From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 22:35:21 BST
Thanks for the thoughts Joe, uncannily close to some of my own (inserted
below).
joe: knowledge and communication struggle with each other. I may know
something, but stammering can cause problems. IMO Pirsig points to an
intuitive, instinctive sense of reality that precedes abstraction.
Intuition is individual, it is hard to communicate. One way I create a
bridge for communication is to say 'I believe." Ignore me if you don't want
to talk about it.
[Ian Glendinning] Interestingly, whenever I have difficult arguments with
people that get to the "Well, in my opinion ..." stage I often retort with a
remark something like - I don't know why you're qualifying it with "in my
opinion" because that caveat applies to everything you (or I) say. The fact
that it is tedious to prefix every statement that way, doesn't mean it's not
always implied.
joe: Intuition: I use words to represent patterns of my experience. The
patterns are composed of an instinctive aspect of existence, purpose,
quality latched into a static pattern to which I assign words. In this way,
if I speak from myself, I create words for the patterns, and hopefully they
are the same words other people for their patterns of experience. I am
offended if you simple ignore or negate these words, though I may not be
offended if you ignore my beliefs. To each his own.
[Ian Glendinning] This idea of language latching I recognise too. I'm in a
sphere of work at the moment where we're trying to create something new, but
find all the words we'd like to use to describe it, are already established
with existing meanings. No matter how much we "re-define" what we mean by
the words it doesn't help, we cannot turn the linguistic clock back
(unsurprisingly).
joe: How in hell can I communicate anything new? What if I am wrong? In
this case the bridge of communications becomes 'we do a lot of the same
things, let us find common lground. We were once all children. We were
once all students.
[Ian Glendinning] Spot on. Some shared experience is necessary for
messages to become communication, so it is essential for repetition,
interaction, metaphor, story-telling etc to take place. Tight, succinct
messages, definitions or snappy jargon only count for anything meaningful
AFTER the message has been succesfully communicated.
Joe: I assume communication is beneficial. "Knowledge models that better
capture the true 'irrationality' of human orginazations", is a rough place
to start. I suppose a common experience of moral orders, and an
instinctive sensing or reality preceding abstraction, might be a toopick in
the door.
[Ian Glendinning] Actually I'm not so sure it is such a bad place to
start - the workplace is the place most people get most of their social
interaction, and it's also the place where misunderstanding and lack of
knowledge can cause the most collateral damage. ('m not making a lifestyle
statement, just observing a fact - in my opinion of course :-)
Ian
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