[lit-ideas] Re: Tittles--a change of title
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:57:46 +0900
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> There is indeed a 'sense' of normativity, although it seems to come and go.
> I take Wittgenstein seriously when he says things like 'Don't think, but
> look!' and 'Nothing is hidden...' These for now are just catch phrases, but
> they are embedded in his relentless attack on 'occult entities,' and the
> 'mechanism of the mind.' This long, drawn out battle doesn't take the form
> of discursive reasoning, but of examples and counterexamples put forward to
> convince 'us' to stop believing that there _must_ be mental processes, e.g.,
> and to focus on what people actually do when they're intending or expecting
> something (e.g.). The expression 'actually do' is no doubt contentious. And
> it's getting late.
> (Is that an argument?)
>
As I read this paragraph, I am struck by the possibility that Clifford
Geertz, an anthropologist whose work I often mention here, was directly
influenced by Wittgenstein. One of the themes in his work is an ongoing
argument with "Cognitive Anthropology," whose proponents regard culture as
composed of mental models located somewhere "inside" the people whose lives
they study. Geertz argued, as Wittgenstein does, that culture isn't hidden
away inside of people; it is literally "out there" in the visible
architectures of the spaces they inhabit, the clothes they wear, the things
that they eat, the ways they react to situations, and the things that they
say to describe/explain/justify any and all of the above.In a clear parallel
with the Wittgenstein that Robert Paul describes, Geertz opposed the
cognitive models view of culture as a set of ghost-in-the-machine
propositions that divert attention from what is going on literally under our
noses. Worse still, they divert enormous amounts of time and intellectual
energy in trying to figure out how the ghosts communicate with the machines,
attempting to solve problems that only arise because we assume that the
ghosts are there in the first place.
What difference does this make? Consider again my grandson Keegan, clinging
to my knee, staring intently at my laptop, and saying "Mommy whoop-whoop."
Speaking as a cognitive anthropologist, I might assume that Keegan's words
are pointers to a mental model and that what John has done when he
interprets correctly what Keegan wants is understand that mental model
assumed to be there, hidden away, somewhere inside Keegan.
Speaking a la Geertz, I observe that what I understood was not the meaning
of the phrase "Mommie whoop-whoop" or a mental model to which it points. It
was, instead, the meaning of a complex but thoroughly material event, which
included, along with the words, the other components mentioned above—and the
mental processing in question wasn't in Keegan's head, it was in John's, as
he assembled a thick description of what was going on into a meaningful
image.
Whoops! Here's that kid again. Got to get him off to daycare and go buy a
new bicycle inner tube.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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