Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK
From: jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Logic and Intuition
Message-ID: <5799@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 88 17:55:31 GMT
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
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Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


In article <8526@spl1.UUCP> skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu writes:
>Does this help?

Not very much.  You start by saying:

>Logic and intuition are not opposites.  And I don't think the
>Lacanians want to suggest they are.

You then say we need to distinguish between discourse and language
and go on to say something about discourse in the West.  Ok, but so
far nothing about logic or intuition.  The next paragraph goes on
to language use, where you say that logic (cutting up the world)
is not incompatible with intuition but is incompatible with Lacanian
feminists ideas about language use.  This says something about the
Lacanian views on logic, but I still don't know what they think
about intuition.  It sounds like they don't really care about
logic vs. intuition at all but think some other distinctions are
important instead.

>They think there are two things which language does (as we presently
>practice it) which alienate women (or force women to alienate themselves
>from their own bodies): cause us to define distinctions among the world,
>to categorize; cause us to the put some things above others, some things
>at the center and others at the fringe.

What strange things to think.  Language alienates women but not men?
I prefer the "eastern" view that distinctions are ultimately false
for everyone, especially since the idea then is not to be deceived
by them rather than not to make them.  (Well, for practical purposes,
I would say there *is* a difference between the potato and the dirt
it's in.)  And then: language (?) causes (?) women to put some things
above others.  I suppose a woman wouldn't value her own body over the
nearest teaspoon (for example) if not for language.  If so, why isn't
language a good thing?  And: language as we presently practice it?
I doubt language is possible without drawing distinctions.  We'd
have a bit of trouble with nouns anyway.  Shall we get rid of them?

-- Jeff