LS Re: vocabulary


Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 15:48:38 +0100


peter@pzw1.resnet.cornell.edu wrote:

> Hey guys and gals...
>
> On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Magnus Berg wrote:
>
> > The day my interest in philosophy is dependent on budget, I hope I have
> > the sense to quit. Another thing, budget is social SPoV. Science,
> > including philosophy, is intellectual SPoV. So, according to MoQ, it
> > is immoral for budget to inhibit science. Of course I realize that much
> > of science today is dependent on budget, it is nevertheless immoral.
>
> this is actually something i've been wondering about: is it really always
> immoral for a pattern of value on the lower order/level to inhibit the
> behaviors of a pattern of value on a higher level?

I've been wondering about this, too. For me, this particular MoQ "statement"
isn't as useful as the others. In fact, when I heard Pirsig was writing again, I
immediately thought of this and wondered whether this concept was going to go the
way of the classical/romantic concept. It seems to be part of the "morality"
question, but there's more too it.

I think it (morality) might have something to do with the art concept--the shifting
of linked levels in tandem, (but not in a package, as if one level causes a shift
in other lowerpatterns without internal re-evaluation).

More moral might have to do with how many levels (lower to higher) include the
evaluative operation--the influence of Dynamic Quality.

For instance, from the intellectual point of view, a paradigm shift ( considered a
"good" happening) is an instance of a Quality Event that has linked (and happy)
readjustments throughout all the levels.

A war, on the other hand, could be the result of a Quality event that influences a
new idea (intellectual Quality) but the social/biological levels are changed
without enough re-evaluation to reform themnselves comfortably, and are therefore
shifted along with (mediated by) the the higher-level patterns, and therefore
brought into conflict with each other.

> isn't the whole
> proposal-budget way of doing science merely a social static-latch that
> keeps scientists from going haywire Dynamically and losing pre-established
> Static Quality?
>
> > Philosophers don't dare to get emotionally involved because then,
> > their so called "objectiveness" gets polluted by their personal
> > likes and dislikes, what we call value. And value is something
> > that is totally forbidden in all "objective" science.
>
> actually, Value is all that ever matters in science. the problem is that
> if you are trying to study inorganic patterns of Value, and you have all
> this interference from social and intellectual patterns of value, it's
> hard to isolate the inorganic pattern. (of course this begs the question,
> "just why do why think we can isolate anything at all?" but that is
> another whole can of beans altogether.)
>
> you can also look at it this way: what is "objectivity"? when a physicist
> is objective, he/she looks at the inorganic, and only the inorganic, and
> tries to find a description of its behavior independent of the
> cultural/social and intellectual (and biological) patterns of value. when
> a social scientist is being "objective", he/she looks at social patterns
> of value and keeps in mind the influences from biological and inorganic
> patterns (e.g. considerations of birth rates (biological) and
> local geography/environment (inorganic) when investigating the tribal
> rituals of a small primitive culture).
>

Here the effect of lower-level influences is intellectually contained.

> but what about people studying the intellectual level? psychiatrists know
> they must take into account a person's social patterns (family, childhood,
> etc.) and biological patterns (chemical inbalances) in order to understand
> or experiment on intellectual patterns. why are psychologists so eager to
> get a good cross-section of all sorts of people to do their little tests?
> because they want to find data and effects that are independent of social
> and biological factors, and are purely intellectual patterns.
>

Here, since we people are primarily social creatures, even in the
social-intellectual realm (in which research is conducted), the intellectual
patterns cannot be "contained" for study, as in lower.

What you pointed out here, the taking of a cross-section, seems to be a totally
different approach to nullifying the effect. Is this necessary for any lower-level
patterns to perceive the existence of the higher? Or is this a case of the social
perception of a DQ event? Or are these one and the same question?

> so in a sense, "objectivity" is not an evil Subject-Object Metaphysics
> construct at all, but can be understood - and used - in the MoQ. in fact,
> it MUST be used in the MoQ, if we are to really understand anything. the
> Subject-Object Metaphysics has, in a sense, perverted the word to mean
> ONLY the minimization of social (and, to a degree, intellectual) patterns
> of value in "science", which is ostensibly a study of the inorganic and
> biological. the problem arises when people like philosophers and
> psychologists and anthropologists try to filter out the wrong patterns of
> value in order to "objectify" their data.
>
> i guess a suitable analogy would be with circuits. if you want to
> investigate behavior at lower frequencies, then it makes sense to filter
> out high frequency "noise". but if you want to study high frequency
> responses of the circuit, well, it makes no sense to put in a high
> frequency noise filter. so the "evil" lies not with the act of filtering
> noise, just with using the wrong kind of noise filter.

Thanks, Donny, Peter, Magnus! Lots to think about here.

--
post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com
unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com
homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:47 CEST