tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.comments2023-07-16T01:48:59.413-07:00Verbal MedicineRick Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-79715763527297404522022-03-27T07:11:08.852-07:002022-03-27T07:11:08.852-07:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.haimijacockshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07649004729776083377noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-45076175992762963242014-03-16T01:06:03.816-07:002014-03-16T01:06:03.816-07:00This is an amazing post which means I agree entire...This is an amazing post which means I agree entirely. How random that I found it. Sorry to be 8 years late telling you so.Larry and Lyndahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05738668355677581110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-5066216640235144692011-09-14T11:23:49.457-07:002011-09-14T11:23:49.457-07:00I've never read (or even heard of) "The M...I've never read (or even heard of) "The Metamorphosis" but anything that challenges a status quo in need of challenging is good in my book. <br /><br />In an environment where Tea Party partisans cheer the idea of letting the uninsured die, something clearly needs to change.BrightenedBoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04140255969796496082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-205476532617978412011-06-25T08:52:46.068-07:002011-06-25T08:52:46.068-07:00Fixed. Thanks. That's what I get for writing o...Fixed. Thanks. That's what I get for writing on four hours of sleep.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-39733555155655762592011-06-24T16:20:06.529-07:002011-06-24T16:20:06.529-07:00This is all right on except that Grandma Ann was y...This is all right on except that Grandma Ann was your paternal grandmother ;)Purrsistenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16314735137998662984noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-49272698244048838452011-03-08T19:44:29.051-08:002011-03-08T19:44:29.051-08:00Right.
We judge all the time and do it badly, all...Right.<br /><br />We judge all the time and do it badly, all the while pretending politically and legally that we think all people are equal. It's institutionalized hypocrisy, built on a foundation of poor judgment.<br /><br />The most important thing to being human is developing good character - virtue, wisdom, the things that let us rise toward the angelic side of our nature rather than sink into the demonic - but we do not study it in school, preferring to train people to be useful rather than valuable and worthy.<br /><br />If we do not study examples of virtue, if we do not cultivate it in ourselves, then we will never become competent at discriminating by character, which will leave us doing so incompetently, based on criteria as far from the mark as race.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-65324127958652811762011-03-07T21:57:33.011-08:002011-03-07T21:57:33.011-08:00Thing is, we already judge others all the time, an...Thing is, we already judge others all the time, and we already think we're doing it based on the content of their characters. But the truth is that we're crap at character judgment and excellent at self-delusion, so what we're really doing is judging them on everything but. Consciously or no, we self-define good character in our own image and look for people who are "one of us" in style and form, assuming they will be like us in substance as well. Often they are not, and even when they are, it isn't always as good a thing as we expected.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-59457362246967181102011-02-12T19:41:38.056-08:002011-02-12T19:41:38.056-08:00Your comment is a treasure trove of ideas and ques...Your comment is a treasure trove of ideas and questions that I'll return to from time to time to add more responses to.<br /><br />For now, let's start with hubris vs. philosophy where Alexander is concerned. Today's post will be about that.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-25451280236868208892011-01-31T20:15:05.638-08:002011-01-31T20:15:05.638-08:00Good point, Brian. That whole field of archaeo-pal...Good point, Brian. That whole field of archaeo-paleontology is fascinating.<br /><br />We forget that part of the reason we don't find fossils on the Earth's surface is that all the ones that were easy to find have already been found - by early people, who had their own ideas about what they were finding.<br /><br />It's not until we look at a mastodon skull without the tusks that we realize any intelligent person unfamiliar with elephants would notice how much it looks like the skull of a giant with one eye.<br /><br />Yeah, very cool to know.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-23003075787814814482011-01-27T06:15:36.257-08:002011-01-27T06:15:36.257-08:00As an aside the origin of the Cyclops is pretty we...As an aside the origin of the Cyclops is pretty well known. Europeans in copper age europe, and later would sometimes dig up giant skulls, with one gigantic hole in the front. Upon looking at such skulls it was easy to see how one could imagine the gigantic single eyed monster that came from it. However we know today, and since ancient greek times, that the skulls did not come from a cyclops but rather from elephants, and the hole in the center of their skull does not house an eye, but rather a nose. I know, not as romantic, but still cool to know.Wizardstormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02083611379182044637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-23721401929277757312011-01-27T04:54:18.141-08:002011-01-27T04:54:18.141-08:00Can you imagine the people of the time? How would ...Can you imagine the people of the time? How would they feel with Alexander on the horizon? Were their terrorist attacks? Did Alexander have to deal with insurgents? It is interesting how time and perspective can make us look differently at the actions of an individual. I know that Alexander was educated and trained, but I also know he resented his father, and I seriously think his personal desire to win, and to prove he was better than his father, or anyone else for that matter made him push onward and onward. I propose this question of a philosophical nature to you. If you were handed a military force or weapon that could not be beaten what would you do? Would you create a new culture or city? Would you hide it and hope no one else ever figured it out? Would set about empire building, or bringing the entire world in line with your priorities? As a certified megalomaniac I have thought about this and studied the empire builders. Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander, Xerxes, Ceasar, Mao, all had different ideas about what the polis should be, except they all agreed on one thing. They should be in charge. Hubris goes hand in hand with power, and then the philosophy comes next. Looking back it is easy to see what they did and assign a level of philosophical inheritance, but I think many of these people were really just essentially playing a bce video game and wanted to win more than the other guys. <br />Forgive me but I feel that I seem to minimizing your grasp of the cause an effect of these great historical figures, I do not mean to do that. I just think that like most people there is more to the story than just who their teacher was, and why they did what they did. Diogenes had many students, only a few are known, and the others did not strive to conquer the world.Wizardstormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02083611379182044637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-58182415003550406512011-01-26T21:06:33.718-08:002011-01-26T21:06:33.718-08:00It is interesting that Aristotle reverses the valu...It is interesting that Aristotle reverses the value of democracy to make it negative.<br /><br />In modern parlance, democracy is the positive form and mobocracy the negative.<br /><br />Aristotle instead uses polity for the positive and democracy for the negative.<br /><br />For our purposes, the terms don't matter much, since the word democracy meant something quite different to those who coined it than it possibly could to us. Instead, the important thing is the idea that the rule of the many can come in both positive and negative forms, and what distinguishes the two.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-91204301217742753582011-01-26T16:20:30.604-08:002011-01-26T16:20:30.604-08:00Though I totally agree with you, in this issue it ...Though I totally agree with you, in this issue it is not the what, but the how that is the issue. If you and I become cosmopolitan, then how do we deal with the parochial dictator, or insurgents that though perhaps unwilling to die, are more than willing to let others die for them? There is an instinctual comfort for most people, especially older people knowing their piece of the world is as they think it should be. Potential changes to that are perceived as dangerous and radical. Usually the next step is a law, then enforcement, and if necessary violence. All in the name of maintaining peace. I have often advocated that all people are part of one another, and that to harm another is to really harm myself. However it is hard to think that when that other is a threat with a gun, and it is not me they are threatening, but my wife or child. How do we make small minded people see that everyone deserves a chance to live their own life in their own way. How do we deal with people that just won't, because no matter how we try they will always exist. The idea is correct, but how we get enough people to see this so that the lines of nations begin to blur and people all believe they have a say in how the human races uses the limited resources and space on our rapidly shrinking world? Short of eliminating 90% of the earths population and letting everyone go wherever they want again, I do not have an good answer. I have lots of easy answers, but no good ones.Wizardstormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02083611379182044637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-8206013968891544312011-01-22T12:21:31.363-08:002011-01-22T12:21:31.363-08:00Hi Jenny. Thank you for your response.
I agree wi...Hi Jenny. Thank you for your response.<br /><br />I agree with your assessment of cubism, an art style I enjoy and admire a great deal.<br /><br />In this essay I was trying (though clearly not entirely successfully) to use cubism as a metaphor for the kinds of ways people fail to be accurate or objective about the world when they think they are telling the truth - if they stick to a single point of view.<br /><br />Cubists, of course, are doing what they do on purpose, which is what makes it so interesting. Cubists explore and illustrate the limitations of a single physical point of view deliberately to (among other things) make much the statement in their art that I'm trying to make in this essay.<br /><br />Picasso's <i>Guernica, </i>for example, which includes not only the perspectival cubism typical of Western cubism but also audible cubism in portraying the cries as the people and animals crying out, is a great favorite of mine.<br /><br />By contrast, the many people in the world who assume that a single point of view on the world is enough to understand it are practicing mental cubism by accident and completely without realizing it. The distortions in their beliefs are invisible to them, even though to any third party of a philosophically cubist bent their ideas present artistically twisted results whose distortions also speak volumes about the nature of perception and understanding.<br /><br />A philosopher friend of mine, Kenneth R. Smith of Texas, used to say that when people try to explain what they think is true about the world, they instead unintentionally end up explaining the ways in which they are confused. - From which I imagine someone could start a movement of philosophical therapy that had some of the same trappings as psychotherapy does, though very different goals and patterns of analysis I suppose.<br /><br />I should have called this essay Unintentional Cubism.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-26450339414491270362011-01-22T11:27:53.062-08:002011-01-22T11:27:53.062-08:00Unless I'm misunderstanding your essay, it sou...Unless I'm misunderstanding your essay, it sounds like you disagree to some extent with the cubist project, but I don't think that you are saying is actually all that different from what cubists did/do with their art. I'm no art scholar, of course, but my understanding is that cubism, far from trying to find a "perfect" single viewpoint and simply expose both the seen and unseen angles from that viewpoint (and, as you say, in the process generally disfiguring their subjects almost beyond recognition and certainly beyond what most people instinctively consider "attractive"), cubist art makes the argument that there is no single viewpoint, no unmediated experience of reality; all reality is experienced through the viewpoint of the experiencer, and all viewpoints are inherently distorting. Cubist painters were only working with the visual because they're painters, but the metaphor holds across the other senses and to other ways of knowing. After all, roughly the same time as cubism developed the same thing was happening in the other arts, only under different names: for example, the literary modernists were basically making the same argument using words as their medium instead of images. (And many people don't realize that E.E. Cummings -- one of my favorite word artists -- was explicitly trying to do "cubist poetry" with his work. He was an amateur painter and found what was going on in cubism profoundly interesting and relevant to his poetry work.) I think it is enlightening to understand these kinds of movements as theses, being made through a body of artistic propositions, as opposed to taking each individual painting as a single thesis about its subject -- if that makes sense. Anyway, this topic is very interesting to me, and I thank you for giving me more to think about! :)<br /><br />Jenny T.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-39789244051712873142011-01-08T16:52:50.040-08:002011-01-08T16:52:50.040-08:00The general point is solid and I support it. Howev...The general point is solid and I support it. However, my beef with this is the argument that it is not ok to express your ignorance in Science classes and probably the rest of educational fields. And that this tracks to adulthood. This not the case in University and from my personal experience in education before hand. In fact, we reward proper inquisitive nature (as long as it does not demonstrate a lack of reading/homework). <br /><br />The problem lies more with socialization that education, in my opinion (and as a scientist and educator).DelmarLarsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251751763456699955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-40994654096398478452011-01-08T16:10:05.119-08:002011-01-08T16:10:05.119-08:00Right.
It turns out that the human brain evolved ...Right.<br /><br />It turns out that the human brain evolved to decide what to do, not to be aware of its own ignorance. Deciding what to do requires thinking you know what to do, so that's how we evolved: to think we know. We didn't evolve to scrutinize our own knowledge or even really to question it. Left to our own devices, we're pretty sure we know. Learning to say "I don't know" is a hallmark of liberal, modern cultural progress. And a milestone in human personal development.Jonathan Tweethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13014975950840278836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-89567541318989376422011-01-07T07:23:53.339-08:002011-01-07T07:23:53.339-08:00Check out the Zapatista slogan "mandar obedec...Check out the Zapatista slogan "mandar obedeciendo": it expresses their unusual concept of leadership (you can Google it).Rick Salinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00908481578985983231noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-2338587448021383822011-01-06T23:14:12.475-08:002011-01-06T23:14:12.475-08:00It's funny how many people intuitively grasp t...It's funny how many people intuitively grasp this principle as it applies to private relationships like friendship or marriage but can't manage it in more public contexts like business, religion, or politics. Maybe we can share only when our need to be loved overwhelms our need to be the boss.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-29559534364915528322011-01-05T20:54:55.746-08:002011-01-05T20:54:55.746-08:00Beverly, yes, for several reasons.
When we move o...Beverly, yes, for several reasons.<br /><br />When we move outside the usual circles of life, either physically or in thought, we leave the realms for which our language is optimized. Language itself becomes an impediment to expressing our experience.<br /><br />When we try to change minds or behavior, we come against the well-documented inertia of human cultures and mentalities. Many people would rather die than change, so they fight you when you bring them new insights. More typically, many people would rather hurt you than let you tell them something they don't want to hear. It is dangerous to be perceived by the herd as not part of the herd.<br /><br />When we make an observation in one frame of reference and then try to express it in an unrelated frame of reference, we strip that thing of the context that gives it meaning. Many important and meaningful things cannot be expressed to those who have not experienced them, because all the listener hears is blah blah blah, information out of context, that is, noise. Shared experience is a prerequisite for true communication, which is why the old mystery religions were all immersive so neophytes underwent the same experience and thereby gained the ability to comprehend the lessons.<br /><br />As Brian wrote, many people, maybe most people, will believe whatever they think they need to believe in order to survive regardless of whether it's true. Many people believe their survival is at stake even when it's not. In either case, the atypical idea you want to convey may be perceived as a threat to their existence and will thus provoke a limbic response.<br /><br />Many people are so uncomfortable with thinking that they do so as little as possible. While you're trying to use your words to describe a line of thought, they're ignoring most of what you say and instead scanning your words for symbols and omens they can use to skip to a conclusion - are you a good guy or a bad guy. You could even be their idea of a good guy, but if you use enough of the words they interpret as evil omens, you get classed as a bad guy, and nothing you say after that can change their interpretation of you.<br /><br />For many people words are something you deploy, like fists or guns, in order to get what you want. Trying to communicate with such people is an exercise in futility, because when each of you appears to do the same thing by speaking you are actually engaging in radically different activities. There cannot possibly be communication in such a situation.<br /><br />The more you care about the truth and communication, the lonelier you will be.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-78720382877908169452011-01-05T01:14:19.143-08:002011-01-05T01:14:19.143-08:00And even if we could grasp some small part of the ...And even if we could grasp some small part of the universe's self-evident truth, we'd never be able to explain it properly to anybody else. <br /><br />"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."<br />Jane AustenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-4620486345393173572011-01-05T00:01:09.636-08:002011-01-05T00:01:09.636-08:00Finally, you also raise two questions, first about...Finally, you also raise two questions, first about blaming the individual for social conditions beyond their control, second about the fate of humanity.<br /><br />As to the first, the relationship between the individual and society is complex. I believe it is an oversimplification to say that social conditions happen to individuals, who are passively shaped by them. You can't make a wise society out of individual fools. You can't make a just society out of selfish louts. You can't make an informed society out of the ignorant. You can't make a law-abiding society out of criminals.<br /><br />Societies shape individuals, but they are also composed of individuals and their relationships. To change the society, you have to do more than change their conditions; you have to change the individuals too - otherwise, what is individual education for? Only when enough individuals become informed can you create an informed society. If we want a better society, we are going to need better people.<br /><br />I don't think that's an unfair burden on the individual. It is a responsibility of the individual. A passive individual, someone who self-identifies as a victim, will surely read responsibility as blame and resent it. But an active individual can understand that responsibility is a form of power to shape the world. Individuals who wait for the forces of history to fix things for them are too passive to change the world. I think it's entirely reasonable to critique the state of individual human beings with an eye toward figuring out how we can all become better.<br /><br />That leads to your second query, about the fate of humanity.<br /><br />The more I learn, the surer I am that we will extinguish ourselves as a species - and take many many other species into extinction with us - unless we drastically change our behavior and social relations. I could be wrong of course - I'm just a flawed human being blindly feeling my way toward the truth after all - but that's my best guess.<br /><br />However, that is not to say I think that's what will happen. The open question is whether we will make the changes needed to prevent that outcome, to instead extend the longevity of our species and of our fellow creatures.<br /><br />Answering that question accurately requires that we come to a clear understanding about what is wrong with us, about why we're so hellbent on self-destruction in ways few other species have been (the anaerobic bacteria being an illuminating exception). It also requires understanding what our strengths and resources are, what we have to work with if we are to somehow change directions away from species-suicide.<br /><br />That's what I'm up to. That's my purpose in life - to try to advance our chances of making things better by improving our understanding of our strengths and weaknesses.<br /><br />I don't pretend I know the answers, or that I'll ever find any, but I do know if I don't try I certainly won't succeed, so I try. Even if I crack the human dilemma somehow and come up with enough essential insight into human nature to formulate a plan to turn things around, the vast scales of the modern world are generally immune to the influence of individuals, so I doubt I could have any effect except by spreading my insights to those willing to hear them.<br /><br />In the meantime, all I can do is study the human condition and speculate out loud on forums like this about what I'm learning.<br /><br />As for what I think is going to happen, I think I don't know. Embracing our own ignorance is the first step in the search for the truth.<br /><br />But I do know that paradoxically sometimes it's easier to change the future than it is to predict it.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-19721534735290210032011-01-04T23:26:57.676-08:002011-01-04T23:26:57.676-08:00Regarding the quote "Everything in the cosmos...Regarding the quote "Everything in the cosmos is self-evident - it is what it is to anyone with eyes to see it - but not to us. We do not have such eyes."<br /><br />about self-evidence:<br /><br />Self-evidence implies that ideas normally require evidence to be accepted as valid. That is true where human beings are concerned - in the realm of our ideas about the world - but before we existed the world was still there, the forces and principles at work in the world were still at work.<br /><br />Such things don't require evidence to be valid or true. They are truly self-evident because their inherent reality is all the evidence they need in order to be true - they certainly don't need us to understand them or accept them for them to be real and true.<br /><br />Sometimes we forget that and convince ourselves that the only true things are those we have decided are true, which of course is nonsense.<br /><br />about eyes to see:<br /><br />Literally, we don't have eyes to see part of what's right in front of us all day long. We see the visible things, the surfaces and appearances of things, but <i>fluxus quo, </i>dialectics, homeostasis, the nature of living systems, human nature, the flaws in our own reasoning - these and many other things are also true and at work all day long all around us but we still can't directly perceive them. Human beings lack a sensory organ capable of directly perceiving truth.<br /><br />Nevertheless - and this is the reason for the language I used in that sentence - just because we cannot perceive something does not mean that it is inherently imperceptible.<br /><br />Our limitations are not characteristics of the things we cannot perceive as a result of those limitations. If I'm blind it does not mean the world is invisible. In precisely the same way, just because we cannot directly perceive cosmic principles like <i>fluxus quo, </i>it does not follow that they are imperceptible. Man is not after all the measure of all things, contrary to the sophist Protagoras.<br /><br />I don't believe there's anything solipsistic, radically skeptical, or obscurantist about this position. It only means that our approach to much of the truth must be through indirect means, as blind men might try to characterize an elephant based on the parts they can feel. As long as we recognize that the results of our explorations are inherently flawed, and that they are only models of the truth and not reality itself, we can successfully creep along and improve our grasp of the truth over time.<br /><br />Of course, if we instead choose to exalt ourselves as though we were angles of reason with access to absolute truths, we reap the consequences of our hubris.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-23685233126278603742011-01-04T21:50:43.480-08:002011-01-04T21:50:43.480-08:00"Benighted" is not an insult. It is a pr..."Benighted" is not an insult. It is a precise term meaning far from enlightenment, far from truth and wisdom. That is the literal truth about human nature as far as I can tell.<br /><br />As Brian posted, most people don't care at all about the truth - they're too busy trying to survive - but that doesn't stop them from filling their heads with ideas, even though those ideas are false.<br /><br />To believe false things is to be further from the truth than not to have opinions about those things. Other animals have fewer opinions about the world because they think more concretely, less abstractly, so they don't tend to fill their minds with a lot of false ideas - because they don't tend to fill their minds with ideas. A cat could never think that all Muslims are terrorists because they keep their thinking focused on their direct experiences; that is a kind of error in reasoning that only a human could make.<br /><br />Ideation and abstraction may not be unique to human beings - I'm not saying other animals are incapable of those things - but judging by outward behavior most animals tend to focus on a smaller pool of things that are of direct interest to them, and they tend to be more accurate about the things they do think about judging by their higher behavioral success rates.<br /><br />More specifically, human beings are more likely to think about things outside their immediate expertise. Those thoughts are by definition less specific, less concrete, more speculative, and more inaccurate than when they stick to acting within their direct experience.<br /><br />The evolutionary advantages of such uncertain reasoning should be obvious. Human beings are far more flexible than most animals, often able to adapt themselves to situations even far outside their day-to-day experience.<br /><br />But as the Greeks noted (and Hegel, Marx, and others also agreed), every strength is also a weakness. Abstract reasoning is less likely to be correct than concrete thought. Human thinking is liberated from reality, which allows for both speculation and delusion.<br /><br />Human beings have demonstrated that sometimes they are capable of treating their own ideas with the detachment and skepticism required to be able to give up false ideas when they're proven wrong, but most of the time people struggle to hang onto even the most patently false of ideas and react with anger if confronted by contrary information.<br /><br />We are benighted because we believe vastly more false things than other animals do, placing us further from the light of the truth and further into the darkness of ignorance and error. That's what makes us the most benighted of animals.<br /><br />It's also what makes us among the most flexible of animals.Rick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9372945.post-53973191270534184412011-01-04T21:19:26.891-08:002011-01-04T21:19:26.891-08:00Dad, my second point in response would be that rea...Dad, my second point in response would be that reason is necessary but not sufficient.<br /><br />Reason can only at best establish validity, not truth. Unless our initial premises are correct, we can and do validly conclude any number of falsehoods. Many of history's heinous crimes were perfectly valid, if you accepted the racists, sexist, or otherwise deranged premises of the perpetrators. Reason is not a perfect instrument for finding our way to the truth.<br /><br />Empiricism, for example. Without empiricism, reason lacks the necessary reality checks. Empiricism has a lovely way of disproving bad premises and theories through direct contradiction. Unfortunately, in the modern world we usually practice empiricism in a profit-oriented context, which corrupts science in two ways.<br /><br />First, as drug trials show, empirical processes can be and often are distorted in myriad ways to produce the most profitable results, even when that contradicts the truth.<br /><br />Second, since very little science is allowed to take place without direct or indirect corporate sponsorship, pure scientific research usually goes unfunded so that researched aimed at discovering new intellectual property can be funded.<br /><br />The scientific distortions introduced by both forms of corruption are profound.<br /><br />Setting aside the cases where empiricism is corrupted, even at its best empiricism can only reveal certain kinds of truth - things that are replicable and measurable. Much of the cosmos is too resistant to measurement, since we can only measure those things we understand well enough have developed concepts and technologies adequate to measure. Everything else is out of our reach until then.<br /><br />Further, at high levels of complexity, systems consistently produce inconsistent results that defy replication and thus defy empirical exploration. This is the fundamental reason that we're so much better at scientifically exploring materials and forces than we are at exploring psychology and history, because the fields empiricism succeeds best at are those trivial enough to be measurable.<br /><br />I know this is true from direct observation. I have written some extremely complex systems for VISTA, including systems that contain the homeostatic feedback mechanisms one normally finds in living systems. When people try to troubleshoot those systems using only rational empiricism, their success rate is only about 50%. About half the time, even highly experienced troubleshooters come to the wrong conclusions about these systems. Unless you understand the precise details of how these different algorithms interact, you cannot possibly come to the right conclusions by reason and empiricism alone.<br /><br />If that's true of something as simple as software I could write, it's certainly true of the much higher levels of complexity found in the human mind, in communities, in ecosystems, and so on. That's why human languages resort to metaphor and approximation - because precision and reason are incapable of doing justice to subjects that complex.<br /><br />It's no coincidence that when rational-empirical techniques are used to try to understand issues like psychology, the results tend to be mixed, sometimes yielding valuable information, sometimes foolishly trying to reduce psychology to chemistry, math, or some other simplistic discipline.<br /><br />Reason, empiricism, and other human cognitive tools are crucial in our search for the truth, but if we blind ourselves to their limitations then we will overestimate our command of reality - which we in fact tend to do.<br /><br />Knowing and accepting our limitations can only improve our search for the truthRick Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707062453047354335noreply@blogger.com