Friday, April 16, 2004

Coherence & Co., by Susan Haack. Whether construed in the usual, relativist style, or in Rorty's tribalist fashion, contextualism really is a desperate measure; abandoning the idea of objectively better or worse evidence, it would, among other things, knock away the epistemological underpinnings of the entire legal system. Happily, no such desperate measures are necessary. We appraise not only people's beliefs, but also their thinking, speech, writing, and actions for coherence. What counts as thinking coherently depends on the context: a physician checks whether a patient in shock knows his own name, what day it is, who is currently president, and so on; but the academic we describe as incoherent can pass that test – the complaint is, rather, that his thinking is muddled, fuzzy, scrambled, perhaps contradictory. It's normal for one's first thoughts about a difficult question to be inchoate, and to shift up and back between one conclusion and its opposite; but sometimes, rather than working through this frustrating initial stage, a person seizes on a confused or half-baked idea and relies on it in blithe disregard of its inability to take the weight. And then, as Peirce observed, the consequences can be disastrous: It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty. Sets of propositions can be inconsistent; situations or states of affairs can't, but they can be chaotic or confused. And, as there can be a sober description of a drunken man, there can be a consistent description of an inconsistent set of propositions; of Frege's inconsistent logic, for example. But often, when we speak of the coherence of a person's speech or writing, we have in mind, not its logical consistency, but something more pragmatic: we praise a colleague‘s or student's paper or presentation for its cogency, or complain that it is lazy, muddy, jumbled; we describe the speech of someone drunk, drugged, or mentally disturbed, or of an academic undone by too much Theory, as “incoherent” – rambling, garbled, a glossogonous word-salad, high-toned gobbledygook. 3:41:20 PM    comment []

Iranian diplomat is killed in Baghdad [Salon.com] 7:15:46 AM    comment []

Corporate Culture Clash: Elitism, Popularity and Rock 'n' Roll. Elitist pop-culture critics must, in the end, be mindful of what large numbers of people actually see and read and listen to. By John Rockwell. [New York Times: Business] 7:09:34 AM    comment []

Virtual Trader Barely Misses Goal. Julian Dibbell proclaimed that he could make more selling imaginary goods than he could plying his usual trade. He was wrong, but still made nearly $4,000 in a month. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] You can read backstory from February and March here at A blog doesn't need a clever name. Julian Dibbell's Play Money blog is where you can see it all played out (and where there were touching reflections last week). 7:04:05 AM    comment []