Hi Tom,
As a note, I may end up moving this to another forum, but we'll see where it goes.....Originally Posted by Tom Kratman
Okay, couple of points. First, yeah, the worms are artificial, as are all human concepts. If you notice the way I phrased my comment - "...that any human can know "truth"" (emphasis added) - it was aimed in a very particular manner based on, yes, artificial constructions. If I wanted to be really technical about it, I would have written "know and intelligeably communicate", but "know" is the short hand reference.
Second, the examples you give are ones that are part and parcel of manipulating a communicative system - playing word games if you will. What they really underscore is two things: the map ain't the territory and the inherent paradoxical nature of abstraction. Basically, they highlight one of the quintessential problems with all human systems of communication, which is that we build these systems using fuzzy sets since it is actually impossible (or has been to date), to build an exact, non-fuzzy, symbol system that accurately reflects our experiences in reality and allows us to precisely communicate them to others. The closest that we have come to such systems are the various dialects of mathematics but, in order to actually get decent representations, we have had to invent dialects such as fuzzy set theory, chaos mechanics, quantum indeterminacy, catastrophe theory, etc.
Okay, so back to this union of opposites type of manipulation: this is a very common manipulation of symbols based on the nature of the symbol systems. The "paradoxical nature of abstraction" really comes about as a result of us, as a species, taking some perception and abstracting it. Since our sensory perceptions are based on ratios and perceived oppositions, we tend to abstract along supposed scales or lines that we then proceed to "name".
To add insult to injury, we then add in the pernicious influence of Plato, specifically his concept of Ideal Types. We take a "name" and abstract it (that's twice now!) from it's already abstracted and constructed line or scale, and treat it as if it were "real", a thing in and of itself. This process, reification, shows up all over the place for one simple reason: it makes communication, knowledge and action simpler. But remember, we are dealing with an abstraction of an abstraction as if it were a thing in and of itself, which "it" isn't (BTW, notice how it is really tricky to use English to talk about this; "it"? That implies existence...).
If a man smokes by himself, is he really smoking?
Silly paraphrases aside, you are taking one of the few positions that I can see that has any real worth - very Baconian of you. Notice how you built this phrase - "I am smoking a real cigarette". Okay, you're smoking a cigarette (so am I BTW). "Cigarette" is a class word, and while adding the modifier "real" to it let's me drop out such sillyness as herb cigarettes, it doesn't really tell me much more than you are smoking some type of an object that falls into the general parameters of the set "cigarette". I have to make certain additional assumption that may, or may not be warranted. For example, since you are American and living in the US, you are probably not smoking an Indian Beedi and I doubt you are smoking either Turkish cigarettes or Sobranies, so I will make an assumption that your cigarette is white (or a vaguely related colour). I have no idea if it has a filter, how long it may be (beyond a range guesstimate), or it is menthol or some other flavour of tobacco. I also have no idea of what additives may be in it.
So, you may have empirically experiences a "truth", but by the time you come to communicate it, much of the quality of that experience is either lost or incommunicable. And that's for something as simple as smoking a cigarette!
But, you know, cigarettes are really good examples to use. When we say that we "smoked a cigarette", we can communicate a representation of the truth of that experience in a satisficing manner; basically, it's good enough to work, even though the "truth" of the experience cannot be communicated in its fullness.
Gregory Bateson, one of my "heroes", had a definition of information that fits here: "information is difference that makes a difference" (A Sacred Unity, page 309; originally written for a lecture on October 28, 1979). NB: this is the exact quote; it is often misquoted as "information is a difference that makes a difference". So, whether or not your cigarette is white, filtered and menthol is, for our purposes, difference that doesn't make a difference, at least as far as both of our original purposes of communication were concerned. However, it we are talking about "truth" as in the "truth" of an experience, then those differences might make a difference. Can the absence of data make a difference?
Yup, and the very absence of data on your experience of smoking that cigarette may be relevant. For example, it might be part of your normal experience of smoking to burn your fingers towards the end of the cigarette, causing you exasperation and a flash of anger. If that is normal for you, it is a difference that makes no difference to you, but would to me since it isn't my "normal". Maybe you only smoke cigarettes when you are writing and, in your mind, part of the normal truth of smoking is conveying ideas in short, pithy sentences. Maybe you are one of those people who only smokes when you are drinking (hey, I've know a few).
Feeling like I'm leading you down some academic, fuzzy headed semantic game? In some ways, I am, but there is a distinct purpose to it, which comes directly out of the last part of your comment - "And Haiti is hopeless". Basically, you are judging Haiti based on what you consider to be "normal", establishing you scale or line with, I would guess, the US (or an idealization of it) at one end and your perceptions of Haiti at the other. Nothing surprising about that; the process, if not the content, seems to be hardwired into our brains. We just need to be aware that it is not an absolute "Truth", merely a situated "truth" that may or may not be shared by someone in a different position.
Remember that discussion of the problem of amoral familiarism and the state in the H&MP context in Carnifex? There are a couple of points I've raised that play directly into that. First, you have to work with what you have, not idealizations - I think you noted that that was one of Marx's faults (amongst many). So, constructing models, which is what H&MP is about, leads to the interesting problem of how can you incorporate situated truth into a system such that it supports the desired end goal (much in the same manner as allowing some degree of "free enterprise" [ not that we've ever had it! ] into a system uses our instinctual resource acquisitiveness - aka greed - to bolster a system).
Second, you have to have a symbol system - an ideology, religion, mental discipline or whatever - that encourages a balance between certainty ("situated truth") and uncertainty (a quest for absolute Truth). This, BTW, is a crucial falure in most modern, Western cultures.
Third, and finally, you (generic - I'm preaching right now) have to be able to step into other people's "minds", regardless of their culture or social position at least to the extent of being able to establish some form of commonality of interpretation of experience so that you can actually communicate with them (technically, it's called verstehen or empathic understanding).
One last point before I end this post. All to often inside academia, this third point is interpreted as you have to "feel their pain" and "stand with them against oppression". That is one possible result of attempting to establish verstehen, and some element of it is probably inevitable. That said, it is also a warm and fuzzy fantasy that too many of my colleagues have fallen in to since they fail to actually judge what they "understand"; the don't exercise "critical thinking" since they forget that the word "critical" comes from two Greek roots: "kriticos" (discerning judgement) and "kriterion" (standards). They apply what I consider to be a flawed judgement based on incorrect standards by assuming that understanding (verstehen) equates with agreement.
That is a round about way of saying that sometimes the only way to effectively establish communication with someone is to eliminate them from the conversation; a point well known by many of those same PC colleagues - they just use exclusionary hiring practices rather than bullets.
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