From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!darwin.sura.net!gatech!pitt!geb Thu Feb 20 15:22:04 EST 1992
Article 3861 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!darwin.sura.net!gatech!pitt!geb
>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robotic Follies (was re: Strong AI and Panpsy
Message-ID: <13477@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 92 14:13:11 GMT
References: <1992Feb14.010922.8804@husc3.harvard.edu> <13430@pitt.UUCP> <43478@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Sender: news@cs.pitt.edu
Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 59

In article <43478@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>In article <13430@pitt.UUCP> geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:

>>Quite the reverse.  I am an anarchist, and it is a strong antipathy
>
>Really? This is a surprise. Which flavor of anarchism gets your vote -
>Kropotkinism? anarcho-syndicalism of the CNT? anarcho-communism of, say,
>Goldman? a modern "green" variant such as Bookchin's? or something more
>along the lines of Chomsky's anarcho-liberalism?
>
Of the ones you name, I probably like Chomsky and Kropotkin the best,
although being a good anarchist, there are no authorities.  I'm not
familiar with Bookchin.  Sounds interesting, can you give me a pointer?

>I've seen a freshly minted orwellianism on the net from advocates of a
>kind of nouveau-feudalism who are calling themselves "anarchists" because they
>wish to supplant the modern state with a purely property based state system.
>I hope that this is not what you mean. 
>
You mean like David Friedman?  He was a member of our anarchism study group
at the Univ. of Chicago 20 years ago, but, no I wouldn't say he is my model
either, although his system is much less Orwellian than and preferable to
the system we have now (as are just about all the archists systems, Goldman
included.)   Of the classical anarchists, I guess I favor
Bukunin (or is it spelled Bakunin, I forget).  
> 
>>to authority and orthodox systems that moves me.
>>Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis are
>>two of the most pernicious systems of orthodoxy to arise recently.
>
>Are you familiar with Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism"? Could
>you explain what it is that you find so "authoritarian" and "orthodox" in
>this work which draws so much from both of these authors?
>
I'm not familiar with it.  But I don't believe that just because Marxism
and Freudianism are authoritarian systems with an orthodoxy that it
would be impossible to derive any work from them that didn't reflect
that.  I think I would find any such work suspect scientifically,
however, if it was grounded on Marxian and Freudian axioms, which
I think are faulty.  There are even feminist interpretations of
Freud, and that really is turning things inside out.

>As William Morris pointed out, the dustbin of history gets spilled back
>out into the street quite often.
>
Well, yes and no.  Politically old wine in new bottles
reappears from time to time. We never seem to learn.  In science that doesn't
happen very often though.  Aristotelian physics and the theory of
humors have shown no signs of life for at least a century.  I doubt
if Freudian psychiatry is going to ever flourish again either.  It
has now become ghettoized and survives only among the rich in places
like New York City.  It is practically extinct in Europe.  The only
place it really is vital is among practioners of the humanities
(e.g. literary criticism and history).
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


