NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/californ/2074

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-20 | 3.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!infoserv!steiny!
From: [e-mail] (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: alt.california
Subject: Re: relocation
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 20 Nov 92 17:19:27 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Don Steiny Software
Lines: 69

[e-mail] (C D Burdorf) writes:

>Sure every analysis is flawed.  Nonetheless, the polictical spectrum
>does apply and is widely used.  Usually people that try to deny
>that there is a polictical spectrum are right or left wing extremists
>but don't want to admit it.

    Your statement is presented as a statement of fact, but it seems
very ignorant to me.   People approach the issue of the meaning of words
who have little interest in politics.  I have a friend that got a scholarship
to Queens at Oxford because if his exceptional work in Political Science
and his main area of inquiry was Wittgenstein.   In fact, I have a book
right here on my shelf called "Wittgenstein and Justice" by Hanna Pitkin.
It is about applying Wittgenstein's work to political science.  The
question of what words refer to concerns most philosophers these days.
The most widely held theory is that they do not refer to anything.

    This is perhaps not easy to understand at first glance.  However,
when I talk about "envy," I am using it as a noun, in the same place
in a sentence I would use a noun like "birthmark" in "her birthmark was
obvious" "her envy was obvious."   However, they are not the same thing.
We can all see her birthmark, but we cannot see her "envy."   We might
see behaviors we interpret as envy, but we cannot see the envy itself.

    There are several theories that address this.  For instance, some
think that there is some chemical state in the brain that can be identified
as "envy" and that the word refers to that.    However, there are serious
difficulties with this approach that has cause it and referential theories
in general to be less popluar.   This is common knowledge in some diciplines,
for instance see, "Linguistics" by A. Akmajian, R. Demers, and R. Harnish,
pps 245-247.   This is a college Freshman level intro to linguistics text.

    If we ask "to what do the words 'political spectrum' refer?"  The
answer would have to be "nothing."   We can see behavior, and if we have
been trained well, when we see one behavior we can say "right wing" and
if we see another behavior we can say "left wing" like trained pigeons,
but we cannot see a "political spectrum."  But there is no guarentee
that any two of us so trained would raise the same wing for the same behavior
if we had been taught by different pigeon trainers.

    What about how they are used?   You are using them to catagorize
people into people to "attack."   You said in an earlier post that you
felt it was your "right" to attack the right [hopefully you got a chuckle
out of it].    On a more observable level, when someone says certain
words, you say certain words back.

    A "political spectrum" is just catagories some people choose
(I don't think you have a choice yet), to use.   The catagories are not
the stuff.   Catagories can be useful to organize, communicate, and
predict, but they can also fail at their task.   Since they are simply
observations about the world and not the world itself we can use them or
discard them at will.

>Nonetheless, if you examine their
>statements, you can see where they lie.  Of course this is alway in
>general terms.  I could make an argument that Reagen was a socialist
>because he increased government spending.  There's no absolutes
>in politics, but that doesn't mean that you can't draw general principles.

    But why bother?    If you call Reagan a fascist, or you call Reagan
a socialist, what have you done?   Nothing.   You are just being a trained
pigeon.

-don
--
Don Steiny
Don Steiny Software
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
[phone]