From: Owleye 




"Phil Roberts, Jr." wrote:

> > >   1. Epistemic "seeing" (juxtaposed to 'being stupid or ignorant')
> >
> > How is seeing related to having the ability to think logically, to understand
> > complex issues, to know vast quantities of information?
> >
>
> It doesn't have a whole lot to do with logic, IMHO.  Like Hume, I happen
> to think that 'all forms of reason are nothing but comparing', and as such
> reasoning is chiefly ANAlogical.  This would also square with how majority
> of rationality theorists view the matter as well (e.g., Henle, Cohen, etc.).
>
> As far as "seeing", which you seem to be having an unusual amount of
> trouble with:
>
> Assume I have some sort of understanding of how water behaves in the
> garden hose, but have no understanding of electricity.  By drawing
> analogy between the two I might eventually come to understand
> Volage as a correlate of pressure, amperage as a correlate of the
> size or hose or AMOUNT of water, and power as the combination of
> the amount and the pressure in terms of turning a water wheel.  As
> such, I would use the knowledge I had already acquired about how
> water behaves to help me to understand electricity.  Metaphorically,
> I would come to "see" how water behaves via the vehcical of the
> analogy.  This I assume is at the core of the reasoning process
> in epistemic matters, and is chiefly ANAlogical rather than logic.
> Unlike Kant, I do not believe reasoning is a matter of following
> rules/algorithmes, but rather a matter of COGNIZING rules/algorithms,
> and with it, the freedome to TRANSCEND those rules/algorithms when
> and if it becomes rational to do so.  Its because I am "seeing" the
> rule from the outside rather than being inside it and determined
> by it that I can employ the knowledge to my own ends, or some such
> rot.

I was addressing your "juxtaposing with stupidity and ignorance."  If it is based on the
ability to draw analogies and make good use of them, then I take it you think that a stupid
person can't draw analogies.  However, an ignorant person is probably not an appropriate
opposing concept.  The opposite of seeing would generally be not seeing or being blind.  I was
blind to what you meant by seeing until now.  Did that make me stupid or ignorant?

>
> > >
> > >   2. Valuative "seeing" (juxtaposed to 'being evil or immoral')
> >
> > How is seeing related to maturity?
> >
>
> Because an increase in knowledge produces an increased likelyhood that
> you will project yourself into the senetience of others and "see" the
> world increasingly from their viewpoint as well as your own, and because
> the more global platform resulting from an increase knowledge also
> results in a relativizing of the significance of matters which were
> formerly the totallity of all that you knwe and understood.

Perhaps I am not understanding what you are referring to as "knowledge."  Perhaps this is
because you distinguish between knowledge and information.  If so, what do you mean by
knowledge?  It seems to me that being mature means, among other things, being able to make
decisions and judgements despite being ignorant of things.

>
> If your behavior is obviously irrational/stupid/uninformed/counter-productive,
> but you just happen to luck out and it actually enhances your ability to
> achieve an end, your behavior is not the more rational because of it.  The
> INTENTIONS underyling the behavior have to be right.  You have to "see"
> how the current action is effective in producing the intended objective,
> and have a coherenet value system, one in which you "see" how all the
> values line up in the hirerarchy under the supremely valued end.  You
> have to have the proper perspective, as we say.

Doesn't this require being an expert?  I can appreciate what Kant means by "ought implies can"
to the effect that if we ought to be doing such and such, then there is an assumption that we
are able to do it.  However, despite your apparent intentional concern, there is a large
element of utitlity embedded in your thesis as it is represented here.  Kant would say we
should not lie, especially to ourselves.  He assumes therefore we are capable of not lying.  We
ourght to help others to the extent we are capable of helping them.  We are capable of
improving ourselves, etc.  We are capable of entering into contracts.  However, you are adding
a further requirement that we must go through some analysis of the effectiveness of the
action.  Kant would not dispute this, but would regard this as an imperative of skill, (a
means-ends determination) not a moral imperative.  Skill is what distinguishes one person from
another.  For Kant, anyone is capable of being moral, even the "stupid and ignorant."  I take
it you would disagree.

>
> Loosely, an increase in epistemically objective, is simply another way of talking
> about an increase in knowledge, an increase in the correctness and completeness of
> one's beliefs or representations.  Its what Kant refers to as theoretical rationality.
> The rationality of beliefs, although you have to be very careful here, because there
> is a strategic sense, in which the ratinality of a belief is a matter of justification,
> and the holistic sense, in which you are not talking about achieving the end of maximizing
> true beleif, but merely referring to the extent to which the beliefs in the system
> approach objectivity.

I'm getting the impression that "knowledge" is being used for what is ordinarly thought of as
"understanding" or "comprehension."  Kant's theoretical reason "oversees" our understanding
permitting us to make judgements (exhibiting scientific knowledge).  Is this what you mean by
knowledge?  How different is it from my knowing that Sydney is going to host the 2000
Olympics?  In any case, this doesn't seem to jive with your idea of analogical reasoning.

> > I take it you think emotion and rationality are opposing forces.  I am still left
> > uncertain, as I was to the first posit, about my question.
> >
>
> All strategic rationalities require the superimposing of a valuative IRrationality
> (of sorts) onto an epistemic rationaliy.  IOW, the efficiency of achieving and
> end increases as a function of an increase in epistemic rationality (at least
> in man's ecological niche) and an increase in valuative IRrationality, that
> is, in having the opposite of a valuative profile which is objective where the
> significance of the fixed objective is concerned.  In other words, the fixed
> objective must be supremely valued, and to the exclusion of all other considerations,
> of a more impartial view of the fixed objective which might result if one's
> view of it were less constricted.  Rationality is not inherently strategic,
> it is holistic.  It has merely been adopted by mother nature to achieve a
> strategic end, but its holistic attributes eventually result in a species
> beginning to question the end itself (suicide, depression, incessant pursuit
> of self-worth, etc.).

It's quite a move you are making between merely questioning one's purpose (and the like) and
suicide, depression, incessent pursuit of self-worth.  However, because of your peculiar use of
the term "rational" how would you respond to the way economists think of humans as rational
maximizers (when they do, of course).  Does this diverge from your usage?   Moreover, and
turning the question around, isn't depression, etc. an emotional (and not a rational) response
to some failure?

> Affirming.  Since our rationality is the product of natural selection (in conjunction
> with cultural evolution), our rationality is obviously a part of nature.  However,
> this is one small island of rationlaity sitting within a vast ocean of arationality.
> The sex example works here.  Nothing in nature except man knows that it is trying
> to reproduce.  So, by and large, nature is arational.  That's why Parfit questions
> whether we have a right to suppose that the end we have been "designed" to achieve
> is a rational one.  Nature has begun to employ rationality in one species to achieve
> the same arational end that she "designed" everything else to achieve.  As such,
> we have no right to assume that the end (perpetuating DNA) is rational, simply
> because rationality has been adopted as the means.

Well, yes this is an interesting perspective and one which the example I used before was
intended to shed light on (where without emotions we would not propagate the species).
However, I don't think this fairly represents the opposition.  As I intended as a
counterexample before, our rationality may still be biologically adaptive because it is useful
to the population -- i.e., it keeps it within bounds.  Our rationality has the "blind"
biological effect of maintaining a reasonable level of sustainable humanity.  I'm not entirely
convinced of this, but I don't think it is easily ruled out either.  Perhaps in your scheme it
has to be ruled out because a population can't be maintained within the context of a formal DNA
model.  Actually it is probably ruled out because rationality has a completely different
function than your thesis asserts.

> >
> > What tells me whether I have seen too much for my own good?
> >
>
> For scientific purposes, if it reduces your inclusive fitness, and hence a
> matter strictly of physical costs and benefits.  For happiness purposes, if
> the amount of happiness you would experience would be greater if you didn't
> have this need, or at least didn't have it to such an extreme.

Thus, happiness is inversely related to rationality after some point on the "seeing" scale.  Is
happiness at a peak when sight is at that point and no farther?  Once happiness is achieved can
it ever be taken away?

owleye