philosophy

[Guest]

. . . These things, please stay with me here, do not duck in fear of the non-objective, these things need an objective analysis like they need a hole in the head.
. . .
Shall I describe it a little, this range of techniques? Can you give me that much rope? I am entirely serious.

I think I'm with you, Cant. Please do. P.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Lucifer_Carroll
Psychology only works if everyone lives in a "Metropolis"-esque environment. This is because conformity is valued over everything else. If anyone dares deviate, dares be unique, they are for the longest time thought of as mad or unhealthy. If they are lucky and evade the psychologists until they write that great novel or invent that amazing new science or technology, they are allowed to be downgraded to "eccentricity". Until then, they live in fear of being shut away forever on a diazeprin drip.

This seems (and forgive me if I'm wrong) like a string of assumptions and conclusions without solid premise. Psychology worked in the case of Pavlov's dog, it worked in the case of Little Albert, it works every day in actual clinical settings to help people who have disorder in their lives to such an extent that it interferes with their (1) peace of mind and (2) ability to cope and function independantly. How that has anything to do with "conformity" is beyond me.

I follow Kesey in his criticisms of society and psychology. I recognize for the services of understanding, moments of catharsis, occasional lockups, etc. but I disagree with our current system. We are treating too many people who don't need it. Check out the chic of psychology in LA and NYC. There having a psychologist is fashionable. It's simply the way to spend your free time. People get to whine and consoled so that they can live in their little fantasy reality, so they can balm those dreadful doubts and feelings, so they can live like a robot and a slave to consumerism and mass culture.

Kesey? Ken Kesey? The narcotic-taking writer? Or some other Kesey? Either way, that we are treating more people that we need to doesn't invalidate or "cliche'" the work of psychology. I think, maybe, you're thinking of "therapy" which isn't actually psychology any more than "driving a car" is "engineering". If it is the case that you're bashing "therapy"--which is a whole other issue I may take up argument with--then be careful in the future about generalizing psychology in incorrect ways. It'd be like saying that "literature is bogus" because my next door neighbor writes bad poetry and feels cool about it.

We are killing our free thinkers with this new mass psychology and this needs to stop. Lend a sympathetic ear to the suicide cases, lock up and try to aid the homocidals, speech therapize the stutterers, but let's lay off the future eccentrics and the non-conformist sane.

Cause often it's good to be crazy.

I cannot think of any recent instances of ending the lives of free thinkers using psychology, if you know of some please share. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure its a meaningful statement that we ought "lay off the future eccentrics and non-conformist sane". We already do, to a great extent (as short of dangerous instances, treatment is a voluntary thing). I'm not sure there's an issue here.

Originally posted by cantdog
I do not speak of the mechanism, electrical, chemical, of the brain. It is doubtless yummy how far we have come. I simply make the point, for me an obvious one, that you can't know anyone objectively.

I tried following your whole post, but I confess it was very lyrical and, thus, very difficult to identify your points from your prose. I would appreciate a clearer summary, if you've time.

This one statement, however, did speak to me and I must disagree.


"you can't know anyone objectively"... it is possible, though. Rationally speaking, that is.

 

[Guest]

"you can't know anyone objectively"... it is possible, though. Rationally speaking, that is.

Joe, your comments on Luc's post were excellent, couldn't have said it better.

But you'll need to explain what you mean by "rationally speaking", otherwise I think I know what Cant means, and I agree.

Perdita

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by perdita
Joe, your comments on Luc's post were excellent, couldn't have said it better.

But you'll need to explain what you mean by "rationally speaking", otherwise I think I know what Cant means, and I agree.

Perdita

Well, I suppose I only mean that there isn't anything about the nature of subjectivity or objectivity that precludes the mind from being known either way. That is to say, the concept of "mind" and that of "objective understanding" do not contradict. Can the mind be known "in relation to the object (in this case 'mind')"? Well, as its not a logical contradiction, I have to conclude that its a possibility.

 

[shereads]

You have got to be joking. In terms of this definition please explain how the beauty of language compares to the beauty of music or the beauty of art compares to the beauty of the sea.

Or did you mean physical beauty? Then please explain how a fat arse is more beautiful than a bony arse.

Oh. See what I did there, I made the word beauty into a comparative when all this time it is an absolute.

I wondered who would call amicus on the statement that beauty is an absolute. Snow is beautiful to me because I live in the tropics. I wonder whether people who live in and near and inspite of snow most of the time, ever wake up to a fresh snowfall and think, "Beautiful, pristine."

Standards of physical beauty in human beings vary by culture, too - to the extent that all cultures don't yet have access to Glamour magazine. To a degree, these standards seem to be based on attributes associated with wealth and privilege. In this country, when we were largely an agrarian society, pale skin was considered attractive until the industrial age, when suddenly it was a sign that you labored in a factory instead of laboring in the fields. Muscles were undesirable for women until recently, when they came to be recognized as a sign that your time is your own, to spend running or at the gym with your trainer. In West Africa, there is still a beauty pageant whose winner must have an enormous belly and thighs - it's a culture where being well-fed is still something to strive for.

Beauty as an absolute? Spoken by a man who sees beauty in anglo saxons of a certain class, and thinks the rest of the world does, too.

I suspect this is why a. typically shrugs off suggestions that he back up his statements of fact, decrying the uses of references and documentation as a weakness. You'll never change anyone's thinking if you state your prejudices as universal truths.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Hey Joe (cause when else can I use a Hendrix song as a title)

Okay, it's a fair cop. I used generalizations.

My examples are poor because what I have to work with is poor. I've only got the mishmash refuge of psychology that is forced on people. The push for all the morons to get therapy whether they need it or not. The cruel trend in schools or parents to send children to a psychologist or psychiatrist (read corporate drug dealer) if they show any sign of not "being like all the other kids". I'm talking about the stupid fucking Freud worship (the guy did more drugs than Kesey, why do we listen to him as if he was God, again?). The fact that one is pressured into acting "normal" his entire life. Essentially the whole societal perversion of the "science".

I use "science" as I do, because of another point. Psychology, sociology, and political science are all part of a scientific-sounding group that are "soft science" and pseudoscience. They use scientific-sounding terms and do their research in similar ways, but they attempt to measure the subjective. cantdog makes this point in his anti-science thread (shame on you for putting science and soft science cantdog in the same boat). All of these sciences attempt to use trends of the majority to dictate human behavior and use the same scientific measuring sticks (remove the extreme variables and plot to fit). This causes these particular people to be marginalized, demonized, and eventually lobotomized. Hard science on the other hand relies on objective data and then toys with it. Thus neurobiology is a hard science but psychology is not.

What psychology knows, it doesn't know about how people's brains work. It knows what a person in full knowledge that they could be locked away or given mind-altering drugs if they answer a certain way will tell a professional looking bored person with his own subjective opinions on how the brain works. In an ideal world, psychology would only know how the statistically average person's brain seems to rationalize. On Metropolis, we would know how everyone's mind was forced to work.

Now an example, I for instance am insane and unmedicated. I, however, am less inclined to kill someone than your average sane soldier, sane business owner, or sane politician. I have a greater standard of morals than your average sane person. I have to this day never struck a person a true blow, though I will admit to moves that have impaired a person's ability to move freely (like headlocks or bearhugs and the like). I have an overdeveloped sense of chivalry. I have a staggering imagination as well as an affinity to hard science esp. biology. However, if I was totally honest to a psychologist on how my mind works, I would be signed up for massive drugs and treatment in seconds flat. I know this. I keep quiet because of it. The one time I confided to a teacher a little bit about how my mind seems to work, she was ready to send me to the staff psychologist until I lied and said I was just kidding (fucking english teachers man, glad I didn't have many in college).

So, yeah, I tend toward the Keseyian perspective on this one. Call it a personal and subjective opinion on a soft science or maybe the sad result of living in a society a little too psychology happy and legal drug happy or possibly just the outside opinion, the voice of the marginalized, the voice of the no-nothing youth, i dunno something.

 

[shereads]

deleted double post

 

[shereads]

Some of the greatest minds in our culture have had more than a passing familiarity with drugs.

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph the Sacred River ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Alph wouldn't have run very far without an assist from opium.

Just an aside, because it bugs me to see everyone who experimented with drugs - including when they were legal - dismissed by the political-correctness police as having been too screwed up to think usefully.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Re: Hey Joe (cause when else can I use a Hendrix song as a title)

Originally posted by Lucifer_Carroll
Okay, it's a fair cop. I used generalizations.

My examples are poor because what I have to work with is poor. I've only got the mishmash refuge of psychology that is forced on people. The push for all the morons to get therapy whether they need it or not. The cruel trend in schools or parents to send children to a psychologist or psychiatrist (read corporate drug dealer) if they show any sign of not "being like all the other kids". I'm talking about the stupid fucking Freud worship (the guy did more drugs than Kesey, why do we listen to him as if he was God, again?). The fact that one is pressured into acting "normal" his entire life. Essentially the whole societal perversion of the "science".

Freud was one branch of psychology, but "branch" is the important word there. Psychodynamic theory has been useful in the prediction and influence of behavior, but is by no means what the whole of the science is based on. I'm not sure that therapy is as pervasive as you say, nor that social repression is that rampant. I cannot argue that there are societal limitations, but I cannot admit to psychology being a part of that limitation--honestly, because I have no proof or fact. It may be, but perhaps you could clarify what sort of pressure we're talking about and whether its isolated or directed (the former being difficult to very-difficult to blame or control, the latter being almost conspiratorial sounding).

I use "science" as I do, because of another point. Psychology, sociology, and political science are all part of a scientific-sounding group that are "soft science" and pseudoscience. They use scientific-sounding terms and do their research in similar ways, but they attempt to measure the subjective. cantdog makes this point in his anti-science thread (shame on you for putting science and soft science cantdog in the same boat). All of these sciences attempt to use trends of the majority to dictate human behavior and use the same scientific measuring sticks (remove the extreme variables and plot to fit). This causes these particular people to be marginalized, demonized, and eventually lobotomized. Hard science on the other hand relies on objective data and then toys with it. Thus neurobiology is a hard science but psychology is not.

The term "soft science" is less offensive than "pseudoscience", but I'm not sure either are really that applicable. Psychology is hardly pseudoscientific. We're not even sure if it is essentially measuring a subjective or objective thing (as I'm not convinced the mind either either, yet). That Psychology (or even sociology or political science) undergoes a paradigm shift based on popularity or trend isn't uncommon even in the "hard sciences". I was always a big fan of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"--and he was a PhD Philosopher and Physicist. Hard and (what we're calling) Soft science both rely on the observed, experimental, and natural sciences. I'm not sure there is a sufficient demarcation between what is a hard science and a soft science... method surely isn't.

What psychology knows, it doesn't know about how people's brains work. It knows what a person in full knowledge that they could be locked away or given mind-altering drugs if they answer a certain way will tell a professional looking bored person with his own subjective opinions on how the brain works. In an ideal world, psychology would only know how the statistically average person's brain seems to rationalize. On Metropolis, we would know how everyone's mind was forced to work.

I'm not sure what this part means, exactly. Psychology may or may not know how people's brains work--I couldn't say, there are a lot of theories, some more popular than others... by that same token, Physics may or may not know how the universe works for the same reasons--there are theories, some more popular than others. Both rely on observational and experimental procedure. I'm not sure about the "Metropolis" part.

Now an example, I for instance am insane and unmedicated. I, however, am less inclined to kill someone than your average sane soldier, sane business owner, or sane politician. I have a greater standard of morals than your average sane person. I have to this day never struck a person a true blow, though I will admit to moves that have impaired a person's ability to move freely (like headlocks or bearhugs and the like). I have an overdeveloped sense of chivalry. I have a staggering imagination as well as an affinity to hard science esp. biology. However, if I was totally honest to a psychologist on how my mind works, I would be signed up for massive drugs and treatment in seconds flat. I know this. I keep quiet because of it. The one time I confided to a teacher a little bit about how my mind seems to work, she was ready to send me to the staff psychologist until I lied and said I was just kidding (fucking english teachers man, glad I didn't have many in college).

You are insane how? Speaking from a clinical psychology background, "insanity" is not a real term. Are you diagnoses with a clinical disorder? A sub-clinical disorder? A combination of disorders? Who diagnosed you? What tests did they perform? What was the problem such that you needed to see a professional about treatment (which would yield a diagnosis)?

Beyond that, I'm not sure you can make comparative statements like "I am less inclined to do X than your average Y-sort-of-person" as we haven't objective and compelte logical foundation about all cases of X and all people that are Y. Its like saying "I'm smarter than your average lawyer", when we don't know how smart the average lawyer is. Not an assertion that's entirely supportable, it doesn't seem. If you were honest to a psychologist, something may or may not happen. Neither you nor I can assume what that outcome would be, unless you're claiming to know how all psychologist think.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
Some of the greatest minds in our culture have had more than a passing familiarity with drugs.

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph the Sacred River ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Alph wouldn't have run very far without an assist from opium.

Just an aside, because it bugs me to see everyone who experimented with drugs - including when they were legal - dismissed by the political-correctness police as having been too screwed up to think usefully.

I can agree with your point, however I must make note of the idea that some of our culture have had more than a passing familiarity with drugs and have last their belongings, potential, and lives to them.

I understand the fears that people Ad Hominem drug users, unfairly. That wasn't my intention. However, similar to you though opposite, it bugs me to see people who experimented with drugs lauded by anti-establishment tools as having found widsom and brilliance inside a bottle.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: Re: Hey Joe (cause when else can I use a Hendrix song as a title)

Freud was one branch of psychology, but "branch" is the important word there. Psychodynamic theory has been useful in the prediction and influence of behavior, but is by no means what the whole of the science is based on. I'm not sure that therapy is as pervasive as you say, nor that social repression is that rampant. I cannot argue that there are societal limitations, but I cannot admit to psychology being a part of that limitation--honestly, because I have no proof or fact. It may be, but perhaps you could clarify what sort of pressure we're talking about and whether its isolated or directed (the former being difficult to very-difficult to blame or control, the latter being almost conspiratorial sounding).



The term "soft science" is less offensive than "pseudoscience", but I'm not sure either are really that applicable. Psychology is hardly pseudoscientific. We're not even sure if it is essentially measuring a subjective or objective thing (as I'm not convinced the mind either either, yet). That Psychology (or even sociology or political science) undergoes a paradigm shift based on popularity or trend isn't uncommon even in the "hard sciences". I was always a big fan of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"--and he was a PhD Philosopher and Physicist. Hard and (what we're calling) Soft science both rely on the observed, experimental, and natural sciences. I'm not sure there is a sufficient demarcation between what is a hard science and a soft science... method surely isn't.



I'm not sure what this part means, exactly. Psychology may or may not know how people's brains work--I couldn't say, there are a lot of theories, some more popular than others... by that same token, Physics may or may not know how the universe works for the same reasons--there are theories, some more popular than others. Both rely on observational and experimental procedure. I'm not sure about the "Metropolis" part.



You are insane how? Speaking from a clinical psychology background, "insanity" is not a real term. Are you diagnoses with a clinical disorder? A sub-clinical disorder? A combination of disorders? Who diagnosed you? What tests did they perform? What was the problem such that you needed to see a professional about treatment (which would yield a diagnosis)?

Beyond that, I'm not sure you can make comparative statements like "I am less inclined to do X than your average Y-sort-of-person" as we haven't objective and compelte logical foundation about all cases of X and all people that are Y. Its like saying "I'm smarter than your average lawyer", when we don't know how smart the average lawyer is. Not an assertion that's entirely supportable, it doesn't seem. If you were honest to a psychologist, something may or may not happen. Neither you nor I can assume what that outcome would be, unless you're claiming to know how all psychologist think.

Okay, here's the main cantdog point.

Soft science uses subjective data. It uses popular trends, death rates, important events, interactions with human thought and speech, to try and develop an objective theory. It is in essence flawed. Psychology as it works tries to follow human thoughts and thought processes which as I'm sure you would agree is a subjective data set. Human thoughts are subjective. Neurobiology on the other hand is a hard science. It measures the electrical and chemical outputs of neurons to try and figure out which sections of the brain are most active at certain times. Neurobiology is more trustworthy, but psychology gets interesting "theories" faster.

And still at the end of it, will one know how everyone's brains work? In biology we are struggling and becoming better at tracking down and explaining the variety in the comparitively simpler cases of pigmentation and etc. To track down the variety in brain activity and how memory blocks and interpretation biologically work is far more difficult. And even then it may be difficult to translate this into thoughts above the basic desires. For instance, how does resistance work? Opinion? Etc...

I think that covers most of your questions, now to tackle the remainder.

I am insane. No, I am not diagnosed by a genuine psychologist, but take it from me when I tell you it's not really hard to tell when you're as fucked up as me. If you like I can PM you the closest thing to my psychosis, but frankly I am adverse to speaking it out to a big group of people because they become frightened when they hear it even though it's not frightening the way I've harnessed it through years of introspection and pure willpower.

For all my comparisons I commited the same sins as psychology and used subjective comparisons to the norm as expressed by my personal experiences. The error and lack of scientificity is the direct result of the failings of the scientific system of soft science and therapy in specific.

P.S. I'm glad to hear that Freud is losing his mystique. How many years do you think it will take before there is a "branch" mentioning how all great innovations are made by those considered mad?

 

[cantdog]

God I love this fuckin thread

Knowing someone objectively, very well, I concede, as you did, that one may, certainly, be allowed to claim that ultimately we may come to know that which is true about anyone we like. Their objective aspect would be known, that way, but not their subjective aspect.

Whereas, by subjective techniques, that which answers to the criterion of the truthful would be known, someday, possibly. Why not?

I do claim, though, that I must be supported, allowed to transmit wisdom to the next generations as knowledge is now preserved for them. The current post-Enlightenment culture of Science as the be-all must cede its grip enough to allow science to become included in a larger system, holistic, including not just the one, but also the other.

I am not anti-science. But the time is here to reintegrate it, with all it has shown us, into the other parts of the whole from which it was differentiated in the beginning of the modern post-Enlightenment period.

This will not solve every problem; far from it. It will solve, though, some of the unique problems caused by the exclusive emphasis that the empirical has enjoyed. Certainly I expect this integration, when it comes, to generate and to reveal another monstrous set of difficulties, which another phase of our evolution will then arise to address.

But I believe that all of us are groping for this integration. Not as a utopian thing, but as the next necessary move in the long climb.

Modernity, the specifically rational-industrial worldview, did not arise in a vacuum or for nothing. It is not invalidated merely because it, in its turn, engenders and reveals montrous problems. It served many useful and extraordinary purposes.

We might list the rise of democracy; the banishing of slavery; the emergence ofliberal feminism; the differentiation of art from science and both from morality, which I'll get to; the widespread emergence or the empirical sciences, including the systems sciences in the objective/plural or objective/collective sphere, and the ecological sciences; an increase in average lifespan of almost three decades; the introduction of relativity and perspectivism in art, in morals, and in science; the move from ethnocentric to global morality; and in general, the undoing of dominator models in social hierarchies in a lot of significant ways. How's that for a long sentence, Og?

These are extraordinary accomplishments. Antimodernist critics who do nothing but condemn modernity, while basking in its benefits, are hypocritical.

On the other hand, the giddy promoters of modernity as nothing but a great progress report ignore the recalcitrant problems that empirical study has never solved and like can never solve.

To transcend and include modernity would involve: for the trancending part that we have to be open to modes of consciousness that move in ways beyond the empirical, objective sphere of rationality, and also embed them in modes of techno-economic structures that move beyond indusrialization.

A change of consciousness embedded in a change of institutions. Either alone won't work, but I think we are heading for both at this point in our collective evolution.

Remembering, of course, that the rational and the industrial will be included as well, but now as components of a more inclusive, integrated stance that both incorporates and limits the rational and industrial.

The system is described in quadrant form, the intersection, plotted from the common origin, of 1) interior and individual-- the intentional, spiritual quadrant in the upper left; 2) interior and communal or collective-- the cultural quadrant in the lower left; 3) the exterior and individual-- the behavioral quadrant in the upper right; and the exterior and communal or collective--the social, systems quadrant in the lower right.

All these have importance, and all have actually been worked on by humans, already. We do not start de novo with any of them.

But in some ways rational, modern, exterior, objective, empirical things, left alone in the field, have become cancers on the body politic, runaway growths that are malignant in some of their effects. They overstep their limits, overrun their functions, and drift into new dominator hierarchies, as obdurate as the monarchies and priests that the new emphasis on them in the Enlightenment was intended to defuse.

To transcend modernity is to negate or limit these overpowering facets, while including their benign and beneficial aspects.

To that end, a few examples. Let's place the upper half first, the individual.

To the right hand, the hierarchy of the exterior, the realm of the objective and empirical. near the origin, atoms, then molecules, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, working out to neuronal organisms, organization to a neural cord, a reptilian brain stem, a limbic system, a neocortex, a complex neocortex, and then whatever is to follow.

To the left, interior and individual: prehension, irritability, sensation, perception, working out to impulse, emotion at the limbic level, symbols, concepts, and what is to follow there, too.

I say the subjective approach to dealing with the left hand quadrant will be a better one, simply because of the subjective nature of the hierarchy there, just as the rational, empirical approach should be used for the hierarchy of the exterior in the right hand side.

Similarly with the functional-fit, social, lower-right side and the cultural, interior, lower left.

August Comte, Karl Marx, systems theorists in the collective exterior, social side. Tkomas Kuhn, Max Weber, in the interior, cultural side.

Freud, Jung, Piget, Gautama, Plotinus in the interior, individual sphere. Skinner, Locke, bahaviorism, neurology, in the exterior individual sphere.

Details. You can find out about my brain, but you will have a harder time with empirical tools to know the specific contents of my mind. Subjectively, though, on its own ground, you find it out by talking to me.

I will concede that in some vastly future day, you can bypass this messy and subjective path with some mechanism. But why wait? Why not go the direct route and talk to me? Currently there is no other way to do it, and it is not so bad.

Ask me, talk to me, communicate with me. Dialogue, not monologue. Science is monologue, you need no one else to expound it. Dialogue is not only subjective, but intersubjective! You cannot simply study me using dialogue, as an object of empirical investigation, you need interesubjective communication.

Do you see my distinction? Not staring at interiors, but sharing of interiors. Not surfaces, but depths. Freud versus John Watson. Heidegger versus Locke. Weber versus Comte.

Integrated approaches are even better, but lets stick to the left hand path for now. I'll post this, and then come back for a dicussion of the advantages of dialogue in certain fields of work.


cantdog

 

[cantdog]

Surfaces can be seen, but depths must be interpreted. A simple mapping of the empirical exteriors is not all that is worth knowing. This is the downside of the Enlightenment's bastard child, modernity.

It leaves out the mapmaker itself, consciousness. Interiors, on the left hand path. Hence our current world of horrors, a universe with no value, no meaning, no intentions, no depth, no quality. A disqualified universe ruled by the gaze of the lab technician.

Women frequently complain about being made into an object-- a sexual object, of the male gaze. But it's the same generally; we are all reduced from a subject in communication to an object of observation, a slab of meat, an object of surface with no depth.

There's nothing wrong with the monologue on the right hand paths. But it must be allowed that it cannot be the whole story.

Interpretation is the key to the left hand paths. Right hand things, as I listed them for the brain in development, are all able to be seen. They have the quality of location, being in a place. They are the physical, and the material.

Left hand things cannot be seen in that way. They none of them have the quality of simple location. You can't point to envy, to pride, to musicality, value, or intention, the way you can point to a brain or its amygdala.

Having no location doesn't make something unreal. It can still be accessed. Perception cedes place to interpretation. You have to interpret what I mean from your perception of what I say. Depth must be communicated, and the communications interpreted. My life is not a series of flatly objective events laid out in front of me; it includes a deep subjective component. The more adequately I can interpret my own depths, the more clearly I understand it, the less baffling it seems, the less opaque, perplexing and painful.

Thomas Kuhn points out that all rational scientific theories are themselves sunk in a context of interpretation. The belief that only things which possess simple location are real things is itself a belief and can't be pointed to, either.

All meaning is bound in context. Contexts themselves lie in their own contexts; context is boundless, and interpretation is slippery. But we are not without guidance in it.

We have a common emotional background with even a dog, who has a limbic brain, a mammalian consciousness like our own. We know it, and we use that to help us interpret the emotional states of the dog. There's hardly any other point to getting a dog. The point is, here, that we use that common emotional world-space to interpret the dog's emotions correctly. We can even achieve a resonance when the dog interprets our emotional condition.

Specifically in humans, besides all the other common features we share with a dog, there are in addition complex cognitive, conceptual, and linguistic backgrounds which we also share. We can ground them in our common cultural backgrounds. There is no other way for communication to happen.

But we must listen very carefully, and be aware of context.

 

[cantdog]

You say Freud was one branch of psychology, but only one branch. That's what I mean by the integration.

You can check your interpretation by what all four quadrants have to say about it. Integrated approaches are always superior.

If I am trying to interpret an experience which I suspect is mystical, I need to place it in context and shake it down in communication against other mystical experiences, on the one side; attempt to decide its meaning in relation to cultural factors, on another; and it would be folly to omit a consideration of brain activity on a third, if I want to understand it as fully as I can. Just like the modernity of which I spoke, a singular, one-quadrant approach is limited. It is just one branch.

cantdog

 

[shereads]

God I love this fuckin thread

Good. I like this post.

I'll admit I can't buy a clue to the meaning of most of it, but I like this part enough to come back and re-read the rest when I'm fully awake:

I am not anti-science. But the time is here to reintegrate it, with all it has shown us, into the other parts of the whole from which it was differentiated in the beginning of the modern post-Enlightenment period.

This will not solve every problem; far from it. It will solve, though, some of the unique problems caused by the exclusive emphasis that the empirical has enjoyed. Certainly I expect this integration, when it comes, to generate and to reveal another monstrous set of difficulties, which another phase of our evolution will then arise to address.

But I believe that all of us are groping for this integration. Not as a utopian thing, but as the next necessary move in the long climb.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I'm sorry to break your long essay cantdog, but I disagree on the need for full synthesis. I actually kind of like the idea of science and mysticism working separately on a common problem. There is an old truth in the saying "Opposite ends meet" that I want to test on the idea of objective science and subjective theology and the idea of the creation of the Universe. I believe a synthesis is an endpoint not a process. In synthesis we get borderline monsters like Christian Science, Psychiatry, and the like. I think evolutionary biology and astrophysics may find common ground with theology, perhaps a proof of a creator better than the craptastic "I think therefore I am". Or perhaps science may disprove forever a creator and theology may come to the realization that Gods are only in our minds. In either case I think the two groups may eventually come to the same answer and I'd rather they weren't synthesized before that day. When I enter my biological realm I like maintaining absolute logic and objectivity. In my writing world, I do the opposite, playing with a lack of logic, a world of fantasy and chaos.

Don't think I'm for a case of Amicus's only absolutes no middle ground philosophy, but rather a belief that absolutes must always exist and must exist separately allowed to drift so far from each other they curve back around. Opposite ends meet eventually.

 

[amicus]

cantdog....

"But the map of the personality and its development and function, its deviances and its sorrows, its joys, prides, capabilities to love, hate, nurture, distinguish, make music! These things, please stay with me here, do not duck in fear of the non-objective, these things need an objective analysis like they need a hole in the head."


It is hard to believe that someone actually said that...you post the rediculous to get a sublime response perhaps?

The precise thing those attributes of the human person needs is a focused application of the best rules of logic, reason and rationality man is capable of.

Only thus can one determine 'objectively' that 'happiness' is a desired state of mankind. What 'objective' pursuits must one endeavor in order to realize that state of mind.

What is 'good' for the human mind and thus pleasureable? Why is it 'good'? How can it be shown to be 'good' in relation to the 'real' natural function of both the body and the mind?

These are questions one should pursue, not an abject dismissal of reason and objectivity when one seeks to comprehend and practice those virtues that give a human mind a sense of well being.

I know..you were just pulling my chain.

amicus...

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

cantdog....

"But the map of the personality and its development and function, its deviances and its sorrows, its joys, prides, capabilities to love, hate, nurture, distinguish, make music! These things, please stay with me here, do not duck in fear of the non-objective, these things need an objective analysis like they need a hole in the head."


It is hard to believe that someone actually said that...you post the rediculous to get a sublime response perhaps?

The precise thing those attributes of the human person needs is a focused application of the best rules of logic, reason and rationality man is capable of.

Only thus can one determine 'objectively' that 'happiness' is a desired state of mankind. What 'objective' pursuits must one endeavor in order to realize that state of mind.

What is 'good' for the human mind and thus pleasureable? Why is it 'good'? How can it be shown to be 'good' in relation to the 'real' natural function of both the body and the mind?

These are questions one should pursue, not an abject dismissal of reason and objectivity when one seeks to comprehend and practice those virtues that give a human mind a sense of well being.

I know..you were just pulling my chain.

amicus...

Um, you're a believer in the absolutes right?

There is a place for subjectivity and a place for objectivity. There must be subjectivity in order for humanity to be non-conformist. Through non-conformity, we can innovate and survive cataclysm (basic evolutionary biology). We also need objectivity to understand the world of science, to comprehend how the universe works, aid mankind in his progress, innovate his society.

The subjective and the objective must co-exist, not meld and never destroy one another. When either occurs you get dystopia, folly, and at worst static society and ruin.

As far as the pursuit of good, it requires mankind to subject to a tight description of good. Is the following of pure animal instinct good? What about total repression? A mixture? How much of a mixture? What is considered too animal? Too repressed? What list of sin do we use? How should we punish deviants? How closely must we resemble each other? What will we sacrifice for a world of happiness?

I mean you've read A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I know you have, becuase you quoted it at me a while ago on a different thread. That book clearly depicts the dystopia that is wrought when a society is fanatically fixated on happiness and pure twisted logic.

I don't agree with cantdog's blender technique and I'm afraid I can't support your Huxleyian, Maoist destruction of the subjective.

So I guess I am the ignored middle ground or third corner on this one.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

There is a place for subjectivity and a place for objectivity. There must be subjectivity in order for humanity to be non-conformist. Through non-conformity, we can innovate and survive cataclysm (basic evolutionary biology). We also need objectivity to understand the world of science, to comprehend how the universe works, aid mankind in his progress, innovate his society.

This is full of fallacy, chico. Firstly, there /might/ be a place for both--that's the most reasonable way to approach the idea. From then on, this may sound redundant, but I'm only using basic reason for the time being:

1) There is nothing about the nature of "non-conformity" that demands being a predicate of subjectivity. One can have a lack of conformity in an objective world, as it is not logically impossible to do so.

2) Nothing about non-conformity necessitates the notion of innovation such that we can survive cataclysm. I think we're mixing "mutation" or "minute advancement of genetics" as "non-conformity"... which seems like the same thing as mixing up "light sensitivity" and "a future so bright I gotta wear shades".

Your later statements about how both subjectivity and objectivity are needed are... I dunno... without rational merit. Given the possible situation that one is correct, then the other may well be precluded from being necessary--as an example.

I'm wondering, in this, if this is a battle between logic and rational congress vs. prose and emotive dogma.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

This is full of fallacy, chico. Firstly, there /might/ be a place for both--that's the most reasonable way to approach the idea. From then on, this may sound redundant, but I'm only using basic reason for the time being:

1) There is nothing about the nature of "non-conformity" that demands being a predicate of subjectivity. One can have a lack of conformity in an objective world, as it is not logically impossible to do so.

2) Nothing about non-conformity necessitates the notion of innovation such that we can survive cataclysm. I think we're mixing "mutation" or "minute advancement of genetics" as "non-conformity"... which seems like the same thing as mixing up "light sensitivity" and "a future so bright I gotta wear shades".

Your later statements about how both subjectivity and objectivity are needed are... I dunno... without rational merit. Given the possible situation that one is correct, then the other may well be precluded from being necessary--as an example.

I'm wondering, in this, if this is a battle between logic and rational congress vs. prose and emotive dogma.

Okay you are dismissing my point on semantics and ignoring my point that the field of evolutionary biology is based on a non-uniform society and species and system. If Species A is fully uniform in biological composition a single virus can kill the species in a single generation. If Species A is fully uniform in diet then a single fallow season for that crop equals instant death for the species. If Species A is fully uniform in location, then a single storm or natural disaster will destroy the species. What makes you believe that uniformity of thought or culture is somehow separated from this basic principle. Being non-conformist is just like having a mutation in biology. It makes the individual different from the rest of the species to some degree, but possible more or less likely to survive coming tragedies for the species. This is evolution, advancement, etc... Culture works in a similar way when you strip down the layers. There is a movement of advancement led by those who think differently after a major shift in ideology or dominant thought or government system or whatnot (a direct similarity to the idea of punctuated equilibrium, the current head theory of evolutionary biology).

Things like the Scientific Revolution, the Golden Age of Athens, etc... allowed great innovation by those who thought outside the box. It's not a case of logic vs chaos, but rather the single bit of hard science in the fuzzy field of sociology.

Now why do I say from a rational scientific standpoint that objectivity and subjectivity are needed for separate actions? There are multiple reasons. First is the cantdog reason. Objectivity sucks at explaining the beauty of a flower and subjectivity sucks at describing why mitochondria are key to life processes as well as the main dictator of our morality. One needs the poet to describe the beauty of the world, help us appreciate this tiny slice of mortal life and one needs the scientist to exploit a particular synthetic chemical to help us extend that slice as much as it will go. The second reason is that a one-or-the-other approach has consistently led to horrid dystopia. And I'm not just talking fiction here. The Third Reich was oiled with pure rationality (mysticism must go, science will prevail) as was the Cultural Revolution and the USSR. On the other hand, pure subjectivity brought us the Inquisition, many wars and meaningless skirmishes, and other examples of melodramatic carnage. The third reason is that it's sometimes important to step back to find an innovation. The cellular phone was invented because of the subjective sci-fi of one Gene Rodenberry and what he did for geek imagination. The rocket ship was born from the influence of Jules Verne. The list goes on. Sci-fi seems to be the biggest subjective influence on objective science.

My point is that both are neccesary. I know atheists dream of a world free from the tethers of religion and mysticism, but raw logic is not the answer. Believe me, I have a logical side far more honed and trained than both of yours. I am in the field of heavily hard science working on the nitty gritty of intracellular biology. And yet I still appreciate and recognize the need for a bit of subjective thought. If either of you have slaved at a deadend for hours in a lab, i'd be surprised. It is there that you learn the value of switching over to a more imaginative and subjective view to try and picture where you're trying to go and what crazy idea may help bring a breakthrough. Pure objectivity sounds nifty in theory, but in the real world, sometimes you need to imagine to truly innovate.

Anyway, a big sum up. You both need to read dystopian novels more. Your "ideal" societies are smack out of at least 50% all dystopian sci-fi and a good 25% of all dystopian fantasy. The idea of following only logic and nothing else, never imagining or writing or dreaming, is to live like a robot or a lobotomized slave. There is a case for subjectivity or rather more semantically correct imagination and chaos for both evolutionary biology reasons as well as anti-dystopian ones. Perhaps you will agree with me.

Or perhaps you'll pull your non-science majors out of your backpacks, the ones won on subjective work and claim my scientific understanding is anti-science again.

 

[cantdog]

The ridiculous

cantdog....

"But the map of the personality and its development and function, its deviances and its sorrows, its joys, prides, capabilities to love, hate, nurture, distinguish, make music! These things, please stay with me here, do not duck in fear of the non-objective, these things need an objective analysis like they need a hole in the head."


It is hard to believe that someone actually said that...you post the rediculous to get a sublime response perhaps?

The precise thing those attributes of the human person needs is a focused application of the best rules of logic, reason and rationality man is capable of.

Only thus can one determine 'objectively' that 'happiness' is a desired state of mankind. What 'objective' pursuits must one endeavor in order to realize that state of mind.

What is 'good' for the human mind and thus pleasureable? Why is it 'good'? How can it be shown to be 'good' in relation to the 'real' natural function of both the body and the mind?

These are questions one should pursue, not an abject dismissal of reason and objectivity when one seeks to comprehend and practice those virtues that give a human mind a sense of well being.

I know..you were just pulling my chain.

amicus...

I maintain that you can't even start on pride, envy, love, mysticism and that kind of thing, with objective means. Where is desire? Point to it! Don't you have to at least locate it before you can train a microscope on it?

If a subject lacks even simple location, how in the world can the study of something else, like a parietal lobe, make any progress toward understanding it, except in the most indirect way imaginable? It must infallibly miss the mark. "But our study is not complete," in this context, is a religiously dogmatic statement. An entirely objective study purporting to investigate desire can never be complete. It is the wrong set of tools for the problem.

Whereas desire is immensely important and takes up a lot of our lifetime. How futile to leave it stranded, unexamined, due to the poor fit of a set of tools you happen to have made a religion out of?

Gautama Buddha addressed desire, but he was not so foolish as to insist on a magnetic resonance imager to do it. Piaget worked on the development of the interior space of the mind through its stages, but his work is almost exclusively an exposition of dialogues between himself and his subjects, because this is the only sane way to tackle any subjective mystery.

But despite Piaget, Perls, Gautama and Plotinus, you express disbelief that anyone would even make the ridiculous statement in a public forum that the subjective exists. That's because you begin with a total belief in the objective as a religious assertion, a beginning assumption without any basis. You can't defend it, because it is too fundamental to your system. You also can't defend it because it is errant nonsense.

With an axiom like that, you fall immediately into every fallacy I've been describing as a problem. You can't acknowledge quality without abandoning that premise, or motivation, intention, happiness, or love. None of them is an object to be even seen or located, so you have to question whether they exist.

Demonstration of the logical necessity that the subjective is nonexistent is you providing us with your own reductio. Laughably, you don't even realize how absurd it is even after you have worked it out.

You confuse the logical with the empirical. Of course you have to think about the dialogues you have with people. Logic is in no way banned.

But your reductio (...therfore the subjective has no reality...) is unfortunately also, in your system, a tautology. That, to a logical man, is a clue that your system is based on a wrong assumption. When nothing makes sense, sometimes one or more of your assumptions is wrong.

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

I'm sorry to break your long essay cantdog, but I disagree on the need for full synthesis. I actually kind of like the idea of science and mysticism working separately on a common problem. There is an old truth in the saying "Opposite ends meet" that I want to test on the idea of objective science and subjective theology and the idea of the creation of the Universe. I believe a synthesis is an endpoint not a process. In synthesis we get borderline monsters like Christian Science, Psychiatry, and the like. I think evolutionary biology and astrophysics may find common ground with theology, perhaps a proof of a creator better than the craptastic "I think therefore I am". Or perhaps science may disprove forever a creator and theology may come to the realization that Gods are only in our minds. In either case I think the two groups may eventually come to the same answer and I'd rather they weren't synthesized before that day. When I enter my biological realm I like maintaining absolute logic and objectivity. In my writing world, I do the opposite, playing with a lack of logic, a world of fantasy and chaos.

Don't think I'm for a case of Amicus's only absolutes no middle ground philosophy, but rather a belief that absolutes must always exist and must exist separately allowed to drift so far from each other they curve back around. Opposite ends meet eventually.

I see that I need to communicate more clearly what I mean by "integrate."

An infant begins life perceiving no split between itself and the rest of the universe. Thumb and chair post are all the same, expected to be the same.

The infant is a sensorimotor organism, possessing no language, no logic, no narrative capacity. It cannot grasp historical time. "The self," as Piaget put it, "is here material, so to speak."

Of course it is not actually material, but it is oriented only to the physical. The self and the perceived sensory world are fused, not yet differentiated.

Do not mistake this state as one beyond the subject-object duality; there is no such advantage. It is beneath it. It simply can't tell the difference yet. There is nothing particularly spiritual about it; it is locked in its own egocentric orbit. Shallow and cramped consciousness. There is no other; hence no capacity to have genuine compassion, love, tolerance, benevolence, altruism.

But around four months, the infant begins to differentiate between physical sensations in the body and those without. Bite the blanket, and it does not hurt, bite the thumb and it does. Margaret Mahler says the "hatching" as she calls it, of the self is complete at five to nine months. Self, as body, and the rest of the universe, are differentiated. The next step is integration of the new knowledge, defining the limits of the self in a workable way.

But the emotional self is still undifferentiated from the rest of the emotional surround. Still fused, particularly with the mother. The infant treats the world as an extension of itself, narcissistically. It still is incapable of thinking about itself. It thinks what it is feeling is what the rest of the world is feeling. Another differentiation and another integration brings it to the next place. But if it does each phase right, it never goes back to the place where no distinction can be made.

So with the integration I suggest. Make the subjective disciplines and the objective ones work, both of the. Define the limits of the objective in a workable way. But we are not, by integrating, returning to a place where no distinction can be made.

I got a PM about Piaget, whose work has been criticized for having too small a sample. The development model he came up with has been discredited. Here is my reply, which I think is germane to the point you make here, that the different approaches need to tolerate each other's work on the common problems:

Re: Piaget

Yeah, that's the fellow.

I could put something like what you see below in the thread if you mention it, but I am not championing Freud or Piaget as they stand. I use them as examples of the necessary method that subjective inquiry requires.

Like this:

His sampling methods are less than relevant. Freud didn't have anything but anecdotal evidence. Same with anyone else who conducts sensitive and in-depth interviews with particular people.

People, even children, are going, at that depth of discussion, to reveal themselves as individuals, each with subjective landscapes different from the others. Generalizations may make use of statistical math if the sample is large enough, but in general, a person like Freud or Perls would require a lifetime of psychoanalytic interviews to get a sample a statistician would like the shape and size of.

So he believed he had some insights, made some decisions and conclusions, and published what he believed the dialogues and experiments had demonstrated was likely. He should, for statistical purposes, have waited until he'd done the same thing until he was eighty. But the larger samples would be collected by others if he published, the work would no longer be in a vacuum.

Sure enough, the model he developed turned out to have been flawed. So did Freud's. But both had hold of a master idea. The details we can agree on, now, are not the same as the details the men themselves decided were significant at the time.

Stats are less important in these contexts than more talk with more people, sharing more insights and more ideas. That is the method by which wisdom moves forward in all ages. The results seem to vary as the culture in which the talks are embedded varies.

But to someone who has had, themselves, personally, a mystical experience, and looks into the writings of William James, Thomas Merton, Al-Arabi, Rumi, and any other source he can find for what a mystical experience is supposed to resemble, can recognize the common thread running through nearly all of them.

The cultural differences are the biggest ones.

Such things happen to people. It is up to the people, then, to decide what they mean and to fit them in with what otherwise is, and to ask what happens next.

Each culture has a different bed for the experience to lie in, but if you have had a genuine experience, you will be able to see the face of yours in the descriptions, unless the theory is so strongly stated as to swamp the thing.

Wisdom traditions can't mess around waiting for a good sample. You don't start having mystical experiences until you've come quite a ways along the path of your development.

So yes, Piaget is flawed, but he was honest enough. His model, much improved now, is still around, but the colleges don't use him directly as much. Maslow's hierarchy is now modified, too, but a model of need-priorities is a good thing to work on. Criticism from a statistical point of view can be useful, but the work is more important.

That's what I mean by honoring the subjective methods for their own sake. Many objectivists consider the entire subject matter of Piaget and of Freud, hell, of Gautama, to be essentially unknowable in the first place, and they apply the tools of objective rigor to show that Gautama was not being objective, nor Freud, nor Piaget, nor Perls.

My answer is, no shit, Sherlock.

They aren't being objective, because they are investigating subjective matters. They will fail certain objectivity tests, always. So does Jesus, St. Paul, Lao Tzu. What would you? Objective science can't even begin to work on these things.

cantdog

who doesn't have all the answers here

--------

So I hope you can see, Lucifer, that a blender is far from what I propose. I want the subjective to have its proper place set at the high table of scientific discourse. Right now, with disastrous results in some ways, the subjective as a whole is excluded from consideration.

cantdog

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I see that I need to communicate more clearly what I mean by "integrate."

An infant begins life perceiving no split between itself and the rest of the universe. Thumb and chair post are all the same, expected to be the same.

The infant is a sensorimotor organism, possessing no language, no logic, no narrative capacity. It cannot grasp historical time. "The self," as Piaget put it, "is here material, so to speak."

Of course it is not actually material, but it is oriented only to the physical. The self and the perceived sensory world are fused, not yet differentiated.

Do not mistake this state as one beyond the subject-object duality; there is no such advantage. It is beneath it. It simply can't tell the difference yet. There is nothing particularly spiritual about it; it is locked in its own egocentric orbit. Shallow and cramped consciousness. There is no other; hence no capacity to have genuine compassion, love, tolerance, benevolence, altruism.

But around four months, the infant begins to differentiate between physical sensations in the body and those without. Bite the blanket, and it does not hurt, bite the thumb and it does. Margaret Mahler says the "hatching" as she calls it, of the self is complete at five to nine months. Self, as body, and the rest of the universe, are differentiated. The next step is integration of the new knowledge, defining the limits of the self in a workable way.

But the emotional self is still undifferentiated from the rest of the emotional surround. Still fused, particularly with the mother. The infant treats the world as an extension of itself, narcissistically. It still is incapable of thinking about itself. It thinks what it is feeling is what the rest of the world is feeling. Another differentiation and another integration brings it to the next place. But if it does each phase right, it never goes back to the place where no distinction can be made.

So with the integration I suggest. Make the subjective disciplines and the objective ones work, both of the. Define the limits of the objective in a workable way. But we are not, by integrating, returning to a place where no distinction can be made.

I got a PM about Piaget, whose work has been criticized for having too small a sample. The development model he came up with has been discredited. Here is my reply, which I think is germane to the point you make here, that the different approaches need to tolerate each other's work on the common problems:

Re: Piaget

Yeah, that's the fellow.

I could put something like what you see below in the thread if you mention it, but I am not championing Freud or Piaget as they stand. I use them as examples of the necessary method that subjective inquiry requires.

Like this:

His sampling methods are less than relevant. Freud didn't have anything but anecdotal evidence. Same with anyone else who conducts sensitive and in-depth interviews with particular people.

People, even children, are going, at that depth of discussion, to reveal themselves as individuals, each with subjective landscapes different from the others. Generalizations may make use of statistical math if the sample is large enough, but in general, a person like Freud or Perls would require a lifetime of psychoanalytic interviews to get a sample a statistician would like the shape and size of.

So he believed he had some insights, made some decisions and conclusions, and published what he believed the dialogues and experiments had demonstrated was likely. He should, for statistical purposes, have waited until he'd done the same thing until he was eighty. But the larger samples would be collected by others if he published, the work would no longer be in a vacuum.

Sure enough, the model he developed turned out to have been flawed. So did Freud's. But both had hold of a master idea. The details we can agree on, now, are not the same as the details the men themselves decided were significant at the time.

Stats are less important in these contexts than more talk with more people, sharing more insights and more ideas. That is the method by which wisdom moves forward in all ages. The results seem to vary as the culture in which the talks are embedded varies.

But to someone who has had, themselves, personally, a mystical experience, and looks into the writings of William James, Thomas Merton, Al-Arabi, Rumi, and any other source he can find for what a mystical experience is supposed to resemble, can recognize the common thread running through nearly all of them.

The cultural differences are the biggest ones.

Such things happen to people. It is up to the people, then, to decide what they mean and to fit them in with what otherwise is, and to ask what happens next.

Each culture has a different bed for the experience to lie in, but if you have had a genuine experience, you will be able to see the face of yours in the descriptions, unless the theory is so strongly stated as to swamp the thing.

Wisdom traditions can't mess around waiting for a good sample. You don't start having mystical experiences until you've come quite a ways along the path of your development.

So yes, Piaget is flawed, but he was honest enough. His model, much improved now, is still around, but the colleges don't use him directly as much. Maslow's hierarchy is now modified, too, but a model of need-priorities is a good thing to work on. Criticism from a statistical point of view can be useful, but the work is more important.

That's what I mean by honoring the subjective methods for their own sake. Many objectivists consider the entire subject matter of Piaget and of Freud, hell, of Gautama, to be essentially unknowable in the first place, and they apply the tools of objective rigor to show that Gautama was not being objective, nor Freud, nor Piaget, nor Perls.

My answer is, no shit, Sherlock.

They aren't being objective, because they are investigating subjective matters. They will fail certain objectivity tests, always. So does Jesus, St. Paul, Lao Tzu. What would you? Objective science can't even begin to work on these things.

cantdog

who doesn't have all the answers here

--------

So I hope you can see, Lucifer, that a blender is far from what I propose. I want the subjective to have its proper place set at the high table of scientific discourse. Right now, with disastrous results in some ways, the subjective as a whole is excluded from consideration.

cantdog

Ok, I think I see what you are saying. My bad on the misinterpret.

I still have reservations on your particular use of the subjective, prefering subjectivity to work only as an idea factory for objective science and objectivity to work as a logic inducer for subjective description and fiction. I hesitate to base sciences on subjective ideas, because subjective ideas are much harder to measure and prove with the intensity of objective ideas. However, as long as this avoids the hard sciences, I'll probably be fine with it.

 

[gauchecritic]

It might be hard work but I love this thread too.

Ignore this post if you like but I get the sense that we are moving towards evolution in a general way which I'm in the middle of reading some popular science about. More later.

On the one hand we have the 'holistic' approach to the matter of 'mind' (Cant's 4 quadrant thing which seems most sensible to me) that is, using all available tools, which it seems Lucifer is amenable to too.

On the other hand there is the idea that we have the best tool available (with certain disagreements on which tool that is) Logic, reason etc from Ami and the 'metasciences' from Joe (and I'm almost certain somebody else).

I have to agree that having the single best tool doesn't preclude the use of other tools.

I think a very reasonable metaphor here would be panel pins. (those tiny nails used for tacking plywood down)

Sooner or later, (using the proper chisel end of the little hammer) one of the pins is going to bend (usually because you didn't hit it right) so you take the pliers and pull it out.

You take another pin from your mouth (the best place to hold them) and look for the hammer again. The pliers are nearer (in fact still in your hand) so you use them as a hammer, which works adequately, and you can use to pull the bent pins out with, but it is not the tool designed for the job and is harder to use requiring greater effort and greater skill, and a lot more wasted panel pins.

Biology (neurosciences?) can tell us in which parts of the brain synapses are most active (which concentrates on the concentration not the spread which I believe is sometimes global), physics (electoencephalograms) gives us squiggles on paper which can tell us how the activity is deviant from the average. Psychology gives us another (limited) pattern which we can compare to averages and psychiatry can ellicit responses to (modified) set questions. Finally (hoping I covered everything) Logic and/or reason gives us a very limited and precise set of words which can be applied to themselves, parts of all of the above and a limited number of self defining abstractions (logic being one of them).

Am I correct in this? Is this the story so far? (with minor and/or major misunderstandings along with imprecision taken into account, but generally, you know what I mean right?)

Ok. This is the part you can safely ignore.

A few contributors have mentioned evolution. It seems to me, in terms of 'advancement' of the species that the quest for self, ego, id, understanding, oneness, all the tools required to find them, all the steps taken to 'normalise' people (psychoanalysis, controlling drugs, mind expanding drugs) are futile.

I will go further and say that some of the tools used (the various averages against which normality is measured) are in fact answers themselves when considered in the light of evolution. Answers (in part) to much larger questions (the state of humanity) than the much smaller, parochial uses (individual people) to which they are confined.

Great inventions, the wheel, use of fire, employment of the General Theory (and the gravity inclusive Special Theory), the internet (especially the internet) would all be entirely without merit or value if they had not been communicated to the rest of the clan.

The question this view begs is "How much difference would it make to humanity if these things weren't invented?" The answer: none.

As a species, being the dominant form, we would still be here (no new ice age, no significant meteorites (meteors if you want to be picky) and no untoward vulcanism. Perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion or the means for this discussion but we would still be here as a species.

So your Einsteins, Hitlers, Pliny the elders (talk about limited tools) and Socrateses would never have been missed. Genius in itself along with evil is irrelevant to evolution. I'm not saying they haven't had an effect, just that they wouldn't be missed 'in the scheme of things'.

Like I said, you can ignore this part, I just thought it was interesting.

Gauche

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: It might be hard work but I love this thread too.

A few contributors have mentioned evolution. It seems to me, in terms of 'advancement' of the species that the quest for self, ego, id, understanding, oneness, all the tools required to find them, all the steps taken to 'normalise' people (psychoanalysis, controlling drugs, mind expanding drugs) are futile.

I will go further and say that some of the tools used (the various averages against which normality is measured) are in fact answers themselves when considered in the light of evolution. Answers (in part) to much larger questions (the state of humanity) than the much smaller, parochial uses (individual people) to which they are confined.

Great inventions, the wheel, use of fire, employment of the General Theory (and the gravity inclusive Special Theory), the internet (especially the internet) would all be entirely without merit or value if they had not been communicated to the rest of the clan.

The question this view begs is "How much difference would it make to humanity if these things weren't invented?" The answer: none.

As a species, being the dominant form, we would still be here (no new ice age, no significant meteorites (meteors if you want to be picky) and no untoward vulcanism. Perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion or the means for this discussion but we would still be here as a species.

So your Einsteins, Hitlers, Pliny the elders (talk about limited tools) and Socrateses would never have been missed. Genius in itself along with evil is irrelevant to evolution. I'm not saying they haven't had an effect, just that they wouldn't be missed 'in the scheme of things'.

Like I said, you can ignore this part, I just thought it was interesting.

Gauche

All right, since I'm the token evolution boy, I have to disagree on a few small points. While it may be true that our species could have survived without utilizing tools, we would not likely have thrived as viral like as we have. Like a gorilla using a stick to get food from an anthill, geniuses have advanced our tools in order to better exploit resources and overall improve the species. Sanitation and medicine have extended lifespans, collecting into cities has reduced the danger of death by animals, seafaring has allowed expansionism to newfound lands.

It has also led to new intriguing ways to attack other examples of humanity, a development of the selfish gene. My genes need to thrive, yours are expendable.

True, genius matters nearly diddly to evolutionary biology or at least until some unethical bioengineer tries to actual go through with the stupid idea of gene designing. However, to the societal survival as outlined in Selfish Gene and some sociology guy whose name I've forgotten, and its impact on human success, they are key.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you are exploring evolutionary biology. Do read Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, whichever book by Gould that describes punctuated equilibrium (sorry, for the vaugeness), and most definitely The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and if you have time The Blind Watchmaker makes good reading as well. If you haven't read any of these, you simply must in order to understand the science. Also, these authors are decent for their accesibility, especially Dawkins.

-Demon-monkey