The polarisation between "subjective" processes within the brain and
"objective" processes within the brain is but a social etiquette. The
sentences "I feel hungry" and "I know that 2+2=4" (or simply "2+2=4")
have
but a social reliability implication difference (in case A we cannot share
this feeling and it is temporary, in case B we /believe to/ know that we can
share this feeling and we /believe to/ know that it aeternal and ubiquitous.
/Isn't it funny that since the Emlightement, as we dissolved God, we appear
to believe in God-like properties of all-pervasiveness, neutrality,
rationality, all-validity, temporal and spatial omnipotence of the so-called
objective fact?/).
This polarisation has brought up many a variety of tortured strenuous
approaches to consolidate and polarise, according to the (economic)
requirements of the philosophers. The mind/body antagonism, the atavistic
instincts vs. civilised progress /with the burden of white men e.g. to
spread democracy/, the noble savage called Emile and the alienated urban
slave; the healthy, natural instincts vs. one-dimensional, seducted,
brain-heavy participant in the rat race are some of the most usual clichees,
and to each one there has already been produced a mirror-symmetrical
rhetorical opposite too.
The more one polarises the more one finds bridges and consolidation
necessary, pleasant, an unfulfillable wish. Freud lived in an era where the
military used to be seen as a vehicle towards progress (bellum pater
progressii), and a "colonist" was a brave, unselfish man who spread
civilisation amongst the uncivilised. So it takes no wonder, that the
terminology of functions of the brain became such a horrible authoritarian
and supremacist shnafu. The "upper" levels of consciousness, the "animal"
urges, the "resistance", the "defence mechanisms", "overwhelming",
"pockets
of misguided emotions", "breakthrough", etc. lead us into the conceptual
landscape of the last years of the Imperial and Royal Academy of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was usual to consider "me", the part of the
brain having gotten hold of the microphone as a self-congratulatory pompous
official Father, who has of course no needs and drives but thru whom the
Objective Truth and Values speak, whilst the opposing was everything
including filthy, cheating, crooked, sick, irritated, irrational, childish,
primitive, sensual (!), sensuous, intuitive, resilient and so forth, what
the "real, objective, oriented, calm, concetrated, thinking, logical,
grown-up, etc." PR-agent of the brain has depicted itself.
Now we begin to realise that one lobe (or layer, or exciotation pattern) of
the brain haeps abuse on other parts of the brain, but both parts of the
brain are in the same cranium.
Consolidate this! would be the answer (with deNiro) to the allegory with the
clouds. The mystery with consolidating and consiliencing (?) is that it was
us who have de-consolidated and de-consilienced the concepts and now we
stand around and pretend we are surprised it is so hard to make them whole,
one again.
Specifically, one can and does describe in a neutral, sober, non-hysteric
way the interdependence between "thoughts" and "emotions".
This present discussion about consiliencing reminds me of a discussion about
"how can we integrate the wild, animalistic, original, unrestrained impulses
of a natural animal with the cool, logical, insightful, intelligent soul of
the crown of genesis, human?" which never intended to come to results
because the possibility of integration would show that it is the rhetorics
of polarisation which had set these concepts apart in the first place. The
discutants of that time were shocked by the proposition (of Freud) that the
cool, intellectual, etc. is in some ways also rooted in an animal (-istic
nervous system).
Today, I try to put forward the notion that there are very many ways of
consolidating diverse observations by recognising similarities and
structural identities among the objects we find hard to consolidate. Only,
in this case the objects we look at are abstract concepts, like
"information", "predetermination", "evoultion", "order",
"symmetry",
"consilience" and all this the FIS chat group has chatted about this
semester and the last few.
In Freud's time the critic went like "but anatomy and physiology are not
sufficient to point out that we are in some ways also animals, and at least
comparable to animals in our urges and needs and impulses, because the Soul
and the Intellect are not muscles and blood, but transcendent ideas". Today,
the critic would be "But numeric translations by means of the feature of
distinctness and similarity regardless of size do not show that space,
energy and matter have common density/probability/distinguishability
properties, because the Ideas and the Information and the Philosophy are not
numbers but Unrelated Concepts".
Making things fit together is not that easy if one does not want to become
obvious that one has broken them previously apart. What has made it
necessary to want to consolidate concepts? I wish for the next session of
FIS as a central topic the Incommensurability and the Distinctness of that
what we try to understand as being au fond similar.
Thanks for the Christmas peace and best wishes to the FIS from
Karl
-----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
Von: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]Im
Auftrag von Pedro C. Marijuan
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 2. Dezember 2004 14:05
An: fis-listas.unizar.es
Betreff: RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds
Dear colleagues,
Unfortunately the end of this session on consilience is close. Around this
weekend Malcolm will post his final comments on the philosophical
whereabouts of this fascinating concept...
The recent comments by Stan, John, and Bob add to the complex mosaic ---I
wonder whether the reflection on the cloud ascend/descend existing
asymmetry could contribute to clarify the panorama and unite some different
strands. At least, I would like to write down a few ideas that just reflect
my own fooliness around.
About "ascend" first. What is the driving force for it? No doubt it is
largely the creation, the imagination, the inspiration of the individual
scientist. The social-communal networking may introduce further checkings,
experiments, teams, discussions, etc., and then the crucial "validation"
aspect that any serious scientific journal or publisher will demand before
adding it to the existing Galaxy. In spite of the vast mechanization of
knolwdge operated in our times, I venture this creative (and validation)
theme has not much changed, and it won't. Scholarship (in its
interdisciplinary splendors) should be mentioned too.
The "descend" is much different. Although both are social-communal
processes, their differences cannot be more pronounced. Who
"mandates"for the descend, for the application? Rarely it will be the
imagination or the ingenuity of an individual (the isolated, creative
technologist). Rather, it will be mandated by a corporate body, perhaps the
"committee", which may be present under multiple forms in an heterogeneous
collision of industrial companies, developers, institutions, the military,
political entities of all kind, markets, fashions, ideologies, etc., etc.,
who just want some bits of science "on tap" so to increase some apparent
"utilities" around. Application of science is thus marked by an
extraordinary heterogeneity of influences that continuously "elbow" on each
other, with the result that the extra-ordinary action capabilities allowed
by the clouds of scientific knowledge often become a destructive force
(Stan's).
All this means that the social "closure" of the two arrows of scientific
knowledge is quite peculiar and asymmetric indeed (in this, it far
separates from our own personal "closure" in the action/perception cycle
where symmetry considerations are really crucial---Berthoz's and Michel
Leyton's stuff could bring quite intriguing reflections on this regard).
All this also means the importance, in my personal opinion, of exploring
new approaches and angles about the heterogeneous collisions of knowledge
realms, starting by mopping up the misconceptions existing in our own house
of the sciences (Bob's on Wilsonian reductive consilience).
But, Have we been --both Wilson and herein at fis discussions-- performing
an undue overstretching on Whewhell's consilience? It is really a serious
question. Should we change gears, pay our respect to a very elegant
historical concept, and look for a new term? My own excuse to keep
defending the enlarged use of consilience is that finally heterogeneous
inductions --even of different disciplines and even of different realms of
knowledge-- have to "conciliate" each other in our own practice too,
Perhaps implying a common mental mechanism beyond the metaphorical abuse?
best
Pedro
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Received on Fri Dec 3 11:42:32 2004
