----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com>
>
"Interdependency" is too vague. I'm using "internal relations" to
mean a
very specific kind of interdependence. For instance, the switches
in a
connected system of on/off switches are "interdependent" but they
aren't
"internally related". Being "on" or "off" is a contingent property
of the
switch. That its being "on" or "off" depends on its relations to
the other
switches doesn't make it's "identity," it's "being," dependent on
its
relations in the sense of "internal relations" I'm using. This
isn't
altered by substituting switches that can represent more than two
"values."
=========== Well yeah, switches don't have identities and the binary of on/off doesn't need more than binary logic, of course. But as the quantum realm, cells and the like aren't remotely like switches modeling them is going to take more than 2 valued logics, no? This stuff is of immense controversy, so yeah I'm all for specificity in defining the contexts of using internal relations if it can be shown that it does work that other forms of exposition can't accomplish. By the same token, if those forms of expression do the same things *ir* does and more that it can't, at what point should the concept be discarded if it can't embrace those forms of expression?
>
You frequently point to the formalized treatment of part/whole
relations
("mereology") as able to handle "internal relations" in the sense
I'm using
the term. Do you mean something other than the idea of "emergent
properties" e.g. the treatment of a "whole," e.g. a bike, as
possessing
properties not derivable from its parts? This is not "internal
relations"
in my sense. It's "holism" in a sense I've several times
explicitly
disconnected from my own usage.
==============
Ok but then what is it about your defining of holism and *ir* that does explanatory work that those other approaches don't?
I was just stating the logical implication of internal relations, i.e. of conceiving the universe as a system of internal relations. The latter directly contradict the solipsistic conception of myself as the universe. Indeed, as Whitehead points out in Symbolism, "solipsism of the present moment" is only avoidable if you assume your relations to the "world" are internal. When you treat the concept as implying solipsism and as logically permitting "you now" to be in more than one universe you are misunderstanding it. Is there a possibility that the conclusion that you are now in multiple universes is a reductio ad absurdum?
==============
Won't know until we get the physics right, which is why I posted Deutsch' piece: http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0104/0104033.pdf and which brings up just whether or not the doctrine of *ir* is consistent with STR. So we're back to square one on that issue. As I said before Russel and Einstein had problems with W's attempt to get the issues worked out and I think the jury is still out. Now if W's doctrine of *ir* is not constrained by the relativity of simultaneity-which under E's approach seems to have made the whole issue moot-how does he avoid monism? See George Lucas' "The Rehabilitation of Whitehead, all the *ir* listings in the index and note the connections to the issue of repetition; also note W's use of the term reiteration in SMW
The agents don't "self-determine" values; that's what's meant by assuming values are "objective."
=============== How do agents conjointly determine value then if we are to avoid the Platonic problem?
They self-determine the content of their willing and acting on the basis, if they are rational, of knowledge of objective values - "love" and "beauty" according to the tradition to which Marx (and Whitehead) belong. Since each has a different "real potentiality" both from itself at other times and from others and since it is a characteristic of "beauty" as understood within this tradition that even though there are "laws of beauty" (Marx - this is one reason why, in contrast to Fourier's idea of it, "really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion" - this is another idea taken from Kant's aesthetics) it involves an irreducible element of free imagination (Kant again), the willing and acting of each, even when fully rationally self-determined, will differ to some degree from every other's.
==================
Ok but then we're back to what happens when rational people disagree with one another over values; assuming that we can't alway see errors and disputes of valuation as errors in reasoning...pluralism...
Modern "science" doesn't treat values as objective and has no room for "self-determination" in the sense I mean.
=============
Well in the sense of a meta-subjective realm 'where' they reside and have determinate content ontologically prior to human agents, what's wrong with such anti-platonism? Doesn't it lead to the whole "we have the right values, you don't, so you're vagrants, criminals etc" problem? I have serious problems with monistic approaches to value; it seems too dangereous. Why do you put science in quotes?
> 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.
>
I'm certain Marx and Whitehead aren't the final word on anything. I don't think the assertions you make here are true, however. Where in orthodox modern science is a "more robust" treatment of the idea (in the sense spelled out above) than Whitehead's found? Orthodox biology - e.g. contemporary sociobiology - has no room for any of the central ontological concepts to which I'm pointing - i.e. no room for internal relations, self-determination or objective values.
===============
I gave you a list of excellent biologists; Rosen, Varela, Waddington, Birch, Bateson [there are others] way back. Additionally to the extent that at least some of the issues of *ir* are connected to the issue of 'the varieties of holism' one need only look at how the debates have played out in "Philosophical Quarterly". Now if *ir* has nothing to do with any issues of holism and causal self-determination as those people understand it and explore and research them, then what niche is it occupying in trying to further develop a process ontology that they leave out? Even W would enjoy the stuff and would, in all probability be further refining his statments on *ir*. Are you a value monist?
This means ironically, as I earlier pointed out, that it has no room for a logically coherent idea of "reason" and "science." Where in the orthodox versions of these sciences would I find it assumed that there is self-determination, that values are "objective" and that both self-determination and objective values play a role in determining what occurs.
============
Surely one can have models of self-determination and agency that are separable from the debate over objective values, no?
>
> 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?
>
I'm using "rational" in the sense of e.g. Marx, Whitehead and Husserl to mean, first, a "self-consciousness" able to ground, i.e. find adequate reasons for, its beliefs and actions in self-consciousness and, second, beliefs and actions grounded in this way. A rational self-consciousness can make mistakes; what distinguishes it is its ability to correct them. The fact that people believe or don't believe something doesn't make it true or false.
============
Agree, but that is not alway the case. What about the class of self-fulfilling beliefs? "And so why is there interest?...Surely there are some phenomena of the mind, the resultants of thoughts and opinions...[whcih] solely originate in the will of two parties, not a physical phenomena at all. Surely there are mental phenomena to which the dictum may be correctly applied there is nothing true but thinking makes it so." [Roy Harrod "Toward a Dynamic Economics" p. 65-66] See also Alexander Wendt's "Social Theory of International Politics" esp. the chapter on 'Scientific Realism and Social Kinds.'
Values are reasonably taken as "objective" and as consisting of "love" and "beauty" in the senses of Marx if reasonable grounds are discoverable in self-consciousness for doing this. Goethe's Faust, for instance, is, among other things, an attempt to show that there are such grounds particularly in so far as "love" is concerned.
============== I'm missing something with your use of "objective." What does it mean to say love is objective?
The "ideal" elaborated by Marx, i.e. a life full of love and beauty lived in a "realm of freedom." ====================
Well who could be against that except Doug and Max? ;->
>
The "will proper" and the "universal will" are Hegel's terms. I've
given
Hegel's definitions several times in earlier posts. The concepts
are
sublated by Marx. Ditto for the other terms which make history an
internally related process of stages of "bildung" through which a
set of
ideal internal social relations are created which allow the
realization of
"freedom" as "rationality" in the above sense, i.e. allow the "in
itself" of
humanity to become "for itself."
============= Ok, but again if those terms aren't the only way of conceptualizing historical at the group and individual 'level' of change how do we know what they refer to?
The answer here is the same as with "interdependency." The "logic of the situation" approach to explanation makes behaviour depend on "social" relations but treats these as external - individuals are always and everywhere "rational." "Social" is too vague; it isn't specific enough to designate the particular kind of interdependence meant.
===============
Ok but then how do we ward off the slippery slope toward the Margaret Thatcher approach?
>
In addition to his attempt to reconstruct the foundations of
natural science in terms of the
concept, Whitehead also pointed insightfully to its implications
(as well as
to the implications of the related concepts of "rationality,"
"self-determination" and "objective values") for social theory
(e.g. in the
first part of Adventures of Ideas and in The Function of Reason).
Among
other things this includes astute criticisms of the ontological
foundations
of "classical political economy," criticisms very like Marx's. His
treatment of social relations as internal relations contains
material that
deserves sublation (mixed up with some that doesn't).
>
It isn't logically entailed by it. It "goes together with" in the
sense of
being part of a psychological complex that includes sadistic
puritanism and
the misidentification of "reason" with formal logic.
==============
But surely the concept of reason and the practices of reasoning must be consistent with what we know of formal logic, no? What, on your terms, determines where reason leaves off and rhetoric begins? I do think that with regards to historical narrativity issues/problems that *ir* simply leads to underdetermination/verstehen issues that are pretty irresolvable.
As far as science goes, I'm not sure it needs a "reconstruction of it's foundations" because "foundations' is metaphorical. Be that as it may, my own take on the contexts in which I think W felt *ir* was important to his scheme was intimitely connected to his attempt to account for the emergence of agency and subjectivity in nature while dumping dualism. Hence the whole emergence of the holism-emergence-reductionism controversy of the 20th century and the role that formal logic plays in elucidating/obfuscating the complex issues involved. If we are not panexperientalists, then any approach to continued use of *ir* has still to come to terms with the developments of the sciences and that means even greater use of mathematics and logic, even as that by no means entails the notion which Victorians found disconcerting, that mind and culture are flukes of nature. And if they are, what's the worry? :-) Love and Beauty are as real as the stars above and that is all we need to know in order to hope....When you love someone do you really care if your love is objective or rational? :-)
David Noble provides relevant material in The Religion of Technology. This includes an account of the paranoid, apocalyptic thinking of Edward Teller and his associates on the H-bomb project and of Teller's direct disciples and descendants at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Religion of Technology, pp. 111-4). There's also relevant material in the chapter on artificial intelligence (Chap. 9).
The reasons for thinking the present human condition is a tragedy differ. The reasons pointed to in Marxist apocalyptic thinking differ from those of the apocalyptic religious fundamentalists at NASA (see Chap. 9 in Noble).
Ted
===================
Ok but science "gives us" Evelyn Fox Kellers, Einsteins, Whiteheads and Varelas too. We all agree there should be more like them in the insitutions of Big Science.
Ian