From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 05 2005 - 11:23:53 GMT
Hi Ian and MD
It's probably just a coincidence, but a couple of weeks ago I was
having some thoughts about 'suspending disbelief', and now it turns
out to be a big part of your thinking. We may be talking about
different things, but here are my thoughts anyway.
It followed on from something I wrote to Matt recently, about the
conditions for social value creating intellectual value:
"What enables individual intellects to think freely, is education.
Education is necessarily a social process. It is _someone else_
teaching you mathematics, teaching you to read and write, and teaching
you to think critically. The significant feature of these disciplines
is that they cannot be indoctrinated - it's much more a Socratic
Method of "drawing-out" (I was fascinated to learn that,
etymologically speaking, "education" is precisely "drawing out". The
"-duc-" bit isn't "drawing" in the sense of a chalk and blackboard,
but in the sense of drawing the knowledge out of the student.). The
teacher voluntarily _suspends_ the power to indoctrinate you, and
instead encourages and empowers you to think autonomously.
"So, the first condition of education (as opposed to indoctrination) is
the teacher's faith that it is better to educate than to indoctrinate.
The second condition is the student's faith that he or she can and
should think for his or her self. And the final condition for a
burgeoning 4th level is the society's faith that its citizens should
be free to think for themselves and to express those thoughts. Again,
it's a _voluntary suspense of power_ - the (rulers of) society
voluntarily suspends the power to control you by coercion.
"So, free thinking is made possible by these particular social faiths.
"There's definitely a hint of paradox about all this. Take that
sentence: "What enables individual intellects to think freely, is
education." However, it makes sense in the context of the suspension
of power. The 4th level can only be created by a voluntary suspension
of level-3 static value. Better still: the 4th level is created when
level-3 value is put into the service of DQ. This is where the
framework of discrete levels shows its elegance."
I should say that this can't be a description of the _beginning_ of
the intellectual level, because there's an infinite regress of 'who
educates the educator'. It's more a description of how the
intellectual level is maintained.
Now, if I'm right that a level creates a higher value level by
voluntarily putting its value into the service of DQ instead of its
own static value, then we can try extrapolating this theory. Organisms
co-operating to form societies instead of competing tooth-and-nail for
food etc - this fits, although the word "voluntary" becomes less
appropriate. And it becomes even less appropriate when we talk about
the inorganic level. DQ works in mysterious ways, I guess :)
But what got me on to 'suspending disbelief' was considering how
intellect might sacrifice its own static value considerations by
putting its value into the service of DQ. Traditionally, at least,
intellect loves to question and to doubt. Socratic dialectic is a
questioning process. Descartes' method was the Method of Doubt. Hell,
doesn't science basically consist of asking nature very specific
questions: if I do _this_ in _these_ conditions, what are you gonna
do, Nature? And there's that line from ZMM, something like "If you
keep asking what it is, you'll never have time to _know_." And there's
Lila's angry response to Phaedrus, something like: "Don't you realise
that I am whatever your questions make me into?" Anyway, I'm rambling.
But haven't you noticed that when it comes to the point of creating
something, you _just can't do it_ if you're still obeying your
intellectual, hrm, DESIRE to question everything that passes through
your mind? You can't say, write, paint anything if you can't stop
asking yourself whether it's right or not.
So, even Descartes had to suspend disbelief a bit to actually write
down his Meditations. However, we can still say that he did this in
the service of his intellectual sense of value. By writing the
Meditations, he propagated the method of doubt.
To put intellectual value into the service of DQ, we have to suspend
disbelief wholesale. Generally speaking, humour and fantasy (to take
two clear-cut examples) have Quality because we have the power to
question them, _but we choose not to_, because.... because, well, its
just Better that way. We just let it go. We allow these things to
stand, for reasons that we can't define or explain without killing the
beast. It's that vague sense of we know not what, which makes us laugh
or makes us keep reading. And Tolkien's books and Ross Noble's
stand-up routines get static-latched: people buy the books or DVDs,
tell their friends, remember the jokes.....
Well, thanks very much if you made it this far.
Regards,
Mike
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