RE: BHA: Epistemological relativism, human rights, culture

["Marshall Feldman" <marsh@xxxxxxx>]

Viren,

Thanks for the reference. I'll have to look into it.

My main point has been that people who take the linguistic turn put great
stake in language, but these days they rarely justify this stake versus
other characteristics (e.g., the socially organized transformation of
material nature). The notion that language facilitates all this is novel in
my experience, even though this is one of those insights that once said
hardly seem remarkable. I (we) would have to give long and deep thought to
whether it's language or something else or some combination of traits that
make sport and all that possible. Also, even if we were to concede that
language is, in some sense, more fundamental than other distinctly human
characteristics, it's not clear to me what weight we should put on this.
After other characteristics and structures emerge at a higher level, to keep
on going back to the lower level would seem to be a form of reductionism,
no?

BTW, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, just to lighten things up I
deliberately mentioned the Discovery Channel as my source for the elephant
information. Nonetheless, the film brought the subject of language up at the
same time it was showing elephants visiting the bones of a family member who
had died the year before. At the risk of imposing a human hermeneutic on the
elephants' behavior, they really seemed to be grieving over the lost family
member.

Maybe I've been too indoctrinated against anti-essentialism, perhaps I'm
just a die-hard Althusserian, or maybe it's how I understand dialectics, but
I've always been suspicious of attempts to discover the defining essence of
what it means to be human.

	Marsh Feldman

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of viren
viven murthy
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 1:03 PM
To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: BHA: Epistemological relativism, human rights, culture


Hi Marshal:

I just have a small comment about the following your following points:


> On the Discovery Channel I once saw a special on elephants. Apparently
they
> have at least 37 separate "words" they use to communicate with each other.
>
> I also think the whole emphasis on language has some rather large holes.
>
> 1. There are a host of other things that only humans do: fly airplanes,
> invest in the stock market, play sports, build cities, etc.
>
> 2. Many distinctly human characteristics, including language, are
> geo-historical. They are not invariant human characteristics.

In his book <<Language and Species>> Derek Bickerton claims that language
is precisely what makes it possible for humans to play sports, build
cities etc.  His argument is complex, and I do not understand all of it,
but his main point is that language is prerequisite for thought and the
type of abstraction (referential detachment) characteristic of
humans.  He claims there is no evidence that animals have the same type of
reflexivity as humans.  The evidence you present about elephants seems
to go against his assumptions and so it would be interesting to look into
this.  He claims that even monkeys and apes do not use "words" in the
linguistic sense.  In any case, he argues that the tools that they have
for communication do not surpass what they need for survival;  hence
their "signs" are usually connected to food and danger.  Humans on the
other hand can generate signs in an infinite number of ways, which
naturally transcends contexts associated with survival.  Language is the
means by which people can build the complex models required to play sports
and so on.  As Searle notes the very idea of a rule requires a type of
language;  similarly keeping or even understanding score is also
impossible without language.

Anyway, as I was reading this book, I thought Bickerton's arguments go
hand in hand with some tenets in CR.

Viren

>
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Marko Beljac
>   Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 5:08 AM
>   To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>   Subject: Re: BHA: Epistemological relativism, human rights, culture
>
>
>   > Any conception of "human nature" which goes beyond trivial tautologies
>   > (humans need to eat, humans can run, etc.) is apt to be reactionary.
As
>   > Hannah Arendt once pointed out, if humannature existed, we couldn't
know
>   > what it was without being non-human. That is, the claim to "know"
human
>   > nature is more or less a claim to divinity (or at leas divine
>   > inspiration). I think that in some ways Marx's most important work was
>   > one word in length -- his reply to a reporter's question very late in
>   > his life. The reporter asked, "What is?" and Marx replied "Struggle."
>   >
>   > Human rights are defined in struggle and  change endlessly.
>
>   It is alleged that Arnedt once pointed out, therefore making the
statement
> necessarily true, that we couldn't know what human nature is without being
> non-human. Humans, alone among all animals, are able to communicate via
> language. The study of language, it follows by logic, tells us something
> about "human nature". Note that if we take Cox (and Arendt's) claim
> seriously then it follows that we cannot know linguistics without being
> non-human and that linguists are making a claim to divinity.
>
>   As for struggle, one may well ask that if the need for freedom is not
> intrinsic to our natures then why should anybody risk their lives and
their
> families future by struggling for it?
>
>   Marko.
>
>




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