I have been the silent reader here but I think I'll ask the question I have been thinking about for quite some time.
There is this idea of using 'labels' for ideas, concepts and philosophies. I will try to explain it in a little more detail. Since i am NOT a student of philosophy in the traditional sense, so I am not sure if what I am going to say has any 'labels' or 'terms' which could be used to identify those ideas. So, per force, I'll improvise my own terms as I move on. I'll number my argument for easy reply. 1. When 'I' talk to a person about something e.g. politics or religion, I usually talk about something specific. e.g I may have asked a friend whether he believes that a three party system would do well for a third world democracy as compared to a two party one? Now, when 'I' (and this could be anyone asking the question) ask this question, I begin with a certain knowledge about the thing I am talking about. In this case, it would be the 'role of political parties in third world democracies'. The extent of my knowledge is irrelevant in this case. (I may have just a 'dewy-eyed' opinion or I may have read up on it well). In any case, my education on the subject informed my opinion in a certain subtle way and I crafted my opinion which may not be exactly the opinion which I read up on or heard at the start. But my opinion has a tangible imprint of my first source of information. e.g in the earlier question I seemed to agree with the stated position of a certain political party called The Justice Party who support a 3 party system. I however agreed with them only to the extent that their position was my starting position and then I informed myself by reading more on the subject. But, when I approached a friend and we talked about this I felt compelled to use a reference to (a label) the 'The Justice Party' to let the addressee understand my opinions better. So I used a label myself.The label could have been 'democrat, republican, liberal, conservative etc'. Insomuch as Wittgenstein said ( and i love to quote it) 'The limits of my language mean the limits of my world', I like to say that 'the inbuilt limits of the labels we use are the limits of our world'. By using that label, I situated myself differently in the eyes of the person I addressed than if I had not used that label. So the label kind of becomes limiting. And the response by the other person is then posited against what his idea of that 'label' is instead of my arguemtn itself. What is this label? Is it similar to that conceptualization which is related to the static quality? 2. When I listen to 'You' I do not LISTEN to you really. I am not listening to your every word and trying to make sense of your meaning in its singularity. My mind is a pattern recognition device and it lays great premium on seeking patterns first before dissecting and understanding those patterns. So, I rather try to PLACE 'you', the speaker, in one of those boxes or labels that will help me in dealing with you easily. Lets say you said the same thing as in point number 1, that, 3 party system is good for 3rd world democracies. Now as you said that, I suddenly remembered that the Justice Party had a similar political ideology. So I do 'centring' (the idea as De bono used it). I kind of use an imaginary funnel to receive your ideas and even if your ideas are just superficially similar to that political party's and are otherwise quite different in detail, I refuse to see it that way. Whatever your ideas, no matter how removed from the core ideas of that political party they might be, since I have chosen to use that funnel (or label) to identify you, so I inevitably end up centring your argument and identifying you with that 'label. This affects me 2-fold. One, I see or read into your argument whats not there. (Distortion of perception) Two, I ground my reply against opinions which are not actually yours but what I have identified you with (after centring your ideas).(Wrong action in response to that distortion of perception) In philosophy do we have a word or term for this behaviour/attitude. How would you analyze this in the background of the discussion about static versus dynamic quality. Regards Omair 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/md/archives.html
