ART AND HOUSE METAPHORS

Trevor Burrowes Hi Alma, thanks a lot for joining us. There have to better ways to get a laugh than weeding through what only a handful of specialists even think of addressing. This is all pretty much over my head too. 

I'm not really trying to understand philosophy; I tend to be philosophical by nature, although in a highly unschooled fashion. But in order to have more solid footing on what I'm proposing, I occasionally look up things on Wikipedia, and usually find too much and more complicated information than I really want to, or can readily, understand. 

Jamaica is a small island with a very coherent geography: the entire coast is flat, with a mountainous spine running lengthwise from east to west. Over the centuries of British colonial rule, starting in 1655, towns sprang up by natural harbors along the entire coast. And except where exceedingly craggy limestone made town development prohibitive, the towns were like a string of pearls held together by a narrow coastal road. Since sea travel was by sailboat, and land travel was pedestrian or horse powered, travel was slow, and towns remained rooted and held on to their character. By contrast, the advent of fossil fuel powered travel in the 20th century allowed towns to sprawl, roads to widen and congest. There was also more industrialization, consumption, economic mobility, more energy dependent construction--like the ubiquitous use of cinder block concrete--and the discarding of architectural heritage. Population mushroomed. The list goes on. What I'm proposing is based on empirical observation, and the ability to think critically, and philosophy is a useful tool in that endeavor.

Neither in Jamaica, nor most place do people have a good ability to think creatively or critically. They simply follow the patterns that have become normal through repeated, long term use and through institutional (structural) support for them. Philosophy might be a way to think clearly enough, with enough pattern of logic and reason, that it supports change, however indirectly. 

I'll share more opinions and thoughts soon. Very, very best for the New Year!

Thagard/Bean describe Foundational  metaphors as a way to get to the foundation of issues. that means weeding out useless or even damaging information that get in the path of the basic foundational pattern. 

EPISTEMOLOGY AND GARVEYISM
By Trevor Burrowes

I apply epistemological metaphors to the study of Marcus Garvey, leaving out for now the fact that there are other metaphors, as well as composites of the various ones. I have been posting images of Edward Hopper paintings as a way to get at Foundational Metaphors from a more sense-related perspective, while universalizing the issues of Garveyism, and pointing to toward integration of European culture and philosophical understandings within the discussion of a Garveyite agenda.

 

Epistemological Metaphors and the Nature of Philosophy

Paul Thagard and Craig Beam

Abstract. This paper examines some of the most important metaphors and analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophical significance of the prevalence of such metaphors. We argue that they support a view of philosophy as akin to science rather than poetry or rhetoric.

2. Foundational Metaphors

The Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) defines a foundation as "the solid ground or base (natural or built up) on which an edifice or other structure is erected". Many philosophers have sought a ground or base on which knowledge could be erected. To say that knowledge has or needs a foundation is to use a metaphor based on a systematic analogy between the development of knowledge and the construction of a building. Descartes (1984, vol. 2, p. 366) explicitly endorses this analogy:

Throughout my writings I have made it clear that my method imitates that of the architect. When an architect wants to build a house which is stable on ground where there is a sandy topsoil over underlying rock, or clay, or some other firm base, he begins by digging out a set of trenches from which he removes the sand, and anything resting on or mixed in with the sand, so that he can lay his foundations on firm soil. In the same way, I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing it out, like sand; and then, when I noticed that it is impossible to doubt that a doubting or thinking substance exists, I took this as the bedrock on which I could lay the foundations of my philosophy.

Just as the architect who wants to build a stable house must find a firm base for it, so Descartes who wants to establish stable knowledge must doubt everything in order to find a firm base for his beliefs. This analogy involves many interconnected correspondences, including: architect/epistemologist, house/knowledge, build/justify, base/indubitable knowledge, and sand/dubitable beliefs. See Newman 1999 for a discussion of Descartes' foundationalism.
Descartes (1984, vol. 2, p. 324) also used another analogy in defending his method of doubt, responding to a critic as follows:

Suppose he had a basket full of apples, and being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others?
Like the foundation analogy, this one serves to justify Descartes' procedure of trying to start from indubitable beliefs, which correspond to good apples, while abandoning dubitable beliefs, which correspond to rotten apples. A third metaphor used by Descartes (1984, vol. 1, p. 120) to expound his epistemology is that of a chain of reasoning:

The long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that all the things which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the same way.

3. Coherence Metaphors

In 1860, Charles Peirce published an incisive attack on Cartesian epistemology, rejecting the method of universal doubt. Peirce criticized the idea of a chain of reasoning that Descartes derived from mathematical proof. According to Peirce, (1958, pp. 40-41) reasoning should be understood as a cable rather than a chain:

Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.

The cable metaphor is a powerful antidote to the chain and foundation metaphors that have dominated much of epistemology. What matters is not the strength of a particular proposition, but its connections with numerous other propositions. The metaphor that reasoning is a cable is based on a complex analogy that involves interrelated correspondences: fiber/beliefs, cable/set of interconnected beliefs, and strength of cable/validity of knowledge. These elements are causally related, in that just as the number and interconnection of fibers is what makes a cable strong, the number and interconnection of beliefs is what makes them justified. Justification is then a matter of coherence rather than foundations.

http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/epistemological.html?fbclid=IwAR3D9iRr0PzdhLrAmRcwyr0TyNdnrLIkWHlynPNsjgdN0ZWQu6iTodCG42g

MARCUS GARVEY

1) Garvey is the foundational thinker for the African world. He didn't make a distinction between Africans at home (African continent) and Africans abroad (African Diaspora). This applies the "separate rotten apples from the good ones by throwing them all out so you can see which ones are rotten and which ones are good" metaphor that Thagard/Bean uses . Garvey throws out the rotten ideas--like Africans' false attachment to colonial memes that they were nationals of some place other than Africa. Then you are left with a clear foundational idea that we all form a single unit which is African. This eliminates the rotten apples of rivalry within colonial-derived fracturing of the diasporic unity.

2) Garvey led the largest mass movement in history (said to number some four million souls at its zenith in 1920). Garvey was charismatic and brilliant almost beyond comprehension, but was not perfect. And business failures, bad apples within his organization (United Negro Improvement Association, aka UNIA) and racist policies within the US government, led to his deportation to his native Jamaica, and the gradual decline of the UNIA. His historical nemesis within the US was W.E.B. DuBois, an academic and privileged black, who disregarded working class and poor black people in favor or the elite classes. 

Here we have more rotten apples in the African basket. Acceptance of colonial memes of worth; disparagement of the vast majority of blacks (the working class and poor), who were less qualified within the European value and status system than the elites. By thus reducing the numbers and the energetic force of engaged blacks, you get a blighted and servile black movement. 

3) Shameless scoundrels with the UNIA also worked to bring down Garvey. And once he was discredited, the DuBois wing of the black movement held sway, and has continued to do so till today. Within the American black movement, the Civil Rights faction, epitomised by Dr. King, generally falls withing the DuBois tradition of trying to make peace and fit in with the American system, while the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X faction leans more toward the Garvey side of independence and self help. The African Independence movement of the 1950s and 60's was inspired by Garveyism. 

This clearly has contributed to the tragic situation we see with black communities in the Western world today, and probably has been contributed to by the rotten apple factors mentioned in 1) and 2). Garvey was not able to solve this problem, which might have more to do with the Coherentist metaphor than Foundational. We should attend to this next. 

But let's try to clear our thoughts, and throw out rotten apple:

The issues which concern me and I seem loathed to abandon for the sake of efficiency and comprehensibility are:

Art

Philosophy

Hopper

Garveyism

Environment

Preservation

\bottom up economics

ART

"In terms of complexity, the amount of brain area used, and advancement over other mammals, vision would be the most well-developed sense in humans, followed by auditory, then touch, smell, and taste." Paul King 

Hypothesis: The majority of people get a greater proportion of their epistemology (such as it might be) through the visual sense than do the educated elite. 

If a critical mass of people need to be affected by a meme, that meme must work through the visual sense. 

In Jamaica, the memes are communicated audially, implying that the greater part of the experience to be gained by living in Jamaica is not being consciously experienced. there's no comparable movement to music for valuing trees or buildings. 

PHILOSOPHY

Epistemological metaphors 

If we can arrange our thoughts in the systematic and interdependent way in which a house is constructed, we can more easily discard thoughts and memes that serve no useful purpose.

One of the clearest ways of arranging our thoughts is to analogize (or compare) them with constructing a house. 

The artist's approach I find most appealing to analogize the construction of a house is Edward Hopper.

What Hopper has done with house-like composition can also be done with political thought.

A visual apprehension of the surroundings ought to enhance thought construction along the lines of house epistemology

MARCUS GARVEY: If Garvey was brought up in a stable town with a stable visual style of construction, it is reasonable to think that influenced his epistemological patterning.

If that patterning had to do with Euclidean geometry reflected in a grid layout, and systematic lot formation within blocks, buildings would likely be consistent in size and shape. They would also be responsive to their environment, designed from wood, with wooden shingles, with peaked roofs and deep ceilings to allowe air to flow. There would be ubiquitous jalousie windows to allow for privacy, to keep the sun out and to discreetly see through. Such patterns would be conducive to reason, especially when experienced by an unusually receptive mind. If Garvey had to walk 3 miles each way on a daily basis passing cane fields and coconut plantations near the sea, that might have conferred as sense of labor, but also of natural bounty, and the appreciation of a green landscape. 

Garvey grew up in a time of frugality, a time of recognized limits. If he knew industry, natural limits, civic order, traditional practicality and manners, why aren't the remnants of these qualities lumped together under the mantle of colonial heritage to be preserved? Isn't the separation of these issues another example of epistemological rotten apples? And if the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) integrates these things in it's long and glorious career, isn't its marginalization and undervaluing not another case of epistemological rotten apples? If a country can't get things straight--as in a crooked post for a building--it gives itself unnecessary problems.

How you best integrate complex issues is through planning. I hope, but am no sure, that Hopper can help with this. Next.

PLANING

If the issue is planning, it can't be about color class or religion. Those would be rotten apples too. The major factor in urban planning is visible space. So we have to give that subject our main attention

See passage on Garvey

St. Ann's Bay is the key to preservationist planning in Jamaica

- It has a logical connection to Garvey tourism

- Its initiation will spur similar efforts nationwide

- It effects the connection of colonial heritage preservation with black self worth and identity.

The artist and patterns

A MAJOR PROBLEMS

It seems to me that Marcus Garvey has been chosen as Jamaica's first national hero for reasons that are not essential to Garvey's mission. If we were to survey every adult in Jamaica and ask what Garvey means to them, I wonder what answers we would get. Traditionally among Rastafari Garvey is truly loved and honored for much of the right reasons. I'm very uncertain about the rest of the population, however. Garvey was a revolutionary, and to honor his heritage requires revolutionary thought and action. That by no means requires taking up arms to fight some oppressive force. We are all, in some sense, the oppressive force that must be lifted through many different remedies, many internal and psychological.

Need for comprehensive heritage plabn that incorporates nature and wildlife 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1136614066515768&set=p.1136614066515768&type=3&theater