, since opponents can join battle only through a mediatory gorund that makes their communicatino possible, thsu providing the first condition necessary for their interchange of blows. But put identifcation and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you ahve the characteristic invitaiton to rhetoric. Here is a major reason why rhetoric, according to Aristotle, "proves opposites." When towo men collaborate in an enterprise to which they contribute different kinds of services and form which they derive different abmouhnts and kinds of profit, who is to say, once and for all, just where "cooperation" ends and one partner's "exploitation" of the other begins? The wavering line betweeen the two cannot be "scientifically" identified; rival rhetoricians can draw it at different places, and their persuasiveness varies with the resources each has at his command. (Where pbulic issues are concerned, such resources are not conifed to the intrinsic powers of the speaker and the speech, but depend also for their effectiveness upon the purely tecnical means of communication, which can either aid the utrterance or hamper it. For a "good" rhetoric neglected by the press obveiously cannot be so "communicative" as a poor rhetoric backed nation-wide by headlines. And often we must hink of rhetoric not in terms of some on particular adddress, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull daily reinforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill.)
If you would praise GOd, and interms that happen also to sanction one system of material property rather than another, you ahve forced Rhetorical considerations upon us. IF you would praise science, however exaltedly, when that same sciecne is at the service of imperialist-militarist expansion, here again you bring things within hte orbit of Rhetoric. For just as GOd has been identified with a certain worldy structure of ownership, so scienc may be identified witht he interstets of ceraint gorups or classes quite unscientificin their puposes. Hence, however "pure" one's motives may be cataully, the impurities of identificaiton lurking about hte dges of such situations introduce a tyupical Rhetorical wrangel of the sort that can never be settled once and for all, but belongs in the field of morla controversy where men properaly seek to "prove opposites."
Thus, when his friend, Preen , wrote of a meeting where lifke-minded colleagues wouldb e pres-ent and would all be procaliming their priase of science, Prone asnwered: "You fail to mention another colleague hwo is sure to bet there too, unless you take care to rule him out. I mean John Q. Militarist-Imperialist." Whereat, Preen: "This is John Q. Militarist-Imperisalist must be quite venerable by now. I seem to ahve heard of him back in Biblical times, before Rober B. Science was born. Doesn't he get in everyewhere eunless he is explicityly ruled out?" He does, thanks to the ways of identification, which are in accordance iwth the naure of property. ANd the rhetorician and thee moralist become one at that point where the attempto tis mdade to reveal theundetected presence of such an identificaiotn. Thsu in the United States after the second Wordl War, the temptations of such an identification became particularly strong because so much scientifci research had fallen under the direction of the military. To speak meerely in praise of pscience, wihtout explicitly dissociating oneself form its reactinoary implications, is to identify oneself iwth these reactionary implications by default. Many reputable educatiors oculd thus, in this roundabout way, funcation as conspirators." In their zeal to get fedaeaeral subsideies for the sciecne department of their college or university, they could help to shape exucational policaies with the ideals of war as guiding principle.

Even More Kenneth Burke Typed up by Me

Excerpt from Identification and "Consubstantiality" subheading in the Grammar of Motives by Kenneth Burke, as excepted by Brummett in his Anthology of Rhetoric, whose complete citation is elsewhere in this blog.

The Rhetoric deals with the possibilities fo classification in its partisan aspects; it considers the ways in whihc individuals are at odds with one another, or become identified with groups more or less at odds with one another.
Why "at odds," you may ask, when the titular term is "identification"? Because, to begin with "identification" is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division. And so, in the end, men are borught to that most tragicvally ironic of alldivisions, or conflicts, wherein millions of cooperative acts go into the preparation for onesisingle diesctructive act. We refer to that ultimate disease of cooperation: war. (You will understand war much better if you think of it, not simply as strife come to a head, but rather as ad isease, or perversion of communion. Modern war characteristically requires a myriad of constructive acts for each destructive one; before each culminating blast there must be a vast netowrk of interlocking operations, directied communally.)
Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because htere is division. Identificaiotn is compensatory to divions. If men were not apart form one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. iFmen were wholly an truly of one substance, absolute communcation would be of man's very essence. It woudl not be an ideal, as it now it,s partly embodied in material conditions and partly frustarated by the sse same conditions; rather, it woudl be as natural, spontnaeous, and total as twith those ideal prototypes of communication, the theologian's angels, or "messengers."
The Grammar was at peace insofar as it contemplated the paradoxescommon to all men, the universal resources of verbal placement. The Symbolic should be at peace, in that the individual substances, or entities, or constituted acts are there considered in their uniqueness, hence outside the realm of conflcit. FOr individual universes, as such, do not compete. Each merely is,, being its own self-sufficient realm of discourse. And the Symbolic thus considers each thing as a set of inter-related terms all conspiring to round out their identity as participants in a common substance of meaning. An individual does in actuality compete with other individuals. But within the rules of Symbolic, the individual is treated merely as a sefl-substistent unit proclaiming its peculiar nature. It is "at peace," in that its terms cooperate in modifying one another. But insofar as the individual is involved in conflict with other indiv iduals or groups, the stuyd of this same indidvidual would fall under the head of LRhetoric. Or considered rhetorically, the fvictim oof a neurotic conflict is torn by parliamentary wrangling; he is heckled like HItler within. (Hitler is said to have confronted a constant wrangel in his private deliberations, after having imposed upon his people a flat choice between conformity and silence.) Rhetorically, the neurotic's every attempt to legislate for his own conduct is disorganized by rival factions wihtin his own dissociated self. Yet, considered Symbolically, the same victim is technically "at peace," in the sense that his identity is like a unified, mutally adjusted set of terms. For even antagonistic terms, confronting each other as parry and thrust, can be said to "cooperate" in the bui9lding of an over-all form.
The Rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of th Market Place, the fulrries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counterpressure, the Logomcahy, the onus of ownership, the War of Nerves, the War. It too has its peaceful moments: at times its endless ocmpetition can add up to the transcending of itself. In ways of its own, it can move from the factional to the universal. But its ideal culminations are more often beset by strife as the condition of their organized expression, or material embodiment. Their very universaility becomes transformed into a partisan weapon. For one need not scrutinize the concept of "identificationn" very shrply to see, implied in it at every turn, its ironic counterpart: division. Rhetroric is concerned with the state of Bablel after the Fall. Its contribution to a "sociology of konwledge" must often carry us far intot he lugubrious regions of malice and the lie.

More of Kenneth Burke Typed up by me

Here is some more from the excerpts of my Rhetoric book by Brummett as written by a popular theorist Kenneth Burke.

He writes in the Subheading from A Grammar of Motives
Identification and "Consubstantiality"


A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even when htheir interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so.
Here are ambiguities of substance. In being identified with B, A is "substantially one" with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique, an indivudual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another.
While consubstantial with it sparents, with the "firsts" from which it is derived, the offspring is nonetheless apart from them. In this sense, there is nothing abstruse in the statement tha tthe offspring both is and is not one with its paerntage. Similarly, two persons may be identified in tterms of some principle they share in common, and "identification" that does not deny thieir distinctness.
To identify A with B is ot make A "consubstantial" with B. Accordingly, since our Grammar of Motives was constructed about "substance" as key term, the related rhetoric selects its nearest equivalent in the areas of persuasion and dissuasion, communication and polemic. And our third volume, Symbolic of Motives, should be built about identity as titular or ancestral term, the "first" to which all other terms could be reduced and from which they could tehn be derived or generated, as from a common spirit. The thing's identity would here be its uniqueness as an entity in itsaelf and by itself, a demarcated unit having its own particular structure.
However, "substance" is an abstuse philosophic term, beset by a long history of quandaries and puzzlements. It names so paradoxiacal a funciton in men's systemiatic terminologies, that thinkers finally tried to abolish it altogether000and in recent years they ahve otften persuaded themselves that they really did abolish it from their terminaologies of motives. They abolished the term, but it is doubtful whether they can ever abolish the function of that term, or even whetehr they cshould want to. A doctrine of consubstantiality, either explicit or implicit, may be necessary to any way of life. For substance, in the old philosphies, was an act; and a way of life is an acting-together; and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them consubstantial.
The Grammar dealt with the universal paradoxesz of substance. It considered resources of placement and definition common to all thought. The Symbolic should deal with unique individuals, each its own peculiarly constucted act, or form. These unique "constitutions" being capable of treatment in isolation, the Symbolic should consider them primarily in their capacity as singulars, each a seaprate universe of dicsurse (though there are also respects in which they are consubstantial with others of their kind, since they can be classed with other unique indivudals as joint participants in common principles, possessors of the same or similar properties).
The Rhetoric deals with the possibilities of classification in its partisan aspects; it considers the ways in which individuals are at odds with one another, or become identififed with groups more or less at odds with one another.
Why "at odds," you may ask, when the titular term is "identification"? Because, to begin with "identification" is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division. And so, in the end, men are brought to that most tragicallly ironic of all divisions, or conflicts, wherein millions of cooperative acts go into the preparation for one single destructive act. We refer to that ultimate disease of cooperation: war. (You will understand war much better if you think of it, not simply as strife come to a head, but rather as a disease, or perversion of communion. Modern war characteristically requires a myriad of constructive acts for each destructive one; before each culminating blast there must be a vast network of interlockign operations, directed communally.)
Identification is affirmed with earnestness pricisely because there is division. Identificaiton is compensatory to divison. If men were not apeart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communcication would be of man's very essence. It would not be an ideal, as it now is, partly emboedied in material conditions and partly frustrated by these same conditions; rather, it would be as natural, spontaneous, and total as those ideal prottypes of communcations, the theologian's angels, or "messengers."
The Grammar was a t peace insofar as it contemplated the paradoxes common to all men, the universal resources of verbal placement. The Symbolic should be at peace, in that the individual substances, or entities, or constituted acts are there cnosidered in their uniq1ueness, hence outside the realm of concflict. For individual universes, as such, do not compete

The Fountain Essay Contest

The following message may be of interest to our faculty and students
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Essay Contest:


In celebration of the quest for the meaning of existence, the purpose of
life, and the nature of reality, The Fountain invites all graduate and
undergraduate students worldwide to take part in its essay contest. The
2009 Matter and Beyond Essay Contest does not have a single theme;
rather it is designed to encourage submission of articles on a wide
range of topics. The mission of the contest is to elicit writing talents
towards a better understanding of human nature and the universe with an
effort to appreciate the grace and wisdom of God. Participants are
required to take on a topic that falls under the broad coverage of
social sciences, religious studies, philosophy, arts and culture.

The contest is sponsored by The Fountain and the Matter and Beyond
program of Ebru TV.

PRIZES:

1st Prize : $2,000
2nd Prize: $1,500
3rd Prize : $1,000
2 Honorable Mentions: $500 each

CONTEST RULES

* The contest is open to all undergraduate and graduate students worldwide.
* The length of essay is required to be between 1500 and 2500 words.
Essays with less or more word count will be rejected.
* Essay submission will start on January 1, 2009 and end on June 15, 2009.
* All submissions will be done online through the essay contest page at
The Fountain magazine website www.fountainmagazine.com/essaycontest

* Offensive and devotional essays— particularly essays that emphasize
superiority of a specific worldview or derogating a specific
worldview—will not be considered for the Grand Prize.
* Winners will be announced on July 15, 2009, at The Fountain website.

This Dorm Room

This Dorm Room kind of sounds like, "This Old Man," and then I remembered a really lame memory. Who sings nursery rhymes as an adult? I think the crazy villains in the Batman franchises do. Wood Hall is a lovely dormitory that I have now almost completed two school years in. I've been in this same dormitory room for a long, long time that is. There's this image of me hanging out in this room, between these well lit walls. There is a blur of junk flashing in and out of it. The furniture in this room has been, looked, and stayed new in my room. There is a slow build of papers on my walls, taped there. There is junk piles that go up and down. There's three posters I got in Israel from the streets of Tel Aviv. I've got motivation theories and a pamphlet of how to say no posted on the walls. I've got syllabi posted on the walls. I've been thinking of war lately, and how it seems as natural a disposition as peace.
When I knew less, last year, and I was more self-centered, I had no carpet and the chair, going back and forth from me to my desk to see so many facebook pages, so many assignments I haven't done, whatever, gouged purplish gray gashes into the floor. Months later, over the summer I checked my school email to see a note I hadn't seen before. They had gone in and replaced the linoleum and charged my account. Appeals were to be made the week that the message had been sent out in the summer. I never saw it coming. This room has chewed me up and spit me out. It looks bright, new, well lit, and functional but I can't get a damn thing done in here and it just accumulates everything that I want to do but never get around to. It's a really cozy dungeon.

Comment on a Jewish Saying 1

"I'd rather be in hell with a wise man than paradise with a fool."

This is an old Jewish statement, which, as we all remember, has to do with the other fundamental declaration of Judaism of education. (The other two being of course the Fundamental Declaration of Monotheism, the Shehma for you Hebrew -knowing types; and the declaration of prayer.)

This emphasis on education is not only seen in the incredible number of rich people such as the Jewish stereotype of doctors, lawyers, and finance wizards, but also, uhm education advocates. I hypothesize that this emphasis on education has lasted into Christianity with infinite examples (Most of the Ivy league mottos are in Hebrew or Latin, more on Hebrew and language as yesteryear's internet later).

One of these guys actually made an appearance already on this blog. His name was Julius Rosenwald (got to check to see if this is right), who was one of the philanthropists toward African American education before it was cool to do so. He supported Booker T. Washington's campaign to build school houses in the South.

But another guy was Jonathan Kozol, who is actually still alive. He's a Civil Rights Activist for Education Reform. It turns out, even after 1954, we still have bad schools in America. He was a Rhodes Scholar. This should be a revelation for all of us. He has as much religious terminology in his works that I have read called Savage Inequalities and Ordinary Resurrections. Kozol is of course Jewish.

The saying, which I taught myself when I was in middle school in order to look smart, is actually a bit more philosophically complex.

Jarrett brings up Nozick's example of the happy man in his work Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed. Nozick's example here seems like a very familiar one, at least from almost all of popular culture that I've seen (This means you, Citizen Kane). Nozick's example is of a man who has all the riches in the world but is not happy versus the poor man who is very happy is supposed to somehow reveal that not having riches is the better of the two because the person gets to be happy, still.

But the question you should ask about all of these things, dear philosophers-in-training, is why you couldn't have it all. Why couldn't I be in paradise with a wise man? For Nozick's example, which is only supposed to show the worth of happiness anyway, ask, why couldn't I be happy with the riches?

The take on all of this is to choose your friends and maintain your personal course, regardless of anything. While Spinoza undoubtedly followed this rule to the last bit, there is some bad news for all of us. That is, where we are might be hell and/or paradise. Where we are might be poor and/or rich already. Self-determination is important regardless of bad and good things, and this seems to be a paradox. Shouldn't good things, and good circumstances and so on, be a determination of what is good? Spinoza would seem to side with this position, too, but we'll get to that later.

The Moderns were born in April

Of Course not everyone subscribes to the same list of Modern Philosophers. Everyone's list will be different. For instance Dr. Jesseph taught the Modern Philosophy class at State with Spinoza in it but without Kant in it. Dr. Puryear takes out Spinoza and puts in Kant.

But you never really lose Kant and Descartes as incredibly powerful. Those are the two big ones. Kant learned a lot from Hume and Leibniz, so it seems like they're in, too. Spinoza was a peculiar take on both Hobbes and Descartes, so maybe you could teach Spinoza in there. Meanwhile, Berekeley is obviously almost as American as he is Irish, having started a school over here with donation money, and one of the greater schools, UC Berkeley, having been named after him. Plus he's cool with his ideas of ideas.

Nevertheless, I noticed that these guys have birthdays that are all near each other.

Hobbes was born on April 5th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbes

While Descartes was born on March 31
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes

While Hume was born on April 26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

Kant was born on April 22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant



Hypothesis: Babies born in the spring in Medieval times tend to live longer, as opposed to dying?

12 Individual Commandments for Myself

I'm inspired by Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Blog, here:

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/09/this-wednesday-.html


I made these just now and so they are subject to change.


1. Don't lie.
2. Keep reading.
3. Know what the goal is, or at best, know what the goal was.
4. Look in the file first (LINFF); try to help myself as much as possible without asking for help first.
5. You can say no, and many times it is more polite and better to say no.
6. Be an individual.
7. Learn.
8. Make money.
9. Be alone sometimes.
10. Travel.
11. Do what's asked and commanded as much as reasonably possible.
12. Listen more.

Some Samuel Johnson Typed up by Me

This is from Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. Rasselas is literally "restless" spelled differently. It was written after Johnson's mother died as a direct response to her death. The book was actually and ostensibly written as a way to cover the costs of her funeral.

I have recently taken to Johnson because he was a great hero. I know more about his biography than I do about his writing, which is why I'm writing this here.


CHAPTER XI from Rasselas (63 in the 1976 Penguin addition with the Enright introduction)

Imlac's narrative continued. A hint on pilgrammageImlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to aggrandize his own profession, when the prince cried out, 'Engouh! trhou hast convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.'
'To be a poet, said Imlac, is indeed very difficult.' 'So difficult, returned teh prince, that I will at present hear no more of this labours. Tell me whither you went when you had sen Persia.'
'From Persia, said teh poet, I travelled through Syria, and for three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed with great numbers of the northern and western nations of Europe; the nations which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge; whose armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the globe. When I compared these men with the natives of our own kingdom, and those that surround us, they appeared almost another order of beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for any thing that may not be obtained.L: a thousand arts, of which we never heard, are continually labouring for their convenience and pleasure; and whatever their own climate has denied them is supplied by their commerce.'
'By what means, said the prince, are the Europeans thus powerful? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither.'
"They are more powerful, Sir, than we, answered Imlac, because they are wiser; knowledge always predominate over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being.'
When, said the prince with a sigh, shall I be able to visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of nations? Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such representations as thou canst give me. I am not ignorant of the motive that assembles such numbers in that place, and cannot but consider it as the center of wisdom and piety, tow which the best and wisest man of every land must be continually resorting.'
'There are some nations, said Imlac, that send few visitants to Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe, concur to censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or deride it as ridiculous.'
'You konw, said the prince, how little my luife has made me aquainted with the diversity of opinions: it will be too long to hear the arguments on both sides; you, that have considered them, thell me the result.'
'Pilgrimage, said Imlac, like many other acts of piety may be reasonable or superstitious, acccording to the principles upon which it is performed,. long journeys in search of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. Change of place is no natural cause of the incerease of piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet, since men go every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed, and return with stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally dispose us to view that country whence our religion had its beginning; and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes without some confirmation of holy resolutions. that the Supreme Being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our owHe who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combatedin Palestine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without follyL: he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, in minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly: he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, dishounours at once his reason and religion.'
'These, said the prince, are European distinctions. I will conside4r them another time. What have you found to be the effect of knowledge? Are those nations happier than we?'
'There is so much infelicity, said the poet, in the world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the comparative happiness of others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionaless and torpid for want of attaraction; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grive when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude, that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range.
'In enumerating the particular comfrots of life we shall find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure wonds and diseases with which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather which they can obcviate. they have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry. there is such comunication between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another. their policy removes all publick inconveniencies: they have roads cut through their mountains, and bridges laid upon their rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more commodious, and their possessions are more secure.'
'They are surely happy, said the prince, who have all these conveniencies, of which I envy none so much as tehir facility with whcih separated friends interchange their thoughts.'
'The Europeans, answered Imlac, are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is every where a state toin which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.'

Grapes of Wrath

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7992942.stm

From the BBC Article:
"If I wanted to destroy a nation," he wrote in 1966, "I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick."

Facadesaside: Columbine

http://www.slate.com/id/2216122/


We thought we knew about school shootings, but these were just appearances until after Columbine happened.

New Column 4-17-2009

http://www.technicianonline.com/viewpoint/remember-technology-when-doing-course-evaluations-1.1719705



Published: Thursday, April 16, 2009
Updated: Thursday, April 16, 2009

© NCSU Student Media 2009
Jake Goldbas
Course evaluations are going on right now and many of us are stumped for what to write. We need to tell every professor in the course evaluation to get a Web site if they don’t have one. If they do have one, those Web sites should be upgraded, and kept informed for better programs out there. By programs I mean learning tools and assignments.To know the reading schedule for that overly simple class with one professor, one essay, and one set of readings, some of us have to go digging through piles of e-mails to find a syllabus instead of getting the file straight from Vista or Webassign. This means putting up the syllabus online will make things easier. Class discussions, the good type of class interactions, can many times just as easily be taken to a discussion board without any harm to the single text or single assignment the professor wants to teach. Only good can come out of continuing discussion outside of class. Likewise, people should tell their teachers that participation on the discussion boards can be graded, too.If we checked our classes and relevant material as much as we checked our Facebook and Myspace accounts, our grades would be better, guaranteed. For example, the library’s Web site offers widgets for cell phones and Facebook. Instead of researching or stalking your latest crush, you can research and stalk at the same time. Tell your professors to point out the appropriate widgets or make a widget-program for the classes you are taking. (If they aren’t savvy they should ask the engineering school).We should build better digital learning selves online ­ and here I mean on Vista, on course Web sites, on Webassign, on Maple and so on. Our digital identity is much larger than Myspace would have us believe. For example, why can’t professors start a Ning group Web site or have students as a group Twitter about the assignments?Many of the old sites that professors use need to be refurbished. Did you know every course has an automatically generated research-Web site from our Library-Sciences department? Neither did your professors. You just go onto the school library page, click on library tools, and select the course. The Library sciences people have already listed your course reserves, helpful databases, some digital research tools on the computer and some concrete (like calculators and GPS systems) hardware that they think you might need. They even have live chat with people who have masters in library science. Remember that 1873 leather bound textbook that’s only available in UNC-Greensboro that your professor was talking about? You and your professor can find it through D.H. Hill, and generally speaking, neither of you know this.And I don’t even have to mention how unappealing and not user-friendly MyPack Portal is. MyPack Portal is truly too hard to use and obviously professors have no contact with it whatsoever. But this is poor judgment because the whole point of the school is the professors. Professors who do not understand technology or do not post syllabi and relevant content on their pages should be urged to take a class on technology from our Engineering school. They need to be respectfully told this through course evaluations.Let Jake know your thoughts at letters@technicianonline.com.
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Modern Philosophers + Theme Songs Part II

Descartes + Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: This one needs some more explanation. Descartes was the guy who arguably started the Modern Philosophical Tradition. Aside from that he pointed out that we want to subject things to doubt. He had important contributions to many of the sciences in those days. His contributions, including the coordinate plane, are still used today. The fact that this greatest contribution outside of philosophy of the coordinate plane is a map is not lost on me, either. The greatest contribution Descartes made to Philosophy was a roadmap to knowledge that said we have to have a good foundation of knowledge when we figure stuff out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZOgoVEud_w

Hobbes + Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin: This one is actually more of a stretch. Hobbes was partly a mathematician, so he would get a kick out of this. Although he had doctrines in basically everything of the day, Hobbes is remembered today as a Political Philosopher. Those of you who graduated High School will remember that 5 minutes we all spent on the philosophers who influenced the American Constitution.
His greatest work of Political Philosophy was Leviathan, which gives an argument for why we should have government in the first place. Now, Leviathan is a name for a generally big monster, and it's taken from the Bible. Moby Dick is Herman Melville's Leviathan, minus (perhaps) the political philosophy. Thus, here is Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgYzaM8l4U0

Modern Philosophers + Theme Songs

Here are some theme songs that I can think of for the Moderns:

Leibniz + Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants: Leibniz spent his life looking for love basically everywhere. His reliance on Chinese Literature and Science leads some to call him a Sinophile. The song is about finding your lover in Vietnam, perhaps, even though you haven't met her.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/they-might-be-giants-ana-ng/2036742165


Berkeley + Any James Brown song with "Soul" : Berekeley's Empiricism was influenced by Rationality. His system was rooted in the firm belief that you could know things without error because everything, and I mean everything, is made of the soul. Notably, so did James Brown.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Anna+Ng&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#q=James+Brown+soul&hl=en&emb=0

Spinoza + U2's "One": This is an obvious one, no pun intended, if you're down with Spinoza, who said that everything is one thing. This served as a way to answer skeptics, who don't believe in God or Knowledge, and a way to answer misguided Religious peoples. Surprisingly, Spinoza's doctrine of "God or Nature" (or Substance I would add, to Spinoza they're all the same), curiously looks like the Judeo-Christian-Islamic declaration of monotheism, or One God.
For this Judeo-Christianity this has bad implications for the problem of evil (Sorry your Mom died, but it's God's plan. Spinoza and Religions would both say this).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWPeVfWB9o