Rhetoric and Incommensurability

Incommensurability, According to dictionary.reference.com means having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison; utterly disproportionate, having no common measure, Impossible to measure or compare
Commensurable --> measurable

Plato/Stanford distinguishes value incomensurability, which is incommensurability between values that must be distinguished from the kind of incommensurability associated with Paul Feyerabend (1978, 1981, 1993) and Thomas Kuhn (1977, 1983, 1996) in epistemology and the philosophy of science. Feyerabend and Kuhn were concerned with incommensurability between rival theories or paradigms — that is, the inability to express or comprehend one conceptual scheme, such as Aristotelian physics, in terms of another, such as Newtonian physics.

In contrast, "contemporary inquiry into value incommensurability concerns comparisons among abstract values (such as liberty or equality) or particular bearers of value (such as a certain institution or its effects on liberty or equality). The term “bearer of value” is to be understood broadly. Bearers of value can be objects of potential choice (such as a career) or states of affairs that cannot be chosen (such as a beautiful sunset). Such bearers of value are valuable in virtue of the abstract value or values they instantiate or display (so, for example, an institution might be valuable in virtue of the liberty or equality that it engenders or embodies)" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-incommensurable/.

According to Kuhn, epistemological different ideas are not compatible. The categories of incommensurability (p22). There are a number of types:

1. Brick-wall--stymied communication
2. Cosmic--differences in habituation
3. Semantic--clusters of meaning
4. Pragmatic--appeal to different values
5. Values and postmodernists --> pragmatic

Temporal proximity
diachronic--language as time /synchronic--language at one particular time (23).
3 ways of talking incommensurability etiology--what causes the communication breakdown.
severity--how substrantial are breakdown
population--who is affected between whom?
Among these are correlations that affect one more than the other, perhaps brick wall incommensurability (25). Two mutually impenetrable walls of communication. Total incommensurability (p27) is it trivial, banal, fictitious? lack of communication = incommensurability, e.g. humans-->dolphins
Cosmetic: seeing one thing in two different ways because of the angle.
Lingusitic relativity--language and thought are inextricably interelated (34) bottom (34).

Semantic incommensurability arises out of lingusitics complication variance in meaning (41) relative to age, region, or interest. It's OK to have meaning various. it only becomes an issue when meaning is impinged upon Locke, Pratt (perception through Whorf accounts for different (49).
Local incommensurability is confined to a small space (50)
Dialogic rhetoric (50) the role of audience (51) constrant shifting/refining of positions to accomodate listeners lexicon (53) "mastering the lexicon means acquiring the skill to recognize its appropriate application in various settings and to encounter the world in those terms (53).

Misaligned meanings
Pragmatic incommensurability concerns non-referential, non-lexical patterns of talk and practice that divide and sepate "pardigmatic disposition" (56).
Patterns of talk are wjat values argument are based on; what data informs those values

• not semantic
• not cosmic--no perceptua issues at stake
• not brickwall (61).

How meaning of incommensurability varies
Related uses of incommensurability (61)

• totalizing terminology (absolute, entire)
• perceptual (different, relative, degree)
• pragmatic term (practice, problem, values) 62

All incommensurability is value-driven
Value incommensurability (moral, political, aesthetic) 69 value pluralism and sophists (73) Socrates-->Phaedrus-->Soul constitutive role of rhetoric (73). Miller on rhetoric and diversity in communities (74).
Postmodernist incommensurability reinforces post-modernism and opacity between language and the concepts of differend (74).
Allows for differences because it rejects totalization, hates metanarratives associated with power and authority...distrusts political structures.
Meta incommensurability
Incommensurable among incommensurable (80). A realist and an instrumentalist can take opposite views of the same data and find it "commensurable in some instances and ...incommensurable in other ways (80).

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Rhetoric and
According to Khun, incommensurability can be termed in lexical notions in a manner amenable to scientific theory (80-81)
Fayerabend believed in the flexibility that allows scientific discourse to mutate; so rhetoric can ind a way around incommensurability (81). scientific theorie are incommensurable (82) that discovery has implications.
Words have the capacity to evolve with time, usgae (83) theories too with time, except there are not enough theories and incommensurability is an extreme form of ebbing (84).

Commensurable --> Measurement-->Precision--necessary for science
Undermining that quality is off-putting. ergo-different theories cannot be interchangeable; different theories=different language; distinct, unique
But theories are about terminologies not grammar (86) Whorf

Incommensurability does not obtain for trivial theories in the same domain (88). Meaning is contextual and argumentation relies on a selective approach to build context that affords one meaning while constraining another. so with context you ca bring 2 disparate theories together (89) so "two perspectives can be assimilated to the same overall framework (89). how can any two things be completely compatible? Incommensurability = misunderstanding/disagreement (92).

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Rhetoric and Remedy
Incommensurability invites non-scientists to examine how science does what it does given the disparities in themes, practices, meanings (97).
Significantly where thinkers do not perceive differences (97-98); what is rhetoric?
rhetoric offers a compromise (99) in that:

• it recognizes variance in meaning and sees theory ladenness in context and purpose
• it denies privilege to theory laden terms

Rhetoric strives for clarity, coherence, relevance
audience strives for charity, empathy, generosity, truth
Have a good attitude at all times; strive for consensual truth to achieve reciprocal suasion (101).

Persistence of incommensurability
exists where:

• Agonistic rhetoric--all or nothing stance (105)
• dialectical exchanges that drive apart (106). the remedy is in incommensurability itself (107)

Incommensurability does not rule out agreement and evaluation (117). Arguments function by phronesis (120).



Alan Gross--Kuhn's Incommensurability (179)
Gross focuses on lexicon--words ; on local semantics resulting from research not based on theory and how that affects mis/communication. Gross argues that Kuhn is using paradigm, etc metaphorically so he goes out of the way to point to ideas. To Gross, science is more about making worlds than about truths, which makes it rhetorical as it seeks to persuade in the face of meaninglessness.

Rhetoric and Incommensurability 196
Gross claims that you can have a position free of Kuhn's lense...Induction/deduction (192) Because history is purely inductive, you can arrive at incommensurability (as revealed by historical examples) because you see the lexicon in particular cases and recognize the miscommunication therein--the theories/terms were incompatible or deductively where by analogy you can argue incommensurability away.

does the existence of incommensurability put a stop to progress?
Gross says the issue of incommensurability is a problem of rhetoric and not of philosophy; certainly not of science.
Induction and lexicon are not incommensurable terms...