Debate with Truepeers, third iteration
re: changing my mind.
When I write of the origins of this or the fact of that, I write of assertions that I cannot prove. Most of these, like my belief in the emergence of group ethics, is no more than an educated guess precisely because I cannot truly know these things.
So, while I do absorb what you say and your words do broaden my inquiry, in the end my belief that experience comes before idea is dispositive. You seem to be saying that our nature was fixed or prefigured in some way, while I believe our capacity as animals was fixed from evolution, but any particular manifestations of that evolution was based on experiences iterated over time. This leaves us separated in debate because while I do not feign to know the exact progression of human beliefs, or aspire to explain the origins of individual permutations of societies, I do believe they stem from the capacity of the human mind and our biological traits developed by natural selection. The human mind is so adaptable that any number of naturally occuring events could explain the emergence of ideas that in their later iterations seem to have popped out of nowhere, like the idea of God. In fact, given that the idea of God is always built around unexplained natural phenomena like weather and water in its first iterations, it seems an earthly origin is undeniable.
Language is representation of ideas, and ideas stem from the active and passive correlation of impressions. Ideas and representations are attributed to the mind's ability to find patterns and continuities, and the raw data for these calculations are derived from experience. (I defer to Hume's treatise on the science of man on this.)
Language, like society, has organically built rules that derived from centuries of common usage; iterated experience led to an ethic of language, just like iterated experience led to an ethic of society. The human mind always strives for order in its thoughts.
When I write of the origins of this or the fact of that, I write of assertions that I cannot prove. Most of these, like my belief in the emergence of group ethics, is no more than an educated guess precisely because I cannot truly know these things.
So, while I do absorb what you say and your words do broaden my inquiry, in the end my belief that experience comes before idea is dispositive. You seem to be saying that our nature was fixed or prefigured in some way, while I believe our capacity as animals was fixed from evolution, but any particular manifestations of that evolution was based on experiences iterated over time. This leaves us separated in debate because while I do not feign to know the exact progression of human beliefs, or aspire to explain the origins of individual permutations of societies, I do believe they stem from the capacity of the human mind and our biological traits developed by natural selection. The human mind is so adaptable that any number of naturally occuring events could explain the emergence of ideas that in their later iterations seem to have popped out of nowhere, like the idea of God. In fact, given that the idea of God is always built around unexplained natural phenomena like weather and water in its first iterations, it seems an earthly origin is undeniable.
Language is representation of ideas, and ideas stem from the active and passive correlation of impressions. Ideas and representations are attributed to the mind's ability to find patterns and continuities, and the raw data for these calculations are derived from experience. (I defer to Hume's treatise on the science of man on this.)
Language, like society, has organically built rules that derived from centuries of common usage; iterated experience led to an ethic of language, just like iterated experience led to an ethic of society. The human mind always strives for order in its thoughts.
posted by John Aristides at 3:24 PM
3 Comments:
in the end my belief that experience comes before idea is dispositive. You seem to be saying that our nature was fixed or prefigured in some way
-just to hopefully clarify a couple of things: I believe experience and idea emerge more or less simultaneously, though of course the idea can be refined later, over time. In other words, I believe experience is revelatory. This is not necessarily a religious idea; and furthermore, it is not meant to give any support to the postmodern idea that we cannot know reality but only our ideas about it. Rather, it's just to suggest that we need to better our understanding of what an experience is, i.e. an event whose significance is being constructed even as it unfolds.
I do not believe our nature is fixed or prefigured. On the one hand there are biological realities which only change very slowly and so one might say there are some things more or less fixed (e.g. the sexual attractiveness of rounded hips and breasts). But as for culture, it had an origin which surely gave limits to or pre-conditions for what comes after, but in no sense is cultural history fixed or prefigured. Rather it unfolds heretofore unknown possibilities inherent in, but not determined by, the origin of culture. In other words, there is an ongoing dialectic between experience and ideas and where it goes nobody knows...
You are right that primitive myths tend to equate the gods with natural forces; but one can readily argue that this is why they are myths: they don't understand the conditions of their own emergence. They don't understand the human group dynamics that sometimes make it feel as if society is awash in a terrifying flood of bad energy. It is awash, except it is human energy, not the external forces of nature that are in play. We don't need to bring God into it, unless we so choose. But neither should we say that the idea of God is simply a reaction to natural forces; it is a reaction to human forces.
tp: "experience and idea emerge more or less simultaneously, though of course the idea can be refined later, over time."
I do not doubt that this is true in the long run, yet I wonder about the first impression of a thing. It seems logical that one must have at least two impressions (not two impressions of a thing, two impressions in an absolute sense) to have one idea.
My interest in this stems from a desire to understand education and how it relates to and supports culture. I believe education to be the science of managing impressions and ideas, and while it can have dangerous repercussions, it can also lead the way to a better world.
If we are to win the battle of ideas, we need to successfully manage the generation of paradigms. The difficulty lies in the particular. How much, in what order, how soon, what kind, etc.?
Culture itself is a form of mind control, creating, as you say, mental constraints that govern behavior. Culture supplies the conscience. I do not advocate fiddling with it to much, but I do think we can massage it to bring out the best. We do okay in this regard already, but okay is never good enough.
I do not doubt that this is true in the long run, yet I wonder about the first impression of a thing. It seems logical that one must have at least two impressions (not two impressions of a thing, two impressions in an absolute sense) to have one idea.
- I think I agree. The solution is to understand how the event or experience from which we take the idea must become meaningful by unfolding in two or three stages. The sign that gives meaning to an event is first floated by either some daring or barely aware individual as a trial balloon; but the sign or idea must be confirmed by being taken up in some communal process of seconding and thirding, before it is fully formed. Adam Katz has a new blog that is addressing this question in a number of interesting ways:
http://prosperoicon.blogspot.com/
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