criticism of discourse

i believe i have found a fundamental flaw with foucault's idea of discourse. to begin with, foucault stresses how language inherently can be used to bias seemingly neutral information:

"In the social sciences (following the work of Michel Foucault), a discourse is considered to be a formalized way of thinking that can be manifested through language, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech"—or possible truth. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists." In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate."

this is a reasonable and acceptable observation, except that it also opens the door for unintended bias due to the inherent structure of language. for one, syntax inherently interferes with the pure transmission of semantics intended to be communicated from one person to another. furthermore, vocabulary, expressions, and style are often just as inaccurate at representing facts in the course of everyday language usage, including both intentional and unintentional misrepresentations, as they are in cases wherein language is able, through the power vested in the speaker or writer due to his/her status or position, to be most potent at exerting power over a number of people. so, if we are to believe that aspects of language, including vocabulary, expressions, and style can color information and subtly attached opinions to facts to the extent that knowledge contained in them can be reduced to power, both in having been created by and in creation of, then we must also admit that language in ordinary everyday use ("casual discourse") -- including vocabulary, expressions, and style -- contains as much ability to color information and subtly attach opinions to facts, except often in unintentional ways (as opposed to "formal discourse", in which the bias is usually intentional). however, intentional or not, the reduction of knowledge to power still occurs in the ordinary everyday use of language to a similar extent as it does in formal discourse; while there is usually some difference in the magnitude of which language presents bias between language used by a country's president in a speech as opposed to an ordinary person having a conversation with a friend, for the purposes of reduction to power, any bias no matter how large or small the degree is pertinent -- it ultimately reduces to a binary, either with bias or without bias. of course, there is also difference in terms of how the magnitude is arrived at; for politicians and such it is almost always a matter of purposeful manipulation of accuracy within perceived intelligible boundaries, whereas for most other people it is often matter of incompetent misrepresentation of accuracy within perceived intelligible boundaries.

now, i realize that these "perceived intelligible boundaries" are might be similar to what butler terms "the limits of acceptable speech", with the difference being that the former is based solely on cognitive ability, whereas the latter is based on social norms, but there is most likely considerable overlap between the two. in any case, for foucault, it appears that "the limits of acceptable speech" also forms a limit as to the extent that knowledge can be objective, a boundary delimiting on one side where knowledge is objective and on the other side where knowledge is subjective. from what i can tell, it seems that foucault believes discourse produces subjective knowledge that can be reduced to power, but only to the extent that the perceived boundaries allow. while i realize that this contradicts his later position regarding "power-knowledge" wherein the reduction of knowledge to power is complete, let's explore it just for the sake of an argument here; i will demonstrate that knowledge cannot be considered partially objective and partially subjective and instead is either wholly subjective or it is not, and if it is wholly subjective, then it can be fully reduced to power, a conclusion which reinforces foucault's later beliefs about power and knowledge if he didn't possess them earlier. (and i'm not saying he didn't, i'm just inferring from what i know that his initial idea of discourse might not have fully embraced the aforementioned conclusion. later on i will show how this actually supports my criticism of discourse rather than hinders it.) reduced upon first glance, one might say that this is fine, for he has delimited the extent of subjective knowledge and thus preserved a certain domain for objective knowledge. the problem with this idea is the following: assume 0 represents totally subjective knowledge and 1 represents objective knowledge, and in between represents degrees of subjective knowledge, with the numbers closer to 0 being more subjective than numbers closer to 1. transmitted over time, totally subjective knowledge is represented by 0^n = 0, so you start with totally subjective knowledge and end with totally subjective knowledge. on the other hand, objective knowledge transmitted over time is represented by 1^n = 1, meaning you start with totally objective knowledge and you end with totally subjective knowledge. now, imagine that the knowledge we have is .8 -- subjective knowledge that is still closer to objective knowledge than subjective knowledge, and thus a good representation of what foucault would think would constitute knowledge in discourse. the problem is that transmitted over time, .8^n where n goes to infinity = 0. furthermore, this is true with any number less than 1 but greater than or equal to 0. why did i use an exponent as it went to infinity? because that represents how the knowledge can faithfully reproduce itself over time (if you have trouble conceiving this, think about what would happen if someone gave you a flawed argument, and then you used this flawed argument to support your own original argument -- an argument that is also being subjected to power and thus is inherently subjective from scratch before importing the subjective knowledge from the other person -- for something else, and then someone else used your argument to support his/her own original argument, and this continued ad infinitum), and the answer reflects what happens when the knowledge is ultimately reduced to power. there are two objections to this, which i will now address. the first is that knowledge is constantly evolving, and in not being stable, is thus not objective. this is an interesting point, and is sort of analogous to views on language as being a rigid system reflecting reality vs having a fluidity that is not attached to anything. since that is a whole nother argument in and of itself that has not been resolved, i will place this on the backburner for now. the second objection is that some of the knowledge passed down remains the same, and thus my mathematical analogy is incorrect. i think this is a matter of characterization: i would say that the knowledge that is passed down that remains the same is objective knowledge, and the knowledge that is not passed down is not really knowledge, but is in fact simply a matter of opinion. now, what about the idea of delimiting the extent to which knowledge is subjective, thus creating separate categories for objective knowledge and subjective knowledge? the problem with this idea is that only the communicator of the knowledge knows which parts constitute objective knowledge and which parts constitute subjective knowledge. for the person on the receiving end of the communication, he/she unable to separate the two from each other, so to that person subjective knowledge is considered to be intertwined with objective knowledge, thus "tainting" all of objective knowledge and making all of the knowledge subjective. so, ultimately it is impossible for knowledge to only be partially or somewhat subjective and for power to only partially or somewhat influence subjective knowledge. knowledge is ultimately either subjective or it is not, and if it is subjective, then it is fully reducible to power.

the problem is furthered by foucault's admittance of the language's ability to relate to objects and subjects as well as other "statements".

"In the work of Michel Foucault, and social theorists inspired by him, discourse has a special meaning. It is "an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements (enoncés)" (Foucault 1969: 141). An enouncement (often translated as "statement") is not a unity of signs, but an abstract matter that enables signs to assign specific repeatable relations to objects, subjects and other enouncements (Ibid: 140). Thus, a discourse constitutes sequences of such relations to objects, subjects and other enouncements."

as such, discourse not only shapes our knowledge via power, but it also affects how we engage and interpret things that language relates to, the very world around us and our engagement with others in describing and attempting to access it. while foucault never explicitly states (to my knowledge, at least) that the objects and subjects and other "enouncements" constitute reality per se, i believe that it is a reasonable inference to make from an objective perspective; foucault might've disagreed with this characterization of part of the definition of "enouncement", but in that case i would say that he was wrong (my previous blog posts deal with the matter of accepting the existence of an external reality). now, since discourse shapes our interactions with reality and thus reduces that to power, and our interactions with reality constitute our very existence as human beings and define who we are with respect to everything else, it follows that discourse effectively reduces our very existence to causes and effects of power. even assuming that there is not an external reality that we can access, it would appear that within foucault's own system of discourse, via his definition of enouncement, including a mere admission of objects and subjects, that foucault would have to acknowledge that discourse is not a form of "linguistic idealism" a la derrida and that things, in some way or another, do "exist", and that as humans, by using discourse, we are not only engaged linguistically, but existentially (not as in the existential 20th century philosophical movement per se, but merely regarding "being") as well, and to the same degree as we are linguistically -- if we are not able to escape discourse linguistically, then we are not able to escape it existentially, and thus anything and everything entailing our very existence is subject to discourse. thus, just like every single word, or even utterance, in discourse cannot escape its scrutiny, it would make sense that behavior, as an extension of thinking just like language is an extension of thinking, would be subject to the same scrutiny, and thus every single movement by a person, from a waiving of an arm, to a blink of an eye, to an act of defecating, to an act of lying in bed instead of deciding to get up must be thoroughly examined and viewed within the context of power relations. now, it is true that foucault was a structuralist (at least early in his career) and not an existentialist (not only in the literal philosophical movement sense of the term, but also in a looser term encompassing the general interest in existence and being), so he was interested in examining language primarily as a system consisting of mechanisms and relationships. however, i think his approach, in reflecting the prevailing thought of the times, was inherently flawed, and mistakenly attempted to divorce the idea of language as a structure from existence. consider a more common sense approach: what does one do before uttering words in a language? the answer is obvious -- one has to think! now, what does one have to do behavior taking a physical action? think. so it is obvious that if foucault system of discourse applies to language, which can be reduced to thinking, then behavior, as a result of existence, can also be reduced to thinking. i must add that in addition to visible behavior -- e.g. taking action such as movement that is better described as behavior than existence -- that thinking and not taking a visible action -- e.g. on both conscious and unconscious levels the mind "controlling" the body so that the body does not move, hence better being described as existing than behavior -- also constitutes thinking affecting behavior; thus simply "being" in a seemingly static manner is just as valid a behavior and an existence as physically exerting oneself in a state of motion and thus behaving in a fluid, changing manner. it should also be noted that behaviorism was largely going out of fashion around the time foucault was conceiving his discourse, which might've contributed to his lack of looking for behavioral effects of power in additional to linguistic ones. i can also see how practically speaking it would be much harder to demonstrate effects of power on behavior in everyday situations as opposed to examining language, but assuming it had been as easy to do as it had been with language, most certainly foucault would've expanded his idea of discourse to include behavior as well, for his ultimate goal -- at least by the time he formed his idea of "power-knowledge" later in his career -- was to show how power influenced practically every aspect of society, and what better way to do this then to demonstrate power's effects on people as evidenced through both language and behavior. now, around this time, the cognitive revolution was underway, a paradigm that connected language to thought and also circumvented the confounding variable of the "black box" of the mind in allowing researchers to directly access cognition, both in linguistic and non-linguistic (such as perception) ways. foucault, being a structuralist with an historical perspective (which separated him from being a conventional structuralist in some ways and allowed him a convenient segue into post-structuralism wherein historical perspectives were embraced), was likely unfamiliar with the ahistorical approach of the cognitive revolution. in addition to circumventing behaviorism and providing a link between mind and language, the cognitive revolution and its associated disciplines, including philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and medicine, also -- at least eventually -- provided some implications that would support my point of view. for example, the center of consciousness is pretty much agreed upon to occur in the brain and be a part of the nervous system. however, in a more surreal sense, consciousness actually exists throughout the entire body. this is not just an exercise in intellectual futility -- i have been made aware that a patient who underwent a heart transplant literally developed a new personality after the procedure! so if consciousness, which entails both mind and language and the idea of "thinking" bridging the two, exists throughout the body, then any system that entails language also inherently entails the human body, or from a philosophical point of view, existence.

so, i have demonstrated how discourse reduces language, knowledge, and existence to power. now, i will show how truth can also be reduced to power. earlier, this quote was part of a cited passage: "...as Judith Butler puts it, 'the limits of acceptable speech'—or possible truth." furthermore, one must consider an aspect pertinent to both language and existence: what is not said is as important as what is said. thus, at every moment, truth is a matter of opportunity cost determined by power, with the maximum amount of power allowed for by each opportunity cost situation prevailing. because truth is simply an outcome of each opportunity cost situation, truths only pertain to the specific situation in which they were produced. thus, there are as many truths as there are opportunity cost situations -- effectively infinite in theory -- with none of these truths being identical to any other truths. with there being a large number -- possibly an infinite number -- of truths that are all different from each other, and these truths being determined and "tainted" by power relations, we can conclude that 1) truth exists in plurality -- possibly infinity -- instead of in a single form that is eternal and/or repeatable, and 2) truth is subjective, not objective. i will now apply this in an example. imagine that you are conversing with a friend, and you tell your friend that the capital of california is sacramento -- you have just stated a truth in a given situation. now, imagine that for no immediately knowable reason you repeat saying this information twice more in the same manner. an "objectivist" would say that you simply stated an objective fact three times. however, for foucault, stating this fact three times entails a few things: 1) the person's statements of fact were not evidence of objective knowledge, but rather, were forms of subjective knowledge indicative of power relations affecting that person's behavior to act in such a manner, 2) the situation is represented by an opportunity cost, meaning that the time and energy used to express that statements of fact could've been used, in theory, to express something that was not a result of power relations, e.g. a statement that did the exact opposite and undermined the power structure, such as declaring the percentage of americans uninsured by health care in comparison with other first world nations, and 3) in reality -- not in theory -- there is no discernible difference between truth and existence; that person's statements of fact both expressed a truth that was the result of power relations and entailed an existence that was the result of those same power relations. the reason i gave the example of stating the capital of california three times instead of just once is that even for someone who believes that knowledge is objective, by transmitting information in an abnormal manner via unneeded and unexpected repetition, one must admit that this alters one's cognitive processing of that information, and thus one's existence is affected in a manner that is different from the normal way knowledge is transmitted. thus, even for an "objectivist", there is an overlap between knowledge and existence, albeit considered a trivial one under normal circumstances, but under abnormal circumstances, such as the repetition of stating the capital of california three times, the overlap is greater. for foucault, his idea of knowledge and existence is an extension of this expansion to the fullest; the overlap between knowledge and existence is complete and unified.

we have successfully reduced four things to power: language, knowledge, truth, and existence. i want to reinforce the idea that knowledge is subjective through the following: by proving that truth is subjective, it follows that knowledge, as either producing the truth or being a product of truth, is also subjective. unlike objective knowledge, subjective knowledge is not cumulative -- e.g., one does not conventionally establish a knowledge base and expand upon it -- and is subject to change at any given moment. with cumulative objective knowledge, it would be impossible to define it as being reduced to power and thus be compatible with sheer existence, assuming it (existence) has been reduced to power, due to the incompatibility of its (cumulative objective knowledge) stable ontology with existence's changing ontology. however, subjective knowledge, due to being subjective, is reducible to power, and is compatible with existence at the level, existence having also been reduced to power. furthermore, existence is defined equally by what it is as what it is not; this is compatible with subjective knowledge, which never accumulates a growing knowledge base but instead is in a state of flux from moment to moment. so, subjective knowledge does not entail only the positive affirmation of information, but also the absence of information. thus, any state of knowledge is as valid as another, and any state of existence is as valid as another. if one is unable to determine a state of knowledge that one aspires to reach and that is desirable and thus different from a currently undesirable state of knowledge, then there is a lack of a mechanism for directing change since conceiving a future state and adjusting one's behavior at present to match this state in the future is impossible. so, not only can one not envision a state of knowledge that is "improved" or "better" than his/her current state, but one also cannot envision a state of knowledge that is just different since that state is simply equivalent to a future state of existence, both having been reduced to sheer power. as such, "everything just is", or expressed in different terms, there is only "being" from here to infinity; there is no "becoming" that would transition "being" (subscript 1) to "being" (subscript 2) -- being is continuous from here to the end of the domain.

so, that is what results from the "lack of a mechanism". now, if we view knowledge as objective and not reducible to power, the mechanism emerges -- the mechanism exists in the same way that a social scientist might say he/she is using a lens (epistemology) through which he/she is conducting research; the mechanism can be seen as something that stabilizes the "playing field" so that things on the playing field can be seen and judged accurately and objectively. so while the mechanism, which is epistemic and thus an aspect of consciousness, is part of a natural, biological process -- the same natural, biological process that can exist without this mechanism -- this does not mean that "everything just is", for there is a "becoming" that transitions "being" (subscript 1) to "being" (subscript 2) due to having objective knowledge; in having objective knowledge, one is forced to acknowledge the results of past behavior resulting in the present state and make a decision about a future state and the best way to approach reaching that state of being. however, if knowledge and existence are one and the same and "everything just is", then intelligent behavior cannot be determined, and things such as 2 + 2 = 4 occurring billions of times does not make it any more or less correct than 2 + 2 = 5, with its -- 2 + 2 = 4 -- frequency being considered normal (not any more or less normal than occurrences that happen far less often) and not a statistical outlier (thus, statistics are useless, and their characterizations of events and relationships among those events being established as causes or correlations do not hold any water). the only way we can establish that 2 + 2 = 4 is correct and intelligent behavior is to make knowledge objective, which in turn separates the ideas of knowledge and existence.