The (lack of the) Mysterious
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Gavin
booty bass intellectual
This might be of interest to some in this very fraught discussion:
Horkheimer - Notes on Science and Crisis
Horkheimer - Notes on Science and Crisis
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I disagree with Horkheimer on most points there, but then, I disagree with most of the Frankfurt Schule guys anyway...
I like the distinction made between scientific attitude, method and world view, that's very useful. But where criticism is misplaced there isn't a problem to begin with, by definition.poetix said:
If there is a problem it's when the truth of a (reductive? aren't all world views necessarily reductive?) world view is mistaken in the mind of the observer for absolute, final or exclusive Truth. It's not so much that this is unscientific (though really it is) or that it can set up unproductive oppositions with other world views (though I think we do see this), but primarily because it can lead to inaccurate and inflexible types of thinking in that observer. It's where a perfectly good belief tips over into fanaticism, bringing with it the kinds of intolerances and chauvinisms that sort of thing tends to engender. Maybe that's something of an extreme scenario but it can certainly lead to blind spots in what is ideally an honest and rigorous approach. The final truth of a given world view is best understood as belonging within the scope of the systems and methods used to define it and to discern its characteristics.
Can it not equally be said to be the other way round? Spiritual practice is concerned with that which can be directly experienced and participated in, whereas scientific investigations reveal much that we have to use imagination to apprehend and that must in a sense be "taken on faith".poetix said:
But more seriously, although this is of course bound up with the various ways in which something can be said to be "known", I do wonder if this kind of statement doesn't rather misconstrue the nature of much spiritual practice...
I don't think it's necessarily accurate to characterise an animistic world view as simply involving some vague generalised idea to do with spirits in rocks and trees, though maybe that's not quite what you are doing here. Members of an animistic culture will more likely relate to individual spirits in particular rocks and trees. These kinds of perceptions and ways of interacting with the environment will be shared by participants in the culture and do indeed reflect knowledge and experience of the world faithfully, perhaps in some ways more so than the view of the proverbial "scientific rationalist" who would aspire to exclude from their world view anything which could not adequately be accounted for by current science.* Of course hardly anybody does this, not even Mr. D I would venture, and the truth is that we don't always have to make that choice.poetix said:
* I understand it's been shown that personifying processes can be an efficient way of employing cognitive resources in thinking about them. In many ways I think it's true to say that animistic conceptions are more than just analogous to the insights of cybernetics and systems theory.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
This is what religion/religious sects do by definition.
The word "reductive" gets thrown around a lot on here, and I don't think many of you have a clue how to use it in any meaningfully precise way.
There is a spectrum that includes a range of degrees of "reductive" approach, even within the sciences. Everything that isn't wild speculation is not automatically reductive. It would be nice if people would start making that distinction.
lanugo
von Verfall erzittern
It would be nice if people started using grammar in a meaningfully precise way, too.
The proposition, and I did drop a couple of question marks in there but I think it applies, is that a world view, a cultural orientation, is necessarily a reduction from the set of all possibilities and inputs. Reductive in this and in the similar sense in which Aldous Huxley and others have described the nervous system as being a reducing valve for perception.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Hm?
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
But then, by that definition of the term "reduction" or "reductive", everything is a reduction. Eating a sandwich is a reduction, because you could possibly eat cereal or have a banana. Or walking three steps to the left instead of to the right is a reductive move because it's a decisive action that reduces the set of all possibilities and inputs at a given point in time.
This is what I mean by meaningful precision. Chemistry uses precision and accuracy standards mathematically, and these work very well to ensure that data doesn't get messy, that important information isn't lost in the shuffle, and that results across experiments are standardized. When you use a term in such a broad way that it could apply to almost any action, almost any person, place, or thing in the world, it ceases to be precise and loses meaning in the process.
"Reductive" is usually reserved as an adjective to describe things that seek to understand and describe phenomena solely with reference to the "micro" level, their molecular causes, thereby ignoring or glossing over the "macro" level on which the phenomena are experienced, felt, judged, perceived, etc. The hard sciences are usually called "reductive" because people find them limiting in this way; they don't have much to say about romantic ideals like "freedom", "everlasting love", etc.--the things many people hold dear and consider very important in their lives.
Well, ok. But compared to...? I don't see why you'd want to use the word "reducing" here, unless you're measuring cognition against a God standard of omniscience or something. Just seems strange.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
We were taught the proper grammatical structure of conditional sentences, i.e. if-clauses, in 8th grade English class. Seems like that's not a priority at American schools, though.
Am I supposed to be impressed? I was taught grammar in English, German, Attic Greek, Spanish, and French.
There's nothing wrong with that sentence, Lanugo.
It's a subjunctive clause. If people would. Nothing wrong with using subjunctive there.
Language is fluid, it evolves, and grammar is not a fixed, rigid, and immutable set of laws etched in stone. There are also, very obviously, regional differences that affect the way people use language.
Do you have anything of substance to add to the thread, or are you just here to play grammar police and derail with pointless nonsense?
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I would think any native speaker of English would immediately spot the difference (tho, yes, it's a subtle one) between these two sentences:
"It would be nice if people shut up."
"It would be nice if people would shut up."
In the first, the sense of time implied by leaving out the subjunctive "would" from the dependent clause gives the sense that the shutting up is happening NOW, in the immediate present. In the second, it's implied that the speaker wishes that people would, of their own volition, kindly stop talking in the near future. The second sounds more polite, less blunt, less harsh.
It's really interesting how native speakers rarely follow the "textbook" when they speak. That's how a native spaker instantly identifies a non-native speaker: the non-native speaker follows rules too rigidly, too literally, and doesn't understand the fluid dynamics of language, the times when breaking a "rule" is actually the preferred mode of communication.
"It would be nice if people shut up."
"It would be nice if people would shut up."
In the first, the sense of time implied by leaving out the subjunctive "would" from the dependent clause gives the sense that the shutting up is happening NOW, in the immediate present. In the second, it's implied that the speaker wishes that people would, of their own volition, kindly stop talking in the near future. The second sounds more polite, less blunt, less harsh.
It's really interesting how native speakers rarely follow the "textbook" when they speak. That's how a native spaker instantly identifies a non-native speaker: the non-native speaker follows rules too rigidly, too literally, and doesn't understand the fluid dynamics of language, the times when breaking a "rule" is actually the preferred mode of communication.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Sounds subjunctive to me - like it's an abbreviation of "It would be nice if people were to shut up."
It's terrible, I really can't resist a tangent. I'm thinking of forming some kind of support group for this...