----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com>
Ian wrote:
>> They are internally related where their identities depend on their
>> relations. Where relations are internal there are no "substances" in
the
>> above senses.
>
> =============
> Right and that just reduces 'internally' to a trivial proposition.
Internal relations made concrete in the human case have to be conceived so as to be compatible with other ontological ideas. As with the internal relations of all living things, human relations must allow logically for self-determination and purpose.
==============
I do not disagree with the above; however the polysemous uses of internal has created a situation where you and I are typing/writing past one another. In the above statement I substitute interdependency for internal relations and find what your asserting completely intelligible. But that's because I have possibly sufficient familiarity with the issues of the debate over those terms as they'e been used in philosophy for the past 150+ years. You might want to consider that others less familiar with the terms and debates would find the use of interdependency more helpful.
>
My relations now are constitutive of me now (this makes it impossible for
me
to be presently in more than one universe since I am a particular universe
now from my standpoint). They constitute me now as a set of possibilities
open to closure by me, this is the self-determination.
================ The above is problematic as you don't sufficiently define universe. Some hold that there can be, at most only one universe and if that were the case then you would seem to be adopting a solipsist approach. If there are multitude of universes how could you possibly know that *you* are one unto yourself?
>
Another ontological
premise is that these possibilities are open to objective valuation as
better or worse so that the purpose that guides self-determination can be
based on rational valuation of alternative possibilities.
===========
How to reconcile the use of objective, used in the context of an irreducible plurality of agents with differing manners of self-determining values seems very problematic to me. I can't help but think that the above leads to a slippery slope towards monism in an approach to *a* [or *the*] theory of value.
Since I think there's more than one theory of value[s], then the issue of *internal* a la Putnam, Lynch, Ellis and many others makes use of the two terms --objective & internal-- problematic because we can't [at least I can't] help but think of the complement --or is it the opposite-- of internal, which is external. This leads back to my concern over the internal-external dyad as it realtes to space-time dynamics; not just the cognitive processes of some beings within cultures and space-time. As I have asserted before and will maintain, developments in the sciences have rendered the use of the concept of internal relations *and it's limits* signficantly more robust than what Whitehead achieved; additionally those who make use of the term have nothing to fear from the ongoing projects of formalizing many of the ideas Whitehead was attmepting to get at within the subject-predicate form which he used to describe relations that were richer and more complex than what is expressible in the subject predicate form of everyday languages [as if mathematics and logic aren't used everyday too...] In that sense Whitehead is *not* the final word on the issues involved.
Marx assumes that a human individual is an individual potentially having a will proper and a universal will, i.e. a will whose content is fully open to rational self determination on the basis of knowledge of the objective values (Marx belongs to a tradition in thought that takes these to be "love" and "beauty") which provide the foundation for ranking possibilities.
============
Ok, but again rational is left undefined. Does it mean incapable of logical error with regards to one's capacities for inductive, deductive and abductive approaches to generating assertions of descriptions and explanations about relations with other entities and agents? And if some people are not monists with regards to values, is not the concept of objective problematic? And is the concept of objective in the context above the same or different to the way, say, a physicist, or biologist uses the term objective?
>
(Anyone claiming that people are naturally resentful, naturally envious,
naturally selfish, naturally exploitive etc. is denying that they
potentially have a "will proper".) The possibilities open to me now depend
on (are "internally related" to) past decisions and actions so that
self-determination in the past can create a current set of possibilities, a
"real potentiality," that includes the ideal.
================
Which ideal?
>
The will is only potentially proper and universal, however. Persons
require
particular relations in order to realize this potentiality, i.e. become
fully rationally self-conscious.
============
Again, those terms are left undefined.
>
Their actual relations can be more or less
consistent with this. I'm not a Sovietologist but my impression (from, for
example, Gorky's My Childhood) is that the social, including the family
relations, characteristic of the Russian peasantry (the vast majority of
the
population in 1917) were very far from what would be required for the
development of full rationality, that their likely usual result would be an
adult personality characterized by primitive defences against psychotic
anxiety i.e. a more or less paranoid, extremely hostile, sadistic
personality. These particular internal social relations would then explain
the coming to dominance within them of a paranoid, hostile, sadistically
murderous mentality. It is in this way that "internal relations" might
help
to explain the last 80 or so years of Russian history including the
disastrous consequences of the collapse, important features of which were
the product of advice from "economists" of the Hayekian sort having no
knowledge either of the psychological factors I've just pointed to (they
are
explicitly denied any role in explanations framed in accordance with the
"logic of the situation"), of the "internal relations" which produce them
(the approach treats social relations as "external"), or of the truth
contained in the passage from Keynes that Brad recently quoted.
==============
What would we be diminishing in terms of narrative and explanation if we simply used *social* in the stead of internal so as to not confuse the manner in which Whitehead used internal in the cases of his attempt to explicate physics and biology and his theories of space-time that he broached using the term?
The passage implicitly calls attention to the irrationality of apocalyptic thinking. Such thinking goes together with the obsessional Ricardian vice and the sadistic puritanism to produce the conclusion that immense present pain and suffering are justifiable because in "the [for Keynes unknowable] long run" there will be enormous positive benefits that will far outweigh them, a belief Keynes claims can't be rationally justified and attributes to a psychological need to deny that "in the long run we are all dead."
=================
I'm not sure apocalyptic thinking is an entailment of the Ricardian vice. It's certainly not if we take a deductive-inductive-abductive approach to analyzing the juxtaposition of apocalyptic thinking among, say, some US religious denominations and those of computer scientists and mathematicians, no?
Who among those sharing the Ricardian vice are saying the present human condition is not a tragedy and the current situation of zoon politkon is just peachy?
>
Ian also claimed that my description of "Oh, that's it; use internal
relations as a stand in for ineffability ..." as contemptuous was
"patently
untrue."
===========
Well it is. Since internal relations is polysemous and you certainly seemed to be conflating it's uses across contexts that seemed to be problematic and wouldn't explicate key terms when asked, I couldn't help but think you were being too vague.
"Oh, that's it" expresses scorn. Placed before "use internal relations as a stand in for ineffability" it makes "ineffability" mean the concept of "internal relations" is "indefinable" because meaningless. A meaningless concept is worthless.
============= Now you are *again* making an inference that has no basis in my take on the situation. We are entering a he said she said situation and there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether scorn was expressed. Since it would seem no amount of my asserting that your inference is mistaken will convince you, I'll let it go. As I understood you to be not saying, as you weren't sufficiently explicating the multiple meaning of internal relations [understandable since many essays have been written about it's meanings and uses without satisfactory resolution of the issues involved that it's not surprising we won't solve the issues on an email list] so that I couldn't determine what internal relations meant in that context...well we just misunderstand each other. To impugn [erroneous] motives to me regarding the way misunderstanding emerged from the context of your assertions is not necessary and is not helpful. To then impugn my motives for responding is not helpful either.
The ordinary definition of "contempt" is "a feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration or worthless, or deserving scorn or extreme reproach".
============= I know what contempt is which is precisely why I asserted that, to the contrary, your inference was and is mistaken. However words are beyond control by any one party to a conversation or dispute. It is precisely due to that lack of control that mis-assigning motives to another person is completely inappropriate, especially after that person, me, has told another person, you, that the inference in question was mistaken. But I'm being redundant.
Three philosophers walk into a room where a young girl is holding a bag with some marbles. She asks them how many objects are in the bag. The first philosopher, a student of GE Moore says 'there are 3 marbles in the bag.' The second philosopher a student of FH Bradley says 'there are 7 objects in the bag x, y, z, x+y, x+z, y+z, and x+y+z.' The third philosopher being a follower Georg Cantor says 'there are an infinite number of objects in the bag.'
Which one is telling the truth?
Ian