Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 58, Issue 4
There is no field that I know of that tells us what societies should be like. philosophy and religion offer numerous utopias... -Dave (to what degree do the philosophers and the priests differ from the fiction writers?)
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 09/08/2014 12:57 PM, SS wrote: On Mon, 2014-09-08 at 11:37 +0200, Dave Long wrote: (to what degree do the philosophers and the priests differ from the fiction writers?) Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but Sci Fi writers ( to the extent that I have read scifi in recent decades) generally do not deal in questions of morality except in terms of some power or entity who is a threat to humanity or something that restricts rights. I would certainly agree that not all science fiction deals with morality, unlike philosophy/religious (although I'm tempted to point out the bits about things like origin stories, or a chunk of Greek mythology, where there's just random stories about the Gods that don't have much moral focus) assuming we use principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. as the definition of morality, I think amongst other examples Ray Bradbury's work certainly deals with issues of morality. Admittedly, sci fi doesn't always explicitly spell out the reasons why some action that is considered moral/immoral is actually the opposite, so they tend to attack more obvious topics, but they still focus on morality. Specific examples would be censorship from `Fahrenheit 451' and multiple issues in `The Martian Chronicles'. The television show Babylong 5 definitely deals with morality as well. Other obvious general definitions are: what an ideal society looks like, and the fate of the universe or man, but I'm just going to leave this article from Spectacle [0] here because many of the examples I'm remembering are partly derived from this article anyway. Philosophers and priests tend to address morality. Morality is generally a restriction of rights. The proof through a story about how something deemed immoral but is not actually immoral wouldn't deal with the restriction of rights. It would deal with them in the context of showing why they aren't, but something deemed moral doesn't have to inherently be a restriction of natural rights. Presumably natural rights deals with moral issues after all (or did I just misinterpret that statement) Sci Fi can be taken as one type of literary output from societies where science and technology have profoundly influenced the lives of people in those societies. The creation of science fiction (as opposed to pure fiction) I believe has occurred only in some societies. If the mood of SciFi output has changed over many decades from positive to negative, it could possibly indicate a change of attitude about the future in that society. But this would be a sociological judgement, unless I am mistaken. Strictly speaking I don't think the societal issues that Sci Fi writers deal with coincide with the issues that priests and philosophers deal with. The common areas are restricted to where science has affected morality - and to that extent science and morality have come into conflict. I am not sure if Sci Fi writers have taken sides on these issues. Once again, please correct me if you think I am wrong. The science (if that is what it is) of sociology came up only because of the need This is just a massive personal bias in definition but: the science of anything is the correct application of mathematics to a field of study, because maths is how you actually define the relationships between two or more constructs as an entity rather than an untestable hypothesis. to study non western societies and document the differences between the normal society of the sociologist with the exotic other society. Not a lot of effort was expended in observing western societies from the outside because all sociologists were from within western societies and were unable or unwilling to comment on western societies that funded their work and left it to the priests, philosophers and more recently Sci Fi writers. So following the above, sociology that actually used statistical methods correctly (Otis Duncan is an important example) was/is a science, even if it only studied western societies. The lack of representative sampling for the world simply means that you can't generalise models that fit the sampled society to non-western societies without rigorously testing that assumption that the model is invariant across those cultures. I'll certainly agree that psychologists (much to my deep annoyance), sociologists, and others ignore, or simply do not know/understand, many of the assumptions that are built into statistical models, (e.g., ones who tried to understand Chinese culture using US sampled models, or those who just kinda looked at things and guessed in the dark) do not deserve the title of scientist though. happy to have something to contribute finally, landon Please note that I don't agree with everything the author states in the following link (the mildly rampant christian morality viewpoint especially), but I certainly think it represents sci fi
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
Shiv, Morality does not stop you from coveting anyone's neighbor's wife. Occasionally religion might, but as there's nothing called universal morality, that won't stop you. So do go ahead, if thats what your primary angst is about :) :-) On 09-Sep-2014 9:38 am, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 08:02 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: On 08-Sep-14 10:27 PM, SS wrote: Morality is generally not about restriction of rights, except as they impact Right. And Wrong. Which are what morality is about - the identification of Right and Wrong. Morality can be completely individual, or applicable within a context. There is no such thing as universal morality. (e.g, perhaps the most often quoted example of a universal moral rule is thou shalt not kill - but if were truly universal then one wouldn't have the death penalty, for instance.) All morality is a restriction of rights. The free born human individual technically has the right to do any damn thing he wants, including steal, lie and covet his neighbour's wife. Morality restricts these rights. Sci Fi can be taken as one type of literary output from societies where science and technology have profoundly influenced the lives of people in those societies. In other words, every society in today's world (barring a few outliers [1])? I have not seen much Indian, Chinese or Egyptian SciFi. In fact Indian society has barely been touched by science and tech the way say European societies have. Oh yes many may have cellphones and TV sets, but possession of cargo is not the same thing as being a technologically aware society, barring a educated few outliers. SF, like other literature, is at the end an exploration of what it means to be human (this includes the literature of ideas or gee whiz aspects). This is, at this level of abstraction, *exactly* what priests and philosophers deal with. I would be interested in Sci Fi views on child sex, age of consent, marriage, divorce, contraception and abortion I'm not really sure what you're saying here - but one comment is that that being a sociologist doesn't really bar you from being a SF writer, for one thing. The problem as I see it is that Sci Fi cannot stand in for sociology and vice versa. It is possible to write fiction and pass it off as a sociological study - I think it has been done - but that is not the point. The point is What is a good society? If priests, philosophers and Sci Fi writers have ideas - what are sociologists doing? What would be their role in defining what is good or bad about societies, given that as a group, sociologists are held as being distinct from priests and philosophers. In fact - who is even looking at what a good future society should look like given that no one takes philosophers and priests seriously and Sci Fi is, well, Fi. shiv
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
On 09/09/14 09-Sep-2014;9:38 am, SS wrote: I have not seen much Indian, Chinese or Egyptian SciFi. Udupa? That's your cue. In fact Indian society has barely been touched by science and tech the way say European societies have. Oh yes many may have cellphones and TV sets, but possession of cargo is not the same thing as being a technologically aware society, barring a educated few outliers. I'd argue that the changes due to technology and globalisation are even more stark in the underdeveloped parts of India. Here's one particularly well-known example [1]. I would be interested in Sci Fi views on child sex, age of consent, marriage, divorce, contraception and abortion As Mahesh pointed out,try the later works of Heinlein, particularly the Lazarus Long books [2]. Udhay [1] http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/241 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 08:55 +0530, Mahesh Murthy wrote: Shiv, read Heinlien. Thanks. Will do shiv
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
I would imagine you can covet whatever you like. Its your right to have any desire. Freedom of thought. Acting on that covetousness is a compact between you and the coveted person, at the very least. But freedom of thought doesn't naturally turn into freedom of deed. Sometimes, with consenting adults, it can. Sometimes, based on non-moral reasons, it doesn't. On 9 Sep 2014 10:15, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 09:43 +0530, Mahesh Murthy wrote: Morality does not stop you from coveting anyone's neighbor's wife. Occasionally religion might, but as there's nothing called universal morality, that won't stop you. But would coveting your neighbour's wife be a right? It would have to be if that is what someone wanted and there was no restriction. That restriction is called by the general term morality. There is nothing in between - there is no no man's land (pun unintended) between rights and morality shiv
Re: [silk] Anthropology and Sociology
On 9 September 2014 10:17, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 08:55 +0530, Mahesh Murthy wrote: Shiv, read Heinlien. Thanks. Will do shiv Do also see the reading list for this Political Science course: http://jakebowers.org/PS300S14/ps300s14syl.pdf that incorporates SF as a way to enhance the political, social and economic imagination of the social sciences, [because] science fiction allows us a much more detailed view of life in alternative futures, and the writers that we choose to read here tend to think seriously and logically about how current cutting edge technology might have social and political ramifications. Ingrid Srinath @ingridsrinath
