Language and Identity

Brian Vickers: Analogy versus Identity

The occult view is exceptional, the science is the rational view
Vickers enlists Aristotle, Plato, Locke against occultism toward scientific uses of language. words are arbitrary, their meanings can be assigned; its meme rather than physical; no relationship between physical and the words they reference. He cites Cassire that language has a sensuous form to it and intellectual content. He is against the Neoplatonists--the ones, who in several traditions believe that language is not arbitrary; that it embodies physical reality. So to them language is reality.

He references Jewish mysticism in which the role of language is creative. Vickers represents a Bacon-like view of language, siding with the notion that language is separate from reality and needs to reference it clearly in order to fulfill the Royal Society's mission. He is pre-Khun; without scientific knowledge as a social construction. There is the scientific and occult mentality. The scientific totally separate language and reality and the occult is the opposite.
Metaphor is a mental gap, he thinks, that ought to be banished once truth is observed. It is a deviation of language-- from the lingusitic norm of signifier and signfied, creating nuances that do not exist (116).
Metaphors are not epistemic; they are not constitutive;
pg. 109 Metaphor versus proof. Vickers argues that language cannot incarnate the essence of things...he rejects the idea and reiterates that Paltonic-Aristotelian concept of notions intermediate between words and things. Vickers position does not align with the Jewish mystical tradition, in which view words don't incarate things; they are things. sounds are physical reality.
He takes the mimesis view that sound mimics physical things and so are a forgery. Imitation, analogy. The Jewish see language as ontology

Vickers is an empiricist. He advocates objectivity for language to distance itself from its referent in order to be true (97).

He is dismissive of the biblical concept of the word becoming flesh, of bringing things into being
The truth is language does bring things into being
Rhetoric as the advocacy of realities--the different realities and the various levels.

The idea of steps and links in Kabbalah is Neoplatonic. The way of thinking of things to connect the divine with the physical or connecting the language with the referent is Neoplatonic.

The Tree of Life
Kabbala of Isaac Luria
Worlds within worlds; the idea that reality was multi-layered. Plato wasn't positing language or God in the phycial world. The different worlds--action, formation, creation, and emanation.
God inhabits infinity so how does he create the phyical world? Through Tzimtzum also known as the contraction. something went wrong in the process of creation hence the Hisdic Jews make it their mission to restore that which was lost...restoring sparks to the vessle.
pg.32 The Hebrwe Letters is the substance of the Jewish rhetoric

Mathematics and Kabbalah
The Torah was writteb before God spoke? The written/oral Torah?
Infinity is nothingness

How the gene got its Groove

Shea argues that the gene is a figure. History comes from the gene, not just in inherited characteristic but its power to shake and generate history; Shea de-historices the gene, though she believes that genes are rhetorical figures. She looks at the way the gene functions in text rather than in human beings.

pg.68 "Fahnestock, genes are not rhetorical figures;"
Gene--Genesis: the beginning...clever
Science is all about language...the relationship between rhetoric and reality.

Metaphors in Science

Metaphors we live by: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press., 1980.
A Review

All of us speak in metaphors whether we realize it or not. In fact we live by metaphors, which have the ability to not only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but also structure our perceptions and understanding. Metaphors set up the expectations that determine what life will be for us in the future.

The power of language and metaphor to shape perception, thought an action. The politically correct debate has to do with the metaphorical properties and connotations that arise with some of these terms: secretary, janitor, etc for those who control metaphor control thought and action.

Metaphors bridge spatial gaps, e.g. Love is a red rose. There is a Burkean sense of identification that says the attributes (physical, symbolic, aesthetic) that belong to a red rose are being transferred over to the sense of love. Other examples include time as a commodity, argument as war.

Rhetoric is the advocacy of realities


Metaphor and Theory Change, Richard Boyd
Metaphors are essential to meaning making in science as in every discipline. Boyd takes a linguistic structuralist approach that metaphor is apriori to the meanings that we attach to metaphor....something embedded in thinking and in nature....a phenomenon that is not a social construct but constitutive Metaphors lead out to empirical reality; the joints of the world, the causal principles in the world. Metaphors are essential as they provide epistemic access to the world.

Richard Boyd wants to apply Black's interaction view of metaphor to what he calls `theory-constitutive metaphors' within the realm of science. Black argues that when we use metaphors what we are really doing is applying a sort of filter that describes the process of theory construction in scientific practice.

357: the role of metaphor there exist an important class of metaphors that play a role in the articulation of theories by mature sciences...a catachresis . Metaphors lead science out to reality. They show scientists where the joints of the world are.
Think about technology: blue tooth, chip, facebook,

And their concomitant sets of associated commonplaces, we are able to disambiguate terms which may definitionaly have appeared co-extensive or co-occurring. Thus, metaphors aren't simply exterior to the `real' work of science; they aren't what get us on the road to science. Rather than simply setting us on the right path metaphor as heuristic they help us cut that path when our other, more definitional, tools are of no use due to their theory constitutive aspect.

Boyd notes that, "the use of theory-constitutive metaphors encourages the discovery of new features of the primary and secondary subjects, and new understanding of theoretically relevant respects of similarity, or analogy, between them" (489). Metaphors in scientific contexts do not lose their potency, becoming tired and trite. Rather, their value goes up the more they are used in science. "Theory constitutive metaphors...become, when they are successful, the property of the entire scientific community , and variations on them are explored by other scientific authors without their interactive quality being lost" (Boyd 487). So, Boyd argues, rather than simply providing a sort of one-time insight that becomes obvious after use scientific metaphors provide us with heuristics.

A metaphors as theory constitutive is a heuristic metaphor...
Boyd talks about what he thinks metaphors can do in relation to linguistic theory and reference fixing that they are nominal--agreed upon conceptually without a direct relationship to the object being depicted. Standard notion of science that definitions are nominal...Also, that you can affix a word to an object and have a basic conception of..reality, ostention. But Boyd is an empiricist, a logical positivist who says metaphor leads to reference fixing. Pg 366 reference are "fixing ostentially rather than by verbal definitions..." Metaphor makes definitions explicit due to linguistic usage caused by yet an undiscovered structure i.e. we name things before we know where they are; we use placeholders till we find the content...so metaphors leads to undiscovered causal patterns.
Boyd is an empiricist who believes in objectivity; hence metaphors too can lead to paradigms as they can be epistemic, constitute theory

Metaphors in Science, Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn disagrees with the fundamental notion (p.418) that language is fixed outside the paradigm. For Kuhn, you are always inside the paradigm; the metaphor is another paradigmatic view. about ontology, about the world's real joint...there is no historical evidence that metaphors lead outside the paradigm. The joints of the world are unknowable, he says. Boyd thinks science is located in the language.

Rhetorical Figures in Science, Jeanne Fahnestock

Rhetoric is science is invisible, then visible...ploche is random repetition, which is formulated and disguised and hard to pick up on in scientific writing. Creating an argumentative virtue. Ploche manifests itself in the works of Darwin, etc. Pg 162 Ploche enforces the stability of the reference--where the argumentative power lies. These figures can be visualized in scientific language (p166) which demonstrate consistency.

Differentiation between ploche and polyptoton, (168) derivational changes the way a word is derived from one form to another, depending on a consistent core meaning. Polyptoton serves in nomenclature as in chemistry, biology, etc, preparing the way for acceptable lines of research

Syle and the notion of presence; style gives concepts and ideas presence. This calls for repetition of terms, parallel structure; to disassociate, you create different terminologies. Antithesis brings in opposition in the content, if that should be your purpose. aesthetics makes reality visibile? Style can invoke the unseen
Rhetorical figures epitomize argument? style contains the argument repetition epitomizes the argument...
Parellisms communicate equality; I came, I saw, I conquered...all the acts are carry the same weight, to say nothing of the rhythm. We vaue Platonic ideals but teach Isocratic concepts where language is consquential.

Asyndeton can communicate hysteria...people use figures serendipitously when they are upset.
Alliteration

Oct 21

Aristotle uses Plato's notion of dialectic to understand emotions and how they could be incited to move an orator one way or another.

Aristotle's attempt as opposed to Plato's "mathematics" to apply similarity to changing objects. Socrates not interested in mathematics but rather to see from observations coming up with proper definitions. Aristotle's Principles that govern conduct----functional matter theory: genus vs differentiae --definitions are really arguments and they are based on induction and ultimately comparison. On emotions, Aristotle indicates that emotions proceed by induction followed by deduction...
Aristotle a veteran taxonomer so his is the first rational treatment of emotion. Compared to Darwin, Aristotle's approach is different as it reflects the difference between classical scinence and Newtonian science. Gillispies observes that Aristotle perceived from experience
Induction presumes hypothesis, which is an irony of induction. The truth is we always frame things even when we presume to be professional.



How useful is Darwin as a rhetorician?
pg. 261 about why someone who is guilty avoids looking at the accuser...Darwin uses rhetoric to inscribe nature
Darwin succeeds in creating waves with his Origin because he uses every form of evidence at his disposal: he observes, argues, compares, infers and describes the results of experiments he has read about, or in many cases, personally conducted. He expounds natural selection along with ideas such as sexual selection that males in many species are burdened with showy ornaments like enormous tails because the females of their species have, by repeatedly picking the showiest males as their mates, caused them to evolve them that way (NYTimes).

Newtonian Darwin

The Epistemic Music of Rhetoric: Toward the Temporal Dimension of Affect in Reader Response and Writing

Predicated on Steven Katz belief that music is all around us. It is in the rhythm and tones of the texts we read, write, and see everyday. How can we be aurally sensitive so we can gain knowledge that the experience of the music we hear conveys? Sophism and orality. Rhetoric focuses particularly on the use of language in specific texts; on the form as much as the content of an utterance. It is not only a method for training effective communicators (rhetors); Katz examines rhetoric as a method for understanding on a theoretical as well as a practical level how humans use language (as in the language of music) to alter or shape our understanding of reality.

Visual, and logocentric? Isn't that a contradiction?
Also we rely on visually-based metaphors to shape our knowledge. So we need a set of metaphors based on aural and temporal experience as championed by the ancients sophists, Isocrates, and Cicero--early sophists as intellectuals in an oral culture as they believed in the ability of language to constitute and communicate knowledge
Plato is seen as a transitional figure to a more literate culture
Gorgias linked language with thought
Isocrates--a sophist; put writing in the service of orality through use of a style attuned to aural effects

Uses a classical rhetorical approach and an aural approach to critique Reader Response Criticism. So it is the philosophy of language, and music theory. Simultaneously, he assesses the scientific empiricism and technological rationalism that control the parameters of reading and writing theory, research, and pedagogy. In doing so, Katz examines the possibility and desirability of teaching reading and writing as "rhetorical music" to supplement the formalistic, logocentric imperatives that underlie current methods of reading and writing instruction. This book will interest not only theorists and teachers in rhetoric, composition, and literature but also scholars and teachers of oral interpretation, literature and science, a
It is said that Isocrates admitted to a lack of the vigor for public performance; how was he able to excel in orality and aural
Cicero capitalized in the Roman conception of the orator and oratory--to him style is epistemic
Eloquence is seen in the uniting of philosophy and rhetoric? form and content together conveys full knowledge -- both rational (via content) and affective (via style). Cicero in his De Oratore excels in the sophistic tradition of equating language with thought and experience while considering sensory perception of the world imprecise.

Chapter 2 documents a parallel development in literary criticism and science
Chapter 3 turns back to classical rhetoric to find precedents and models for dealing with affective response
Chapter 4 shifts to the theory and study of language as a musical experience

The postscript: examines the potential pedagogical take--how to teach epistemological uncertainty, performance, and emotion as a vehicle of meaning

The role of emotions and affectation on texts....contains expectations, etc, making knowledge acquisition more subjective than objective.
Music creates affect without have a referential aspect to it...



Techne: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/science/21wormgrunting.html?ref=science
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/science/21arch.html?ref=science

The Topics: Discovery of arguments, P. J. Corbett--Darwin, the Origin of Species

Analogy produces probable truth. Analogy argues that if two things are alike in one of two characteristics, they are probably alike in another characteristic. This argument is similar to Campbell's notion of Vera causa logic pg 363 which means in harmony with other causes already known. Vera causa treats things that are the same the same way. It does not work where there are distinctions.

For Aristotle, rhetoric concerned probable knowledge, which includes dialectic. In classifying, he was very much the scientist. But when he comes to the Topics, his social constructionism comes through.


The Topoi, Corbett makes a neo-Aristotelian stance, to result in a contemporary compilation of Aristotle's take presented randomly withing the context of an ongoing discussion.
Useful for seeing through a terministic screen the way scientists argue along with Latour, Toulmin, etc. Corbett's is a very "classical" take.
Bitzer's argument of exigence is mechanical rather than causal (side note).

Vera causa--Darwin uses causality based on observation

A versa causa argument, which means true cause, is a direct response to the .....To work, with vera causa, one has to establish the existence of a potentially causal process then demonstrate that the process is competent to explain the phenomenon of interest and that the process is inf act possible.

Darwin wanted to build the argument that would be acceptable to the audience first before making declarative statements.
Topoi in the Origin of the Species: the use of precedents..where accepted facts exist--law

Darwin's vera causa argument:
1. ability of new conditions to cause heredity variants in domestic species
2. the struggle for existence entails that just such a selective breeding exists
3. natural selection has longer to work and is more discriminating than artificial selection, so
4. the extant and extinct species could have originated as races produced by natural selection. Thus species probably did originate as varieties or races produced by natural selection.

Darwin's is a muted revolution in Biology

Darwin makes the case for the scientific method that of the hypothetico-deductive from which you deduce the truth. You use selective induction, find what you want to support the hypothesis--the myth of induction. Induction is based on analogy (Corbett, Campell)and analogy is the weakest form of argument. It is weak because it draws a probable conclusion from one form of similarity--if two things are similar, induction brings them together, classifies them, and then draws conclusion...it's circular reasoning, paralogical


Aristotle on Emotions

Rhetors need to understad the role of character and emotion in persuasion.
Aristotle's concern for rhetoric provided with the opportunity to develop a discussion on emotions. This is because judgment is the object of rhetoric and judgements vary with emotions.

Emotions are the things on account of which the ones altered differ with respect to
their judgments, and are accompanied by pleasure and pain: such are anger, pity,
fear, and all similar emotions and their contraries. (Rhetoric 1378a20-23)

Emotions are temporary states, says Aristotle, but they affect judgement. They are an example of external causality.
Logos-->Pathos-->Ethos-->

It's all about how to use emotions in rhetoric...emotions are multi-dimensional (Steve Katz).

Darwin on Emotions
According to Darwin, emotion generates emotion, which is manifested in three forms:

• certain expressions spring from habit
• certain expressions go to their natural opposite when the emotion is reversed
• emotions are a response of the nervous system

Begin by defintion

Prospectus

Common moves in research article introductions:
John Swales, Research into the structure of introductions to journal articles and its application to the teaching of academic writing.

Move 1: Announce the topic--in present tense
Move 2: summarize previous knowledge and research--literature review; support, verifying
Move 3: prepare for research by indicating a gap in previous research and/or by raising a question about previous work
Move 4: Introduce the present research by stating the purpose and/ by outlining the research
Creating a research base. Methods and results are framed in the past

Objectives and Criteria
Show own awareness of topic and audience' criteria in judging the article successful.

p45



Latour gives us the epistemology that makes us aware of practice. It assumes that knowledge is a social construction. So Latour looks at strategies of academic writing (25). The literature I site transforms the knowledge. You can identify controversial points by modality/style/structure. Who you site becomes very important...(33) Latour calls stacking use of former texts

Gross: The arrangement of the scientific paper
the scientific paper is itself an object. It's epistemological.
Gross claims that the arrangement of the scientific paper is a realization of the principles of Baconian induction. What is typification in science? What is the arrangement or the order of sections in the scientific paper. The Baconian principles record the series of steps taken ---Baconian induction "from contingency to natural necessity" ().
The order tells the story of how the findings came to be.
Induction regarded as foolproof.
The myth of causality is problematic...we don't always know why things happen...we can only infer cause most of the time. Gross references the IMRD form first conceptualized by P.D. Medawar (1964) a form which mirrors and substantiates the inductive method. The various sections are framing sections (intro and discussion) but the methods section is all induction.

Fayerabend talks about the context of discovery (what scientists do to get published. They reconceptualize the whole process to accomodate "rational reconstruction") and the context of justification (the methods, the rationale,

Look at sample IMRD: treatment of

An introduction to reasoning
Toulmin objects to science being seen as informal logic. He suggests a different way of thinking about logic in science and in other fields.
What's written is what gets tested--the falsifiability statements that Popper wrote about.
1. Claims
2. Grounds--results section
3. Warrants--prejudices, issues and perspectives. hard to find in science because they are tacit... can take the form of laws of nature, mathematical formulas, legal principles, rules of thumb, etc
Focus: how do you get from this starting pint to that destination?
4. Backing--the generalization make explicit the body of experience or knowldge necessary to support warrants...to establish trustworthiness of the ways of arguing a particular case. Solegal statutes must be validly legislated

Backing-->Warrants-->claims--rebuttals are answers to anticipated arguments to fend off attacks on assertions, methodology, etcl