28.9.2006 kello 07:59, Eugene Halton kirjoitti:
If I understand your criticism that the social should not be excluded from the
method of tenacity, you are saying that much research today goes on under
Darwin-like survival of the fittest rules: research by tenacity in a
competitive social milieu, individuals forced by the game to stick to their
prior thought which gave them their success. Are you saying that through the competitive social milieu, in pushing individuals into tenacity, the social is thereby ingredient in the method of tenacity? Or that methodically tenacious individuals, in aiming for competitive social success, thereby reveal the social within the method of tenacity? I'm not sure.
On the main, yes, but this was not exactly what I had in mind. You wrote in your previous post:
A tenaciously held belief is still social, as any habit is. Yet the social is excluded from the method of tenacity. What you believe by tenacity may also be social and learned, or perhaps social and instinctive, but believed in because you simply continue to believe in it, regardless of others' beliefs.
It was the way you considered social to be excluded, and tenaciously held belief as something having nothing to do with others' beliefs, which I did not quite agree with. A belief, being a habit, is held as long as it works. And the reason it works - or does not work - may be mainly social, (also including others' beliefs). But it need not be authority. Individuals may not be forced (by authority) to stick to their beliefs, if it just works to do so.
Or maybe I should soften what I said in previous post to viewing the social as
only indirectly involved in the method of tenacity? Tenacity seems to me to be
about imposing one's way on experience.
Well, on second thoughts, I think one could say that the social is not essentially involved in the CONCEPT of the method of tenacity, although it is necessarily involved in using the method. But in the concept of the method of authority the social IS essentially involved, because "authority" presupposes two positions, being a dual relation, with one or more believers and at least one believed.
This, I assume, is in agreement with your "progressively broadening social conceptions", only taken from a different aspect.
The you wrote:
I am also familiar with the funding approach you describe, through some
encounters with the MacArthur Foundation way back. I spent one evening with
Jonas Salk and Rod MacArthur (shortly before he died), who were talking about
the five year fellowships the foundation had started, with no applications or
conditions. Salk described it as a way to develop something like
intellectual "spore heads" that could have time to pursue their ideas
unencumbered, then disseminate. About a year later I also got to play with
Salk and some of his "spore heads" at another meeting, which involved a tour
of the Art Institute in Chicago. We were in an Andy Warhol exhibit, a room of
large silver floating balloons shaped like pillows. Salk and others, including
me, laughing and bouncing balloons around, as though in an amusement park.
What was this, the method of musement? -A "method," not of fixing belief, but
of loosening it!
Yes, the method of musement, absolutely! The question is, is it critically adopted, or just indulged in. (In analogy to using unlimited funds reasonably or just sloshing money around). In "Neglegted Argument..." Peirce recommends that about 5-10 % of one's working hours should be spent musing. No doubt this was based on some part of his over 20 000 cards "about the size of a postcard", on which he wrote down e.g. detailed and methodical observations on his own experiences. I, for my part, have found out that about 10 -15% works out best.
Anyway, the main point is that Peirce found it reasonable to use both kinds of methods, those of fixing AND those of loosening one's beliefs. With fixing, one should take critical approach in, with loosening, one should take it out. For the reason that one's beliefs get fixed by themselves, uncontrollably, so the question is are they critically fixed or not. All of them never can be at once (i.e. collectively), but some of them can, any time. On the other hand, one can deliberately choose to loosen one's ideas, if one has a method which works. Peirce recommends musement.
Best,
Kirsti
Kirsti Määttänen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
