From: JCROSS@OREGON.BITNET (James Crosswhite)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Still defending reason
Date: 17 Nov 92 16:30:04 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
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In response to Sharon Crowley,
I don't think I said that reason was "neutral." I think I
said that there is an ideal of reason which includes a
concept of fairness, equality, justice. I don't even know
what "neutral" would mean in this context. In fact,
argumentation seems to me to carry a very specific ideology.
It privileges what can be made explicit in a claim. It
privileges questioning. Especially, it privileges agreement,
consensus--which I think is what Gary B. is pointing to when
he says that the *conclusions* of argumentation are
monological.
    And I emphatically deny that reason and emotion are
opposites (I don't even like the faculty-talk that the
dichotomy or its denial suggests.) Rather, I think that
reasoning *depends* on mood and emotion--in fact, that any
kind of awareness/activity does. I don't see how anything I
wrote commits me to a reason/emotion split or a claim that
reasoning is somehow ideology-free.
    And I would never deny that ideology can play a strong
role in what groups of people count as convincing reasons to
do or believe something. Why should I?
    I would also never deny that ideological inertia is much
stronger in influencing action than reasoning is. Violence
is stronger too. Reasoning is a very weak kind of influence;
that's part of my point.
    So where does our conflict lie here? Is it this? I don't
see why giving up traditional concepts of reason (I hereby
renounce them, the devil Descartes and all his legions)
means reducing reason to mere ideology. Rather I agree with
Genevieve Lloyd who, after unmasking the strongly gendered
concept of reason in the history of Western philosophy,
still found in the concept an aspiration for agreement and
solidarity--something worth salvaging--just what I think
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca find in the concept of
argumentation. (G. Lloyd:_The Man of Reason: "Male" and
"Female" in Western Philosophy_)
   Reasoning by way of argumentation is an attempt to purify
influence of violence, to reconcile our differences by
appealing to one another's "freedom"--i.e. our making
choices in the relative absence of constraints. It's never
absolutely successful in some complete sense. It works to
some degree or other, for some purposes or others, to the
satisfaction of some and not others. And where we make it
work, we sometimes avoid more violent ways of settling
disputes.
   I want to thank Irv P. for the help, but I have to say
"No, thanks" on distinguishing between persuasion/
argumentation on the basis of the audience/reference
distinction. For me, what counts as reference is just the
judgment of a special audience--one recognized as composed
of people with the authority to make judgments about, say,
whether there are superstrings or not.
  Jim Crosswhite  jcross@oregon.uoregon
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU