All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons

All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Thanks, Herb.

I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
recognizable as humans.

Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.

At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
get a pellet.

One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
"corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
all action.)

Clarke

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> All,
>
> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>
> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
> with your response to me.
>
> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
> journalism).
>
> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
> substance?
>
> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>
> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>
> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
> the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
> epistemologically.
>
> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>
> Nonsense!
>
> Nice
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>
>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
>> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
>> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
>> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
>> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
>> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
>> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
>> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
>> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
>> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
>> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>> it hath no bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
>> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
>> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
>> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
>> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
>> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>> talking.)
>>
>>
>>
>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
>> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
>> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
>> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
>> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
>> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
>> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
>> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
>> to its literalness?
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inquisitively,
>>
>>
>>
>> Jl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>



--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646

All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Thanks, Herb.

I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
recognizable as humans.

Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.

At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
get a pellet.

One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
"corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
all action.)

Clarke

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> All,
>
> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>
> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
> with your response to me.
>
> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
> journalism).
>
> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
> substance?
>
> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>
> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>
> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
> the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
> epistemologically.
>
> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>
> Nonsense!
>
> Nice
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>
>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
>> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
>> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
>> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
>> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
>> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
>> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
>> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
>> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
>> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
>> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>> it hath no bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
>> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
>> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
>> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
>> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
>> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>> talking.)
>>
>>
>>
>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
>> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
>> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
>> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
>> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
>> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
>> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
>> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
>> to its literalness?
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inquisitively,
>>
>>
>>
>> Jl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>



--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646
Clarke,

Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you: Given
the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism, which
would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment, at
least?

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Thanks, Herb.
>
> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
> was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
> useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
> argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
> only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
> literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
> action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
> question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
> ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
> humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
> and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
> question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
> recognizable as humans.
>
> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>
> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
> get a pellet.
>
> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
> all action.)
>
> Clarke
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>
>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>> with your response to me.
>>
>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>> journalism).
>>
>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>> substance?
>>
>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>
>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>
>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>> epistemologically.
>>
>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>
>> Nonsense!
>>
>> Nice
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>
>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>
>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>>
>>> Clarke,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did
>>> you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what
>>> he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon
>>> different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which
>>> robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that
>>> robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that
>>> way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Inquisitively,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons

All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Thanks, Herb.

I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
recognizable as humans.

Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.

At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
get a pellet.

One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
"corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
all action.)

Clarke

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> All,
>
> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>
> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
> with your response to me.
>
> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
> journalism).
>
> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
> substance?
>
> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>
> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>
> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
> the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
> epistemologically.
>
> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>
> Nonsense!
>
> Nice
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>
>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
>> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
>> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
>> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
>> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
>> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
>> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
>> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
>> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
>> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
>> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>> it hath no bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
>> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
>> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
>> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
>> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
>> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>> talking.)
>>
>>
>>
>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
>> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
>> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
>> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
>> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
>> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
>> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
>> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
>> to its literalness?
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inquisitively,
>>
>>
>>
>> Jl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>



--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646
Clarke,

Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you: Given
the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism, which
would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment, at
least?

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Thanks, Herb.
>
> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
> was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
> useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
> argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
> only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
> literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
> action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
> question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
> ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
> humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
> and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
> question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
> recognizable as humans.
>
> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>
> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
> get a pellet.
>
> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
> all action.)
>
> Clarke
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>
>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>> with your response to me.
>>
>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>> journalism).
>>
>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>> substance?
>>
>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>
>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>
>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>> epistemologically.
>>
>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>
>> Nonsense!
>>
>> Nice
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>
>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>
>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>>
>>> Clarke,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did
>>> you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what
>>> he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon
>>> different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which
>>> robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that
>>> robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that
>>> way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Inquisitively,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Herb and others--

I just finished rereading an essay by my colleague in philosophy, Bill
Wilkerson. He uses arguments from Anglo-American philosophy, phenomenology,
and developmental psychology to support his claim that "intentionality, in
the form of specific intentions, is in fact a part of our perception of
bodily activity." We don't infer from particular, variable, muscular
behaviors an intention; goal oriented action is presumed, even by children
as young as 9 months. I take that as supporting the idea that dramatism
describes something universal. The essay is William Wilkerson, "From bodily
motions to bodily intentions: the perception of bodily activity,"
Philosophical Psychology. 12.1 (1999): 61-77.

Clarke

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 2, 2010, at 5:59 PM, John Lyne <> wrote:

Herb,

I'll be interested to see what the article from the NYTimes is. Last week
they ran a piece by a philosopher who was glibly claiming that the argument
for determinism is "air tight." As I recall, Zeno's argument against the
possibility of motion was air tight, too--and, in fact, surprisingly
similar, when you get down to it.

I think "free will" is sort of weighted with too much historical baggage to
be the right focal point. It implies that there are no constraints on
action, etc., and thus leads people to the conclusion that "freedom" would
mean just absence of constraint, which is of course ridiculous. Somehow the
binary that gets set up is "determined vs. random". It probably makes more
sense to talk about complex systems, an open universe (a la Stuart
Kauffman), etc. For my money, determinism is just about as valid as Zeno's
proofs. But don't get me started...

I used to have a quotation from Charles Hartshorne on my door, which said,
roughly, that the more we learn about causes, the more we are able to
manipulate those causes; hence, the less we are constrained by them.

jl

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> Clarke,
>
> Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you:
> Given the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism,
> which would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment,
> at least?
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Herb.
>>
>> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives
>> ("He was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are
>> constructed is useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He torpedoed
>> her with his argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning
>> an argument); only that the construction of motives that makes such
>> statements possible is literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and
>> themselves as engaging in action rather than mere motion). That, I believe,
>> raises an interesting question about the "reality" of social constructions
>> of reality, and the ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain
>> why it is that humans began talking about one another and themselves as if
>> they were acting and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that
>> pre-historical question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we
>> wouldn't be recognizable as humans.
>>
>> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
>> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
>> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
>> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
>> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
>> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
>> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
>> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
>> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
>> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
>> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
>> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>>
>> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
>> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
>> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
>> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
>> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
>> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
>> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
>> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
>> get a pellet.
>>
>> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
>> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
>> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
>> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
>> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
>> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
>> all action.)
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>>
>>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>>> with your response to me.
>>>
>>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>>> journalism).
>>>
>>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>>> substance?
>>>
>>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>>
>>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>>
>>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>>> epistemologically.
>>>
>>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>>
>>> Nonsense!
>>>
>>> Nice
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>>
>>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>>
>>>> Clarke
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>>> 256-824-6646
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Clarke,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is
>>>> to draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no,
>>>> folks, this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But
>>>> then parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as
>>>> to whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game.
>>>> “Literal” is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the
>>>> specific literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the
>>>> fuzziness in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these
>>>> are among the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example:
>>>> Were you attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the
>>>> former, did you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Another issue of pedagogical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic
>>>> attitude is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism
>>>> is like interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of
>>>> interpretation compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for
>>>> example. You seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many
>>>> evidences, both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought
>>>> hard for what he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out
>>>> upon different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in
>>>> which robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say
>>>> that robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it
>>>> that way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is
>>>> to say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Inquisitively,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jl
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>

All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Thanks, Herb.

I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
recognizable as humans.

Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.

At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
get a pellet.

One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
"corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
all action.)

Clarke

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> All,
>
> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>
> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
> with your response to me.
>
> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
> journalism).
>
> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
> substance?
>
> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>
> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>
> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
> the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
> epistemologically.
>
> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>
> Nonsense!
>
> Nice
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>
>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
>> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
>> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
>> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
>> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
>> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
>> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
>> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
>> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
>> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
>> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>> it hath no bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
>> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
>> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
>> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
>> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
>> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>> talking.)
>>
>>
>>
>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
>> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
>> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
>> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
>> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
>> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
>> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
>> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
>> to its literalness?
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inquisitively,
>>
>>
>>
>> Jl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>



--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646
Clarke,

Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you: Given
the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism, which
would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment, at
least?

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Thanks, Herb.
>
> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
> was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
> useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
> argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
> only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
> literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
> action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
> question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
> ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
> humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
> and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
> question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
> recognizable as humans.
>
> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>
> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
> get a pellet.
>
> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
> all action.)
>
> Clarke
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>
>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>> with your response to me.
>>
>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>> journalism).
>>
>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>> substance?
>>
>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>
>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>
>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>> epistemologically.
>>
>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>
>> Nonsense!
>>
>> Nice
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>
>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>
>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>>
>>> Clarke,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did
>>> you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what
>>> he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon
>>> different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which
>>> robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that
>>> robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that
>>> way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Inquisitively,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Herb and others--

I just finished rereading an essay by my colleague in philosophy, Bill
Wilkerson. He uses arguments from Anglo-American philosophy, phenomenology,
and developmental psychology to support his claim that "intentionality, in
the form of specific intentions, is in fact a part of our perception of
bodily activity." We don't infer from particular, variable, muscular
behaviors an intention; goal oriented action is presumed, even by children
as young as 9 months. I take that as supporting the idea that dramatism
describes something universal. The essay is William Wilkerson, "From bodily
motions to bodily intentions: the perception of bodily activity,"
Philosophical Psychology. 12.1 (1999): 61-77.

Clarke

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 2, 2010, at 5:59 PM, John Lyne <> wrote:

Herb,

I'll be interested to see what the article from the NYTimes is. Last week
they ran a piece by a philosopher who was glibly claiming that the argument
for determinism is "air tight." As I recall, Zeno's argument against the
possibility of motion was air tight, too--and, in fact, surprisingly
similar, when you get down to it.

I think "free will" is sort of weighted with too much historical baggage to
be the right focal point. It implies that there are no constraints on
action, etc., and thus leads people to the conclusion that "freedom" would
mean just absence of constraint, which is of course ridiculous. Somehow the
binary that gets set up is "determined vs. random". It probably makes more
sense to talk about complex systems, an open universe (a la Stuart
Kauffman), etc. For my money, determinism is just about as valid as Zeno's
proofs. But don't get me started...

I used to have a quotation from Charles Hartshorne on my door, which said,
roughly, that the more we learn about causes, the more we are able to
manipulate those causes; hence, the less we are constrained by them.

jl

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> Clarke,
>
> Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you:
> Given the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism,
> which would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment,
> at least?
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Herb.
>>
>> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives
>> ("He was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are
>> constructed is useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He torpedoed
>> her with his argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning
>> an argument); only that the construction of motives that makes such
>> statements possible is literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and
>> themselves as engaging in action rather than mere motion). That, I believe,
>> raises an interesting question about the "reality" of social constructions
>> of reality, and the ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain
>> why it is that humans began talking about one another and themselves as if
>> they were acting and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that
>> pre-historical question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we
>> wouldn't be recognizable as humans.
>>
>> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
>> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
>> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
>> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
>> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
>> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
>> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
>> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
>> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
>> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
>> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
>> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>>
>> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
>> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
>> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
>> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
>> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
>> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
>> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
>> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
>> get a pellet.
>>
>> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
>> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
>> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
>> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
>> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
>> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
>> all action.)
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>>
>>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>>> with your response to me.
>>>
>>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>>> journalism).
>>>
>>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>>> substance?
>>>
>>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>>
>>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>>
>>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>>> epistemologically.
>>>
>>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>>
>>> Nonsense!
>>>
>>> Nice
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>>
>>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>>
>>>> Clarke
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>>> 256-824-6646
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Clarke,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is
>>>> to draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no,
>>>> folks, this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But
>>>> then parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as
>>>> to whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game.
>>>> “Literal” is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the
>>>> specific literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the
>>>> fuzziness in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these
>>>> are among the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example:
>>>> Were you attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the
>>>> former, did you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Another issue of pedagogical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic
>>>> attitude is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism
>>>> is like interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of
>>>> interpretation compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for
>>>> example. You seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many
>>>> evidences, both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought
>>>> hard for what he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out
>>>> upon different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in
>>>> which robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say
>>>> that robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it
>>>> that way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is
>>>> to say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Inquisitively,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jl
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
> Along these lines, see Hubert Dreyfus's "The Primacy of Phenomenology
Over Logical Analysis: A Critique of Searle," available online at
http://philpapers.org/rec/DRETPO

An excerpt:
"Searle claims that for a movement to be an action it must be caused
by an intention in action -- a propositional representation of the
action’s conditions of satisfaction. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology of everyday absorbed coping, I contested what I took to
be Searle’s conclusion that, in all cases of comportment, the agent
must be able to recognize in advance what would count as success.
Searle, I held, had correctly described intentional action, but
absorbed coping does not require that the agent’s movements be
governed by an intention in action that represents the action’s
success conditions, i.e. what the agent is trying to achieve. Rather,
I claimed, in absorbed coping the agent’s body is led to move so as to
reduce a sense of deviation from a satisfactory gestalt without the
agent knowing what that satisfactory gestalt will be like in advance
of achieving it. Thus, in absorbed coping, rather than a sense of
trying to achieve success, one has a sense of being drawn towards an
equilibrium. As Merleau-Ponty puts it:
'[T]o move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow
oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently
of any representation.' "

Dreyfus then takes up a theory of learning from William Freeman, a
neuroscientist, and uses it to reflect on 'absorbed coping' with the
example of learning to hit a tennis ball. It's a very interesting take
on the blurry line inside the body with respect to intention (action)
and motion. Learning to dance would make an interesting example too,
though perhaps more expressive than strategic.

Paul




On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Joshua Rountree <> wrote:
> Herb and others--
> I just finished rereading an essay by my colleague in philosophy, Bill
> Wilkerson. He uses arguments from Anglo-American philosophy, phenomenology,
> and developmental psychology to support his claim that "intentionality, in
> the form of specific intentions, is in fact a part of our perception of
> bodily activity." We don't infer from particular, variable, muscular
> behaviors an intention; goal oriented action is presumed, even by children
> as young as 9 months. I take that as supporting the idea that dramatism
> describes something universal. The essay is William Wilkerson, "From bodily
> motions to bodily intentions: the perception of bodily activity,"
> Philosophical Psychology. 12.1 (1999): 61-77.
> Clarke
> Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 2, 2010, at 5:59 PM, John Lyne <> wrote:
>
> Herb,
>
> I'll be interested to see what the article from the NYTimes is.  Last week
> they ran a piece by a philosopher who was glibly claiming that the argument
> for determinism is "air tight."  As I recall, Zeno's argument against the
> possibility of motion was air tight, too--and, in fact, surprisingly
> similar, when you get down to it.
>
> I think "free will" is sort of weighted with too much historical baggage to
> be the right focal point. It implies that there are no constraints on
> action, etc., and thus leads people to the conclusion that "freedom" would
> mean just absence of constraint, which is of course ridiculous. Somehow the
> binary that gets set up is "determined vs. random". It probably makes  more
> sense to talk about complex systems, an open universe (a la Stuart
> Kauffman), etc.  For my money, determinism is just about as valid as Zeno's
> proofs. But don't get me started...
>
> I used to have a quotation from Charles Hartshorne on my door, which said,
> roughly, that the more we learn about causes, the more we are able to
> manipulate those causes; hence, the less we are constrained by them.
>
> jl
>
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>
> wrote:
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>> Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you:
>> Given the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism,
>> which would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment,
>> at least?
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, Herb.
>>> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives
>>> ("He was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are
>>> constructed is useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed
>>> her with his argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning
>>> an argument); only that the construction of motives that makes such
>>> statements possible is literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and
>>> themselves as engaging in action rather than mere motion). That, I believe,
>>> raises an interesting question about the "reality" of social constructions
>>> of reality, and the ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain
>>> why it is that humans began talking about one another and themselves as if
>>> they were acting and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that
>>> pre-historical question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we
>>> wouldn't be recognizable as humans.
>>> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that
>>> we didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption
>>> that we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
>>> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
>>> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
>>> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
>>> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
>>> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
>>> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
>>> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
>>> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
>>> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>>> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen
>>> Keller's discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running
>>> across her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an
>>> animal reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered
>>> words, the world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized
>>> everything had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a
>>> miraculous transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is
>>> light-years removed from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by
>>> pressing on a bar to get a pellet.
>>> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
>>> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
>>> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
>>> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
>>> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
>>> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
>>> all action.)
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> All,
>>>>
>>>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>>>
>>>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I
>>>> think it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a
>>>> point, with your response to me.
>>>>
>>>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>>>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>>>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>>>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and  descriptive (yellow
>>>> journalism).
>>>>
>>>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>>>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>>>> substance?
>>>>
>>>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a
>>>> conference here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now
>>>> literal claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>>>
>>>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?)
>>>> and down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>>>
>>>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>>>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>>>> epistemologically.
>>>>
>>>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>>>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>>>
>>>> Nonsense!
>>>>
>>>> Nice
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>>> Clarke
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>>>> Huntsville, AL  35899
>>>>> 256-824-6646
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Clarke,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor.  I would add this,
>>>>> however: In particular cases, whether some characterization of an act is
>>>>> best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That is to
>>>>> say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow from
>>>>> that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is
>>>>> to draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no,
>>>>> folks, this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But
>>>>> then parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as
>>>>> to whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game.
>>>>> “Literal” is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the
>>>>> specific literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the
>>>>> fuzziness in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are
>>>>> among the things we commonly dispute in particular cases.  Example: Were you
>>>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position?  If the former, did you
>>>>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>>>>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>>>>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>>>>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>>>>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>>>>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>>>>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>>>>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>>>>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
>>>>> hath no bottom.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.)  In speech act theory,
>>>>> the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>>>>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>>>>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>>>>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>>>>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>>>>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>>>>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>>>>> talking.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>>>> actions.  Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as if”
>>>>> action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine as a
>>>>> general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>>>> havoc with the literalness issue.  It’s not so easy to tell when we’re just
>>>>> anthropomorphizing.  Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea. My
>>>>> example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So, was
>>>>> Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
>>>>> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
>>>>> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
>>>>> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
>>>>> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
>>>>> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
>>>>> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic
>>>>> attitude is towards Burke.  Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is
>>>>> like interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended.  He fought hard for what he
>>>>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>>>>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>>>>> ask “What is dramatism in light of a scene in which robots seem to behave
>>>>> more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just “move”—but
>>>>> check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living
>>>>> constitution.”  (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate”
>>>>> it, in reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.)   I will be only
>>>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is
>>>>> to say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>>>> distinctions, objects don’t.  When we treat something as motion-only we get
>>>>> one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we get
>>>>> another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>>>> point here is that it is the action/motion distinction that matters. Where a
>>>>> given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort of like
>>>>> Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very important,
>>>>> and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different eras,
>>>>> drawn the line in different places.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>>>> determined rather than  given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>>>>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Inquisitively,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Jl
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>>>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>>>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>>>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>>>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>>>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL  35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>
>
> _______________________________________________
___________________________________________________

Posted on the KB mailing list. Go to https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/kb to subscribe.

All,

Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.

Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think it
comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point, with
your response to me.

Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
journalism).

Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
substance?

A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.

But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).

Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
epistemologically.

When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.

Nonsense!

Nice

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>
> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>
> Clarke
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>
> Clarke,
>
>
>
> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
> literal-not-metaphorical.
>
>
>
> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among the
> things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>
>
>
> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
> hath no bottom.
>
>
>
> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
> talking.)
>
>
>
> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea.
> My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So,
> was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>
>
>
> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>
>
>
> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>
>
>
> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>
>
>
> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
> to its literalness?
>
>
>
> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for the stimulation.
>
>
>
> Inquisitively,
>
>
>
> Jl
>
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Thanks, Herb.

I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
recognizable as humans.

Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.

At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
get a pellet.

One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
"corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
all action.)

Clarke

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> All,
>
> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>
> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
> with your response to me.
>
> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
> journalism).
>
> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
> substance?
>
> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>
> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>
> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors in
> the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
> epistemologically.
>
> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>
> Nonsense!
>
> Nice
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>
>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal position
>> with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with others. His
>> descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on the matter. I
>> don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are necessarily
>> literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and attributing
>> motives to human (and sometimes to other creatures/gods/artificial
>> intelligences)--however they are described, literally or metaphorically--is
>> UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of an
>> act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That
>> is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow
>> from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did you
>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>> it hath no bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some discussion
>> of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other theoretical
>> contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is in the realm
>> of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more recent
>> theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act theory, the
>> best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>> talking.)
>>
>>
>>
>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what he
>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>> ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which robots seem to
>> behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just
>> “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.” (I’d
>> also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in reference to
>> your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only partly concerned
>> with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also partly with how
>> it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while action
>> is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be ambiguous as
>> to its literalness?
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inquisitively,
>>
>>
>>
>> Jl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>



--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646
Clarke,

Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you: Given
the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism, which
would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment, at
least?

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:

> Thanks, Herb.
>
> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives ("He
> was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are constructed is
> useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed her with his
> argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning an argument);
> only that the construction of motives that makes such statements possible is
> literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and themselves as engaging in
> action rather than mere motion). That, I believe, raises an interesting
> question about the "reality" of social constructions of reality, and the
> ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain why it is that
> humans began talking about one another and themselves as if they were acting
> and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that pre-historical
> question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we wouldn't be
> recognizable as humans.
>
> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>
> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
> get a pellet.
>
> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
> all action.)
>
> Clarke
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>
>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>> with your response to me.
>>
>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>> journalism).
>>
>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>> substance?
>>
>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>
>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>
>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>> epistemologically.
>>
>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>
>> Nonsense!
>>
>> Nice
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>
>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>
>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>>
>>> Clarke,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is to
>>> draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no, folks,
>>> this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But then
>>> parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as to
>>> whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game. “Literal”
>>> is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the specific
>>> literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the fuzziness
>>> in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are among
>>> the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example: Were you
>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the former, did
>>> you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic attitude
>>> is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is like
>>> interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought hard for what
>>> he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon
>>> different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in which
>>> robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that
>>> robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it that
>>> way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is to
>>> say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Inquisitively,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Clarke Rountree
> Professor of Communication Arts
> 342 Morton Hall
> University of Alabama in Huntsville
> Huntsville, AL 35899
> 256-824-6646
>
>



--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
Herb and others--

I just finished rereading an essay by my colleague in philosophy, Bill
Wilkerson. He uses arguments from Anglo-American philosophy, phenomenology,
and developmental psychology to support his claim that "intentionality, in
the form of specific intentions, is in fact a part of our perception of
bodily activity." We don't infer from particular, variable, muscular
behaviors an intention; goal oriented action is presumed, even by children
as young as 9 months. I take that as supporting the idea that dramatism
describes something universal. The essay is William Wilkerson, "From bodily
motions to bodily intentions: the perception of bodily activity,"
Philosophical Psychology. 12.1 (1999): 61-77.

Clarke

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 2, 2010, at 5:59 PM, John Lyne <> wrote:

Herb,

I'll be interested to see what the article from the NYTimes is. Last week
they ran a piece by a philosopher who was glibly claiming that the argument
for determinism is "air tight." As I recall, Zeno's argument against the
possibility of motion was air tight, too--and, in fact, surprisingly
similar, when you get down to it.

I think "free will" is sort of weighted with too much historical baggage to
be the right focal point. It implies that there are no constraints on
action, etc., and thus leads people to the conclusion that "freedom" would
mean just absence of constraint, which is of course ridiculous. Somehow the
binary that gets set up is "determined vs. random". It probably makes more
sense to talk about complex systems, an open universe (a la Stuart
Kauffman), etc. For my money, determinism is just about as valid as Zeno's
proofs. But don't get me started...

I used to have a quotation from Charles Hartshorne on my door, which said,
roughly, that the more we learn about causes, the more we are able to
manipulate those causes; hence, the less we are constrained by them.

jl

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:

> Clarke,
>
> Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you:
> Given the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism,
> which would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment,
> at least?
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Herb.
>>
>> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives
>> ("He was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are
>> constructed is useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He torpedoed
>> her with his argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning
>> an argument); only that the construction of motives that makes such
>> statements possible is literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and
>> themselves as engaging in action rather than mere motion). That, I believe,
>> raises an interesting question about the "reality" of social constructions
>> of reality, and the ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain
>> why it is that humans began talking about one another and themselves as if
>> they were acting and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that
>> pre-historical question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we
>> wouldn't be recognizable as humans.
>>
>> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that we
>> didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption that
>> we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
>> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
>> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
>> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
>> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
>> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
>> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
>> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
>> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
>> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>>
>> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen Keller's
>> discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running across
>> her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an animal
>> reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered words, the
>> world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized everything
>> had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a miraculous
>> transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is light-years removed
>> from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by pressing on a bar to
>> get a pellet.
>>
>> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
>> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
>> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
>> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
>> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
>> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
>> all action.)
>>
>> Clarke
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>wrote:
>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>>
>>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I think
>>> it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a point,
>>> with your response to me.
>>>
>>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and descriptive (yellow
>>> journalism).
>>>
>>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>>> substance?
>>>
>>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a conference
>>> here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now literal
>>> claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>>
>>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?) and
>>> down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>>
>>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>>> epistemologically.
>>>
>>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>>
>>> Nonsense!
>>>
>>> Nice
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>>
>>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>>
>>>> Clarke
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>>>> 256-824-6646
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Clarke,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor. I would add
>>>> this, however: In particular cases, whether some *characterization* of
>>>> an act is best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs.
>>>> That is to say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t
>>>> follow from that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is
>>>> to draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no,
>>>> folks, this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But
>>>> then parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as
>>>> to whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game.
>>>> “Literal” is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the
>>>> specific literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the
>>>> fuzziness in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these
>>>> are among the things we commonly dispute in particular cases. Example:
>>>> Were you attacking Simons or just defending your position? If the
>>>> former, did you literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”?
>>>> (Colloquially, one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic
>>>> pitchfork!”) Were you attacking his argument, with no implication that you
>>>> are attacking him? I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is
>>>> nevertheless a question that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you
>>>> have to look at the circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations
>>>> are among the things that people most passionately argue about. In the
>>>> particular instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a
>>>> friendly way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because
>>>> it hath no bottom.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.) In speech act
>>>> theory, the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform
>>>> actions. (But actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic
>>>> actions.) I’m also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network
>>>> Theory,” which is emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act
>>>> too, he avers! He’d say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier
>>>> “blocks” me, that these are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to
>>>> look at it. (But I think the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the
>>>> limitations to Latour’s way of talking.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>>> actions. Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as
>>>> if” action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine
>>>> as a general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>>> havoc with the literalness issue. It’s not so easy to tell when we’re
>>>> just anthropomorphizing. Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving
>>>> sea. My example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors.
>>>> So, was Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for
>>>> the sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not
>>>> think they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he
>>>> thought the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in
>>>> his presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different.
>>>> The minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back
>>>> and say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Another issue of pedagogical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic
>>>> attitude is towards Burke. Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism
>>>> is like interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of
>>>> interpretation compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for
>>>> example. You seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many
>>>> evidences, both written and spoken, of what he intended. He fought
>>>> hard for what he believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out
>>>> upon different scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for
>>>> instance, we could ask “What is dramatism *in light of* a scene in
>>>> which robots seem to behave more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say
>>>> that robots just “move”—but check back in ten years, and I may not see it
>>>> that way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living constitution.”
>>>> (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate” it, in
>>>> reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.) I will be only
>>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is
>>>> to say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>>> distinctions, objects don’t. When we treat something as motion-only we
>>>> get one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we
>>>> get another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>>> point here is that it is the action/motion *distinction *that matters.
>>>> Where a given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort
>>>> of like Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very
>>>> important, and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different
>>>> eras, drawn the line in different places.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>>> determined rather than given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act,
>>>> some think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Inquisitively,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jl
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>> Professor of Communication Arts
>> 342 Morton Hall
>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>> Huntsville, AL 35899
>> 256-824-6646
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Communication
> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone: 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
> Along these lines, see Hubert Dreyfus's "The Primacy of Phenomenology
Over Logical Analysis: A Critique of Searle," available online at
http://philpapers.org/rec/DRETPO

An excerpt:
"Searle claims that for a movement to be an action it must be caused
by an intention in action -- a propositional representation of the
action’s conditions of satisfaction. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology of everyday absorbed coping, I contested what I took to
be Searle’s conclusion that, in all cases of comportment, the agent
must be able to recognize in advance what would count as success.
Searle, I held, had correctly described intentional action, but
absorbed coping does not require that the agent’s movements be
governed by an intention in action that represents the action’s
success conditions, i.e. what the agent is trying to achieve. Rather,
I claimed, in absorbed coping the agent’s body is led to move so as to
reduce a sense of deviation from a satisfactory gestalt without the
agent knowing what that satisfactory gestalt will be like in advance
of achieving it. Thus, in absorbed coping, rather than a sense of
trying to achieve success, one has a sense of being drawn towards an
equilibrium. As Merleau-Ponty puts it:
'[T]o move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow
oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently
of any representation.' "

Dreyfus then takes up a theory of learning from William Freeman, a
neuroscientist, and uses it to reflect on 'absorbed coping' with the
example of learning to hit a tennis ball. It's a very interesting take
on the blurry line inside the body with respect to intention (action)
and motion. Learning to dance would make an interesting example too,
though perhaps more expressive than strategic.

Paul




On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Joshua Rountree <> wrote:
> Herb and others--
> I just finished rereading an essay by my colleague in philosophy, Bill
> Wilkerson. He uses arguments from Anglo-American philosophy, phenomenology,
> and developmental psychology to support his claim that "intentionality, in
> the form of specific intentions, is in fact a part of our perception of
> bodily activity." We don't infer from particular, variable, muscular
> behaviors an intention; goal oriented action is presumed, even by children
> as young as 9 months. I take that as supporting the idea that dramatism
> describes something universal. The essay is William Wilkerson, "From bodily
> motions to bodily intentions: the perception of bodily activity,"
> Philosophical Psychology. 12.1 (1999): 61-77.
> Clarke
> Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 2, 2010, at 5:59 PM, John Lyne <> wrote:
>
> Herb,
>
> I'll be interested to see what the article from the NYTimes is.  Last week
> they ran a piece by a philosopher who was glibly claiming that the argument
> for determinism is "air tight."  As I recall, Zeno's argument against the
> possibility of motion was air tight, too--and, in fact, surprisingly
> similar, when you get down to it.
>
> I think "free will" is sort of weighted with too much historical baggage to
> be the right focal point. It implies that there are no constraints on
> action, etc., and thus leads people to the conclusion that "freedom" would
> mean just absence of constraint, which is of course ridiculous. Somehow the
> binary that gets set up is "determined vs. random". It probably makes  more
> sense to talk about complex systems, an open universe (a la Stuart
> Kauffman), etc.  For my money, determinism is just about as valid as Zeno's
> proofs. But don't get me started...
>
> I used to have a quotation from Charles Hartshorne on my door, which said,
> roughly, that the more we learn about causes, the more we are able to
> manipulate those causes; hence, the less we are constrained by them.
>
> jl
>
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>
> wrote:
>>
>> Clarke,
>>
>> Before I send you a disturbing article from the NYT I want to ask you:
>> Given the need for a choice between mundane realism and scientific realism,
>> which would you select, assuming free will were possible at this one moment,
>> at least?
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, Herb.
>>> I think John's distinction between particular constructions of motives
>>> ("He was a drag") and Burke's general claim about how motives are
>>> constructed is useful. I would never claim that the statement, "He tor****ed
>>> her with his argument," is literal (describing a physical means for winning
>>> an argument); only that the construction of motives that makes such
>>> statements possible is literal (i.e., that humans talk about others and
>>> themselves as engaging in action rather than mere motion). That, I believe,
>>> raises an interesting question about the "reality" of social constructions
>>> of reality, and the ways we talk about it. I haven't gone so far to explain
>>> why it is that humans began talking about one another and themselves as if
>>> they were acting and not merely moving--I don't have an answer to that
>>> pre-historical question. I only know that if we did not begin to do that, we
>>> wouldn't be recognizable as humans.
>>> Now, for argument's sake, let's suppose things could be otherwise--that
>>> we didn't have to orient ourselves towards one another on the assumption
>>> that we are acting, but rather on the assumption that we are moving. Let's
>>> suppose that action and the free will implied by action (though, Burke says,
>>> not necessitated by his theory of dramatism) were not part of the human
>>> experience. Perhaps we would move around like currents of air, rivers, or
>>> more aptly the animals we ascribe "instinct" to rather than "action." We
>>> would live in a world of motion and reaction to that motion, so that only
>>> the trajectories of our paths would determine our interactions. For example,
>>> if you are going after the same deer I'm trying to kill and eat, maybe I
>>> would kill you. Or, if I were instinctively afraid because you're bigger
>>> than me, I would look for another deer to hunt.
>>> At the end of the Iowa interviews Burke used the example of Helen
>>> Keller's discovery that the word "water" stood for that liquid thing running
>>> across her hand. Before that she was, for all intents and purposes, an
>>> animal reacting to her environment. But, Burke says, when she discovered
>>> words, the world of "spirit" (his word) opened up before her. She realized
>>> everything had a name and you could use it in the absence of a thing. It's a
>>> miraculous transformation, he stressed, because spelling a word is
>>> light-years removed from a rat saying, in effect, "give me some of that" by
>>> pressing on a bar to get a pellet.
>>> One of the problems in talking about all of this is that the notion of
>>> action so infuses our discussions of everything that motion is almost the
>>> foreign idea here. I would speculate that early animistic thinking was only
>>> "corrected" when we stopped thinking of rivers, trees, and rocks as having
>>> spirits, intentions, and purposes, and reduced them to motion. (And, to the
>>> chagrin of Burke, Skinnerians tried to go one step further and get rid of
>>> all action.)
>>> Clarke
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:47 PM, HERBERT W. SIMONS <>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> All,
>>>>
>>>> Nice work, JL. I'm copying to the KB journal so that others can see it.
>>>>
>>>> Clarke, feel free to circulate my response to your original post. I
>>>> think it comports with what Ed, Bob, and John have been saying and, to a
>>>> point, with your response to me.
>>>>
>>>> Part of the problem in distinguishing literal from metaphorical is their
>>>> ambiguity. There's literal as true and literal as properly said; i.e., in
>>>> keeping with dictionary usage. There's metaphor as structural (humans as
>>>> machines), conceptual (arguments as wars) and  descriptive (yellow
>>>> journalism).
>>>>
>>>> Are dead metaphors no longer metaphors, or can some still resonate
>>>> metaphorically when, fo example, KB goes to work on the paradox of
>>>> substance?
>>>>
>>>> A philosopher named Ted Cohen spoke last week on metaphor at a
>>>> conference here in mid-coast Maine. Example of a once metaphorical but now
>>>> literal claim: Camden, Maine is on the water.
>>>>
>>>> But recall Lakoff and Johnson on orienting metaphors like up (happy?)
>>>> and down (sad), on (the fly on the ceiling) and off (his rocker).
>>>>
>>>> Burke would say that they're not nearly as problematic as dead metaphors
>>>> in the network of terms (see, understand, grasp, text/context, etc.) we use
>>>> epistemologically.
>>>>
>>>> When I voiced this concern to Ted Cohen he did a rant on Continental
>>>> philosophy, as though all would be clear w/o its aporias.
>>>>
>>>> Nonsense!
>>>>
>>>> Nice
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Clarke Rountree <> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob, Ed, and Herb,
>>>>> I was discussing some of your feedback on my dramatism as literal
>>>>> position with John Lyne. He gave me permission to share his thoughts with
>>>>> others. His descriptions are a pretty accurate account of my positions on
>>>>> the matter. I don't believe that PARTICULAR constructions of motives are
>>>>> necessarily literal, though I believe that the PRACTICE of assuming and
>>>>> attributing motives to human (and sometimes to other
>>>>> creatures/gods/artificial intelligences)--however they are described,
>>>>> literally or metaphorically--is UNIVERSAL. I've included John on this email.
>>>>> Clarke
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>>>> Huntsville, AL  35899
>>>>> 256-824-6646
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Clarke,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that the heart of what you are getting at is that dramatism is
>>>>> ontological and universal—and that it is not a metaphor.  I would add this,
>>>>> however: In particular cases, whether some characterization of an act is
>>>>> best understood as literal versus metaphorical is up for grabs. That is to
>>>>> say, Burke is saying that people literally act. But it doesn’t follow from
>>>>> that that any given act-ascription must be understood as
>>>>> literal-not-metaphorical.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the best reason to invoke the “literal” nature of dramatism is
>>>>> to draw the contrast, as you have, with Goffmanesque dramatism—i.e. no,
>>>>> folks, this is not a theatre metaphor—people literally engage in action. But
>>>>> then parsing particular utterances--as to what kinds of acts they are, or as
>>>>> to whether best understood as literal or not-- is a wide-open game.
>>>>> “Literal” is in fact rather slippery thing once you get away from the
>>>>> specific literal/figurative contrast. I think Crable is acknowledging the
>>>>> fuzziness in his move toward a “soft” literal. But hard or soft, these are
>>>>> among the things we commonly dispute in particular cases.  Example: Were you
>>>>> attacking Simons or just defending your position?  If the former, did you
>>>>> literally attack Simons, or just attack him, “so to speak”? (Colloquially,
>>>>> one might say “Rountree went after Simons with a pentadic pitchfork!”) Were
>>>>> you attacking his argument, with no implication that you are attacking him?
>>>>> I think the answer to that is obvious, but it is nevertheless a question
>>>>> that is not resolved at the theoretical level—you have to look at the
>>>>> circumstances and make a judgment. Act characterizations are among the
>>>>> things that people most passionately argue about. In the particular
>>>>> instance, you might be “really attacking” or just “attacking in a friendly
>>>>> way,” and it could appropriately be subject to dispute. The latter
>>>>> highlights attitude. But is a friendly attack really an attack? We do argue
>>>>> about such things, of course, as in the case of the passive aggressive
>>>>> personality who insults you then says “just kidding.” Well, they may say
>>>>> they’re just kidding, but it sure felt like an insult!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think you should stick firmly with the point that dramatism is not a
>>>>> metaphor of the theatre, and that it is universal. It is meant literally.
>>>>> But in characterizing any particular act—well, let the games begin. It’s
>>>>> contestable. Our theories won’t ever get to the bottom of that. Because it
>>>>> hath no bottom.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I’m planning to start my seminar [this fall on Burke] with some
>>>>> discussion of the way that “action” has been conceived in a few other
>>>>> theoretical contexts. In the much of the sociological tradition, action is
>>>>> in the realm of the social rather than the “natural.” (But in light of more
>>>>> recent theories, it isn’t so easy to draw that line.)  In speech act theory,
>>>>> the best way to characterize utterances is that they perform actions. (But
>>>>> actions achieved via speech are just a subset of dramatistic actions.) I’m
>>>>> also going to talk about Bruno Latour’s “Action Network Theory,” which is
>>>>> emphatic that it’s not just people who act—objects act too, he avers! He’d
>>>>> say that when the chair “supports” me or the barrier “blocks” me, that these
>>>>> are actions too. OK, that’s an interesting way to look at it. (But I think
>>>>> the Burkean rounded-out pentad shows the limitations to Latour’s way of
>>>>> talking.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> My take on Burke’s action/motion distinction is that it does not
>>>>> antecedently sort out which things are just in motion and which are
>>>>> actions.  Because, as you point out, it’s a matter of seeing things “as if”
>>>>> action were involved—and this is flexible. Saying “people act” is fine as a
>>>>> general principle—but was Terri Schiavo capable of action in her latter
>>>>> days? (Depends on who you ask.) Are genes? Is the immune system? Is Gaia?
>>>>> These are rightly subject to argument. I would say that whenever we apply a
>>>>> personalizing principle, then we open the door to action (via the “as if”).
>>>>> One of the useful applications of dramatism, I believe, is to show how our
>>>>> human impulse to ascribe action is so strong that we do not limit it to
>>>>> human beings. And in this connection, the “as if” approach seems to play
>>>>> havoc with the literalness issue.  It’s not so easy to tell when we’re just
>>>>> anthropomorphizing.  Your example was Xerxes and the misbehaving sea. My
>>>>> example is the sociobiologists who implicitly read genes as actors. So, was
>>>>> Xerxes only confused about the fact that things don’t act? Ditto for the
>>>>> sociobiologists? My read of it is that these parties may or may not think
>>>>> they are making literal claims. In the case of Xerxes, I’d say he thought
>>>>> the sea was literally acting (and I would disagree, although not in his
>>>>> presence). In the case of the sociobiologists, it’s rather different. The
>>>>> minute you point out their ascription of action to genes, they pull back and
>>>>> say it’s only a metaphor. But whether something is literally or just
>>>>> metaphorically an action is something we rightly argue about. For instance,
>>>>> some philosophers say there is no such thing as “collective action.” For
>>>>> others, collectives do indeed act. (I once heard John Searle give an
>>>>> extremely smug lecture on this.) I don’t think dramatism qua theory offers
>>>>> apriori answers to that dispute. “It’s more complicated than that.”
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Another issue of pe****gical relevance is what one’s hermeneutic
>>>>> attitude is towards Burke.  Suppose we say that interpreting Dramatism is
>>>>> like interpreting the Constitution. Different philosophies of interpretation
>>>>> compete. One can take an “originalist” approach to Burke, for example. You
>>>>> seem to have good grounds for doing so, because you have many evidences,
>>>>> both written and spoken, of what he intended.  He fought hard for what he
>>>>> believed. And yet, he realized that his words will play out upon different
>>>>> scenes, causing them to “act” in unforeseen ways. So, for instance, we could
>>>>> ask “What is dramatism in light of a scene in which robots seem to behave
>>>>> more and more as persons?” Right now I’d say that robots just “move”—but
>>>>> check back in ten years, and I may not see it that way.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess I take dramatism more in the spirit of a “living
>>>>> constitution.”  (I’d also say that you want to be careful not to “Scaliate”
>>>>> it, in reference to your least favorite Sup. Ct. Justice.)   I will be only
>>>>> partly concerned with how Burke intended his dramatism to be used, but also
>>>>> partly with how it presently makes sense, irrespective of intent.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> For me, the best way to make sense of the action/motion distinction is
>>>>> to say that this is already a social distinction After all, humans make
>>>>> distinctions, objects don’t.  When we treat something as motion-only we get
>>>>> one read on what is going on, and when we treat something as action, we get
>>>>> another read. As per your dog example, animals provide a great threshold
>>>>> illustration. I’ve always been astonished by people who think animals are
>>>>> just stimulus-response machines. I think there are many contexts in which it
>>>>> makes perfect sense to regard an animal as a literal actor. So, my general
>>>>> point here is that it is the action/motion distinction that matters. Where a
>>>>> given society draws the line between them is up for grabs. It’s sort of like
>>>>> Levi-Strauss’ “the raw and the cooked”—the distinction is very important,
>>>>> and universal-- it’s just that different societies, and different eras,
>>>>> drawn the line in different places.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So, how much of this do you agree with? Would you agree that, while
>>>>> action is literal, the characterization of a particular action may be
>>>>> ambiguous as to its literalness?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Would you agree that the distinction between action and motion is very
>>>>> important, but just where we drawn the line between them is socially
>>>>> determined rather than  given apriori? (Xerxes thought the seas act, some
>>>>> think God acts, some think “the planet” acts.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the stimulation.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Inquisitively,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Jl
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>>>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>>>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>>>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>>>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>>>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Clarke Rountree
>>> Professor of Communication Arts
>>> 342 Morton Hall
>>> University of Alabama in Huntsville
>>> Huntsville, AL  35899
>>> 256-824-6646
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of Communication
>> Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
>> Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
>> Home phone: 215 844 5969
>> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
>
>
> _______________________________________________
___________________________________________________

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July 25, 2010, *5:26 pm* The Limits of the Coded World By WILLIAM
EGGINTON

[image: The Stone]The
Stoneis a
forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and
timeless.

Tags:

consciousness ,
determinism , free
will ,
Philosophy,
science

In an influential article in the Annual Review of Neuroscience, Joshua Gold
of the University of Pennsylvania and Michael Shadlen of the University of
Washington sum up experiments aimed at discovering the neural basis of
decision-making. In one set of experiments, researchers attached sensors to
the parts of monkeys’ brains responsible for visual pattern recognition. The
monkeys were then taught to respond to a cue by choosing to look at one of
two patterns. Computers reading the sensors were able to register the
decision a fraction of a second before the monkeys’ eyes turned to the
pattern. As the monkeys were not deliberating, but rather reacting to visual
stimuli, researchers were able to plausibly claim that the computer could
successfully predict the monkeys’ reaction. In other words, the computer was
reading the monkeys’ minds and knew before they did what their decision
would be.

We have no reason to assume that either predictability or lack of
predictability has anything to say about free will.

The implications are immediate. If researchers can in theory predict what
human beings will decide before they themselves know it, what is left of the
notion of human freedom? How can we say that humans are free in any
meaningful way if others can know what their decisions will be before they
themselves make them?

Research of this sort can seem frightening. An experiment that demonstrated
the illusory nature of human freedom would, in many people’s mind, rob the
test subjects of something essential to their humanity.

If a machine can tell me what I am about to decide before I decide it, this
means that, in some sense, the decision was already made before I became
consciously involved. But if that is the case, how am I, as a moral agent,
to be held accountable for my actions? If, on the cusp of an important moral
decision, I now know that my decision was already taken at the moment I
thought myself to be deciding, does this not undermine my responsibility for
that choice?

Some might conclude that resistance to such findings reveal a religious
bias. After all, the ability to consciously decide is essential in many
religions to the idea of humans as spiritual beings. Without freedom of
choice, a person becomes a cog in the machine of nature; with action and
choice predetermined, morality and ultimately the very meaning of that
person’s existence is left in tatters.

Theologians have spent a great deal of time ruminating on the problem of
determination. The Catholic response to the theological problem of theodicy
— that is, of how to explain the existence of evil in a world ruled by a
benevolent and omnipotent God — was to teach that God created humans with
free will. It is only because evil does exist that humans are free to choose
between good and evil; hence, the choice for good has meaning. As the
theologians at the Council of Trent in the 16th century put it, freedom of
will is essential for Christian faith, and it is anathema to believe
otherwise. Protestant theologians such as Luther and Calvin, to whom the
Trent statement was responding, had disputed this notion on the basis of
God’s omniscience. If God’s ability to know were truly limitless, they
argued, then his knowledge of the future would be as clear and perfect as
his knowledge of the present and of the past. If that were the case, though,
then God would already know what each and every one of us has done, is
doing, and will do at every moment in our lives. And how, then, could we be
truly free?

Even though this particular resistance to a deterministic model of human
behavior is religious, one can easily come to the same sorts of conclusions
from a scientific perspective. In fact, when religion and science square off
around human freedom, they often end up on remarkably similar ground because
both science and religion base their assumptions on an identical
understanding of the world as something intrinsically knowable, either by
God or ourselves.

While our senses can only bring us verifiable knowledge about how the world
appears in time and space, our reason always strives to know more.

Let me explain what I mean by way of an example. Imagine we suspend a steel
ball from a magnet directly above a vertical steel plate, such that when I
turn off the magnet, the ball hits the edge of the plate and falls to either
one side or the other.

Very few people, having accepted the premises of this experiment, would
conclude from its outcome that the ball in question was exhibiting free
will. Whether the ball falls on one side or the other of the steel plate, we
can all comfortably agree, is completely determined by the physical forces
acting on the ball, which are simply too complex and minute for us to
monitor. And yet we have no problem assuming the opposite to be true of the
application of the monkey experiment to theoretical humans: namely, that
because their actions are predictable they can be assumed to lack free will.
In other words, we have no reason to assume that either predictability or
lack of predictability has anything to say about free will. The fact that we
do make this association has more to do with the model of the world that we
subtly import into such thought experiments than with the experiments
themselves.

The model in question holds that the universe exists in space and time as a
kind of ultimate code that can be deciphered. This image of the universe has
a philosophical and religious provenance, and has made its way into secular
beliefs and practices as well. In the case of human freedom, this
presumption of a “code of codes” works by convincing us that a prediction
somehow decodes or deciphers a future that already exists in a coded form.
So, for example, when the computers read the signals coming from the
monkeys’ brains and make a prediction, belief in the code of codes
influences how we interpret that event. Instead of interpreting the
prediction as what it is — a statement about the neural process leading to
the monkeys’ actions — we extrapolate about a supposed future as if it were
already written down, and all we were doing was reading it.

To my mind the philosopher who gave the most complete answer to this
question was Immanuel Kant. In Kant’s view, the main mistake philosophers
before him had made when considering how humans could have accurate
knowledge of the world was to forget the necessary difference between our
knowledge and the actual subject of that knowledge. At first glance, this
may not seem like a very easy thing to forget; for example, what our eyes
tell us about a rainbow and what that rainbow actually is are quite
different things. Kant argued that our failure to grasp this difference was
further reaching and had greater consequences than anyone could have
thought.

The belief that our empirical exploration of the world and of the human
brain could ever eradicate human freedom is an error.

Taking again the example of the rainbow, Kant would argue that while most
people would grant the difference between the range of colors our eyes
perceive and the refraction of light that causes this optical phenomenon,
they would still maintain that more careful observation could indeed bring
one to know the rainbow as it is in itself, apart from its sensible
manifestation. This commonplace understanding, he argued, was at the root of
our tendency to fall profoundly into error, not only about the nature of the
world, but about what we were justified in believing about ourselves, God,
and our duty to others.

The problem was that while our senses can only ever bring us verifiable
knowledge about how the world appears in time and space, our reason always
strives to know more than appearances can show it. This tendency of reason
to always know more is and was a good thing. It is why human kind is always
curious, always progressing to greater and greater knowledge and
accomplishments. But if not tempered by a respect for its limits and an
understanding of its innate tendencies to overreach, reason can lead us into
error and fanaticism.

Let’s return to the example of the experiment predicting the monkeys’
decisions. What the experiment tells us is nothing other than that the
monkeys’ decision making process moves through the brain, and that our
technology allows us to get a reading of that activity faster than the
monkeys’ brain can put it into action. From that relatively simple outcome,
we can now see what an unjustified series of rather major conundrums we had
drawn. And the reason we drew them was because we unquestioningly translated
something unknowable — the stretch of time including the future of the
monkeys’ as of yet undecided and unperformed actions — into a neat scene
that just needed to be decoded in order to be experienced. We treated the
future as if it had already happened and hence as a series of events that
could be read and narrated.

>From a Kantian perspective, with this simple act we allowed reason to
override its boundaries, and as a result we fell into error. The error we
fell into was, specifically, to believe that our empirical exploration of
the world and of the human brain could ever eradicate human freedom.

This, then, is why, as “irresistible” as their logic might appear, none of
the versions of Galen Strawson’s “Basic
Argument”for
determinism, which he outlined in The Stone last week, have any
relevance for human freedom or responsibility. According to this logic,
responsibility must be illusory, because in order to be responsible at any
given time an agent must also be responsible for how he or she became how he
or she is at that time, which initiates an infinite regress, because at no
point can an individual be responsible for all the genetic and cultural
forces that have produced him or her as he or she is. But this logic is
nothing other than a philosophical version of the code of codes; it assumes
that the sum history of forces determining an individual exist as a kind of
potentially legible catalog.
Related More From The
Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

- Go to All Posts »

The point to stress, however, is that this catalog is not even legible in
theory, for to be known it assumes a kind of knower unconstrained by time
and space, a knower who could be present from every possible perspective at
every possible deciding moment in an agent’s history and prehistory. Such a
knower, of course, could only be something along the lines of what the
monotheistic traditions call God. But as Kant made clear, it makes no sense
to think in terms of ethics, or responsibility, or freedom when talking
about God; to make ethical choices, to be responsible for them, to be free
to choose poorly, all of these require precisely the kind of being who is
constrained by the minimal opacity that defines our kind of knowing.

As much as we owe the nature of our current existence to the evolutionary
forces Darwin first discovered, or to the cultures we grow up in, or to the
chemical states affecting our brain processes at any given moment, none of
this impacts on our freedom. I am free because neither science nor religion
can ever tell me, with certainty, what my future will be and what I should
do about it. The dictum from Sartre that Strawson quoted thus gets it
exactly right: I am condemned to freedom. I am not free because I *can* make
choices, but because I *must* make them, all the time, even when I think I
have no choice to make.
------------------------------
[image: William Egginton]

*William Egginton is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at the
Johns Hopkins University. His next book, “An Uncertain Faith: Atheism,
Fundamentalism, and Religious Moderation,” will be published by Columbia
University Press in 2011. *


--
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Communication
Dep't of STOC, Weiss Hall 215
Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
Home phone: 215 844 5969
http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons