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On 8 Jun 2001, at 13:12, Whit Blauvelt wrote:
> Chris,
>
> As you know I'm much impressed with your work. But I also find Peter
> Mutnick's contributions substantial, and so am confused by the
> vehemence of the current debate. In a way perhaps it's useful, in that
> we often bring out our weakest arguments in such circumstance. Not to
> take Mutnick's side, but might some revision and softening of your
> stance perhaps make it stronger in the long run?
>
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 03:19:45AM +1000, Chris Lofting wrote:
>
> > There is nothing 'Orwellian' about my perspective, I deal with facts
> > first, interpretations later (or more so my interest in the METHODS
> > of interpretations); what is 'Orwellian' is the clinging to old
> > interpretations, that are more and more 'out of date' when compared
> > to the facts from neurosciences/cognitive sciences and what those
> > facts say about how we interpret.
>
> This sounds simple, but may be naive - the notion that we have 'facts'
> available to us which are interpretation-free. That very notion is an
> interpretation, highly debated. Everything we've learned from the
> neuroscience you prize goes towards showing that the 'facts' that
> reach our senses go through quite a bit of parsing, simplification,
> recombination and distortion before they ever become cognizable.
> Further, these processes are not just at the lower levels, but
> continue into areas of mind which are experientially and culturally
> mediated - for instance in the strong correlation between expectancy
> and subsequent awareness at each level.
>
> It is the delusion of each 'modern' age that finally the distortions
> are done away with, the blinders are off, and reality and truth
> freshly apprehended. The flip side of this is it takes less than a
> generation for each wave of fresh revelation to take on the appearance
> of faddism and even absurdity. Like, how did anyone ever believe in
> behaviorism, in Freudianism, in Marxism, in deconstructionism, in
> positivism? In their day each of these seemed true at the level of
> literal, obvious fact to thousands of people as smart as anyone on
> this list. Can we, should we, risk mistaking our latest, best framing
> of the real as being any more strictly factual, any less embellished
> by its frame? Not that we shouldn't show good faith in our projects;
> it's more our belittling of projects that don't accord with ours that
> can set us up for looking silly or worse in the longer run, whatever
> we accomplish. All the isms listed above also made contributions I
> respect - despite their uniformity in beating up and disrespecting
> anyone who didn't share their somewhat flawed premises and flatter
> their inflated self-estimation. Now the memory of their real
> contributions has been clouded by that of their bad behavior.
>
> > One of the problems with making maps of reality is the emergence of
> > the map being confused with the territory such that any data that
> > does not fit the map must be 'wrong'.
>
> Doesn't this count against your complaints against Mutnick?
>
> > The QM map of the early pioneers was made with no understanding at
> > all as to how we make the maps, how properties in the METHOD can be
> > interpreted as properties of that being analyzed; all that was
> > reported was 'as is' data which was then interpreted within a
> > context defined by the times and that includes a very weak
> > understanding of 'in here'.
>
> On the contrary, many of the QM pioneers were explicitly concerned
> _not_ to let metaphors distort their view of the radically new terrain
> - while others were concerned that abstaining from metaphors
> surrendered too key a part of our intellectual armamentum. Whether any
> of them were aware of the sort of Korsybskian General Semantics
> concerns you raise may be an open question (didn't he publish in the
> 30s?).
>
> > The words, the interpretations, of QM from Bohm, Bohr, Dirac,
> > Einstein etc etc cannot help us now; they have FAILED when it comes
> > to dealing with the philosophical questions primarily since the
> > mindset was 'attuned' to out-of-date models which included metaphors
> > being taken literally. IOW you could burn every book ever written
> > pre the 70s and within a short time regain all of the qualitative
> > data 'lost' by the process. History (feedback) can help us but at
> > times, especially in a context of strong change, we need to purge,
> > to prune, by accepting the contextual change. Bohm, Bohr, Dirac,
> > Einstein etc may have been our heroes but they are dead heroes whose
> > works have been well read and cherished by many but are now 'out of
> > context'; warm memories and that is all.
>
> This prose doesn't serve you. For one thing, as Lakoff and his
> colleagues have shown, no person does much in the way of cognition
> without a rich engagement with metaphors. Further, as mentioned above,
> there was explicit discussion among the QM pioneers on how far to go
> to try to keep metaphors - whose danger of distortion they were aware
> of - out of their theoretical formulations. Beyond that, we have
> historical examples such as Jung's discovery, after he'd worked his
> way out of the Freudian metaphors, that the alchemists - once their
> own metaphors are understood and allowed for - were better, more
> insightful psychologists than Freud or anyone in his generation. It
> may take more work to read the best contributions of prior generations
> and realized them for what they were - since it requires us to remove
> ourselves further from the prejudices of our time. It may even be, on
> a very long-term trend line, that 'progress' is not as flawed a
> concept as much contemporary understanding makes it out to be. And it
> may be that your own work will go forward best if you don't struggle
> with "Bohm, Bohr, Dirac, Einstein etc" - there are plenty of major
> thinkers I don't engage because the diversion would be too much for
> little me. But personally, when reading the quotes Mutnick brings
> forward, I suspect the physicists were not only ahead of their times,
> but often ahead of ours (as I also suspect, on closer reading than
> I've given the physicists, even Aristotle was, despite Korsybski's
> disdain for him, and silly mistakes about gravity and the like).
>
> Also, and I mean this as no disparagement, I read you as a mystic,
> Chris - a very good one. The sort of structures you sketch are similar
> in tone and elaboration to the Kabalah. If you intend to be read as a
> purveyor of the most literal factuality, all I can suggest is that
> your text may both deviate from and surpass authorial intent.
>
> Whit
>
>
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>
>
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>
>
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