Roger,
Thanks for your thoughts.
>ROG:
>...Personally, I interpret "derived from society," as
>meaning emergent from society and coherent with it (and my interpretation
>could be wrong). How do you interpret the phrase?
I don't consider the statement: "atoms are like billiard balls", to be an
example of a description of nature that is socially or culturally derived.
Billiard balls don't cut it for me as a social or cultural pattern.
Generalizing from this, I don't think 'objects' composed of 'substance'
are social patterns (I think they are biological). What I'm after here is
an honest to goodness social pattern, something that involves politics,
religion, feminism, cultural traditions, and the like. A typical pomo
belief is that scientists decide the laws of nature over heated turf-wars
that involve competing scientists in different countries, or by committee
in scientific think-tanks. Disagreements are resolved by compromise or by
the alpha males in the scientific elite. In other words, scientific laws
of nature are mediated or derived in much the same way as federal and
state laws are created by your elected officials. In the case of scientific
laws, nature might have something to say about it but this is SECONDARY to
the social effect.
>
>GLENN:
>Descartes did important work
>in analytic geometry, for example. Does this mean analytic geometry has a
>certain Frenchness about it? Has another society come up with a competing
>variety of analytic geometry that is more derivative of its culture? No.
>
>ROG:
>What do you mean by "more derivitive?"
I mean like an art historian looking at two works of art and saying that
the first piece has the tell-tale signs of Haitian art and the second one
Chinese art, even though they are both depictions of the same sort of thing.
>Have you noticed that Pirsig qualified
>his cultural derivation statement with the caveat that it could be
>biologically derived?
No, I didn't. Where is this?
>ROG:
>I don't see it as a conspiracy, as much as a somewhat shallow yet practical
>set of beliefs.
Somewhat shallow enough to be a myth?
>As for objectivity, I believe the MOQ would explain the term
>as consistency to experience and consistency between experimenters. We have a
>common biological heritage and most scientists adopt a common social system
>of beliefs. This allows objectivity/consistency to be possible.
Yes. Of the two, sharing a common biology is more critical to enabling
objectivity. People with different languages and cultures would point and
stare at a supernova with the same astonishment and realize they are
witnessing the same thing. You won't get this confirmation from a frog.
Fundamentally, objectivity is possible because there is an objective world,
and fundamentally, consistency is possible because the objective world is
reasonably consistent. Having a common biological and social heritage
alone doesn't justify all the common experience we share.
>
>GLENN:
>This is a postmodern attitude that doesn't apply equally to all domains
>of science. It certainly applies to fields like anthropology but hardly
>at all, or not at all, to physics and chemistry. What possible social
>pattern could be at work that would mediate our observations of water
>molecules, for example? None I can think of. Pirsig offers no salient
>examples.
>
>ROG:
>I agree that some domains are more socially-influenced than others. For an
>example though, consider the worldview that atoms and molecules are material
>vs the worldview that atoms and molecules are consistent patterns or stable
>series of events. Each can be consistent with experience, yet lead to
>different models, descriptions, experiments and associated scientific
>exploration (thinking about things differently can lead you to different
>questions)
Firstly, what you speak of here is how MOQ vs SOM would
mediate our observations of water molecules, and MOQ and SOM are
intellectual patterns, not social ones. Pirsig is arguing that social
patterns mediate our descriptions of nature. Secondly, while I agree
that an MOQ worldview would give different descriptions of nature from
the ones we currently have (the MOQ would have conscious atoms making
moral decisions), I would argue that there would be far fewer
"scientific explorations", and as a result far fewer prescriptive
laws of nature, all from the stifling effect the belief in DQ
would have on scientists.
>
>GLENN:
>I also wonder about Pirsig's justification for putting science at the
>intellectual level if he really believes what he says in these quotes.
>Pirsig says that patterns in a level depend on patterns that reside in
>levels below it, and that the higher level patterns got to be where they
>are because they grew away from their lower level patterns and took on
>independent purposes. It strikes me as odd then that he would put science
>in the intellectual level, the penultimate level of static existence, and
>then implicitly argue that its place there is unjustified. Why do I say
>this?
>
>ROG:
>But the reason the level is penultimate is that it is the most dynamic.
Yes, Pirsig says this, but as I argued in the other thread, being dynamic
alone doesn't make something good. I could come up with a system of thought
and change my mind about it every 5 minutes and tout how provisional it is.
Are you arguing then that my system of thought could be elevated to the
intellectual level on this basis alone? I would hope not.
>And I don't see the fact that [science] emerges out of society as diminishing
>its value.
That's not what I meant. I explain my reasoning in the next paragraph.
>GLENN:
>Pirsig, as I've tried to show above, argues that science depends on the
>social level not only for its 'means' but also for its 'ends'. All
>patterns depend on its lower level for its 'means', but Pirsig mentions
>no pattern depending on its lower level patterns for its 'ends', except
>science. How could science depend on lower level patterns for its 'ends'
>and still be called a higher level pattern? How could a science based on
>a socially derived choice for 'c' in E=mc^2 (if you could believe that) be
>justified as intellectual, as breaking away from the social? I don't think
>it could. If Pirsig justifies science at the intellectual level because
>he thinks at least *some* data and evidence come from the objective world
>or can be reasonably objectively obtained, he doesn't say.
>
>ROG:
>He says that society started as a way to improve biology, but that it grew
>beyond this original purpose. Same with science. (I could also argue that
>life started as a more stable type of pattern -- survival/lastability via
>dynamic adaptiveness). As for the objective world, remember that this phrase
>refers to a high quality interpretation of experience. As for the value of
>science, it isn't in its objectivity (or its consistency), it is in its value
>to the advancement of life, society and knowledge.
You don't comment on the thrust of my argument. As for your last sentence,
it is correct in the sense that the outward values of science are the
advancement of life, society, and knowledge. However, these things would
not be possible without obtaining objective evidence. Pirsig doesn't say
whether or not he thinks this is possible or even if it's important.
However, he does spends a good amount of time discrediting the scientific
method and reason itself.
Glenn
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