Frank Kogan

Take a very simple Wittgensteinian language-game, e.g., a bricklayer says "BRICK" and the bricklayer's assistant brings her the brick.* All of this is part of the language-game: not just the utterance "BRICK," but also the assistant bringing the brick — so the actions as well as the sound. You don't have one part being language and another part not. It's all language, and if you leave out the actions it's not complete.**

Of course, at times the assistant could understand that he's to bring a brick, yet he chooses not to, in defiance or as a joke; or he may be prevented from doing so, say by an injury; and that doesn't mean the language-game is incomplete in these instances. As long as the practice is there, the established practice of "BRICK" and an assistant bringing the brick, the language-game is in effect. And defiance and humor are expressible in this language, too, even though the language only contains one word, the command "BRICK." (Suppose, somehow, there's miscommunication in the game. Or some misunderstanding, the assistant incorrectly thinking that it's only when the bricklayer has her arm raised as she's uttering "BRICK" that he's to bring the brick. Or maybe sometimes the bricklayer doesn't mean it, and the assistant has to figure out when. A game doesn't have to be conducted with absolutely certainty to be a game; a language doesn't have to have absolute certainty and consistency to be a language.)

We can define "language-games" as being, more or less, "human social practices." The terms "language-game" and "social practice" are near synonyms, language being so ubiquitous. But let's see what happens if we go further. Let's get rid of "more or less." Let's say that all human social practices are language-games, whether or not any word is actually spoken in the practice, and whether or not all the parties even know a language. Yes, at least one of them — the parent of a baby, for instance — will have to know a language; but the other(s) won't have to. So parental action and baby wails and goos and parental response are all in the category "language-game." A baby being initiated into parent-child social behavior is a baby being initiated into language.***

By this definition, all musical events, including the "nonverbal," are nonetheless in some language-game or other. This doesn't mean "can be made part of a language-game by translating musical sounds into words or by describing the music in words." It means that the language-game includes musical sounds as they are, and we can take the sounds and see their role in particular games — particular social practices — just as we can take the utterances and actions in the "BRICK" language and see their roles in that particular practice. In any event, we refuse to give the social practices we call "music" the special status of being "nonverbal." They aren't.

( Motive here is to tease out what might be usable in Mark's glimmer of an idea )

( Footnotes (as opposed to musical notes?) )

Dave over on his Tumblr:

I worry that people who are interested (and provocative, and good writers) in "other avenues" online tend to be exceedingly poor at transferring those skills to discussing music. I like several progressive writers in the political blogosphere, but in nearly all cases their ability to talk about music is fucked, because, perhaps by nature of what they "do," they don't take music very seriously. It's a "break" from the hard work of writing about politics and policy, and it's their only chance to be intellectually lax (or flat-out stupid). The only field in which I've seen any potential for overlap is education and pedagogy theory, where much of the more enlightened theory on media literacy seems to take up many of the things I'm most interested in in music criticism — especially how personal likes and dislikes interact with our ability to learn. Music can galvanize learners in both directions — engagement and disengagement — and bringing matters of personal taste into the classroom is a minefield.

. . .

A good internet convo or community, like a good classroom, is a site for questioning, accepts reasoned analysis, and actively discourages intellectual stasis and a reliance on unfounded assumptions. Also like a good classroom it includes all of the messy stuff, too — temper tantrums, joking, going off-topic, failed experimentation — and makes it part of the learning experience. The question I have is whether or not the elephant in the room in this comparison — the role of the teacher — is by and large what's missing from internet discourse. I want to say no (when you tell a group of adults that they need a teacher, you're on the express train to condescension-ville) but I do see an occasional need for a larger force that could more strongly redirect conversations when they begin to derail (derailing is not the same as going off-topic).

(There's plenty more, so click the link.)

Am embarking on a project of rereading Thomas Kuhn and so I'm starting a Thomas Kuhn reading group here in Denver. The group so far consists in its entirety of me and my friend David (the fellow who taught the intro to philosophy course I audited last semester) and isn't likely to grow, so I'm adding an online component. As always, I'm open to anyone posting here whether you've done the reading or not and whether you feel "qualified" or not. You'll likely stimulate my ideas even when your own aren't worked out. That said... well, see below.

Believe it or not I find this stuff real easy (about a hundred times easier than figuring out and articulating why I like Cassie's "Turn The Lights Off" and Heidi Montag's "No More"). And what's impressive about its easiness is that Kuhn is addressing himself to the hardest practical topic there is, how to go about understanding a mode of thought that you had not previously been acquainted with.

I'm going to experiment to see if these posts can function as a proto-Department Of Dilettante Research, which means I'll put thought into how to be a teacher, how to stimulate your ideas. So in some instances I'll be asking questions but temporarily holding back my own answers until you've had a chance to start on yours, my belief being that ideas you work out for yourself will stick with you better than ones you simply read or memorize. And this also means that if you want to learn much you're better off doing the reading and doing what I tell you.

( No, you must explain this in full, now! )

( reading list )

I have a whole bunch of notes written down that didn't make it into my most recent Department Of Dilettante Research thread (which you should look back at, since byebyepride made a couple of late comments that I've been thinking about).

(1) What's the reward for teaching well and for understanding? What are the consequences for failing to teach or to understand? --When I wrote those questions I was thinking of how they would apply to an actual dep't we'd set up. Any answer would have to take into account what sort of thing the dep't is, e.g. an actual funded dep't somewhere or a message board or a magazine or a bunch of conversations on the town green or an itinerant group of marauders who "intervene" in some or all of the aforementioned. BUT actually when I glanced at the questions just now I interpreted them as applying to the world in general, not the Dep't in specific. What are the consequences for failing to teach or to understand? Like, in one's life.

If success and failure were its own rewards, then "departments of dilettante research" would have emerged all over the blogosphere. I wonder if the loose gaggle of economists blogs I've been reading - mostly by academics, a few by those in the financial industry, a few by journalists - could actually be considered a de facto Department Of Dilettante Research. Presumably the academics read each other's papers. Or I would like to think that they do. But they also have the ongoing financial support of institutions, and some of them get paid for columns and - presumably - for their blogs. (I don't know this, however.)

( Ways of creating courses )

( Where do we start? )

the further the problem was from the solver's expertise, the more likely they were to solve it

"If it could easily have been solved 'by people within the industry, it would have been,' he said."

(So the question here for me is what are the problems that I'm working on that people in my rock-critic and blog worlds are having trouble thinking about, and where do I find people from elsewhere who might be willing to think about those problems? E.g., my ideas on "social class," that we need to think about what social class is, and we need to think about it differently. For instance, I think Ashlee and Jessica Simpson belong to different social classes, but with the way class is generally defined, what I've just said would be considered nonsense.)

First in what I hope is a new series of posts about the Department of Dilettante Research (though if my past behavior is any guide, "series of posts" don't happen to me, seeing as I'm more of a convo man than a blog man, hence end up saying more and better stuff on other people's comments threads).

A couple of song lyrics, followed by analysis and speculation.

( When I'm out shoppin', it's like having a gun )

( Turn around bitch I got a use for you )

( Let's make sex mean something this year )

In three months through June 2006 my book moved about 1,450 copies, so I said to myself, "It'll probably top out at about 2,000," which I guess wasn't too bad considering I didn't get many reviews, the most high-profile being Tom Breihan's Pitchfork rave ("Don't even attempt to fuck with Real Punks Don't Wear Black") that didn't even go up until July.

( I got clobbered by returns )

This week's column is something of a repeat of last week's, elaborating on both the functionality and dysfunctionality of sticking with our own (with our own people and their ideas). So, any thoughts about how to overcome the dysfunctionality, given that social clustering is necessary and inevitable?

The Rules Of The Game #17: Punks and Cats

I make no effort to justify the last three words of the piece. I just toss them in.

( Stuff about italics and their absence )

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

Last week Mark made yet another Department Of Dilettante Research post on poptimists. And here are some additional thoughts of my own.

A crucial component (the centering component, perhaps) of the Department Of Dilettante Research is conversations among several people - surrounded by kibitzers, onlookers, revelers, brawlers, etc. - where no one leaves the conversation until everyone is satisfied that the others understand him or her. Different conversations may have different central characters (though my guess is that the same characters will keep turning up time and time again), and "central" might just mean "central to me"; that is, there may be other conversations with as many or more participants and onlookers than the ones I'm calling "central." But the conversations I'm calling "central" will be the ones where no one leaves the conversation until everyone is satisfied that the others understand him or her. Without those conversations, there's no department.

I want these conversations to occur in a fundamentally open space, hence the revelers, kibitzers, etc. (how open will be a matter for experience to teach us). This is to lessen the chance of our becoming social retards.

( I will have trouble finding people able to take a central role. )

Here are some excerpts from my book:

From chapter 18, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life:

Among other things, I'm arguing that (i) presentation of self - creating, maintaining, or modifying one's hairstyle, as it were - is a way of thinking, but (ii) given a choice between maintaining one's hairstyle and thinking about it, my profession as a whole will choose hairstyle over thought. And the reader/editor/colleague will crack down on my thought, too, if it threatens his hairstyle (at least, he'll crack down collectively, institutionally, on behalf of the collective/institutional hairstyle, even if he'd rather not). In effect, to freeze one's hairstyle is to freeze a part of one's brain.

[By "my profession" I mean academia as well as journalism, even though I've never had a job in academia.]

Later in the same chapter:

( the drive towards academic diversity tends to run aground )