From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Aug 13 2005 - 05:27:19 BST
MATT wrote in another thread: The "web" metaphor can be used either for an individual's beliefs or for an entire culture's. It's the flip-flop between the two that produces the idea
of a "collective consciousness." And this is why I don't get too excited
either way about that whole debate. They're just two different
descriptions, flip sides of a coin. If you want to emphasize what
individual people do, like the idea of genius, you talk about an
individual's web. If you want to emphasize how culture's change, like the
rise and fall of geoocentrism, you talk about the culture's web. Neither
side can do without the other, and if they tried, one doesn't have to work
that hard to make them look silly: which is what both extreme sides do to
each other. They are both quite convincing in making the other side look
silly, but only at the expense of looking silly themselves.
HI Matt,
This summary makes sense. I think it would be interesting in some way to combine this thread with the thread on the philosophy/philosophology thread. I don't understand how "originality" is the clear distinction in one thread and then can't be determined in another. Are these ideas not comparable...am I missing somthing?
If they are comparable...what happens when you apply mark's comment (see below) to ant's comment (hee hee....i'm just kidding around about this but I am genuinely confused at how these threads relate.).
Erin
ANT wrote Tue Mar 22 2005 : And in this paragraph Matt enters a realm of fantasy. There’s a difference between thinking for yourself and blindly destroying the social institutions
(such as universities) which support high quality thought. If this is the
type of idea that Matt is presently deriving from Rorty then the latter
really is a bad influence. “Hey kids – Uncle Dick here! Now listen to me –
if you do philosophy, don’t get involved in politics, don’t be original and
don’t question any authority.” I can hear the “Sieg Heils” ringing out in
Rorty’s banal world right now. And, yes, it is exactly this type of
thinking that help facilitates atrocities such as Auschwitz and badly judged
actions such as the Iraqi invasion.
MARK wrote on Fri Jul 29 2005: The
fact is, in both cultural and biological evolution it is nonsense to
speak of firsts at all. The wish for a "Stand-Alone Genius" stems
from a psychological need to believe that such people exist, (and
that the believer is probably one of them), and therefore that SA-
Geniuses are entitled to some special treatment by society.
It's very simple. Really. Psychology 101. :-)
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