I'm only going to make an allusion here, but its a very important allusion. The reason I said that these two types "undoubtadly exist" was not so much an epistemological judgement - I hope the rest of what I was saying proved this - but instead a, for want of a better term, moral or ethical judgement. But not "moral" in the sense which I was saying that enlightenment-esque moralises on certain issues and then passes them off as science. Moreso "moral" in a post-Nietszchean sense of the term.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com>wrote:
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>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com>
>
> If, on the other hand, you argue that "emotional make-ups" are historically
> determined then they cannot be pre-rational as they must be founded on some
> sort of linguistic/cultural input. Linguistic/cultural inputs cannot be
>
> [WS:] Is both socially constructed and neurologically influenced - both
> types of influence interact (cf. neuroplasticity.) What I am saying is that
> science, as any other form of culture, is ultimately a product of human
> brain, and as such is influenced by balance of chemical reactions in that
> brain (i.e. affects or emotions as in "emotional intelligence"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence), the impact of the
> environment - both "natural" and "cultural" - on that brain, as welss as
> sets of human conventions (aka "culture.") These types of influences are
> basiclly historical coincidences in the sense that they are prodcuts of
> specific sets of circumstances existing in specific time periods.
>
> I would not consider such a view "deterministic" because this concept
> itself is amibiguous and carries a heavy emotive baggage - as in "ordained
> by a superior power" or "independent of human will" both implying religious
> mythology. I prefer the term "contingent" on a particular set of
> circumstances.
>
> Wojtek
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>
My central problem with this is the approach. It spins on a dialectic of nature and culture, which is essentially a manifestation of Cartesian dualism - I know cognivists and neuroligists deny this, but if you really deconstruct their arguments they do tend to promote a dualism. What happens is that the metaphysical perspective of Decartes (i.e. that mind is immaterial) gets entangled in the logical construction of these arguments. Above it was the notions first of "nature" and "culture" and then of "social construction" and "neurology".
A coherent body of thought would jettison these ideas completely. Neurology and cognitivism are always already a social construction, just as the ability to posit social constructionism cannot be thought of outside of some conception of a material entity. The reason seems to be that all of these ideas are themselves caught up in language which cannot be thought of outside of cultural constraints. It may seem a pedantic criticism to make but when its applied to many of the cognitivist - and sometimes even biological (genetics, some neurology etc.) - theories it can show that they often build constructions which have very specific social goals in mind. Some of which are less than savoury, to say the least. It also eliminates that shaky medical category of "psycho-somaticism" by fully integrating it into a unitary system of humans - instead of just simply throwing it outside of the medical community and instead finding recourse in inventing about eight or nine new "invisible" disorders every year, which is a true disgrace, both medically and rationally.
I suppose Hegel was the first to put forward a framework to do this - although his was lacking in certain self-criticisms. Marx picked it up and did quite a good job, but kept slipping into weird methods of thinking (phrenology etc.) because he refused to "clean up his language" and was rather unhealthily obsessed with materialism. But in the 20th century a few thinkers have pushed these conceptions quite far. In the purely philosophical domain: Adorno. In the psychological domain: Lacan. And in the cognitivist/analytically oriented domain: Rorty.
Unfortunately science is currently unable so accept this approach. And (here's a little test of applying this theory) I don't believe that its because of people's innate psychological constructions. Its due to the language they speak. And when I say language I mean ALL the language they speak. Everyday language, technical language, political language, scientific language etc etc etc.