tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post180012296923910004..comments2023-11-03T08:02:25.369-04:00Comments on AmericanScience: A Team Blog: "The 'Nothing' of Reality"David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-69369735128495892822012-04-28T11:34:29.291-04:002012-04-28T11:34:29.291-04:00And as usual, you have largely agreed with my poin...And as usual, you have largely agreed with my point in antagonistic terms! Though it's unclear what you mean by "skepticism about common sense," let's see what Geertz has to say about it. In the actual chapter of which you've linked to an excerpt, he says: "Common sense is not what the mind cleared of cant spontaneously apprehends; it is what the mind filled with presuppositions .. concludes."<br /><br />We all know this, but how does it apply here? For one, there's a sense (!) in which we always capitalize on common sense: even by undermining it, since that sense of dislocation is one of the pleasures associated with good art and scholarship. <br /><br />For another, and this is the sense in which Dewey meant it, we should *question our common sense* in the language of common sense. Common sense is most powerful as "common sense" – as a naturalizing discourse that masks its own construction. To address the wrongs – intellectual or otherwise – committed in its name, we need to address all of those who invoke it or those to whom it is an appeal. <br /><br />Basically, let's ask who the "us" is in Lukas's last sentence: is it mostly other philosophers and science studies scholars? The choir can hear us – they're close at hand – but can anyone else? Why not?Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-22518929671027906002012-04-28T11:16:28.399-04:002012-04-28T11:16:28.399-04:00As usual, the comments hide a more interesting dis...As usual, the comments hide a more interesting discussion than the original post!<br /><br />As is also perhaps becoming usual, I'll have to throw my lot in with Lee on this one. I like your Dewey quote insofar as it appeals to my populist instincts. If pressed, however, I'd have to register my skepticism about common sense. <br /><br />What is common about common sense? Is it right just by virtue of being common? There's a great <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/teaching/coursenotes/Texts/geertzcomsense.html" rel="nofollow">article</a>, by Clifford Geertz on Common Sense as a Cultural System. <br /><br />My perhaps uncommon sense is that philosophy (and, hopefully, science studies) is most powerful precisely when it forces us to question our common sense, if not undermine it.Lukashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05686764806913124506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-966697647575997492012-04-28T10:56:45.151-04:002012-04-28T10:56:45.151-04:00Hi Lee! Krauss conducts research in the rarefied i...Hi Lee! Krauss conducts research in the rarefied idiom of theoretical physics – the "nothingness" he endorses is supposed to enable further research in that field. Still, he makes a lot of the "wonder" and "mystery" of cosmology, and his notion of "nothing" as "absence of material particles" definitely plays into that common sense wonder, if for no higher reason than to sell books. <br /><br />So, if we read the statement as a warning against unhitching our technical work from what's interesting about it, we can see it as parallel to Dewey's suggestion that ""Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men." <br /><br />Note that if we take that admonition seriously, it answers your last two questions in a way. It doesn't mean everything we do has to be geared toward, or conducted in the language of, common sense. Instead, it means that we should take common sense questions and problems seriously – maybe the most seriously – and use the tools we've developed to address them.Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-3593170899406110462012-04-28T10:31:28.963-04:002012-04-28T10:31:28.963-04:00Thanks for this, Hank. I just have a couple clarif...Thanks for this, Hank. I just have a couple clarificatory questions.<br /><br />I'm trying to get my head around what you mean when you say, "To my mind, if we re-read "the 'nothing' of reality" as "the 'nothing' of common sense," Krauss has a point that's worth the attention of those in science studies." Do you picture Krauss as endorsing a common sense picture of nothingness? Or are you saying that at least Krauss and Co. are involved in public engagement with the people's common sense, whereas perhaps some in science studies tend to focus myopically on their own scholarly navels? Or what? <br /><br />Then, a separate question arises, to the degree that we engage the public, what relationship should we take to common sense?<br /><br />OK, and finally, I'm trying to understand your conclusion: are you saying that, even if we want to engage the public, "disciplinary puzzle-solving"--say, for instance, historians being in discussion with historiography--is what produces whatever interesting things we have to communicate in a popular venue?<br /><br />I think I could be down with that.Leehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14164091550633430973noreply@blogger.com