I’ve tried to explicate my use of the phrase “ontological tyranny” here. I realize now that my use of the phrase is at least somewhat counter-intuitive, since you haven’t been the first person to ask for clarification (see: turtle’s persistent posts).
this could have been a good thread about reality…
you wont hear from me anymore on this topic HERE…
The problem I see here, especially given the inclusion of the word “tyranny”, is the possibility of someone thinking they have arrived at this objective truth, and the equal possibility of their being wrong.
And even if they were right, there are political and ethical implications that often stand outside the realm of scientific truth. I think we have to be careful embracing the objective at the expense of basic subjective experience. Psychobiology once came to the point of arguing that the drug user or alcoholic was like a machine that was malfunctioning to the point that it was no longer able to think for itself, as if they were so consumed in their pathology that they could no longer make the distinction between happy or sad. The solution, therefore, was for the expert to intervene as a kind of mechanic that would fix the machine -that would make it functional again. The problem was that this failed to address issues that were less accessible to the scientific method such as personal autonomy or the individuals subjective comfort with their state, the pleasure they took from the experience, or their desire to spend their point A to point B in that circumstance.
The problem is that you can’t make ethical statements and give them the same fact status as say 1+1=2. And given the importance of ethical statements to our given point A to point B’s, I’m not sure the ontological tyranny (if I understand it right) would be such a good thing. I would subscribe to a more democratic approach to the intellectual life (a system of checks and balances), which, as Churchill said of democracy: it’s worst system possible, except for all the rest.
At the same time, it would be foolish to underestimate the value of individuals seeking out the “really real”.
I guess the main problem I’m pointing to involves a hierarchy that might be created between the ontological tyrranny and all other knowledge, and the very real possibility that subjective values or agendas might actually slip in unseen or unrecognized.
w-m, You can be a very frustrating person at times. Imagine you’re teaching an adult evening class in the Philosophy of How Science Works. Your students range in ages that cover a 50-year span, and in experience from no philosophy to reading philosophy every day but alone and/or on their own. No matter what their backgrounds, they’re intelligent and they have questions. One of your students asks if the god-concept has been removed from the definition of ontology. Rather than answer her directly, you tell to reread her notes on your first lecture. She does so, but they don’t answer her question–not even the portion of your lecture that she taped. Besides that, her question came as the result of her asking if she’s understood what you’ve so far been teaching. Another student, going by, overhears her question about GS344 and answers it directly. Remembering the broad experiential backgrounds of your students, had you explained GS344 when it first came up, that question would have been unnecessary.
“But,” you say, “I’m not teaching a class! I’m simply having a conversation with like-minded individuals about my philosophy as it applies to How Science Works.”
I believe you’re doing both, although you may not be aware of the teaching role of your posts. I think you are aware, however, since you’re trying to teach what it is you believe. Your audience is just much broader than a group of like-minded individuals who already know pretty much what you know about your subject. That’s okay as far as it goes. It just often comes across, at least to me, as your rather egoistic attempts to convince your like-minded group that your philosophy is the correct philosophy.
I’ve enjoyed the thread and believe I’ve learned from it. I’ve tried to put your thoughts into my mind, using my interpretations of the ideas you’re trying to express. I’ve asked if my interpretation is correct–even partially. You haven’t answered. I consider that to be a rebuff of my thoughts and ideas. If I’m to be rebuffed, why should I continue to present those thoughts and ideas?
lizbeth: I’m sorry you feel that way; it was never my intention to rebuff your ideas or condescend you in any way. It was a quick response, and you’re right: I completely ignored your question. Admittedly, I misinterpreted what you were asking for. I also admit to having behaved rather regrettably in threads with James. Apart from that, I’m especially sorry to hear that my posts seem like egoistic attempts at persuasion.
As for your question: I don’t think the god-concept has been removed, absolutely, from the ontology discussed. However, it certainly isn’t vital to the system either. What the ontology requires is an objective reality not dependent on knowers for its consistency, logic, understandability and uniformity; whether or not such a reality requires the god-concept is, I think, another issue. Hopefully this answers your question.
It was not I who brought up the Gay Science reference. I merely confirmed that I had the section in mind. I believed it to be a short exchange between attano and I, and so didn’t consider making it explicit to everyone reading: Again, it’s my mistake, and I’m sorry it reflected so poorly on me.
That said, I do appreciate having contributed something to your understanding of the topic. As for your interpretation: I believe all science to be “tyrannized” by value, bias, perspective. However, such a “tyranny” is, I believe, unavoidable. Thus, I think we should strive for a way to appropriate perspective instead of feigning the ability to operate in its absence. In short: I don’t consider it a “tyranny”; on the contrary: I consider the “rule” that bias be absent “tyrannical” insofar as it renders the inevitability of bias invisible, allowing it to work subversively. Beside this distinction, I think you’re mostly correct in your interpretation.
Again: sorry. I hate to have put you off; I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said for future posts.
And by what standards is it the “best”? - Bias.
Exactly. Which means that science does not try to understand how the natural word works, but how something else does.
It is clear to a clear mind (of which there are so few) that when one observes a simulation, one does not gain insight into anything real.
One great bias on which science moves is this: “by isolating a thing from its context, we can understand it as it really is.”
This leads to a bizarre, fragmentary and incoherent understanding of nature, and the application of this understanding leads to little else than the degeneration of nature.
I am a bit more strong in my opinions than without-music: not only do I think that the bias needs to be understood and admitted, but I am certain that once scientists do understand their prejudices, that they in fact are prejudices, they will abandon them.
I do not question the intentions of scientists to know the real world - so I think a more objective, a less biased science will always follow the realization that a method has been based on bias.
Again, one of the great scientific biases is: “isolation from context = enabling knowledge”
And we dont even have to judge the tree by its fruits to see where this leads.
Again what is studies is precisely not the natural world. The natural world is doing the studying, with its all-too-natural purposes: to command & conquer.
And this is natural - without-music reasonably suggests that we should embrace this motivation. But I ask a bit ahead: what is it that we conquer?
Can we not be conquering something else - something better? Something more real? The same logic with which I have shown scientific understanding to be at root a systematic error, says that we can, and proposes a starting point. But only if we leave the aforementioned bias at the door, and set higher standards. This is far more difficult than the practice of science itself, as it takes will and character. Two things of which the practice of science-as-truth has thoroughly stripped our race.
I asked: “what does this bias produce?”
It produces science.
Science “discovers” only in the sense that it allows nature into the mind according to a certain designated function (to be of use).
These interpretations of nature allow man certain technologies.
It is manifestly clear that different interpretations of nature allow man different types of technology.
Upholding the so called ‘reality’ of science, or any other system of method, controls thought and traps us in a prison of isolated thinking, and this prison creates the illusion that we are separate, that we are not part of nature, and yet the prison itself is also an illusion because we are part of nature. The prison is created by the thought, and that is the reason why it is trying to get out of that trap it has created by itself. But there is nothing there in the intellect that can capture the natural way in which the whole thing is flowing, the way nature controls things. Intellectual pursuit will find satisfaction in thought, giving the impression that this will result as an advantage to the nature. But there is nothing in thought as far as its ability to touch life. It can have an effect on life. Inasmuch as thought’s purpose is to protect and maintain itself, the effect it has is bound to be a detrimental one.
Well said.
I’m not exactly clear on your position here: do you mean this to be a choice-worthy reaction, or one more fault of science? It seems to me like the will-to-abandon-bias is exactly what’s at stake in overcoming the ontological tyranny: the concepts seem to stand and fall with each other.
I want a science that can both accept and embrace its bias: science can, I think, one day follow the realization that method is based on bias with a sublimation, rather than an eradication.
finishedman: I think you’ve done well in fleshing out the tyranny. Your post lends itself to what I mean when I liken the ontology discussed to a tyrannical rule.
Ironically, what would emanate from the unbiased scientist would be a disassociation with his research and discoveries. He would insist that what he says (finds) stands or fall on its own. Nobel prize notwithstanding.
Is that not what the scientist already insists?
How can you hope to comprehend something as complex as ‘all reality’ without breaking it down into understandable chunks?
How do you get an unfragmented, coherent understanding of nature?
Science tries to gain understanding by interacting with nature, experimenting and rejecting whatever is not confirmed by nature. Is it preferable to accept the ideas of philosophers and theologians who pull understanding out of their, er, minds?
Really? Sounds like thought itself is conscious and not just the animal doing the thinking.
Let us assume that science embraces the bias. How do you control it? How do you know when there is too much bias? There seems to be no way to clearly draw the line. When is a scientist just doing bad science for the cell phone industry, big pharma or the ecological lobby?
I’m a little unsure as to the point you’re making myself. So if what follows seems tangential, I hope you will correct me.
But being a progressive who claims his Marxist roots, I tend to find myself in a lot of knock down drag out fights with FreeMarketFundalmentalists. But one in particular happened to be an economist who had access to some of the best data money could buy. In the data war he kept dragging me into, he always won hands down. The problem was that, as impressive as his repertoire seemed, I always went back into the real world to find most of my instincts and understandings confirmed. But more relevant to your point (or what I think it is), his data was clearly cherry-picked and biased. Furthermore, he seemed fail to distinguish between facts (which do not offer themselves up for interpretation – for example 1+1=2 which means exactly what it says) and data (which is a collective of facts which must be considered for what it fails to include as much what it does –which must be interpreted). The problem was that while I was perfectly honest about my bias, he kept trying to make it seem as if he were simply quoting facts and allowing the truth to emerge from that.
If I’m getting what you’re saying, this would seem to be an example of the ontological tyranny, or the tyranny of acting as if bias makes one position weak when, in fact, all positions, by nature, are biased.
Economical law says that the context has to be tight for the product to sell dependably. The campaign needs to be in strict colors, methods, phrases. The message is the product.
As such, marketing context is specified among very particular characteristics of human beings - the ones that are most quickly brought out, the ones appealing not any reality, but to the unexpected suggestion of joy. The easy seduction, after which the product doesn’t really matter. These are extrapolated and exploited, and thereby cultivated. It has made us weak in the nerves, and lost in terms of any such things as “spine” or “gut”, that mattered in the olden days.
Precisely because we are twitchingly superficial, we are unable to consciously appreciate the surface, only making it identifiable by parodies and satire. We are not allowed by the “gestalt of truth lurking above our children’s cribs” to really look at what we see. Instead, we compel ourselves to believe in sharply defined rules about dignity, civilized justice, sensibility toward goodness, a trust that what appears does so for a reason, and a belief in the naturalness of equality (How can equality be good, instead of mediocre?) while secretly all we look at is appearances. We do our utmost to make our appearances fit out desired image of “the world” with ourself in its center.
Our ideology is based on numbers, in the sense of integers. Democracy is the power of numbers, so is economics. But science is based on the absence of values to the numbers, - “x” is a dangerous letter. Hiding with the ducks in the park, is it quack to say that our science is x-driven? X as the unknown that has to come out of the box, the given value.
We attribute the given value to “science” - like that guy says it “It’s science”, but in the meantime, we are actually occupied with a more fundamental activity that’s not science, but of which science is a part. We’re busy with what we always do, as humans - creating things to please us, to make life more pleasant. Why not admit, that science has in the first instance been not the objective surmising of a thing called “reality”, but the observation and simulation of that which pleases the observator?
Realizing this we could quit screwing around with quick pleasures and develop science the way it was originally spawned, as object of much deeper fascination and more vivid contemplation of new powers than what comes to us from it as be believe it to be primarily something ‘evident’. “Naturally true”. What is mere nature, compared to this ‘magic’? Science is a thoroughly, as thoroughly as they come, subjective experience of reality. It is precisely not what it claims to be - there is not a shred of objectivity in it. It is so powerfully subjective (a fish wouldn’t know what to do with a concept like gravity or a car-radio or a cattle-prod or a computer) that it binds those who are in the same way subjective together in an understanding of the world as it is created for them.
Truly objective science includes all sciences of all species. Our science is the towering ambition of man to dominate his environment. I believe that he has accomplished that goal, and that the accomplishment has led him further away from any kind of belief in truth than he has ever been, and as much out of control of himself as he could ever be.
There is a certain prejudice against which I am violently disposed; the significance of normalcy. Science has never been normal and never produced “natural results”.
Let’s put it strongly: the discussed bias will be shed wholly only by what must thereby be designated as a superior species: the Übermensch alone is brave enough to account for this break-and-entering, this imposition of mans perspective on the proceedings on the planet. He is brave because he knows he is worth it. Man, as he looks at himself now, is not. He is creature undeserving to be master of the Earth, despite the fact that he has created the necessity to act this part.
The answer to this beautifully terrible dilemma is I believe in the loosening of focus on the particulars of this creature, such as his opposable thumbs and his large brain. The species of man has so far largely and too strictly been defined by his use of tools. That means: by his specific way of using the concept “tool”. Man has yet to mature a bit to know what potency he has in his hands. His heart has to grow. He is too afraid of what might happen to his conception of himself - man is far too insecure about his own worth to develop his science truthfully.
I agree, but then I would no longer call it a bias, but a clear perspective.
We have set in motion irreversible forces. We have polluted the sky, the waters, everything. Nature’s laws know no reward, only punishment. The reward is only that you are in harmony with nature. The whole problem started when man decided that the whole universe was created for his exclusive enjoyment. We have superimposed the notion of evolution and progress over nature. Our mind–and there are no individual minds, only mind–which is the accumulation of the totality of man’s knowledge and experience, has created the notion of the psyche and evolution. Only technology progresses, while we as a race are moving closer to complete and total destruction of ourselves and the world. Everything in man’s consciousness is pushing the whole world, which nature has so laboriously created, towards destruction. There has been no qualitative change in man’s thinking.
There is no preference in nature. Nature is controlling everything. All of us are puppets. Nature is pulling the strings, but we believe that we are acting. If we function as puppets, then the understanding is simple. But we have superimposed on that the idea of a `person’ who is pulling those strings.
The natural state is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there – it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By ‘life’ I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself.
d63: You’re on the right track. Bias is ineradicable; we can either accept it or pretend it isn’t there.
Jakob: I was hesitant to bring the Overman into the discussion, but that is essentially what we’re talking about: a new science, for a new type. I’m short on time, but I think we’re more or less on the same page here; if anything, as you’ve pointed out, you might be slightly more extreme in your theory than I. Regardless, we have little on which to disagree. Please carry on.
Phyllo: The point I’m stressing is that regardless of whether or not science can accept its bias, it will still always have bias (Jakob’s sense of a “clear perspective” notwithstanding). This isn’t a matter of “permitting” bias, not really anyway. Bias is there, we’ve just convinced ourselves it isn’t, because we’ve accepted that it shouldn’t be. But this is backwards thinking. When does science, today, qualify as bad science? When it is empirically impoverished. The acknowledgment of perspective will not change this criteria, and the issue of whether or not it should is a different discussion altogether.