Dave, I gather by saying that you mean the rationalizations people give you are the main set of clues you have as to what they are going through in their lives, etc., not that, like with quantum mechanics in Bohr's interpretation, that since the rationalizations are all the information you have then nothing else exists for you as a scientist... nor the extension of that, that the patterns in their remarks are the cause of the behaviors of the people whose remarks you are studying, right?
Well, even if I guessed wrong on that, what if you happened to notice patterns of developmental change in their rationalizations, that no one had ever noticed before, and you were able to identify larger emerging complex systems in their behavior that you could confirm from independent sources of information. Would that discovery of an invisible direct causal process of change count as a legitimate subject of study? I ask that partly because I'm still thinking about that example of Barabasi studying the inverse square distributions in the hub distributions of the internet, and time and again explicitly attributing the complex 'scale free' patterns being left behind in the wake of the vibrant living systems that were busy inventing the web and producing them, as being what caused the behavior of the living system that left them behind... a total reversal of instrumental causation as well as the time sequence of events!! His syntax is real clear on that, and what's even more clear is even though he clearly sees the living system producing the network patterns, it's the patterns he's interested in, and the patterns do not lead him to examine the directly causal living system, but only the reverse! There is, of course, one very direct if tricky way that the patterns we find left behind by the independent behaviors of the world actually do cause those behaviors, in that they are our primary source of information about the behaviors of the world, and are the direct cause of our minds having any reliable connection with them, by directly causing our images. If we were to think our images were reality, then it's perfectly reasonable to think that the information causing them was the cause of the behaviors too, not only for people, but for everything else too, and to never ask how that might work. The deep trouble comes when you seriously ask how that might work. Learning how use information to lead you into exploring the presence of diverse independent behaviors in causation, and the error in reading that backwards, only becomes completely necessary when you begin to look at the instrumental causes of individual events. In part there is just no other explanation for all the time lags and ordered but independent developmental processes you find prolifically represented in individual events, and far more satisfying explanations for them. There's also a stunning discovery to make of what happens to the quality of your own questions when you turn the evidence of independent behaviors around to help you watch exactly how they work rather than use information only to 'explain them away' as projections of static patterns they leave behind. So I hope, though don't actually expect, that you read the rationalizations people give you as being what they think they think, and as a great source of questions for exposing and exploring their independent behaviors. The alternate is to use information as all you have, and consider it a complete representation of your subjects, and treat the patterns you find as what caused the behavior of the people you study... Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Prof David West > Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 4:27 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied > ComplexityCoffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Rationalilzations or Causes? > > > > True, but the rationalizations are the only things that are important. > > As a cultural anthropologist I am interested in building > models of culture - complex non-deterministic models and > rationalizations are the only data points that are useful. > Rationalizations provide some measure of insight into why > people think they do what they do and these insights can be > compared and contrasted with other aspects of culture > (paraphrasing here, the complex whole that includes world > view (metaphysics), values, practices, customs, and > technology) to build models that are mildly explanatory and > even mildly and statistically predictive. > > An anthropologist like Marvin Harris would be interested in > causes - he explains Hindu behavior vis-a-vis cows in terms > of calories available and the inevitable mass die off of > Hindu's if they started to eat beef, or Yanomami violence > also from the lack of available calories. Dawkins (selfish > gene) would also be interested in causes - but in his case > there would only be one - a gene's desire to reproduce > explains everything, including the most exotic sexual > practice you could imagine. > > In a similar vein - Penthouse Letters provides a fascinating > insight into what Americans think turns them on. A > statistical history of pages devoted to different topics > shows some really interesting trends over the past twenty > years - and not because anyone believes that the letters are > "real" or that they reflect what people are actually doing - > only in that they accurately reflect what readers think is > exciting enough to read about that they would shell out the > $6-10 to buy the magazine. > > davew > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
