Philosophy exercise: call for critiques
Jun. 5th, 2005 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grysarSo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
regyt once told me that philosphy was a meta area of study, that it explored and discovered caves/topics like politics, biology, economics, and moved on while those less meta subjects explored their own cave in depth. I'm not doing full justice to the eloquence of the metaphor, but I think that gets the point across.
In that case I believe this is an exercise in philosophy. I propose, against all comers, an analytic system for understanding effective human action. Specifically for describing codes, honor, moral systems, political systems, economic systems, religions, and the like. I do not seek to describe the actions of animals, unthinking objects, computers, or any other entity that doesn't meet my human-centric definition of self-consciousness.
Namely:
All these systems humans follow hold two opposing but also reinforces forces: power and principles.
Power is both creative and destructive. It gives us drive and is tested in the forge that is reality. Thus it changes as the world changes, for the power of a cave man is not the power of a modern human. It can be internal: sharpness of mind, force of will or strength of body. It can be external: weapons, money, technology, God or gods. It can even be a fundamental rejection of the world and a realization of some truer plane.
Principles are rules, conscious or unconscious. They are restrictions on the means we can employ. They are not goals in and of themselves, except that some goals deny us certain means or demand we use others. They are law, the golden rule, cultural mandates, and the like.
Both of these aspects are necessary. Moreover in an effective system they both must be balanced. Power needs the channel of principle or it will become corrupted: see absolute power or hedonism. Principles alone will lack the ability to achieve their goals or they will stagnate without the renewal of power.
As you get into complex economic or political systems the model can be applied, but complex systems will often have multiple sub-systems that need to check and mutually reinforce one another.
So here are my contentions:
So, I need a quick nap and I'm also smug, so I'll skip the examples for now. I invite anyone to challenge any of my contentions or any other contentions they think are implied. And if you provide me a system, I'll give my breakdown.
Addendum due to Ard's threat of violence. (Note, there's lots of variety, I'll just go with a common one I think of.)
regyt once told me that philosphy was a meta area of study, that it explored and discovered caves/topics like politics, biology, economics, and moved on while those less meta subjects explored their own cave in depth. I'm not doing full justice to the eloquence of the metaphor, but I think that gets the point across.In that case I believe this is an exercise in philosophy. I propose, against all comers, an analytic system for understanding effective human action. Specifically for describing codes, honor, moral systems, political systems, economic systems, religions, and the like. I do not seek to describe the actions of animals, unthinking objects, computers, or any other entity that doesn't meet my human-centric definition of self-consciousness.
Namely:
All these systems humans follow hold two opposing but also reinforces forces: power and principles.
Power is both creative and destructive. It gives us drive and is tested in the forge that is reality. Thus it changes as the world changes, for the power of a cave man is not the power of a modern human. It can be internal: sharpness of mind, force of will or strength of body. It can be external: weapons, money, technology, God or gods. It can even be a fundamental rejection of the world and a realization of some truer plane.
Principles are rules, conscious or unconscious. They are restrictions on the means we can employ. They are not goals in and of themselves, except that some goals deny us certain means or demand we use others. They are law, the golden rule, cultural mandates, and the like.
Both of these aspects are necessary. Moreover in an effective system they both must be balanced. Power needs the channel of principle or it will become corrupted: see absolute power or hedonism. Principles alone will lack the ability to achieve their goals or they will stagnate without the renewal of power.
As you get into complex economic or political systems the model can be applied, but complex systems will often have multiple sub-systems that need to check and mutually reinforce one another.
So here are my contentions:
- This model is quite helpful in understanding what makes an effective system.
- This model can be applied to any of the systems I've described above.
- This model can not be simplified to contain only a single force and it need not be expanded to contain three or more.
- This model is a better window for understanding these systems than other dichotomies: individual/society; order/chaos; good/evil; good/bad; rationality/emotion.
- Any effective system must have both of these aspects and they both must be strong forces in and of themselves.
So, I need a quick nap and I'm also smug, so I'll skip the examples for now. I invite anyone to challenge any of my contentions or any other contentions they think are implied. And if you provide me a system, I'll give my breakdown.
Addendum due to Ard's threat of violence. (Note, there's lots of variety, I'll just go with a common one I think of.)
| System | Power | Principles |
| Christianity (old school) | God | Strict code of sacrifice and golden rule. |
| Buddhism | Enlightenment/Seeing through illusion of reality | Rejecting atachment. |
| Capitalism | Self-interest; hard work; competition; entrepeneurship | Basic market rules: no violence, no monopolies, etc. |
| Theoretical communism | Hard work; power in the hand of the workers; collective effort | Work all you can; don't take more than you need. |
| Totalitarianism | Centralized power without restrictions; government can guide colleective energy of entire society; shaping of individuals to best serve countries need | Unquestioning devotion to leader; leader servers interest of people |
| Democracy | Power is in people's hand | Must accept results of elections; follow election rules; majority must try to serve interests of all |
| Utilitarianism | All means are available when appropriate | Means/ends together must server greater good |
| Natural law | Core desires and needs of humanity | Don't infringe on other's core needs in most cases |
| Kantian | Moral strength; positive example influences others | Don't do anything that you aren't willing to have someone else do |
| Nihilism | Rejection of no-win world | Don't give a shit. |
Starting Over, Part Two.
Date: 2005-06-07 10:08 pm (UTC)(Continued from part one)
An analytically useful classification system may not be elegant (though obviously can't be totally inelegant, or it will no longer classify) but it can yield results. You can draw a conclusion about an item based on its group membership but not invoking the criteria for membership. Similarly, you can suggest relationships between items based on their respective group memberships.
An example of an analytically useful but not really elegant classification system would be, to parallel the one I gave earlier, the "personality type" list of BESM characters that's also been produced. Whether characters belong in one group or another can be somewhat murky, so it is inelegant. But it is analytically useful, in that one can make conclusions about characters based on their group, or hypothesize relationships between characters based on their respective groups, and so on.
(Continued again)
Starting Over, Part Three
Date: 2005-06-07 10:17 pm (UTC)(Continued from part two.)
At this point, I think you've conceded that your terminology and definitions are in a state of disarray to the point where you cannot claim this system is elegant for classification. This can be improved, of course.
Where I think we disagree a bit more is on whether this has the other form of merit, analytical use. My attitude is: show me. I suggest that you haven't done so. You hint that analytical use is forthcoming, but you seem to not have quite worked it out yourself. You allude to not having quite worked out the question you are trying to answer. Once you've worked out the questions this is meant to answer, and moreover proved that it does, its analytic use will have been demonstrated.
It is worth noting at this juncture that not all analytic uses are equal. Almost all classification systems have some limited analytic use. A truly useful and interesting classification system has either got many such uses or else uses of extreme importance and insight.
With some work, this could either have moderate elegance and/or moderate analytical use. I don't think it will ever be the new all-encompassing explanation for human affairs, which would require it to be both extremely elegant and unequaled in analytic value.
Whew. Okay, done.
Nicolas
Addendum to Starting Over
Date: 2005-06-07 10:29 pm (UTC)I should note a few final things. In order to prove that a categorization system is analystically useful, it must be possible to form an analysis that reduces items to their group membership and/or interchanges them. Otherwise, one is presenting totally separate analyses with common terminology.
Again, this is something that I perceive as a likely problem for you. If each separate power/principles dynamic must be examined in its own context and separate conclusions drawn, the categorization system itself is not helpful to producing useful analyses.
Also, analyses can be considered useful even if they are not 100% correct and/or can be assumed to deal with probabilities rather than certainties.
Nicolas