Hi Glenn,
>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?
GLENN:
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.
ROG:
I certainly never read Pirsig to hold such an extreme position (and what is a
'pomo'?). In fact, I think he would agree with you and define such a process
above as social, not as derived from social.
>ROG:
>What do you mean by "more derivitive?"
GLENN:
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.
ROG:
I interpret Pirsig as implying something more subtle than this. He is
stating that intellect emerges out of the social and thus shares a common
worldview or way of looking at things and that this brings an inherent bias
to science.
Another take on the issue is that I think we could argue that proper science
depends upon a certain social worldview. In other words, all science emerges
out of a common relevent set of beliefs, without which one can't really be
said to be a 'scientist'. The indoctrination is now called a PHD. This would
obscure our ability to see most social effects in various theories as they
would tend to be endemic in all science. There is some evidence of problems
with some branches of science in the old Soviet Union. Socialist propaganda
led to invalid assumptions on genetics and this led to some examples of BAD
science (non science).
The statement that science could also be biologically derived comes
immediately prior to the Descartes paragraph.
As for your question of whether Pirsig's 'myth' implies a 'conspiracy' or
just a pre-intellectual set of beliefs, please refer to David's opus
yesterday.
GLENN:
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.
ROG:
Pirsig would (and has) argued that your statement on an objective world is a
high quality interpretation of experience.
GLENN:
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.
ROG:
I think you are oversimplifying the term dynamic in this context. It doesn't
just mean change, it also refers to the ability to explore and create new
patterns of quality. Social evolution is incomparably faster than biological
evolution. Science has similarly accelerated the pace of creative
exploration.
Rog
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