A Justice Site
A Justice Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June18, 1998; October 8, 2005
Latest Update: October 30, 2005
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
WHAT'S NEW?
Narratives Become Text: Accretion or Parology?
And so we began to collect narratives, like local color, to bring depth of meaning to the traditional texts. Parology, Lois Shawver said, on 25 September 1996, was the term that Lyotard used in arguing against Habermas' search for metanarrative. "You say something and it inspires me to say something in return. . .and when it works successfully it can awaken our minds to an unending expansion of new ideas. That's parology." Neat description. Students, NOTICE. Complex ideas put in simple English that most of us can grasp!
LINK to Article by Lois Shawver. Need new link for this. October 31, 2005.
What follows is the recording of an e-mail narrative between two of the faculty on the site, Jeanne Curran and Robert Christie. This is the kind of story we don't usually take the time to record, and consequently don't add as text to the understanding of the traditional text. We offer it here, something like Matisse's "Ce n'est pas une pipe." Here is how we are struggling with postmodern thought. We invite our students to join in the dialog.
Curran wrote, upon reading Lois Shawver's brief piece on parology, to Christie: "I know that what I'm arguing for is parology, where ideas build interactively upon one another. I thought that Robert K. Merton said that in On the Shoulders of Giants but it didn't sound nearly so postmodern. Duh!"
Christie wrote: "I believe Merton's was a sort of 'accretion' model of knowledge growth, a traditional idea of progress sort of thing, as in modern."
Curran wrote: "I can't see any difference between Merton's "accretion" model and Lyotard's "parology" or continual building of ideas upon one another."
Christie wrote: "I thought the "parology" idea implied more of a dynamic collective mental process than an accretion of 'objective-science-theory-fact' . . ."
Curran wrote: "Modernity/postmodernity can't be a split into another dimension. These involve minuscule course corrections in out thinking."
Christie wrote: "But many postmodernists seem to think that their radical subjectivism is some new transformation of human thought -- though I'd agree, certainly, that it has been a partially valid commentary on the excesses of the
practice of scientism."
Curran wrote: "Positivism can't get thrown out because the fools that practiced it
thought they were objective."
Christie wrote: "But I have thought of the positivists as those who practice scientism in the illusion that they ARE being objective. Maybe the word has taken on too much negativity over the years of my complaining about the sociological objectivists. More and more of my students in methods now believe that the only objectivity is contained in their own beliefs; they have become implicit localists without being aware of these theories. To that extent the postmodernist theorists have recognized a real movement in thought even within popular culture, not just academia.
Curran wrote: "Has anyone ever heard of moderation?"
Christie wrote: "Heaven forbid! Who could become the new intellectual monarch that way?"
Curran wrote: "Even if the ultimate final answer on the relationship between metanarrative and local narrative, between the individual and the community, came along, it would take us generations to move our thinking into alignment with the answers. Can you really see a difference between "accretion" as modernism and "parology" as postmodernism?"
Christie wrote: "I guess I'm looking for a parology of the ways of thinking rather than an accretion of knowledge, although I do argue with students who put forth the radical subjectivist claims to personal knowledge as 'whatever I prefer to believe,' that there really are some verified objective pieces of knowledge out there which can't be simply dismissed as 'point of view.'"
Curran wrote: "Pieces. The key word is "pieces." And how do those pieces fit in with the local narratives?"
Christie wrote: "Hey! Are we having an intellectual discussion here, or what? Isn't that against some policy or other? We could get in trouble for this!"
Back to Table of Contents
On December 5, 1997, Jeanne received an e-mail from Maureen Tam, the listed subject: "I enjoyed the drawing." The e-mail message went on to say: "Thank you for an enlightening class. I had a feeling I learnt something but can't say what" The hardest part of academic writing is fitting the topic that interests you into the theory that best fits it. Maureen's expression of this feeling as knowing that she has learned, but finding difficulty in knowing how to express it is very common. It's tough putting into words what you are learning. You are just learning the theories, many at once, and that can be confusing. So we developed the
shared writing approach to offer you two things: (1) a chance to look for the theory that best fits your ideas in class, where you have the professor available to help with that fit, and (2) to share ideas with others in the discussion group, so that you can build on their ideas, that might spark your own. (Robert K. Merton wrote a book on this: On The Shoulders of Giants, in which he reminded us that all great works have been created by building on the ideas and works of those who went before us. For more on this go to Christie and Curran's discussion of how to build on ideas.)
Curran was able to share some theoretical approaches to help Maureen explain what she had learned. The drawing Maureen had liked was the class project with oil pastels. We worked on the drawings as we discussed some of the basic theoretical concepts and shared narratives of our own experiences. This technique makes it easier to talk about difficult concepts that create a lot of affect because we don't have to make eye contact. It creates movement and distraction in the classroom, taking some of the pressure off. It also interferes with our concentration. Well, you can't have everything, now, can you? In a class of sixty people, those who want to attend do, and those who need the distraction take it. But it does offer the possibility of a relatively stress -free environment in which one can explore ideas.
Maureen had obviously attended, and had obviously learned something. We hadn't discussed "voices," which she was pursuing in Gilligan's work, so she was at a loss as to how she could explain what she learned in theoretical terms. Curran suggested that there were several ways to proceed. One was for Maureen to recognize that her discomfort came from finding herself in a position of latent learning. Actually she wasn't all that uncomfortable. Notice that she felt free to express her quandary by e-mail. She recognized the importance of what was being discussed, but couldn't formulate the concept or her own experience of it in essay form. In our work with shared writing, we have emphasized that it's OK to work together to build ideas and understanding at the latent learning stage. Maureen felt the assurance of doing that in the drawing sessions.
Curran suspected that many of the students also began to recognize the power of non-language expression of learning and narrative. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." As a matter of fact, it was a possibility that Maureen was in the process of forming "a critical consciousness." See James Palermo's article. "I'm Not Lying, This Is Not A Pipe:Foucault and Magritte on the Art of Critical Pedagogy," Philosophy of Education 1994 http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/COE/EPS/PES-Yearbook/94_docs/PALERMO.HTM A beginning effort at a reclaimed text from Women in Society. by Toi Ethridge and Faculty on the Site
The class on Women in Society, like the class on Habermas' theory of the system of law, had to deal repeatedly with the issue of good faith. To bring men and women, as well as to bring all citizens, to the discourse table is quite a task. Efforts at world and family piece would suggest that we have much to learn in this area.
L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis, 1995, gives us some solid theoretical grounding for our feelings in this area. Jones guides us through a sense of "cheap grace,"for which he quotes Herbert Marcuse: "One cannot and should not go around happily killing and torturing and then, when the moment comes,simply ask, and receive, forgiveness. In my view, this perpetuates the crime"(p. 170)" (at .p. 285 in Jones).
Jones refers again to our need to understand forgiveness more deeply on p. 275: "[A]ll of us -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- need to do some serious rethinking about the ways in which people currently engage in discipline and punishment -- ranging from ecclesial patterns of discipline to coping with clerical misconduct to patterns in the US. of "locking people up" as virtually the only means we have of dealing with wrongdoing. It is particularly worrisome that in the U.S. we seem to continue to "punish" people long after their terms are up; once a convict, always a convict in our eyes. [fn. omitted]" This is an excellent chapter, with many good references for those of you who would follow through.
Toi wrote: "What about how society treats people who have been in jail? Once they have served their sentence, shouldn't we forgive? But this is hard to do. How can we know when they have "repented" in Jones' terms or been rehabilitated in criminology's parlance?"
"Imagine this hypothetical. Imagine that I write to a prisoner, recognizing the prejudice he will encounter on leaving prison, and wanting to help. This would seem to me to be Christian forgiveness. But sometimes the prisoner has not "repented." What if he lies? What if he tells me his crimes were ones that don't frighten me, weren't violent, and then I discover when he gets out that his crimes were violent and he hurts me? Do I forgive that? And how?"
Jeanne wrote: "Good hypothetical, Toi. You're going to end up in law school if you keep this up. As it happens, L.Gregory Jones deals with a very similar issue in Embodying Forgiveness.
Toi raised another important hypothetical. "What about the zero tolerance in our schools today. The juvenile justice system in San Diego is indiscriminately citing kids from elementary through high school. these citations are equivalent to an arrest. The kids must appear in court, pay a fine, and if fine not paid, an arrest can eventually be made. That means jail time is a possibility."
"The toll has fallen heavily on minorities. Kids can be kicked out for
Jeanne wrote: "Again, Toi, you have raised a good issue. But you need to document your information with sources. If you are citing news stories, identify them. If you are citing people talking about the conditions, cite them as "informed respondents," identify the geographic area, and give some background on the extent of their experience. Then, get some official word on this. Visit with a school officer or a community police officer. They will help you document the information."
Maybe some of our readers have had experiences with this, know reputable sources we can share, know people with personal experiences we can share.
Follow this text as we develop it.
A beginning effort at a reclaimed text from two classes, statistics and moot court. by Toi Ethridge and Christine Emery and Renate Stroup and Faculty on the Site.
Joe Feagin speaks of institutional racism as that privileging of subjectivity which springs forth with no perpetrator, no real intent to discriminate, just the bureaucratic enforcement of rules that grew up in an institution in which some subjectivities were privileged. We sometimes translate that into the concept that those who have a stake in the system are the ones that get to make up the rules. When the rules harm many people who fall through the cracks, so to speak, committees within the institution rarely consider learning from the collective experience of their students. Most institutions of higher learning today have developed into what Habermas calls "auto-poietic non-learning sub-systems," that is, systems that have functional rules of long standing that fit with their self conception and their vision of their mission. Student failures are seen as just that, "student failures," not as the system's failure to adapt to the fact that many of its rules privilege those who are like those who have captured institutional authority.
"Playing with Habermas" addresses the fifteen minute study period, which most scholars from "research institutes" find intolerable. But not all students in such universities become future scholars. Many just take the degree and follow life's normal courses. So even within the research institutions the system should not take itself so seriously as to become auto-poietic and non-learning. Student failure suggests institutional failure. Society does not send its children here to be stamped with failure, but to be educated, each of them, so that they can create a better government for a better community. That is a different goal from creating young x-ray crystallographers. And this is a different world from that in which most future serious scholars are created. We have neither the money nor the teaching and research support to develop the disciplined scholastic tendencies of the few potential scholars who cannot afford the research institutions. We can give them much of value. But we cannot match the resources of the institutions whose mission is entirely to create such scholarship.
These conditions are neither a reflection upon those who teach at or those who come to "not research institutions." Society is today less willing to pay to educate brilliance and potential at the best institutions. That means that good teachers and good students need to discover ways to develop the seriousness of their discipline, while at the same time acknowledging the less demanding needs of the average students in a working class institution with limited funding.
In a statistics class last week, students grew audibly and visibly restless five minutes before the end of class. Granted, this is a two period class, so there was another hour in lab to come. After class, I asked what had caused the "antziness." Christine answered instantly, "I was starving," as she wolfed down a sandwich at the picnic table outside the lab. "I desperately needed a cup of coffee," answered Toi. And I, Jeanne, needed desperately to achieve that sense of discipline in learning that would clutch them from such restlessness. It took just a few minutes for us to realize that there were two separate validity claims here, and to bring ourselves to the discourse table. We have to learn to forgive ourselves th hunger, the exhaustion, the striving to find the motivation that eludes us, and to hear each other in good faith.
Years ago we realized that hungry children focus more on their hunger than on learning. And so we arranged for school breakfasts and lunches. When our students work all day, come directly to class, are exhausted and torn by other worries, the situatedness of their world has changed drastically from that of the academic world we knew. If we would have the legitimacy of the granting of degrees to this non-traditional population, then we must honor that legitimacy by hearing them in good faith.
Renate Stroup joined me the next day and expressed an understanding of the new situation. No one had presented the validity claim of genuine hunger or need for energy replenishment before. Together the three students and I worked out a plan where we will socially construct an agreement that allows one to go for food or coffee when needed. We'll reduce the confusion by asking for quiet foods; no potato chips with all the noise that would bring. And we will consider the social acceptability and tolerance factors that will surely vary as widely as possible in groups of 50 people. These are large classes. But if they will sit in our large circle, where we can see each other, and acknowledge the difference in the many validity claims, then we can all focus more deeply on the statistics, instead of our hunger, or need for caffeine, or concern about manners in a classroom, or insecurity that somehow we're failing at disciplined thought and intellectual effort. We can deal with the real heart of the issue. Learning, as best we can, in very large groups, with inadequate technical support because society questions the need to offer such genuine education to all.
Since no one really knows how Habermas' rational discourse will work, we figure this is as good an approach as any. We have the discussion down to validity claims, and most of us are willing to listen in good faith. I, for one, am willing to trust this, at least as a social experiment. We're going to try. We invite you to visit us and add your best validity claims to ours. We ask that you do so in good faith. And we promise to listen and consider them in good faith.
Watch here as we develop this text. Hopefully, all fifty students will have something to say, and through this we will discover ways of creating texts that could have important intertextual meanings for the differently disciplined texts that come out of the "research institutions."
On June 5 the Neutrino 98 conference was the setting in Takayama, Japan, for announcing that scientists have "discovered" that neutrinos have mass. They cannot yet measure that mass, but they have come to the conclusion that the claim that the neutrinos have mass is valid. They came to this conclusion by eliminating many alternative explanations for what they found in their experiments.
This is an acceptable way to decide on "truth" as we know it. It fits with critical theory and the postmodern approach. Look at all the possible explanations. Eliminate them one by one as each one fails to accurately predict and describe, until finally there seems to be only one explanation.
CAVEAT: That is the one explanation that seems to fit the data of the possibilities that were brought to the discourse table. Out there, somewhere, may be another validity claim that has not yet been conceived and submitted to the discourse table of these scientists. Then, again, maybe not. Maybe the claim they declare as "scientific truth" is the best explanation. Or maybe it is just the best, given our understanding of the universe, until more understanding comes along.
This kind of explanation sounds like equivocation. Do neutrinos have mass or don't they? Well, just like the issues we deal with in justice, legitimacy, equality, an equivocal answer may have to suffice for a while. We'll just have to tolerate the ambiguity of not "knowing for sure." That really isn't such a terrible dilemma. Folks "knew for certain" the earth was flat for a very long time, until some daring sailors set sail and didn't fall off the edge, and Columbus made his fortune. We no longer feel the "angoisse" of those who were sure there was an edge out there off of which one was sure to fall. Instead we've substituted new anxieties for new edges to our understanding that we're scared of falling off of.
Modernity sought sweeping overall conclusions that would not change, through which we could satisfy our need to know for certain. Postmodernism recognizes that this is an ever changing world, that we create the world as we discover it, in the very process of discovering it. I am not the same in a world I understand as I was in a world that seemed magical and unpredictable. My head is held higher; I feel greater control; I do not respond in fear to the same stimuli.
The power of knowledge, as we create it interactively with our world, can be easily measured through self-esteem, competence, achievement. But where do these neutrinos fit in? I wasn't scared of falling off the edge of a neutrino. With 300 estimated to be in one spoonful of space, I can't even imagine the little critters all around us. So who cares, if what I'm trying to do is create discourse to establish legitimacy? We do. Because discourse, just like scientific understanding, is built on bringing all validity claims to the table, that all may be heard in good faith, so that we may choose to act as a community on that which seems best to fit our data and our values. There are always, even with neutrinos, competing claims. We choose; we must; but we tolerate the ambiguity of recognizing that there may some day be yet another claim. As ideas build upon ideas, becoming different ideas in the process, new claims arise. To remain open to hearing those claims in good faith is to establish legitimacy.
Today the New York Times reports that neutrinos have mass. And that adds to our store of knowledge. We accept the authority of the physicists who have struggled for this knowledge in good faith, remaining open to the next validity claim which may alter that vague perception we now have of neutrino mass.
The neutrino article just came to my attention this morning. I wanted to draw some of these parallels to the evaluation of and acceptance of authority, and the importance of this process across all disciplines, from philosophy to physics. I wanted to lead you to time-sensitive links, so I uploaded this quickly. That's what Dear Habermas is for, allowing us to think and explore together. This was not intended as a definitive comment. Think about it. Reference the statistics site on evaluating authority. And then join me in creating a text that will help all of us better understand authority and its role in our consciousness.
And nota bene: When responding to a newspaper as a source, it's a good idea to go on the Web. Notice that I send you to the NYTimes Web site. The newspaper does not give the University of Hawaii sites. But if you follow the NY Times Web site you are linked to both Hawaii's department of physics and the Takayama site in Japan. Newspaper articles will not generally be adequate sources in scholarly papers. But through their Web sites the newspapers will lead you to sources that will be adequate for your term papers and classroom discussions. Check out the LA Times. Then check out your more specific local papers. The world of research is more accessible every day.
The New York Times is what I tend to start with. But try the LA Times. I found this paragraph on their Web site: "The observatory was 90% funded by the Japanese government and 10% by the United States. Researchers at the site include teams from UC Irvine, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Hawaii and Boston University. " That's a clue that there might be other information at those university sites. But the LA Times site did not make readily visible site links. So I went to Yahoo and found each university. No special site info up.
So then I tried the Dept. of Physics at Boston University. Having got to the Physics Dept. through the Web index of departments which I found at http://web.bu.edu/. From the Physics Dept. I linked to Research, and from that to their link: Experimental High-Energy Physics and Astrophysics. From there, there is another link http://hep.bu.edu/~superk/, which leads to more detailed information and to many Super K sites. The only such site at a California State University is at CSUDH!
The Neutrino Site at CSUDH Try it. The site at Irvine has is nicely done.
http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/ There's even a "What's It All Mean?" section on the Irvine site, but it said that it would be updated within the hour when I went there, so all I got was lovely colors. But maybe that will help us build the references to discourse for all this. Go look. Don't be limited to one site. Try different sites, different routes.
Kudos to the University of Hawaii and the New York Times site for having made it so easy. And Kudos to CSUDH for buikding a path aroind their samaged server to get up the story of Super-K at CSUDH. Go out on the Web and discover neutrinos and think on how they are related to Habermasian discourse. Jeanne
On Friday, June 5, when the New York Times, the L.A. Times, and most other news agencies announced the discovery by physicists that neutrinos do indeed have mass, we rushed to alert you to this new perception of reality. We also rushed to explain it, for neutrinos are not part of our everyday discourse. The New York Times and the University of Hawaii made it easy for us. They highlighted the news and on their Web sites gave URLS to lead us there.
In the most honored tradition of our mothers' teaching, Jeanne sent a thank you to John Learnedof the Physics Department of the University of Hawaii, for he was the author credited.
On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Jeanne wrote:
"Thank you for providing lay information. By linking to your department's work I can be sure that my students have access to such material. That's important, since I teach the sociological approach to justice, legitimacy, and uncertainty. My students may not have taken physics. They need such pages as yours to understand the links I try to teach."
On Fri, 5 Jun 1998 , Prof. John F. Learned responded:
"Thanks for the kudos. Actually the press level material was written by our press officer here, Cheryl Ernst. She used my Scientific American level, which my wife (botanist) complained was not that comprehensible. It is hard to translate information from our obscure specialities. We need to try harder with this sort of thing to sell the importance of science to those, as is the case with your students, who ultimately pay the bill and in the long run benefit from them."
Curran immediately responded that she had sent students to the New York Times site, and done her best to prepare a comment to help students understand, "though it was very hasty." She promised to work at the piece, "for her specialty is precisely crossing these barriers of understanding."
Again, on Fri, 5 Jun 1998, John Learned sent a message to Dear Habermas:
"Very nice... I quickly read the material at your site. I like your tilt on the postmodern view... a bit more acceptable to us old fashioned realists who do not believe in the literal social construction of knowledge when it comes to "hard science". Of course not all physicists accept our data, but most are won over when they see it. So we are quickly establishing a consensus, but it is still a shaky one.
"If we (you and I) have an intellectual difference in belief, but probably not in daily actions based upon our understandings, it would be that I take there to be a firm unmodifiable reality behind the curtain of our limited experiments and models. We make approaches to this underlying reality, but in the end our works stands upon being 'right or 'wrong', and of course sometimes undecided. If we have made egregious errors, we will get caught... this we all believe, and it makes one careful (well most, usually)! This I think is what distinguishes physics from social anthropology, for example (well, one distinction).
"Anyway, nice site, I think you work well towards bridging the academic chasm!"
To which Jeanne immediately responded:
"I hate to confess this, but I suspect you're right and there may well be a "reality" out there that we are merely approximating in our attempts at understanding. But I'm afraid that "reality" may be, like "God," something I can only be "certain" of when it's too late to make much difference. Certainly, that "reality" out there is one of the validity claims I've always got to take into account in order to maintain the good faith that brings legitimacy. Now maybe this is all because I started out as a physicist."
Jeanne, in the time-honored tradition of Habermasian discourse practiced on this site, promptly asked Professor Learned if she could post this exchange. To which he replied:
"Sure, you may post it and edit as you wish. Glad to hear that that old time physicist's religion has not been totally submerged in French obscurity."
And so we have the beginnings of a text where scholars across disciplines find e-mail a convenient way to carry on threaded discussions. Professor Leader didn't have the time to learn that Prof. Craig Calhoun had a lot to do with the descriptions of post-modernism prompted by those pesky little neutrinos. And Jeanne didn't have the space or time to document all of critical theory and post-modernism. Discourse will depend on our willingness to come in good faith to the discourse table, and the level of critical understanding we have synthesized from the many disciplines.
For those who would like to read a little more to get a better sense of that "reality" that might be out there, and how we have come to understand it, we recommend that you read the many lay descriptions available on the numerous sites around the country. And, just for summer fun, we picked up Gordon Kane's $12 The Particle Garden. (ISBN 0-201-40826) A couple of tidbits, just to tempt you:
"This is a conservative book. . . It emphasizes the view that science requires experiment to stimulate and verify any understanding of nature. There is an alternative approach which attempts to achieve dramatic purely theoretical breakthroughs and leap to a complete understanding of nature. A happy rivalry exists between the ‘string theorists,' who create mathematical constructs and hope they match the data, and ‘phenomenologists,' like me, who prefer to mix studying models based on data with suggesting goals to experimenters." (At p. 4)
Both theory and evidence from experiments are needed to add to our understanding of that "reality" out there, unless we're counting on string theory "aha"s. The Standard Theory or Standard Model "is a framework that unifies the new knowledge of recent decades with what has been learned about the physical world over past centuries, the achievements of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Heisenberg, and many more. The combination of experiment and the Standard Theory is what allows us to conclude that the quarks and electrons are the basic constituents of nature." (At pp. 10–11)
So where do the neutrinos come in? Well, the Standard Theory describes matter particles as quarks and leptons. "There are six flavors (yes, this choice of names is based on an analogy with ice cream) of leptons." Three of the six flavors are neutrinos, and the Standard Theory describes the ways in which these neutrinos interact. A clear line is drawn between the lepton families. The electrons occur in the atoms we are made of. The muon and the tau [Each of the three - electron, muon, and tau - is associated with a neutrino of the same name.] have very short lifetimes and are only produced at accelerators and by cosmic rays."
It is the neutrinos, the existence of whose mass has just been ascertained by the Super-K experiments. Want to know more of this exciting story? Visit the sites. Ask physicists. Read Kane's book. Visit your local library for Kane's and other explanations of the "reality" that we are, and in which we live. Donna Carthright, you owe me time. Turn this into a story your 8 year-old can understand. Anyone, even an 8 year-old who can understand the complexities of learning about "reality" is unlikely to privilege the limited subjectivity of personal experience. So that is where discourse must begin.
Yes, we have no neutrinos. But that's just because they squiggled from muons to taus. It's OK. They're all in the same family of leptons.
President Clinton's Speech at MIT Graduation
How Do We Learn to Speak of Validity Claims For and To Each Other? Added June 13, 1998.
In Memoriam: A Child is Dead For Want of a Way to Make His Validity Claim Heard Added June 13, 1998.
July 1 Update: Camp Remains Open
Added July 1, 1998.
On Evaluating Authority from Many Validity Claims:
Neutrinos Have Mass Added on June 7, 1998
The Neutrino Site at CSUDH Try it. Added on June 18, 1998
Yes, We Have No Neutrinos - A Text Created as Discourse, with John G. Learned, Professor of Physics, University of Hawaii.
Added on June 7, 1998.
President Clinton's Speech at MIT Graduation and the Crises in Funding Fundamental Research: A Text Created over the Internet by Dr. Ganezer and Prof. Jordan A. Goodman, University of Maryland, Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Added on June 8, 1998. President Clinton's Full Speech
I Think I Learned Something
Forgiveness and Good Faith
Text development begun on February12, 1998.
"'Forgiving doesn't mean risk your life.' This is the headline in a recent column written by Andrew M. Greeley for Religious News Service. Greeley's focus is domestic violence, more specifically the dangers of Christians telling women that they ought always to forgive their abusers." (at p. 3 in Jones)
Jones argues that Greeley suggests that abusers "are not in full control of [their] own actions." (p. 5) But that, says Jones, deprives us all of a deeper understanding of "Christian forgiveness [that] might provide a more radical critique of situations of abuse and a more radical hope for the future." Jones says that the purpose of forgiveness is not just absolution, but the restoration of that which has been broken in the community, our sense of trust of one another, our sense of family and belonging. And Jones believes that we need to look at "particular sins, specific instances of brokenness." Jones is a Christian theologian, but one who has done an excellent job of helping me think about forgiveness. We would welcome suggestions from our readers about other philosophers, sociologists, theologians, historians, literary critics who have ideas to offer us on this topic.
Jeanne.
Jeanne.
Forgiveness and Serious Study
Text development begun on February12, 1998.
Jeanne your validity claims.
On Evaluating Authority from Many Validity Claims
Neutrinos Have Mass
Jeanne your reactions.
Yes, We Have No Neutrinos - A Text Created as Discourse
Department of Physics
University of Hawaii
In the tradition of creating texts in mid-discourse, we present this text of e-mails on the topic of neutrino funding. Over the weekend the New York Times reported that Japan was proposing to severely cut the funding for Super-Kamiokande facility. This week also Congress has suggested major cuts to wiring schools and librairies across the country for the Internet. Discourse depends upon the strength of our citizens' foundations in critical thought. Pure research and access to data are essential to the establishment and maintenance of legitimacy.
Share with us our task in creatiing discourse, that we shall remain always free. The following were posted on June 8, 1998:
On Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:14:28, Ken Ganezer wrote to Jeanne Curran:
"Apparently President Clinton included Super-Kamiokande in remarks he made at the MIT graduation last Friday. Here is a transcript of the relevant portion of Clinton's speech collected by a colleague of mine, Prof. Jordan Goodman of the University of Maryland Department of Physics and Astronomy. Unfortunately President Clinton acknowledged the Department of Energy but not the National Science Foundation which is our major source of funding. Here is the message Prof. Goodman sent to me, followed by Clinton's MIT remarks."
Prof. Goodman's comment:
"Some of you may have missed President Clinton's remarks to the MIT graduates the other day. I give a small section below:"
"This discovery was made, in Japan, yes, but it had the support of the investment of the U.S. Department of Energy. This discovery calls into question the decision made in Washington a couple of years ago to disband the super-conducting supercollider, and it reaffirms the importance of the work now being done at the Fermi National Acceleration Facility in Illinois."
Prof. Goodman added that the the full text is available as a White House Press release.
Dear Habermas wishes to thank the many physicists who have helped us understand the importance of the Super-Kamiokande announcements of the discoveries of neutrino mass. Their help in guiding us to understand, and our help in creating discourse on the importance of their work are what constitute the Habermasian discourse we seek to create on this site.
Autism || Choosing A Major || Expressive Codes || Codes of Silence || Claims We'd Rather Not Hear
We all have validity claims. Most of us try to express them. But generally no one listens. This section includes stories and sources to help us understand how often we fail to hear the validity claims of others and how we can try to listen.
THIS IS A TEXT IN PROGRESS. your stories and thoughts.
We generally think of those who are autistic that they cannot communicate. In this section we will review some of the stories of Donna Williams, an autistic woman, who is also the author of Nobody Nowhere and Somebody Somewhere. Her work does highlight validity claims that she, as an autistic child, and as an adult, would make. Our analysis will focus on ways we can imagine that would have helped her explain those validity claims as she struggled to do so in childhood and beyond.
Reference: Somebody Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism, Time Books, New York, 1994. ISBN: 0-8129-2287-5.
Coming Soon - Pat Acone's article on how to adapt a major to your needs instead of letting the major force you into its formalities.
Coming Soon - Excerpts and Discussion from Moving Violations. This is a wonderfully readable account of the adventures of a 19 year old's learning to live fully from a wheelchair. The validity claims of the disabled make more much sense when we can see their perspective through this well told tale. Good insights on how each group builds codes to which outsiders do not have access, and, yet, on which they are judged.
This section will deal with Freire's codes of silence, with Gilligan's In a Different Voice, and with Women's Ways of Knowing.
This section came to mind as I read James Atlas' review of Will This Do?, by Auberon Waugh, journalist son of Evelyn Waugh. (The New Yorker, June 15, 1998, p.74.) Evelyn Waugh wrote of his son, Auberon, "Bron is clumsy and dishevelled, sly, without intellectual, aesthetic or spiritual interest." Auberon was "a mere seven years old" at the time! As we approach, particularly for our Children's Site, the barriers encountered by children in expressing their validity claims, we can be sure that Auberon's story is relevant.
Auberon Waugh, probably to no one's great surprise, tuns out to be, like his father, a curmudgeon. James Atlas notes that "many American readers inoculated against wrong thinking by the p.c. fanaticism that has long dominated our literary and intellectual discourse, will wince . . .[at Auberon Waugh's] animadversions against whatever or whoever strikes him as "guilty of officiousness. . . . The real enemies of society, in Waugh's estimate, are the anhedonic . . ."
Waugh regards "vituperation . . . [as] a tool [which] . . .redresses some ofthe forces of deference which bolster the conceith of the secong-rate; it also prevents the first rate from going mad with conceit." "Hear, hear," comments James Atlas.
This review of Waugh's Will This Do?, Carroll and Graf, raises numerous issues of good faith in the hearing of validity claims. What role does "political correctness" (p.c.) play in our less formal discourse. Atlas says that "p.c.fanaticism" pervades our intellectual discourse. That's not the same as public discourse when we've come to the table to undertake communicative action. But our cultural critics, our journalists, our scholars, our intellectuals, and the boundaries we place on their discourse with each other and with us, may well affect our good faith. This suggests that the study of humor, the concern for catharsis, and just plain kicking back and talking with a little vituperation thrown in for spice, must be considered in our more sober discussion of good faith. Release of tension is a factor we dare not ignore. According to Atlas, Waugh's credo was "The more one annoys them the better." Perhaps we need to think on that and its import for our discourse.
THIS IS A TEXT IN PROGRESS. your stories and thoughts.
On Saturday, June 13, 1998, Julie Cart, of the Los Angeles Times exposed the tragic death of 16-year-old Nicholaus Contreras in "A Puzzling Death at Boys Ranch." (At p. 1). Nick was a troubled youth who had not adjusted well to his father's death in a drive-by shooting three years ago. California, whose policy is to keep only the worst offenders in the California Youth Authority, sent him to an Arizona Boys' Ranch, which costs the state far less than the CYA. There he became ill, but was unable to convince the camp guards that he was not "faking it." After two weeks of the continued imposition of strenuous physical therapy, despite constant vomiting and complaint of illness, Nick died.
Cart reports that an autopsy revealed "2 1/2 quarts of pus in the lining of his chest, causing his left lung to partially collapse. . . 71 cuts and bruises on his body . . . strep and staph infections, pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. A pathologist said that a massive infection had been incubating for some time and that Nick must have been visibly ill for weeks."
Cart ends the article that covers nearly two entire pages of the main section of the paper:
Det. Downing: Something was wrong with him the last two weeks of his life.
Torres: I disagree with that, Det. Downing. [It was] his ruse to [get] out of the program, I don't feel [it] had anything to do with his health. I looked at it as his way to get out of the program. . . . His way of lying and making up, you know, a fictitious story.
Downing: Obviously there was a problem. He died.
Torres: Yes."
If ever the faculty on this site searched for a clear example of the privileging of subjectivity, we have found it in that last exchange. What could we have taught young Nick that might have helped him break through the bad faith, helped make himself heard in some way other than with his last words, when he was told to get up from the floor and engage in more physical exercise? He said simply, "No." And then he died.
What could we say to the counselors, the guards, the adults in charge of this deathly ill young man that might have made them hear them in good faith?
On July 1, 1998, on p. A11 of the Los Angeles Times, journalist Julie Cart reported that the "Arizona Department of Economic Security . . . would temporarily extend the operating license ofthe Arizona Boys Ranch pending the completion" of the March 2 death of Nicholas Contreraz.
I went on the LA Times site to see if there were any ready sources offered for those of you who wish to pursue this dreadfully painful issue. There were not. But YAHOO yielded some quick references to the California Youth Authority home page, bibliography, and related sites.
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