I was randomly writing in the library after doing research for one of my final papers last month. I took a 15 minute break to rest my eyes, and dump the stillborn contents of my brain so as to prevent them from impeding any further thought. These very same contents came up in conversation the next day, and I was asked to type them out as they were--which I hope accounts for how incomprehensible they are at times. Anyway, I didn't have anything to do with them before now, so I figured that I'd just toss them on here so they didn't go the wastrel way of my other aborted efforts.
- On Excising Argument Structures From Simple and Complex Texts:
This is as much a criticism of essay writing and argumentative form as it is a meditation on how to distill the essence of argument from the academic fester of preponderance and the aegises of obscure terminology.
The introduction must clearly state the argument in terms that are not bound specifically in the discipline, even if the explanation relies on understanding sciences that purport to have logical weight upon the fulcrum underlying the issues in contention. Why "must?" -- In looking at what academia as wrought upon academics--where once there were disciplines that were definite and their objects many, now we bear witness to a clustering of offshoots and cross-pollination where the sciences have become specialized to differentiate or separate the modern phenomena from that which has come before it. In order to be plain about these terms--especially things like "structuralist," "constructionist," "normative," et al., where meaning and application change across disciplines-- they must be strictly defined. Even within one discipline there are are multifarious meanings based on differing contexts, and/or by a misconception held by the author. Even though philosophers like Wittgenstein lament the lack of added meaning through added words: each additional word breeding misconception, the problem of misconception tends to be endemic in the one word alone.
This seems to break with logic at first glance, but Wittgenstein's system is consistent: "what cannot be said clearly we must pass over in silence." If the word itself is wrong, ignore it. All too often, however, there is a pervasion of incorrect usage which in turn can be so damaging as to start a school of thought that represents an offshoot. we cannot "pass over [them] in silence" because the author has already erred and disseminated that malignant seed into the literary world. It is, however, inevitable, and this is why languages evolve as they do. As an ultimate consequence for any sort of standardized methodology being perpetrated by a technocracy, or an academic elite, we see the rise of academic and technocratic languages that come into forbearance out of juxtaposition with the ever-evolving languages around us. (lit. because there is a gap in intellectual language and standard language--to be extremely general-- we see a different stratification of class and a privatization of information by intelligentsia, who are a statal entity in the academic institution. The removal of specialized language is akin to the liberalization of the means of production, and, as in the typical socio-economic portrait of the worker alienated from labor, so too is this the democratic citizen alienated from knowledge). If we admit to this kind of entropy that is in the sway of corpuscularianistic elements of influence and uncertainty of change, how can we sustain any standardized academic language regardless? The answer to that lies in three things: a general de-academization, the knowledge that is the object of that process (and, moreover, what constitutes knowledge), and a temporalization/
This gives me three tasks to address, all detailed above. The initial item to address in this structure is that of epistemology. The nature of knowledge is the only thing that remains consistent across generations and cultures across measured time (this is different from experiential time, which has to do more with elements of a societal center that have a greater tenacity in the face of measured time. Example: 60 years have past since the 47 consitution was put into effect in Japan. The conditions of that document for the Japanese are still very real: to a certain extent the conditions of that document have not changed at all-- compare this with the 60 years that America has experienced. There is no comparable constant as X that can be set as relative to Y=time. We therefore have a larger sense of time sense on a massive localized scale). The idea that the Inca, Indus and Mycenaean civilizations all reached a golden age is indicative of an abundance of proper knowledge that was in-line with a zeitgeist that took the most of their ages(as in condition of lebenswelt), locations and great men. In comparing what each civilization thought to be "correct," however, there would be several lacunae in between certain things that, in abstraction, were shared, yet they were valued differently and held different roles in their societies. (It ends here, but what I was trying to get at in the end is that in the face of natural law, there are different qualifiers for what is true, what is right. Yet in putting those things into a teleological system with the goal of our baser needs-- food, shelter, society (law, god, science), what is perceived as "right" and "wrong" is never constant when put into particulars, only when put in a certain degree of abstraction. But unless we are in positions of abstraction, how often does knowledge occur in abstraction? We are students and therefore can say things like: "food and shelter are needed to form society." But I wonder if farmers in the Tigris-Euphrates thought the same things, or whether they thought in total specificity-- our task (what we are farming, how we are doing it day to day) is necessary for survival. (Food is a bad example because it's inconsistent with what I'm about to say next, but the general idea applies) How convenient is it that we can see through history--eternally (all time, all at once)-- and derive fact where fact may not apply. We're playing a colossal game of connect the dots, and repeated occurrences alone yield consent.
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