Inserted DMB ... On 5/20/08, david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ian said to Matt and dmb: > I guess I'm one of those with the (distasteful) "cultural illness" view - but > at least I'm aware of it. Particularly liked the "synthetic" angle here - > stop thinking of other philosophers as "enemies" and see what they can bring > to the party. No surprises there. > > dmb says: > So far, it seems that there are a bunch of philosophers acceptable to > academia that can be used to take a thinker right up to Pirsig's Quality, but > none quite go there. In other words, it seems Pirsig has a unique > contribution that totally makes sense in the standard context. And all this, > as far as I can tell, happens at the cutting edge, at the current state of > philosophy. Obviously, I'm thrilled about this. > > Ian said: > On cost-benefit. Reading (well, my younger son is reading) "The Economic > Naturalist" by Robert H Frank, and we're relating the idea that ecomonics is > just (psychological) evolution and evolution is just economics - Dawkins / > Dennett et al all use cost-benefit ideas in explaining various evolutionary > mechanisms. But I hadn't made the connection to Phronesis, not consciously > anyway. Thanks for that. > > dmb says: > Smells like social Darwinism to me.
[IG] The "ism" labels do smell, but of course MoQism is about social evolution and (as I would say) evolutionary psychology. I think it's important we use the Pirsigian perspective to see past the labels to more enlightened views of these things. (There are a lot more enlightened economists, and or economic views, than the "capitalist" free-marketeers responsible for the ills you describe.) I'm suspicious of economic in general because of the way it is so deeply implicated in materialism. But I recently read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", which traces the recent history of "disaster capitalism". It explains how a small group of dedicated free-market zealots influenced U.S. policy in places all over the world. It connects Pinochet, 9/11, Katrina and a whole bunch of other things that you only think you already know. It shows how we got to be where we are now. It explains how we're letting democracy and the American form of government slip away from us. And it is psychological in a way. I mean, this "disaster capitalism" wouldn't ever work except for a psychological phenomenon that it invariably takes advantage of, namely, fear makes people stupid and compliant. Apparently, this is a principle with which capitalism rules the world. [IG] I think you are right .... another "cultural ill" I would say, but one we can evolve our way out of with the right will and enlightenment. > > Ian said: > On the "its all too much like maths" view of analytic philosophy my elder son > has just written his dissertation on Completeness and Consistency in Systems > of Ethics and concludes that kind of analytic view will never work, thanks to > Godel. > > dmb says: > Along the same lines, Hubert Dreyfus says that artificial intelligence will > never work. He teaches Heidegger at Berkeley now, but started out in the > sciences at MIT. He has the very tough job of trying to explain to the IT > community that they are working with certain metaphysical assumptions that > lead them to error. He uses Heidegger to explain what they don't know about > human cognition. I think this is similar to Pirsig's polite comment about the > possibility of thinking machines. He said something like, well if computers > could respond to DQ it would be possible to have a machine that can genuinely > think. Its my impression that the "if" here is insurmountable. Computers > can't respond to DQ and I think they can't for very much the same reasons > Dreyfus comes up with in his work on Heidegger. You know, that whole > being-in-the-world thing is unknown to the IT guys. They're typical SOM > scientists. If anybody I know would be interested in that issue, it would be > you, Ian. You and Mr. Google can take it form here. [IG] Agreed - AI "will never work" until it is realised that life has to evolve before intelligence .... and then it's not artificial any more, simply real. Of course plenty of "IT" people do see that ... the enlightened ones ... so your generalization is a bit swingeing. Most people in the world (but not all) are working under metaphysical illusions - that their SOMist ontologies are concrete and real, etc - whether they are in IT or science or wherever. That's where I take the "cultural ill" view. But I get where you're coming from - you bet I'm interested.. > > I don't know how to say it or even why I believe it, exactly. But it seems > this is all related. Basically, its an over-extension of logic and a > blindness to a certain dimension. There's a sort of brittle, rigid and > shallow way of thinking that also happens to be oblivious to its own > limitations. That's how we get mathematical analysis of ethics and the > attempt to make machines think. A robot like Data (Star Trek: Next > Generation) because even if he was programed with every fact in the universe, > he'd never know which facts to value or which facts matter and why. It'd be a > case of autism on steroids, much worse than the misunderstandings we saw on > the show. > > And there will never be a transporter like they have on Star Trek either. Its > impossible for the same reason. [IG] I'm sure you will know that "numbers-based" economics hase been referred to as "autistic" in serious economics circles - but again plenty of enlightened economists (of the kind we should be encouraging, surely) do already get that. > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Change the world with e-mail. 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