From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




Owleye wrote:
> 
> "Phil Roberts, Jr." wrote:
> 
> 
> 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. 

Yep.  
 
> 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?
> 

With respect to this particular issue it did.  It means you had a mental
block of some sort.  Of course, it could also mean that I simply don't
"see" very good when it comes to explaining things, with being able
to get out of my own skin and comprehend how you were "seeing" my 
words.

A good analogy here would be with respect to humouric rationality.  
Either a person "gets" a joke or they don't.  And when they don't, 
you can engage in discursive explantion ad nauseuum, but they just
don't "see" it.  They just can't come up with the Aha! experience
those of us who are on the inside of the joke have experienced. 
They have the syntax of the words, but not the semantics, or 
at least not a sufficiently abstract level of the semantics.

> >
> > 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?  

Beliefs which are relatively correct and complete and with a dash of
coherence to bring the whole thing to a boil.  My hero in epistemology
is A. R. White, one of philosophy's best kept secrets, who correctly 
understood that justification is not within the topic domain of 
epistemology, but a matter of epistemics (Alvin Goldman has recently come to
see the light on this as well), that is, the strategic considerations 
associated with THE MAXMIZING of true belief/knowledge.  But knowledge 
is itself simply a matter of right representation.  (The Nature of
Knowledge, A.R. White).  Information isn't knowledge, because it has
to be interpreted by a conscious/rational agent as a representation in 
order to be a right representation.  For that, you need more than 
syntax, you need semantics.

> It seems to me that being mature 
> means, among other things, being able to make decisions and judgements 
> despite being ignorant of things.
> 

Yes.  This would be heuristic knowledge, one of many types.  Tennis knowledge
also requires being able to "see" what is going on, but in somewhat more 
limited domain, of course.  And some types of knowledge are going to have
a greater impact on producing valuative disappation (increases in valuative
objectivity/impartiality) than others, of course (the loss of a child to
some given disease, and the massive incrase in empathy for others with
similar misfortunes which results, etc.).

> >
> > 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?  

Only if one buys into the rational irrational dichotomy supported by the 
ordinary use of words.  More realistically, there is no such thing as
rational and irrational, if as my holistic theory and Godel, Lucas, Cohen,
Penrose, etc. maintain, that rationality can never be constrained within a 
formalism.  The only meaningful rationality ascriptions would have to be 
comparative, e.g., X is more rational than Y, the norm, etc.  

This is the 
problem with the Cohen symposium on rationality, BTW (Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 1981).  You can't meaningfully answer the question, 'Can
Human Irrationality Be Experimentally Demonstrated', because in the 
real world rationaity and irrationality are always a matter of degree.  
Its also why I am rather fond of explanationism as an epistemological
(actually, a position in epistemics) position (Pierce, Harman, Lycan,
Thagard, etc.), in that it never supposes a theory is "true" or "false",
but merely compares theory A with theory B to ascertain which has the 
better epistemic credentials.  Of course, I translate this to mean 
that theory A is simply MORE RATIONAL than theory B, not rational
or irrational.  Or that an agent who believes in theory A is MORE 
RATIONAL than one who believes in theory B.  

> 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.  

Yes.  I suppose that to get action, you have to have pain and pleasure
involved, or at least the value that seems to accompany pain and 
pleasure.   Affective necessity.  However, I also assume 
that wants/needs/desires occurr 
along a continuum, with the rationality of such correlating with
the comprehensiveness of the considerations involved.  That's why
I assume prudence is a more rational motivational factor that 
immediate impulse (having sex with the boss's wife in a public
restaurant in front of one's wife and children).

> Kant would say we should not lie, especially to ourselves.  He assumes 
> therefore we are capable of not lying.  We ought 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.  

I agree.  But I don't think we can do any of these things without a 
reason, and are therefore going to be constrained by that reason.
There may be more and less constraint in various reasons, but there
will always be a constraint, a fixation, a directionality, if you
are going to get something to happen.  This isn't sociobilogy by
the way (e.g., advocating selfishness), but merely an assumption that
psychodynmics is not mystical.  That psychic energy has to come 
form somewhere for something to happen, there has to be a valuative
imbalance, a lack of valuative impartiality, otherwise everything
will cancel out and the system will become innert.  You will end
up with pure "seeing" and no doing.

In other words, you would have to have a desire
to be rational, or at least place value on rationality, itself.
But even that would be less rational than if your values were totally
impartial where rationlaity is compared to other features of life, 
reality, etc. (e.g., enjoying nature).  Kant's is a prescription for
monomania, which even in the most worthy of causes, is still less
rational than an unfixated view of reality.  He's still an O. J. 
kin at rationality's trial.  To be truly rational, Kant's lust for
rationality has to be balanced against other factors.  John Keke's
has written some wonderful novels which expose the flaws and 
contradictions when you imagine characters who supremely value
rationality, BTW.  They also come in exactly the same flavors
I mention, epistemic, valuative and strategic.  Also, definitely
check out Stephan Nathanson's, 'The Ideal of RAtionality', if 
this is a topic that interests you.

> However, you are adding a further requirement that we must go 
> through some analysis of the effectiveness of the action.  

Only as a means of assessing the rationality of the STRATEGY, the cognitive 
component of the conjuunction of a cognitive and valuative profile.  And 
since deficiencies in the cognitive/epistemic component will reduce efficienty,
and efficiency is the standard of a STRATEGIC rationality (a hybrid, which isn't
the real stuff, but which needs a name and a formulation nonetheless), such
deficiencies in the cognitive/epistemic compnent would also mean you were 
'being less strategically rational'.  You would "see" less where the
strategy is concerned.

> Kant would not dispute this, 
> but would regard this as an imperative of skill, (a means-ends determination) 
> not a moral imperative.  

That's because Kant wisely understands that morality is about the VALUATIVE 
component, the rationality of the supremely valued end, although he still isn't 
able to get completely out of the rut almost all of us are in of thinking that 
rationaity has to be strategic in one of its two manifestations.  That's why
I suspect his maxim is in the form of a hypothetical desired end, but in 
which there is merely a rule with no acknowledged motivator for following
the rule.  You just do it.

> 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.
> 

Yes.  Just like getting a joke, one has to have sufficient intellect to
have the Aha! experience in which one "sees" moral intuitions.  Kohlberg's 
stipulation that moral development is dependent on intellectual development,
Darwin's realization that any society with the same intellectual deveelopment
as our own would probably have comparable moral development, etc.  Its the
reason alligators don't have moral dillemas.  They don't have enough 
intellect/knowledge, enough epistemic rationality, etc. to bring them to the 
point where they have rich enough associations where their perspective 
also begins to produce valuative transitions.  A moral retard might BEHAVE 
in a perfectly moral fashion, for example from fear of reprimand, but it
would not be moral behavior, because he still just doesn't "get it".

Just because one is brilliant in playing tennis, is able to "see" a 
great deal about how to win at tennis, there is no guarantee that this 
particularly type of epistemic "seeing" is going to carry over into the
sort of Aha!s and the sort of "seeing" that will be necessary to have 
moral intentions.  Ted Bundy comes to mind.  Brilliant in his own way,
but a brilliance which was profoundly fixated on a very small part of
reallity, with all the values focused in Ted Bundy.  Morality was a concept
he freely admitted he did not understand (an interview on T V a while 
ago).  He never had the Aha! you and I had at some time in our childhood,
the same sort of Aha! we had when we finally incorporated the reason 
for going to the dentist into our own values, and no longer had to be 
coerced.  Ted just didn't "get it". 


> >
> > 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 believe it does.  I believe that all the things you mention are the products
of ANAlogical reasoning.  That everything is compared to this and to that and
to this.  That's why there is no knowledge of the thing-in-itself, because 
"thing" is merely the product of comparing.  Thinking is thinging, but 
the ultimate nature of realtiy is probably not a "thing" at all.  That's 
also why I believe that physics, or at least large parts of it, may eventually
reduce to psychology as well.  I'm not alone in this belief.  Niels Bohr 
also thought we would only be able to understand the nature of the atom 
if we developed 'a much better understanding of what it "means" to 
understand something'.  I suspect Kant might share a somewhat similar
perspective, although I often found his use of the term THING in itself
a bit odd and misleading.  


-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/