Please be patient with me as I work out the tools in our tool bar.  The last edition had a few links (such as to Bakhtin and Vygotsky) that were not completed.   This time you'll see some fancy pages that will take you to a few relevant links - and the numbers will grow.

I hope you grow very familiar with the people in these tool bars.  Their names weave through our conversation here.  They are all part of the new postmodern vision.

Also, you see a new tool bar that I have put up called "Postmodern Perspectives.".  It doesn't work yet at all -- but it will soon.   Please watch for it.

Thanks for the suggestions sent me privately.
 
 

For some reason we haven't said much on PMTH about Bakhtin, and we really should not forget him.  He has been an important influence on postmodern thought.

I know that we have some Bakhtin scholars on this list and I want to invite them to contribute something about him to our collection.  In the mean time, I have written a little essay that you can either access here, or through the individual thinkers tool to your left.
 

Just try it.  You'll find your head spinning.  Most importantly, no one will share your language.  Just try to talk the rest of us into calling black "white" and red "green."

Clear enough, but what makes it possible for a term to become accepted?  This is not so clear.  But it has become popular to say that it happens through a negotiation of definitions.  For example, Jürgen Habermas says:
 

Maybe the secret is found in a fragment of Lyotard when he says:
 

I think there is something to this.  Does it seem right to you?  When does it make sense to buy someone else's terms?
 
 

Those of you who have been around PMTH long have heard me speak of postmodernity's two voices.  Monday, in discussing this matter with PMTH subscriber Helen Shoemaker, it struck me that we could name these two voices within Lyotard's language game.  One voice is our  "pagan voice  "  and the other is our "postmodern voice."  I believe that this concept of two voices is implicit in Lyotard's work, The Postmodern Condition as well as his work Just Gaming.

First, consider the source of postmodern's "postmodern voice."  Lyotard, you will recall, tells us that postmodernism is based on an incredulity towards metanarratives.  That is, the postmodern is dubious about grand generalizations, especially generalizations that impose meaning on local discussions.  This incredulity would seem to give rise to a sense of "not-knowingness" of the sort that is talked about in postmodern works such as that by Anderson and Goolishian and by Newman and Holzman.  I think this "not-knowingness" would be expressed with phrases like "I think" but also with questions such as "What do you think about that?"  This postmodern voice is the voice that "makes space" for diversity of opinion.

But then there is also postmodernity's "pagan voice."  I believe the pagan voice is the voice that speaks with its "felt sense" of things.  Thus, Lyotard defines the pagan as
a name
 

I have decided to publish my reading of Wittgenstein's aphorism #43.  This is a very significant aphorism and it is worth our emphasizing it in some way.

Aphorism #43 discusses the meaning of "meaning" and gives the first clue as to how Wittgenstein's later philosophy will deal with the concept of "meaning."
 
 

Will there be universities in our postmodern future?  Many peering into the future of advanced education believe that, at the very least, there will be radical changes.

What changes can we expect?  You will remember, for example, when Andy Lock  talked about the changes that he envisioned.  There will be increased reliance on online learning tools, but the exact format of those tools are still very much up in the air.  Also up in the air is the matter of who will develop and own those tools.  They are wonderful topics for our discussion on PMTH -- because we have the resources for this kind of brainstorming between us.

My own beliefs about how education should go are being worked out in my formatting of PMTH NEWS and the PMTH List.  I believe we need to develop learning tools that make access to information easy  and inexpensive.  If expensive universities are the only institutions that have access to the new databases, then (I believe) we will have a new system of discrimination more powerful, eventually,  than we have ever had before.  It will support a culture of gnosticism.  Some people (university based) will have their fingers on all information.  Others (non-university based) will be completely cut off.  If we are cut off from sources of information, we will be dependent on others to interpret this information for us.  This is a recipe not only for discrimination but for class stratification based on access to data.

This will not only be detrimental for non-university based scholars.  It will be detrimental to independent people everywhere.  And it will be detrimental, too,  to the freedom of university professors.  With the institution of tenure currently being highly challenged, professors will have too much to lose to resist the status quo.  The university will control not only their access to the teaching profession (by supplying them with students), but it will control their access to information that they need in order to function as credible scholars.

But the conservative forces that would preserve this privilege for university based institutions are not likely to win.  I believe the economic forces are such that the university cannot preserve this privilege for itself.  This position is expanded on in an interesting paper by Eli M. Noam called "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University."

Nevertheless, the conservative forces of a privileged institution like a university in a capitalistic society should not be underestimated.  It will put up an enormous fight.  But, at the same time, there will surely be a struggle for commercial ventures will want to compete for the positions of universities in our culture.  Already, in psychology, there are many professional schools.  In just this way, publishing companies (which are hurting because of the electronic changes) can develop competitive resources that make the databases and texts that university libraries offer less unique.

It seems inevitable that the internet will change the way we think of education, and also that we are at the crossroads for the first of dramatic electronic changes.  These changes could be good.  They could set our education free, allow us to educate ourselves for better and happier lives, make education more accessible.  Or they could entangle our ignorances in the greed of institutional forces that further disenfranchise the less affluent.  The university system could become further entrenched as our culture's version of an academic aristocracy that controls the gateway to professional and educational opportunity.

past article on postmodern education
 
 

Dates are just dates unless you can tie them to something.  Indulge me.  I want to relate some key dates to my mother's life (1910-1998).

Vygotsky was only 14 when my mother was born whereas Wittgenstein  had just turned of age (21), and Freud was a mature man of 54.

But what about Foucault?  He wasn't born yet.  Remember the picture of my mother standing at the beach with a lollypop in her hand?  Mother was 17 and at that time, little Michel was just a toddler learning to talk in whole sentences.

Their Actual lifespans were:
 

That is, isn't the worker's challenge today about how to discover her creative voice while remembering how to listen?  How to be inspired to find a new solution and also how to inspire?  How to grow in our changing world not merely to adapt to the way things are, but to find and articulate new and creative solutions?

Perhaps, this is what Newman and Holzman have in mind when they tell us it is time to learn to be who we are not (yet).

Want to know the latest APA advice on electronic publishing of your published articles?  It has changed over the last few years.  The latest is guidance says that after publishing an article in the traditional way::
 

Please feel free to  tell me what you think about this policy.  I do it because I think it is a good way to do things.
 

What is perjury?  Isn't this a relevant topic for postmoderns?  If postmodernity sees an ambiguity deep in the concept of "truth" then what does it think of the concept of "telling the truth" under oath?

This has been a topic under discussion at on this listserv  since Fred Newman published a PMTH article suggesting that Clinton was our first postmodern President.  A little discussion told us that what Newman meant by that was that Clinton has a postmodern awareness of the contextual nature of his language.  What might be a lie in one context is not necessarily "perjury" in a legal context if the legal proceedings had defined terms being discussed.  A person without a postmodern sensibility might become lost in this distinction saying that a lie is a lie wherever it occurs.

In the context of a list discussion of this matter, Judy Weintraub asked a question that interested me.  She asked:
 

In pondering Weintraub's fascinating question I said:
 

But there is a problem with that answer that my post glossed over.  Many people do not presume the term "sexual relations" means only what the attorneys meant for it to mean.  For them, is Clinton's statement a "lie"?  If so, you might imagine someone saying that Clinton "lied" under oath, and that is the usual definition of "perjury."  Therefore, so the argument would go, Clinton committed perjury.

I believe, however, this would be a kind of logical slight of hand that would lead us into a morass of confusion and dispute, in fact, I think it would lead us into a "differend" so that we could argue about these things indefinitely without getting anywhere.  I suspect, in fact, that this is the differend that will boggle the minds of the people discussing the impeachment trial.

How can we escape from this differend?  Can you see what is wrong that leads us into such a differend?

If you want to read a page on the White House response to the perjury charge click here.
 
 

Yesterday, I perused one of the websites for the Newman/Holzman group and I found some answers to some of my questions about them.

Remember we were deliberating here about what these two meant by the word "performance"?  Well, I now think I get it.  It is part of their notion of "being what you are not."  On one of their webpages they explain:
 

I often run across this clinical problem.  For example, when I worked in the prisons I found men saying, "I am who I am.  I'm a rapist.  That's me."  Haven't you heard your clients say things like this?  This kind of cultural myth impedes, well, as Holzman and Newman would say, "development."

They elaborate this idea a bit further by talking about the Vygotskian notion of the the "zone of proximal development."  This is a period of early childhood in which adults speak to children as if they could understand even before they do.  For example, while the baby
 

There are other good ideas on the Newman/Holzman page I am referring you, to, ideas for working with delinquent youth, for example.  Good reading.  I suggest it.  It will give you a better sense as to what they are about.  Also, I want to refer you to a page on their All Stars Talent Show Network, which is a program for working with troubled, violent youth.
 

Notice a new tool in the heading of this newsletter.  Not only can you reach our name sheet, our local dictionary of postmodern terms, and our references, but you now have a new button to push to get to APA's new search engine for APA journals.

Check it out.  It's great.  Strange that APA doesn't allow you to search for authors, but it is a wonderful tool for searching for terms in the title.
 

I perused Chris Sinha and Andy Lock's new draft of an essay today.  He gave us this URL a few days ago.  What I found was a delight, although perhaps a diamond still in the rough.  (He told us it was a draft,  and in my view the first paragraph needs work and he needs to elaborate the notion of "Ukranian Narrative" more before he talks about it.)

However, after the first paragraph, this text  represents a genre of writing I admire and I want to relate what I see Sinha and Lock trying to do to Val Lewis' intelligent and determined quest on the PMTH list to try find something useful in psychological research.  After all, as Lewis might reasonably point out, some postmodern professors have an obligation to supervise dissertation students in modernist university settings and some kind of traditional research is expected of them.  Fair enough.  As I sit here in my private study my mind sometimes drifts in visionary and impractical ways.  Lewis ties me to a more practical context.

A bit of background: A few days ago when Lewis and I were discussing these matters I wrote her that I thought the ideal postmodern researcher would write in a literary way that engaged the reader and showed (rather than told) about the subject.  Well, I believe that Sinha and Lock's paper exemplifies what would want, or rather, might help me illustrate what I am arguing for.  If this kind of writing were focused on therapy it might well, in my opinion,  prove much more illuminating than traditional research.  It seems to me for the most part, all the tons of modernist research on therapy falls into a black hole of our forgetting just because the authors fail to do what Lock and Sinha are doing in their draft.

Now, an overly  brief summary of Sinha and Lock's draft: They try to show us (with illustration and explanation) that when Princess Diana died the British monarchy tried to stage her death in a certain (hypocritical) way and that the people rose up at the burial and restaged it.  I think that those of us who watched any of the news programs on Diana at the time, have our memories sparked by such an account, and that is part of the way the Sinha and Lock draft works that I like.

Also, to make their point, Sinha and Lock give us certain paradigms ("narratives") and let us as readers see the analogy.  (Although frankly they need to say more about the Ukanian narrative in order for this to entirely work for me.) But when they say,
 

I do think this kind of writing can be appropriated by psychological research.  I hope it can.  In fact, I think some of Freud's most powerful writing was of this type.  It amounts to giving a story of the therapy that allows the reader to see the therapy.  This can be done on the basis of an individual therapy session, or it can be done on the basis of illustrations of a collection of therapy sessions that show the same feature that we, as readers, would be able to discern from our reading.
 
 

Andy Lock has suggested that we look at his lecture on Vygotsky in order to get a better picture of what he calls "Zoped," or the Zone of Proximal Development.  What he calls Zoped, Newman and Holzman call ZPD.  I think I prefer "Zoped" because I can pronounce it, and it is easier to say than "Zone of Proximal Development."  But it doesn't matter what you call it, so long as you see what is involved.  And, to me, these two different sets of authors are pursuing a treasure of a concept.

And, by the way, I found Lock's Vygotsky lecture quite useful, and I recommend it.  But I am also going to check out the Newman and Holzman book on Vygotsky which I ordered today from Amazon today. Click here if you'd like to order it, too, or perhaps just read a little about it on the Amazon pages.   If you purchase it, too, or get it from the library, we can read it together.

I believe, folks, that the notion of a ZOPED (ZPD) is contained in Wittgenstein as well, although perhaps in a less accessible way.  So when we get to that place in Wittgenstein I will be glad to have Vygotsky's notion of Zoped available to us.

Also, this reminds me, Andy Lock has a number of published books on child development.  I wonder which ones, if any, we should look at to get his take on the ZOPED.  First, I intend to look at the Newman and Holzman book, but then...

My own interest, and perhaps some of yours would be, too, is how to make the ZOPED useful to our developing understanding of paralogy.
 

I have created a PMTH NEWS banner.  Click here to see it.  If you have a website and want to include this banner on your website, please feel free to do so.  If you would like assistance in how to do that, please contact me.
 

I'll be going early February and I'll be gone for a week.  I'll report on this when I get back.  It's a conference and a training program.  I would appreciate you folks asking questions about them before hand so that I can think about your questions as preparation.

Shaffer got responses from Manfred Straehle, Judy Weintraub, Nick Drury, Val Lewis, Tom Strong, and myself, Lois Shawver.   A number of these posts had to do with explaining how postmodernism does not conform to general rules but proposes local rules, but then the question was if this statement "pinned things down a bit more for Shaffer."

Shaffer replied that:
 

Of course, if I say that, I muyst now make space for your opinion.  Let me do that by saying that I cannot imagine how my characterization of postmodernism could possibly be related to postmodern architecture.  Can you?
 

I think that pagans are artists, that is, they can move from one game to another, and in each of these games (in the optimal situation) they try to figure out new moves.  And even better, they try to invent new games.

For the past few months PMTH has been studying the postmodern work of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman.  Today, I bring you a personal article by Fred Newman.  He will tell you how he became a therapist and speak clearly about his ideas on doing therapy.

Read his article, for example,  to see why Newman thinks that Clinton is the first postmodern American president and also to see how he thinks that Vygotsky provides us with a radical new model to help us shift to a more postmodern approach to therapy.  As you will see, Newman, like many of us at PMTH, believes that therapy needs to make a transition away from thinking in terms of mental illness, a transition towards thinking in terms of positive growth and development.

But as you read through the article remember how the article  starts.  It starts, as many of our own stories start, by noting that we became inspired by the very possibility of therapy only by experiencing its effect on his own personal lives.  For Newman, this was over thirty years ago, and one wonders how it is that the many therapists who have inspired us could have done so in an era that seemed to believe so profoundly in the modernist notion of mental illness.

Were there a few therapists who broke away from the modernist concept of mental illness?  Or was it possible for a few therapists in that traditional era to use the mental illness concept without it destroying their ability to do good therapy?

What do you think?
 

Neverthless, there has been a little discussion of the notion of the social construction subjectivity.  However, a major poster, Saliha Bava, has had to slow her postings down.  We expect to hear more from her later on this topic.  Also,   Val Lewis and I are continuing along a little different thread.  We are  discussing, for the moment,  whether, in our postmodern era, therapy students should be educated in research psychology.  Please join us in this discussion if the topic interests you.

Although there have been less postings during the holidays the Wittgenstein reading has been moving along at a rapid pace.  Those who have followed this reading know that there have been, for a long time, two stages of the reading.  Judy Weintraub, Harry Korman and Ulf Korman have spent several years reading Wittgenstein online.  Diana Cook, David Pocock and now Nick Drury are catching up by reading quickly up to aphorism #50.  Our hope is that we will all be able to move ahead at the same pace by about February 1.  Whether we make that deadline or not, the plan is that  from that point on all six readers will be together with me in their reading of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations.  I do hope you read all of their readings for they are all informed people who, while sharing in their enthusiasm for later Wittgenstein, bring their own unique perspective and personality to an intelligent reading of this major philosopher.
 

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.

A few of us have been trying to understand what Parker's complaint about postmodernism is all about.  It has been especially interesting to study it in conjunction with our reading of Lois Holzman and Fred Newman's postmodern project (as represented by their book, End of Knowing) because Parker singles out Holzman and Newman (along with a few others like Kenneth Gergen) to represent what he criticizes about postmodernity.

And day before yesterday, Val Lewis posted a thoughtful questioning of one of my earlier studies of Parker's critique - and recently Judy Weintraub has joined in this discussion.

So, to assist our study I am posting a link to a paraphrase I have created of Parker's argument against Holzman and Newman's version of postmodernism.

Link here to access the paraphrase.
 

 A few days ago I asked:
 

But the puzzle is:  How would a theory of brute facts being the bedrock of reality deal with the "brute fact" (ha, ha) that says "we never know for sure that something is a brute fact?"  In other words, "brute fact" is a defeasible concept -- or is it?  How can a "brute fact" be defeasible?

Aren't considerations like this one at least part of what makes us postmodern?  But the question is why doesn't the fickleness of our "brute facts" undermine the credulity of moderns?

Maybe we should stick with the idea that the only "brute fact" is the patterned jello.
 

Watch for more on this topic in your next PMTH NEWS.
 

Earlier today I wrote an article on the construction of subjectivity.  Now, I would like to write a little about its opposite, the construction of "out-there-ness."  To do that, I want to make reference to Jonathan Potter's work on fact production.

Potter says science has a way of producing  out-there-ness.  "Out-there-ness" is a description that makes the object seem independent of people producing it.  He says, scientific procedures that produce out-thereness
 

How can one construct "out-thereness?"
I think so.  I think we do this not only when we use scientific procedures but whenever we diagnose a person or a situation.  To diagnose, or describe what is "out there" as if that description is in no way biased by the author's interests and situation is, it seems to me, a way of creating "out thereness."

But the creation of out-thereness mostly slips by us, especially when we are the one creating the out-thereness.  Picture it, however, when someone else creates it in you.  That is sometimes much easier to see.

You are sitting there and someone diagnoses you saying, "You are really a person who likes to go shopping."  Argh!  You remember shopping for gifts last week and it was awful.  Yet the person describing you is putting together a credible case and everyone around is beginning to see you in those terms.  The diagnosis (or description) is creating your "out-thereness."

(If Potter's work interests you, please do not fail to read Tom Strong's
review of Potter's book, Representing Reality.)
 
 

But I have a question:  Do you think being postmodern makes this task more difficult?  I am convinced that my postmodern incredulity about individuality does not prevent essentializing characterizations from coming to my mind with friends and acquaintances.  But, what about with people we do not know at all?  Like the characters Lock asked us to characterize?  And fictional characters at that?

Is it harder for postmoderns to do this exercise?  What do you think?  Did any others of you try it?
 

Do scientists expectations bias what they find in their experiments? McGuire seems to think so.  He said that what experimenters may test
 

Perhaps, this sometimes happens.  To the extent it does, it undermines the traditional picture of "facts" being something discovered rather than something created.

But consider the possibility that there is a little of both.  Language may make it seem as though facts are either discovered or found, but not both.  But is that true?  Suppose you are looking for something you have lost.  If you find it, then it seems that you have discovered it.  But if you find it where you left it, there is a way in which you have created this discovery.  And suppose you find it where the dog left it.  The fact that you knew to look, and that you have let the dog go to this leaving place, makes you a party to creating the reality that you discovered.

Similarly, consider the possibility that any scientific "discovery" is creation in some similar sense that mixes a little "creativity" in with the fact of discovery.
 

A few days ago Jerry Shaffer started us all thinking about the nature of "facts" by posting his review of John Searles' book on PMTH NEWS.  Since then, our conversation continues.  I have already given you part one and part two  of a dialogue on this matter between Shaffer and Nick Drury.

Today, I  have culled a few excerpts from recent postings for your reflection.  It shows the range of our response to this puzzling question of the nature of facts.

What are facts?  We're in some disagreement, but we know things are not as simple as they seemed in the nineteen-fifties TV show, Dragnet, where detective Joe Frieday typically told people "Just the facts, ma'm" in an effort to get them to keep their responses brief and on point.

Today, after puzzling with the problem of facts for a few days, here are some of the things we are saying:
 

Now, listen to Nick Drury.  He says:
 

And Tom Srong said:
 

David Pocock also points to the way in which our recognition of "facts" depends on our context and culture.  He tells the story first of a recent discovery that male Hegesparrows blend their sperm with other Hegesparrows in the fertilization of baby birds.  Then Pocock says:
 

This is not the end of our discussion.  Even as I write this article, more new posts pour in on "facts."  And, Shaffer, who is willing to be a congenial foil for our  postmodern list, is likely to continue to defend Searle's concept of "brute facts."

So, maybe he would address this question:
 

Because if two rocks move around each other in outer space, there is no way to say which one is circling around which.  There is no way to prove that Copernicus had the correct system that replaced Ptolemy's.  Nevertheless, Copernicus' theory was a more fertile point of view.  Using this new framework it was possible, for example, to order the distance of each of the planets from the sun.

Perhaps, there is a parallel with dialogue. If language is largely indexical and it is not possible to create word pictures that portray reality accurately, then perhaps we should hope that our language carries the dialogue forward and that what we have to say is a contribution to the development of an increasingly fertile point of view.

And isn't this the quest of paralogy?  For paralogy, Lyotard tells us, is not innovation within the system.  It is a generator of ideas that reorganizes the unknowledge:  First we must discover the puzzles that hides glossed over in our taken-for-granted myths and then we must reorganize this unknowledge.  At least this is how I read Lyotard's footnote when he says:
 

And maybe this is why Lyotard wrote: