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Article 3807 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robotic Follies (was re: Strong AI and Panpsy
Message-ID: <1992Feb17.153034.8914@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 92 20:30:30 GMT
References: <13398@pitt.UUCP> <1992Feb14.010922.8804@husc3.harvard.edu> <13430@pitt.UUCP>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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Nntp-Posting-Host: brauer.harvard.edu

In article <13430@pitt.UUCP> 
geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:

>In article <1992Feb14.010922.8804@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>I agree: it's common knowledge that Freud spent every minute of his
>>association with Charcot shooting cocaine and reading anonymous Victorian
>>smut.  Likewise, the vast empirical data collected in the course of his
>>Viennese practice concerns only neurotic middle-class Jewish women, and
>>is ipso facto irrelevant to the rest of the world.

GB:
>His time with Charcot was time well spent.  Charcot was ten times the
>scientist Freud ever was.  The cocaine snorting and ridiculous
>generalizations from hysterics to the rest of the world came
>later, as you well know.

Freud, on the other hand, was ten times the thinker Charcot ever was.  As
for "ridiculous generalizations from hysterics to the rest of the world",
methinks I sense a whiff of ressentiment... are you suggesting that Freud's
clinical practice doesn't entitle him to any meaningful insight into human
nature? what about his education and self-analysis?  Perhaps, at the end of
the day, a physician is obligated to treat each new patient as an entirely
new phenomenon, having absolutely nothing in common with anything he may
have encountered before?

MZ:
>>Oh, it's not just that remark, it's Freud and Marx together in "the dustbin
>>of history".  There's something about the people who would have such hopes
>>or expectations of theories and ideas, that strikes me as quite obviously
>>reactionary.

GB:
>Quite the reverse.  I am an anarchist, and it is a strong antipathy
>to authority and orthodox systems that moves me.
>Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis are
>two of the most pernicious systems of orthodoxy to arise recently.
>I'd be happy to see some of the older authorities also consigned
>to the same dustbin.

If Freudian psychoanalysis has turned into an orthodox institution, it
can't be blamed on its founder.  Freud himself was anything but an
authoritarian thinker, at least if you don't interpret this term in a
trivial fashion, whereby every academic comes out as one.  If the same
can't be said for Marx' political persona, his socioeconomic theory is most
manifestly not a "pernicious systems of orthodoxy" in and of itself; within
its limitations, as outlined e.g. by Max Weber, it offers a wealth of valid
observations about its subject matter.  Again, any attempt to consign an
idea to ""the dustbin of history" strikes me as fundamentally
anti-intellectual and reactionary.  As a prime example of such practice, I
adduce Richard Pipes and his book "The Russian Revolution".

>-- 
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
>geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------


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