Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein and the 99 percent

John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:04:59 -0500

I'd be remiss not to mention a philosopher you've brought up from time
to time.  He likely won't be found in any anthologies of contemporary
philosophy and it wouldn't surprise me to discover you and I to be the
only people who are fans of both him and Wittgenstein (Our commonalities
are one reason I've been tempered in my reaction to the Cornish stuff,
though it makes me livid.) but Richard Stallman - known simply as rms
among the cognescenti - is a philosopher likely to discuss such issues.

Certainly he's challenged the fatuous language of "intellectual
property" that has infiltrated our culture, language which blurs issues
of copyright, patent, and trademark (encouraging such inanity as
"software patents", which the Europeans rightly continue to reject) but,
more insidiously, links these government granted temporary monopolies to
the language of fundamental rights.  Even though such promoters of the
right to property as Jefferson nevertheless took, e.g. copyright, as
being justified only to the extent that the public at large benefited
from such laws more than they were inconvenienced by them.  And
Jefferson believed that calculus could change, as I would say it has
given current technology, though instead copyright continues to be
expanded and extended, benefiting corporations (a connection) more than
creators.

Discussions of corporate personhood are few and far between in analytic
philosophy and the chances are good that any discussion you're likely to
find will relate to Hegel's social and political philosophy.  More
tangential would be discussions in analytic philosophy of the philosophy
of the social sciences and issues of methodological individualism and
holism, analyses of social wholes are units of explanation in theories
of the social sciences.  Popper, not coincidentally a fierce critic of
Hegel, is a common starting point here.  

A few more remarks...

On Tue, 2012-01-10 at 01:03 -0800, kirby urner wrote:
>   
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 1:45 PM, John Phillip DeMouy
> <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Given Sean's interest in Originalism and Kirby's interest in tying
> > Wittgenstein in with Progressive politics, I wanted to bring up an
> issue
> > of ordinary language and politics current today.
> >
> 
> Yes, I'm OK saying I'm doing some kind of "tying" there, or dot
> connecting.
> 
> My focus has been more an investigation of how shaping meanings
> involves gestalts and psychological factors. I often mention
> advertising, Pepsi in particular (as an example). "Pepsi" doesn't
> just mean some dark colored sweet tasting carbonated beverage. No,
> it's "the choice of a new generation" etc.
> 
> I then intimate at a "political" dimension to PR / propaganda /
> advertising (nothing new), such as by liking Pepsi to the Obama
> campaign of 2008, as many do (Google images: pepsi obama)
> 

Pepsi's cloyingly sweet and I suspect that the only reason for the
"Pepsi challenge" phenomenon - where people who are loyal Coca-Cola
drinkers choose Pepsi in blind taste tests - is that they are comparing
sips, where the excessive sweetness isn't as annoying, rather than a
whole can.  The only cola I drink is Coca-Cola bottled in Mexico and
available at bodegas (or, when in Europe, the Coke bottled in the Middle
East and available at falafel stands) which, like the Coke only bottled
in the US during Passover (when Ashkenazi Jews cannot consume corn
products), is made with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup.
It has more of a "burn" and a cleaner mouth feel.  It doesn't coat the
mouth the way the regular Coke does.  When they brought back the
"original" formula after the "New Coke" fiasco, they'd replaced sugar
with the corn syrup.  (Cheap because of corn subsidies.)

No doubt image and advertising should not be underestimated.  But
whatever my political sympathies, my personal style, and so forth,
"Pepsi" remains the name of a beverage I dislike.

I think we need to distinguish the meaning of the word from the
associations the word and its referent may have.  (Frege, noted for his
distinction between sense and reference, also distinguished between both
of these and the various idiosyncratic images and associations connected
with a word.)

> But lets link to Occupy for a moment:
> 
> http://obeygiant.com/headlines/occupy-hope
> 
> A preoccupation with art / propaganda leads me to ethnography and to
> Wittgenstein's griping about British ethnocentrism ala Frazer etc.
> 

Be careful with expressions like "British ethnocentrism".  If it means
"ethnocentrism such as displayed by some British as well as others,"
that's quite harmless.  But the issues with which you've connected it
suggest you don't simply mean that.  You should recall Wittgenstein's
irritation with Malcolm's remarks about "national character" (and again,
this connects with corporate personhood via the issue of ascribing
personality traits to groups).  I doubt Wittgenstein's point was only
that Malcom shouldn't ascribe virtues to nations as a whole.  Ascribing
vices to them is equally problematic.

> Why is what "they" believe considered "superstitious" next to what
> "we" believe? Wittgenstein uses that for some fondly cherished
> "philosophical" notions. And how is the play of brands and the
> "corporate persons" for which they stand not a form of spell-binding,
> bewitchment or magic?
> 

I'm getting all the connections you're making here except the link to
corporate persons.  It seems to me that the fetishism (in the
anthropological sense) surrounding brands aims to distance consumers
from awareness of the corporate entity.  While the traditional idea of
"brand loyalty" encouraged seeing the corporation as a person - one with
whom the consumer had a relationship, felt a sense of trust, and so
forth - the marketing of brand image seems to me actually to subvert
that.  The product is a vehicle for the consumer's image and aspirations
and peer group identification, a means of "self-expression", rather than
expressing a relationship with the manufacturers.  Or so it seems to me
at any rate.  It's interesting to note how different products are
marketed.  Insurance companies, who seem to be doing some of the most
creative advertising recently, are emphasizing personal relationships,
with memorable spokespeople (or animals or cartoons).  Some beer is
marketed by appealing to image and "lifestyle" but others focus on the
people making the beer, the craft, the tradition.  Of course, being
someone who is a "discerning" beer drinker is also a vehicle for
"self-expression", but the relationship with the brewer is emphasized.
The major soft drink makers aren't doing that.

> Aspect-blindness, not seeing one's own conditioning for what it is;

Are you equating these two things?  That strikes me as mistaken, though
perhaps you could elaborate.

Seeing only one aspect - being able to see an image in only one way -
might be connected with an inability to recognize one's conditioning.
But that's quite different from aspect blindness.  And conditioning
doesn't seem to play a significant role in the paradigmatic examples of
seeing an aspect, though one might be conditioned to always use a
picture in a particular way and thus to be "blind" (though this is not
what Wittgenstein meant with his discussion of "aspect blindness", a
hypothetical phenomenon rather than something he took to be pervasive)
to other ways of seeing.

> philosophy helps develop our self-awareness, which is world-awareness.
> 
> What would it mean if have the moon, in its darkest phase (no sunlight
> reflected) were suddenly illuminated for 30 seconds by a high powered
> color laser doing a raster-like trace, showing the Pepsi logo brightly
> reflecting across its entire face?
> 

I don't understand the question.

> So many would be horrified by such a stunt. I'm not encouraging it.
> I'm just saying, by such memories in time are meanings molded.
> 

Again, I point to the Fergean distinction I mentioned earlier.

> > The Occupy/99 percent movement, while loosely organized, are
> emphasizing
> > two points that I would think congenial - or at least worth
> considering
> > - for the philosopher of ordinary language: 1.) Money is not speech
> and
> > 2.) Corporations are not people.
> >
> > These would seem like truisms but are clearly at variance with the
> law
> > and Supreme Court rulings.  And taking them seriously would have
> > significant consequences to our civic life.
> >
> 
> I wonder why, in the Anglophone culture of North America, we don't
> have philosophers stepping forward to say much of anything about
> anything.

There is your fellow Rorty student, Cornell West.  And Chomsky, of
course.  But the participation of philosophers in civic life is
relatively rare here, in contrast with the situation in France.  Or even
the UK.

> 
> When was the last time you saw a philosopher quoted on TV.
> Economists? All the time.
> 

I've seen West and Chomsky quoted on cable news programs in recent
memory.  And on PBS, it's not uncommon.  Popper gets quoted in relation
to George Soros.  Still, economists are much more likely to be quoted.
Speaking of which, I caught a passing reference to Hayek on a news
program just this weekend, though being both a philosopher and an
economist...

> They're a back room culture, these philosophers, whereas pundits and
> politicians are eager to get in front of the cameras and give us the
> benefit of their views.
> 

This is actually a topic Larry, Walt, and I have discussed a bit
privately.  I'm not sure if society would benefit but I suspect
philosophy would suffer from a more public face.

> Is the quality of public debate so poor because philosophy has
> crumbled, thereby surrendering its keystone position within the
> trivium / quadrivium? Is philosophy taken seriously anymore? By
> anyone?
> 
> If I do a literature search, am I going to find large numbers of
> people who consider themselves philosophers writing essays about
> "corporate personhood" and what it means?
> 
> Do we have any philosophers of that nature? Just curious.
> 
> > I'm rather ill right now and not up to further analysis but I throw
> this
> > out there hoping to see some discussion given that the issues seem
> > pertinent to concerns of those here.  (I'd also wish it noted that
> my
> > objections to the Cornish narrative in no way indicate a hostility
> to
> > progressivism or a wish to avoid politics altogether.)
> >
> > Discuss...
> >
> 
> I'd be eager for more discussion and thank you for proposing this
> thread.
> 
> I wish you better health and leeway to jump in yourself at some point.
> 

Thanks.

> I'm pretty familiar with my own thinking and could spiel on at length,
> but is there going to be a real conversation?
> 
> Rather than be redundant, I should be more on the quiet side I think,
> at least for awhile, and see where others want to go with this.
> 

I hope others will comment as well.

> Thanks again,

Thank you.

Take care,

John

> 
> Kirby
> 
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Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein and the 99 percent

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