Krimel, Mati and y'all: I agree that the conversation is a bit of a mess but I don't blame the MOQ for that.
I also agree that the question is too vague. But I totally disagree with Krimel's contention that Reet's answer "can only be an intellectual formulation". I don't see anything at all intellectual in it. She's seems perfectly bright and her answers are coherent but her concerns are all about money and family and national pride. These are social values even when a person is very articulate about expressing them. In the philosophy of religion course I took last semester we spent some time looking at "the death of God" and Nietzsche's claim that it would take at least 100 years for people to realize what he was saying. The professor's wife happens to be a sociologist and has become quite sophisticated about designing research surveys and can otherwise tell good ones from bad ones. To flesh out Nietzsche's claim he brought in some "data" on the attitudes of scientists toward religious belief, one that spans several generations. Contrary to what you might think, as it turns out, scientists aren't generally very different from the general population in terms of religious belief. Or at least that was true for a long time. But more recently somebody got the bright idea to survey the very top ranked scientists, members of the academy of science, rather than just anybody in the field. And sure enough, there is a dramatic difference among that group. The elite scientists aren't entirely irreli gious, but almost. The professors point, i think, was simply to show that Nietzsche was basically right. These things don't happen overnight and there is always going to a cutting edge that gets there before the rest of us do. I mention this survey because asking about the conflict between science and religion so clearly gets at conflict between intellectual and social values. Its classic. Seems to me that one could interview a cross section of Estonians and get usable data if the questions were written along the same lines. You know, you'd be looking for correlations that reach down from that classic conflict. You'd ask about attitudes toward sex and drugs and other vices to see if that goes hand in hand with religious beliefs, respect for authority, attitudes toward the military, toward wealth, toward status. You'd also ask a series of questions that would likewise reflect intellectual values. The questions could even be set up so that there is a choice between one or the other. "Do you spend time doing X or Y?" "Which is more important to you, A or B?" "Do you agree more with assertion number one or assertion number two?" In the United States at least, there seems to be a strong correlation between social level values and a contempt for intellectuals as if they were members of an hereditary aristocracy rather a meritocracy, for example. There is a strong cor relation between social values and nationalism, religiosity and submission to authority whereas these things are treated with skepticism and even contempt in the Universities. In fact, my number one concern is no longer with defeating SOM or scientific objectivity but rather with getting philosophical mysticism to fly in that world. I think it can be done, so far so good in fact, but it'll still probably be the hardest part. My point? The survey's questions would have to be much more specific and to test the theory they'd have to be carefully designed according to the theory. I mean, if social and intellectual values are in conflict, the questions asked would have to concern those areas of conflict. In effect, people have already taken sides whether they realize it or not and the trick is to ask the right questions so as to get those positions on paper. Thanks, dmb Krimel said: > It is hard to recall a set of threads that has so clearly demonstrated why > the "levels" are at best a secondary feature of the MoQ. The inability to > clearly delineate between the social and intellectual or even to > unambiguously state what the intellectual level is, jump off the screen with > every new post. I have said many times similar problems occur at each level. > Pirsig puts organic chemistry on the inorganic level and creates a social > level divorced from its biological function. It is a mess. > > But this last bit raises all sorts of questions. How does anything Mati > proposed constitute a "methodology"? How does: "Describe how you see your > future and the future of Estonia," constitute a research question? It is > entirely too vague and contains nothing measurable to analyze. Worse yet > asking a vague question and collecting freeform answers from individuals is > a sure fire prescription for getting meaningless results. What in Reet's > answer can be considered "data"? How would her "data" be compared to "data" > from other respondents? > > Even in a purely MoQ context asking a vague question and looking at the > jumbled answer is only going to produce "intellectual level" "data". Reet is > telling you what she thinks. This can only be an intellectual formulation of > her situation. > > Is this really what you think an MoQ approach to a scientific study would > look like? _________________________________________________________________ Keep your kids safer online with Windows Live Family Safety. http://www.windowslive.com/family_safety/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_family_safety_072008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
