Laura, thank you for getting us started. I'll chime in by way of offering a few passages that inspired me to wonder about this question in the first place.
Based on class discussion today, I think we see Wollstonecraft's principal claim as the following: women's education heightens moral agency (257). Equalizing rank and educating male and female students together will provide fewer opportunities for "rancorous striving" and lead to a culture of modesty rather than of sexual distinction (238).
How can we have one without the other (cultural modesty without sexual distinction)? Here is how she seems to argue for this:
--she appeals principally for the education of middle-class women (as opposed to gentleladies) (xxxiii)
--women need this right so as to help lift themselves and each other out of poverty, which is the real source of societal degradation (207)
--without coercion, sexes will naturally fall into their places (xxix)
--"the sympathies of our nature are strengthened by pondering cogitations, and deadened by thoughtless use" (248)
--private virtue can work towards a common center of public happiness (204)
--reason helps us to avoid tyranny, which undermines civility and morality (xxviii)
--who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him of the gift of reason? (xxviii)
--excluding one-half of the human race from all governmental participation is perplexing and illogical (xxvii)
--elegance is inferior to virtue (xxxiv)
--we say masculine women are unnatural, but where are we to actually find a woman who is too masculine? (xxxiii)
(Jon, does any of this line up with Wollstonecraft's appropriation of Blair's "masculine style" in Allen's article?)
Could we say that for Wollstonecraft, reason is meant to accommodate nature? What could be her noetic field?
-Tarez
22 October 2009
On Wollstonecraft - Continuation from Class
A few thoughts: I had difficulty plugging her in to either of these, based on Berlin's descriptions of the two. In some sense, however, I see Wollstonecraft in keeping with a form of Scottish Common Sense Realism, given her explicit emphasis on using reasoned arguments supported by her own knowledge. Berlin explains that, for Common Sense Realists, "The world of sense data exists independently of us and can be apprehended by the use of our sense and our faculties. Reliance on the observations of others, especially those from the past, leads to distortion" (6). As the last bit of class discussion brought to the fore, Wollstonecraft does not rely heavily on earlier texts to bolster her call for the education of women - we would likely not go so far as to say she recalls "traditional wisdom" (7) even as she writes with clear attention to the social order and an audience of educated men. She relies on her own observations re: the world and the ways in which society operates and seems to suggest that this kind of access to the truth of things can be available to all.
13 October 2009
Carina and Jeff's Post (In Reduced Form)
Sorry this is a little late, it's been a hectic weekend/beginning of the week:
- Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable (872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865).
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genius,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
ALEX concordance results: Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
Language: 114 hits “The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
Reason: 84 hits Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language. “
Perception: 20 hits “The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 hits
- Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable (872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865).
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genius,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
ALEX concordance results: Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
Language: 114 hits “The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
Reason: 84 hits Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language. “
Perception: 20 hits “The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 hits
09 October 2009
Chris and Jon
(Sorry, I originally had this posted in the comments section)
Vico, Question no. 2:Vico does not seem to believe that we can go to language to find cultural and sociological theories. In his mind, these are cannot be contained within reason. He argues that "young men, because of their training, which is focused on these studies, are unable to engage in the life of the community, to conduct themselves with sufficient wisdom and prudence; nor can they infuse speech with a familiarity with human psychology or permeate their utterances with passion" (871). This suggests that language is limited. He suggests, in saying they cannot "permeate their utterances with passion," that language alone is not capable of representing truths. Instead, truths come from the people; truths are not established by the language of the rhetor, but rather adopted to the audience.
Vico seems to feel that language does not create truths, but adapts itself to truth. "He argues that it is "impossible to assess human affairs by the inflexible standard of abstract right; we must rather gauge them by the pliant Lesbic rule, which does not conform bodies to itself, but adjusts itself to their contours" (871). Thus sign systems are abitrary in the sense that they can never be stable of fixed; sign systems must be adapted to different means.
In a respect, Vico does see eloquence and rhetoric as a threat to probability and inquiry. He claims that "eloquence does not address itself to the rational part of our nature, but almost entirely to our passions" (873). But unlike Bacon, I don't believe that this a bad thing, for language alone cannot completely affect persausion, as the above discussion shows.
[Jon Booth to continue this discourse]
Locke, Language is imperfect:
Learning (29)
Perception (20)
Sensation (26)
"There were philosophers who had LEARNING and subtility enough to prove. . . that White was Black."
Here Locke suggests that learning can act to manipulate language. Language is thus imperfect in the sense that learning allows it to be used to distort the truth.
"We may define the term whiteness as the power of exciting in us the sensation of white. We cannot define the name of the simple feeling itself."
Language has the power to signify a sensation, but it is powerless to truly represent that feeling. What we feel and what we use to express are, in this respect, arbitrary and futile. Language is imperfect in that true feelings and sensations cannot be captured in language. As he says in Chapter IX, "sounds have no natural connection with our ideas, but have all their signfication from the abitrary imposition of men."
Learning (29)
Perception (20)
Sensation (26)
"There were philosophers who had LEARNING and subtility enough to prove. . . that White was Black."
Here Locke suggests that learning can act to manipulate language. Language is thus imperfect in the sense that learning allows it to be used to distort the truth.
"We may define the term whiteness as the power of exciting in us the sensation of white. We cannot define the name of the simple feeling itself."
Language has the power to signify a sensation, but it is powerless to truly represent that feeling. What we feel and what we use to express are, in this respect, arbitrary and futile. Language is imperfect in that true feelings and sensations cannot be captured in language. As he says in Chapter IX, "sounds have no natural connection with our ideas, but have all their signfication from the abitrary imposition of men."
08 October 2009
Carina and Jeff's Post
-Sign systems are arbitrary. Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable(872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865). Vico proposes that a speaker should always give their words “the appearance of truth” (873); the implication is that words resemble truth, but are not in an of themselves truth.
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genuis,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874). Conversely, Bacon was deeply concerned with the way that language and oratory warped truth and reason (737).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities as opposed to concrete Truths, common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. For Vico, ingenuity is based in applying the ars topica to argument (869). Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action. Vico laments academic focus on the sciences to the exclusion of a study of ethics (871), and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. He writes that, while physical phenomena are unambiguous, human nature is dificult to determine and deal with, due to free will and human variability (871). Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
-Vico believes that the rhetor is a scientist. The rhetor can approach any topic by imposing the appropriate topos upon it (869), whereas Bacon posits that a rhetor can apply the topoi to oratory. He acknowledges that the topoi can be used as a point of departure for a more creative approach (740).
ALEX concordance results:
Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
All of these hits were either, in a few cases, from introductory material. Most of them were notes directing towards JS Mill or the Port Royal Logic. “Logic” does not seem to be Locke’s chosen term; he demonstrably prefers “reason.”
Language: 114 hits
“The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
“But Men, in making their general Ideas, seeing more the convenience of Language and quick dispatch, by short and comprehensive Signs, than the true and precise Nature of Things, as they exist, have, in the framing their abstract Ideas, chiefly pursued that end, which was to be furnished with store of general, and variously comprehensive Names.”
Reason: 84 hits
Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language.
“But if that particular Being be to be counted of the Sort Man, and to have the Name Man given it, then Reason is essential to it, supposing Reason to be a part of the complex Idea, the Name Man stands for : as it is essential to this thing I write on to contain Words, if I will give it the Name Treatise, and rank it under that Species. So that essential, and not essential, relate only to our abstract Ideas, and the Names annexed to them...”
“There are Creatures in the World that have Shapes like ours, but are hairy, and Our abstract want Language, and Reason.”
Perception: 20 hits
“…yet the Idea of the cause of Light, if we had it ever so exact, would no more give us the Idea of Light it self, as it is such a particular Perception in us, than the Idea of the Figure and Motion of a sharp piece of Steel, would give us the Idea of that Pain which it is able to cause in us. For the cause of any Sensation, and the Sensation it self, in all the Simple Ideas of one Sense, are two Ideas ; and two Ideas so different, and distant one from another, that, no two can be more so.”
“The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 Hits
“…to give Names, that might make known to others any Operations they felt in themselves, or any other Ideas, that came not under their Senses, they were fain to borrow Words from ordinary known Ideas of Sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those Operations they experi-mented in themselves…all their other Ideas ; since they could consist of nothing, but either of outward sensible Perceptions, or of the inward Operations of their Minds about them ;
Response--Jerrell and Mary (edited)
Vico, Question 2: Vico’s importance as a rhetorical player
Vico separates knowledge into two categories: Scientific, or “exact” knowledge, which is gained through observation, and “probable” knowledge, which is carried through words.
Vico argues that the differences in rhetorical knowledge of respective languages is purely stylistic, and as such it would not be a threat to the distortion of truth (which is “probable” or “rhetorical” truth here) as much as it is an opportunity to understand how speakers of different languages may be appealed to. “While we Italians praise our orators for fluency, lucidity, and eloquence, the French praise theirs for reasoning truly” (874).
He also differs from Bacon in his theory of the relation of language to truth. Whereas Bacon claims that communication would be possible without language (through gestures), Vico says that language is indispensable for the spread of some types of knowledge—especially those that deal with “human nature” (742, 871).
The primary concern of Vico indeed seems to be understanding how language relates to the formation of knowledge, the primary goal of his work is an examination of the way his contemporaries had began to view rhetorical knowledge as insufficient in the age of hard truth and exact knowledge.
Locke, Question 2: What are the shortcomings of language?
Language (114 hits), Rhetoric (2 hits), Logic (31), Education (5), Perception (20)
Language is imperfect because ideas conveyed through language are entirely dependent on the experience of individuals. Hence, different people will define a word differently.
“I shall imagine I have done some Service to Truth, Peace, and Learning, if, by an enlargement on this Subject, I can make Men reflect on their own Use of Language ; and give them Reason to suspect, that since it is frequent for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very good and approved Words in their Mouths, and Writings, with very un-certain, little, or no Signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined by others.” (Chapter 4—“Of the Names of Substances)
The imperfection of language can be overcome to some degree through the process of education. He only specifically refers to the idea once, but he makes a case for those who are educated to use language may be able to compensate for its arbitrariness.
“For we see, that other well- meaning and wise Men, whose Education and Parts had not acquir'd that acnteness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another ; and in its plain use, make a benefit of Language.”
Vico separates knowledge into two categories: Scientific, or “exact” knowledge, which is gained through observation, and “probable” knowledge, which is carried through words.
Vico argues that the differences in rhetorical knowledge of respective languages is purely stylistic, and as such it would not be a threat to the distortion of truth (which is “probable” or “rhetorical” truth here) as much as it is an opportunity to understand how speakers of different languages may be appealed to. “While we Italians praise our orators for fluency, lucidity, and eloquence, the French praise theirs for reasoning truly” (874).
He also differs from Bacon in his theory of the relation of language to truth. Whereas Bacon claims that communication would be possible without language (through gestures), Vico says that language is indispensable for the spread of some types of knowledge—especially those that deal with “human nature” (742, 871).
The primary concern of Vico indeed seems to be understanding how language relates to the formation of knowledge, the primary goal of his work is an examination of the way his contemporaries had began to view rhetorical knowledge as insufficient in the age of hard truth and exact knowledge.
Locke, Question 2: What are the shortcomings of language?
Language (114 hits), Rhetoric (2 hits), Logic (31), Education (5), Perception (20)
Language is imperfect because ideas conveyed through language are entirely dependent on the experience of individuals. Hence, different people will define a word differently.
“I shall imagine I have done some Service to Truth, Peace, and Learning, if, by an enlargement on this Subject, I can make Men reflect on their own Use of Language ; and give them Reason to suspect, that since it is frequent for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very good and approved Words in their Mouths, and Writings, with very un-certain, little, or no Signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined by others.” (Chapter 4—“Of the Names of Substances)
The imperfection of language can be overcome to some degree through the process of education. He only specifically refers to the idea once, but he makes a case for those who are educated to use language may be able to compensate for its arbitrariness.
“For we see, that other well- meaning and wise Men, whose Education and Parts had not acquir'd that acnteness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another ; and in its plain use, make a benefit of Language.”
Limitations/Possibilities of Language
Part I
Vico believes that there is an original system of universal truths, but in nature we have access to those thruths through language which at times could be unstable and imperfect (872). For Vico, the mind arises with knowledge/language since one should cultivate common sense (874 and 868) and train one’s memory and imagination to reach “eternal truths [that] stand above nature” (872). According to him, language serves us to uncover “common sense” and to provide a link between rhetor and audience, thus establishing communication through shared cultural and sociological issues.Vico has as his starting point the uncovering of TRUTH; yet, he situates this quest in the context of sociological “common sense” where the communication between speaker and listeners is “of the essence” (869).
Bacon seems to argue that Rhetoric links imagination and Reason, which facilitates access to reality through “the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe” (745). More so than Vico, he sees Mind and Language in a dialectical relationship; “Men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding.” (Novum Organum 746) For him, language follows the mind but it also has the power to affect and distort Reason, thus creating false Idols. These false Idols distort our comprehension of reality; therefore, our task would be to untangle them.
Part II
“I cannot but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation” (827)
“To conclude this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of language. The ends of language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three: First, to make known one man’s thoughts or ideas to another; Secondly, to do it with as much ease and quickness as possible; and, Thridly, thereby to convey the knowledge of things: language is either abused or deficient, when it fails of any of these three.” (825)
Perception – 20 , Writing – 5, Language – 114, Passion – 4, Rhetoric -2
John Locke overtly favors clarity in language since he believes that this is the most imperfect mode for conveying knowledge. We gain knowledge of things through our perceptions; yet, when working with complex ideas, direct perceptions of things become remote and the names we use in labelling them are inherently imperfect. Rhetoric amplifies the distortion and imperfections of language, being an instrument of error and deceit.
We also tried to diagram the relationships between perception, passion, knowledge, and language and we came up with the following formulas:
Perception = mind + corporeal passion
Object/Essence àPerception àIdea
06 October 2009
Vico and Locke
WORKING TEAMS:
Lavinia and Laura
Jerrell and Mary
Chris and Jon
Carina and Jeff
DUE DATE:
end of class on Thursday 10/8
PART ONE: What's Up with Vico?
Understanding Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time
Here's where we are with Bacon: in his desire for a way to generate “new” knowledge, Bacon is helping us to differentiate between scientific inquiry and rhetorical recovery (or between discovery and remembrance), rather than between dialectic and rhetoric. Baconian invention seems to have a logical and rhetorical counterpart, where rhetorical knowledge is still somehow responsible for all four intellectual arts that Chris and Jon schematized for us.
On Vico, I provoked you mercilessly during our last class. We are trying to read On the Study Methods of Our Time as a rhetorical treatise (which it is not). We do understand that Vico is very interested in language in use, i.e., he is like an early discourse theorist. Let's see if we can figure him out. I’m offering you two ways to do this (choose only one):
1) By synthesizing the ideas represented in the passages below, write in your own words how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's.
• Language reveals the processes of reason, passion, and imagination (B/H 862).
• “[Bacon’s] vast demands so exceed the utmost extent of man’s effort that he seems to have indicated how we fall short of achieving an absolutely complete system of sciences rather than how we may remedy our cultural gaps” (865).
• “As for the aim, it should circulate, like a blood-stream, through the entire body of the learning process” (866).
• “Some of the new instruments of science are, themselves, sciences; others are arts; still others, products of either art or nature” (866).
• “I may add that in the art of oratory the relationship between speaker and listeners is of the essence” (869).
• “[W]hereas truth is one, probabilities are many, and falsehoods numberless. Each procedure, then, has its defects. … To avoid both defects, I think, young men should be taught the totality of sciences and arts, and their intellectual powers should be developed to the full; …” (870).
• “Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence” (871).
• “What is eloquence, in effect, but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of mankind?” (877).
2) By exercising your right to (multiple) choice, discuss how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's based on the combination of choices you make below.
Does Vico think that:
• sign systems are arbitrary or universal?
• the mind precedes language or arises with language?
• we go to language to discover “real” cultural and sociological theories about a nation or to discover ways that truths are distorted?
• rhetoric is potentially a threat to probability and a harm to inquiry, or a help to probability and a guide to inquiry?
• ingenuity is seen in metaphor or in imagination?
• we should be more concerned with training youth for civic action or with the ways in which knowledge becomes incorporated into social institutions?
• the poet is a scientist or a creationist?
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
PART TWO: ALEX Concordance Search
Language as a Vehicle for Understanding in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We are going to use the concordance in ALEX to explore terms and post results.
GOAL QUESTIONS:
1) What are the relations of ideas and langage?
2) How is language imperfect?
3) How does knowledge relate to ideas and language?
4) What are ideas? And how are they reached?
Preliminary steps
Select one of the "goal" questions above.
Link to the concordance for Locke's Essay.
Note the placement of the search bar, "go" button, and "view phrase in context" button. Thankfully, we are linking to the old platform so all of these tools are located near one another.
Using the search bar and "go" button, search the ALEX concordance of Essay for five of the terms below:
Virtue, civility, rhetoric, grammar, logic, history
Perception, learning, writing, language, philosophy
Science, reason, sensation, passion, education
Note the number of “hits" you get for each of your terms and comment on anything that strikes you. Be sure to “view phrase in context" as you begin to look for patterns or make broader realizations about how (often) your whole set of five terms are used in Locke’s treatise. Feel free to search and draw conclusions based on individual terms, but aim for a more vital realization by considering the whole set.
Find two or three sections in Locke’s treatise that (based on the results of your concordance search) speak to your goal question above, and post the references to those sections along with some ideas you have about what Locke was after in the Essay (in relation to your question).
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
Lavinia and Laura
Jerrell and Mary
Chris and Jon
Carina and Jeff
DUE DATE:
end of class on Thursday 10/8
PART ONE: What's Up with Vico?
Understanding Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time
Here's where we are with Bacon: in his desire for a way to generate “new” knowledge, Bacon is helping us to differentiate between scientific inquiry and rhetorical recovery (or between discovery and remembrance), rather than between dialectic and rhetoric. Baconian invention seems to have a logical and rhetorical counterpart, where rhetorical knowledge is still somehow responsible for all four intellectual arts that Chris and Jon schematized for us.
On Vico, I provoked you mercilessly during our last class. We are trying to read On the Study Methods of Our Time as a rhetorical treatise (which it is not). We do understand that Vico is very interested in language in use, i.e., he is like an early discourse theorist. Let's see if we can figure him out. I’m offering you two ways to do this (choose only one):
1) By synthesizing the ideas represented in the passages below, write in your own words how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's.
• Language reveals the processes of reason, passion, and imagination (B/H 862).
• “[Bacon’s] vast demands so exceed the utmost extent of man’s effort that he seems to have indicated how we fall short of achieving an absolutely complete system of sciences rather than how we may remedy our cultural gaps” (865).
• “As for the aim, it should circulate, like a blood-stream, through the entire body of the learning process” (866).
• “Some of the new instruments of science are, themselves, sciences; others are arts; still others, products of either art or nature” (866).
• “I may add that in the art of oratory the relationship between speaker and listeners is of the essence” (869).
• “[W]hereas truth is one, probabilities are many, and falsehoods numberless. Each procedure, then, has its defects. … To avoid both defects, I think, young men should be taught the totality of sciences and arts, and their intellectual powers should be developed to the full; …” (870).
• “Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence” (871).
• “What is eloquence, in effect, but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of mankind?” (877).
2) By exercising your right to (multiple) choice, discuss how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's based on the combination of choices you make below.
Does Vico think that:
• sign systems are arbitrary or universal?
• the mind precedes language or arises with language?
• we go to language to discover “real” cultural and sociological theories about a nation or to discover ways that truths are distorted?
• rhetoric is potentially a threat to probability and a harm to inquiry, or a help to probability and a guide to inquiry?
• ingenuity is seen in metaphor or in imagination?
• we should be more concerned with training youth for civic action or with the ways in which knowledge becomes incorporated into social institutions?
• the poet is a scientist or a creationist?
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
PART TWO: ALEX Concordance Search
Language as a Vehicle for Understanding in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We are going to use the concordance in ALEX to explore terms and post results.
GOAL QUESTIONS:
1) What are the relations of ideas and langage?
2) How is language imperfect?
3) How does knowledge relate to ideas and language?
4) What are ideas? And how are they reached?
Preliminary steps
Select one of the "goal" questions above.
Link to the concordance for Locke's Essay.
Note the placement of the search bar, "go" button, and "view phrase in context" button. Thankfully, we are linking to the old platform so all of these tools are located near one another.
Using the search bar and "go" button, search the ALEX concordance of Essay for five of the terms below:
Virtue, civility, rhetoric, grammar, logic, history
Perception, learning, writing, language, philosophy
Science, reason, sensation, passion, education
Note the number of “hits" you get for each of your terms and comment on anything that strikes you. Be sure to “view phrase in context" as you begin to look for patterns or make broader realizations about how (often) your whole set of five terms are used in Locke’s treatise. Feel free to search and draw conclusions based on individual terms, but aim for a more vital realization by considering the whole set.
Find two or three sections in Locke’s treatise that (based on the results of your concordance search) speak to your goal question above, and post the references to those sections along with some ideas you have about what Locke was after in the Essay (in relation to your question).
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
01 October 2009
Chris' mini-trace and synthesis
[this is from Chris]
Vives, Ignorance (not knowledge) Fostered Evil:
Vives argues that it is the experience of many people that they fall into the same behavior to which they have been accustomed without their being aware of it, and although at times they struggle against them and try to control them, they slip out and burst forth against their will (56). This is a central argument for Vives, as it constitutes why learning is necessary to combat evil. It is their not being aware of it that leads to evil. Vives consequently argues that women should be edified by chaste tales (56). His idea is thus that learning (a very distinct and proper type of learning) has the double effect of warding off ignorance and consequently evil.
Even Vives' recommendation of the art of cooking follows this logic. He suggests that she will learn the art of cooking, not the vulgar kind associated with low-class eating houses that serve up immoderate amounts of food to great numbers, nor that which caters to gluttony, but a sensible, refined, temperate, and frugal art (64). While this does not directly address evil, the connotations are evident in language of opposition (low-class, immoderate, gluttony against sensible, refined, temperate and frugal. In positing cooking as something learned as an art, Vives suggests that ignorance in this area associates one with evil. This is an example of the broader logic of ignorance and evil.
Of course, for Vives learning must be of a very specific kind. He states that learned women are suspect to many, as if the mental ability acquired by learning increased their natural wickedness and as if men should not also be suspect for the same reason if subtle learning is added to a perverse mind. The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better (64). Vives, instead of seeing learning in women as dangerous argues that the opposite is the case; Vives' learning has a constructive quality, it is used to rid one of vice.
The main concern with Vives' argument is that, for him, learning must only be of a certain kind--it must be sober and chaste. If this is the case, is it fair to assert that his recommendation of limited learning is still a form of ignorance? Vives seems to believe that this type of learning will allow one to recognize evil and false learning. He argues that the study of literature... lifts the mind to the contemplation of beautiful things and rids it of lowly thoughts; and if any such thoughts creep into the mind, fortified by precepts and counsels of good living, either dispels them immediately or does not lend an ear to vile and base things (70). In this statement Vives suggests that once one has the right base of learning, they are capable only of good and chaste thoughts.
But were one ignorant of right and wrong (had they not knowledge) they would not be subject to vices such as reading literature of amorous reveries (74). Learning and knowledge, for women as in men, acts as a safeguard rather than a corrupting factor.
-cjt
Vives, Ignorance (not knowledge) Fostered Evil:
Vives argues that it is the experience of many people that they fall into the same behavior to which they have been accustomed without their being aware of it, and although at times they struggle against them and try to control them, they slip out and burst forth against their will (56). This is a central argument for Vives, as it constitutes why learning is necessary to combat evil. It is their not being aware of it that leads to evil. Vives consequently argues that women should be edified by chaste tales (56). His idea is thus that learning (a very distinct and proper type of learning) has the double effect of warding off ignorance and consequently evil.
Even Vives' recommendation of the art of cooking follows this logic. He suggests that she will learn the art of cooking, not the vulgar kind associated with low-class eating houses that serve up immoderate amounts of food to great numbers, nor that which caters to gluttony, but a sensible, refined, temperate, and frugal art (64). While this does not directly address evil, the connotations are evident in language of opposition (low-class, immoderate, gluttony against sensible, refined, temperate and frugal. In positing cooking as something learned as an art, Vives suggests that ignorance in this area associates one with evil. This is an example of the broader logic of ignorance and evil.
Of course, for Vives learning must be of a very specific kind. He states that learned women are suspect to many, as if the mental ability acquired by learning increased their natural wickedness and as if men should not also be suspect for the same reason if subtle learning is added to a perverse mind. The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better (64). Vives, instead of seeing learning in women as dangerous argues that the opposite is the case; Vives' learning has a constructive quality, it is used to rid one of vice.
The main concern with Vives' argument is that, for him, learning must only be of a certain kind--it must be sober and chaste. If this is the case, is it fair to assert that his recommendation of limited learning is still a form of ignorance? Vives seems to believe that this type of learning will allow one to recognize evil and false learning. He argues that the study of literature... lifts the mind to the contemplation of beautiful things and rids it of lowly thoughts; and if any such thoughts creep into the mind, fortified by precepts and counsels of good living, either dispels them immediately or does not lend an ear to vile and base things (70). In this statement Vives suggests that once one has the right base of learning, they are capable only of good and chaste thoughts.
But were one ignorant of right and wrong (had they not knowledge) they would not be subject to vices such as reading literature of amorous reveries (74). Learning and knowledge, for women as in men, acts as a safeguard rather than a corrupting factor.
-cjt
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