In response to Barney McLelland\’s article \”Old News You Can Use: the denaturing of history\”
As part of my course of study, and as a personal interest, I am doing research on the problems of history and public memory. I agree with the arguments of Mr. McLelland\’s article. But I find the choice of words in the Santayana quote at the end a bit ill-advised: \”when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual\”, \”the condition of…barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience\” – it\’s one thing to talk about a childish or undeveloped state, but to use the words \”savages\” and \”barbarians\” like this, as if entire cultures are made up of children, or people of even sub-animal intelligence (animals certainly learn from experience) is dangerous because it starts to sound like the old Enlightenment-era Heroic Model of History and the Superiority of Western Civilization, etc. Somehow I don\’t think that\’s the position that Mr. McLelland is trying to defend.
Pre-literate cultures, for example, have in the past been called \”savage\”, as if the lack of writing meant that people had no memory at all. The problem in the United States now isn\’t that literacy is simply being put aside in favor of a return to orality – that wouldn\’t be nearly so much of a problem. The real problem is that even oral tradition is being eroded – partly by electronic media, but even more so by the commercial motives behind its current uses, as Mr. McLelland\’s article convincingly shows.
Charles Stanford, archival student, University of Pittsburgh
Bader\’s \’Sleep of Reason\’ raised a smile, albeit a weary one. I suggest using mathematical, or a leaast, arithmetic analogies to deliver the case for humanism.
For example, the Left has traditionally tended to downplay/exclude sex differences on the grounds that they promote a culture of inequality, focussing instead on the notion of \’gender\’ as a socio-politico-ultural \’construction.\’
But recognition of differences promotes no such thing. It is how a culture treats of them that does. There ARE basic anato-biological differences, and it is DENIAL of them that promotes inequities. I have seen arguments justifying porn on the grounds that woman are paid as much if not more than men, while ignoring the fact that producers and users are largely, if not exclusively men. (And female users and producers tend to have more money – or come from backgrounds that do – than the female performers.) It denies also the fact that the experience of being impregnated is very different, and carries greater bio-anatomical risks.
And all of this ignores its global relationship to trafficking and sexual violence.
If differences were placed on the Left agenda it might begin to find its bearings. The body is an objective material fact and sex differences are a logical extension of that fact. In the equation \’1+4=2+3\’ the parts on either side are different, but they sum up to an equal VALUE. It is the notion of \’value\’ that the Left-humanist argument must define more clearly, and it will only do so only by ackowledging basic, inalienable, bio-anatomical truths.
Bader\’s \’Sleep of Reason\’ raised a smile, albeit a weary one. I suggest using mathematical, or a leaast, arithmetic analogies to deliver the case for humanism.
For example, the Left has traditionally tended to downplay/exclude sex differences on the grounds that they promote a culture of inequality, focussing instead on the notion of \’gender\’ as a socio-politico-ultural \’construction.\’
But recognition of differences promotes no such thing. It is how a culture treats of them that does. There ARE basic anato-biological differences, and it is DENIAL of them that promotes inequities. I have seen arguments justifying porn on the grounds that woman are paid as much if not more than men, while ignoring the fact that producers and users are largely, if not exclusively men. (And female users and producers tend to have more money – or come from backgrounds that do – than the female performers.) It denies also the fact that the experience of being impregnated is very different, and carries greater bio-anatomical risks.
And all of this ignores its global relationship to trafficking and sexual violence.
PaulP, you won\’t find what you\’re looking for, sadly. The key problem is the very notion of personality itself.
Some researchers have given up on even entertaining the concept, looking instead to the notion of character. The former is distinguished from personality as a function of values, while the latter is considered a function of desires and current energies. The former arguably results in a more stable conceptualisation than the latter. Some like Hollander, have bypassed definition and elected to simply describe, using models.
Language does not merely describe, it interprets. Hardly news. But the implications for personality theory appear to have been missed.
Central to the debate is what distingushes emotions from feelings. Words like \’anger\’ and \’aggression\’ are used interchangably by lazy minds. The former is an emotion – \’put into motion \’ by a cause,by a reason. The latter is separable from thought and can be provoked by anything at all. It is displaced anger, the \’feeling\’ of anger shorn of its original \’reason\’.
Examples of such mistaken synonyms are multiple. (I\’m assuming English as a first language here.)
In addition, since behaviour is a dynamic between nature and nurture, it is fundamentally protean. Therefore the notion of personality,as a phenomenon distinct from context -familial/environmental and cultural – and separable from condition – mental/physical health – is impractical, to say the least.
It is the observer that infers personality traits in the subject. But only the subject knows his/her own probabilites, based on precedent and past experience. And, within the framework of values, cultural norms, prohibition and taboo, only the subject can decide what possibilities to entertain.
You might consider a re-conceptualising of personality itself as the more appropriate goal for psychology.
Bourges-Waldegg\’s scepticism about extraterrestrial intelligence (\”A Curious Accident in Space-Time\”) is well-placed.
There is, however, another explanation for the apparent rarity of civilised life on Earth, other than the evolutionary lottery, and that is that _Homo sapiens_ has killed off, or is killing off, the other contenders.
Civilisation is a relatively recent phenomenon in our history, a result of mostly cultural rather than biological evolution. Competition between sibling species, and other organisms sharing the same ecological niche, can be fierce, and probably contributed to the extinction of other _Homo_ species, not to mention other intelligent animals from whose ranks civilised life might have arisen given enough time. Given the way human civilisations have treated each other in the past, it would be surprising if civilisations of different species could co-exist peacefully for any length of time. It seems more likely that the first species to \”civilise\” on any planet would ensure that it remained the only one — for as long as it lasted at any rate.
So while you can certainly believe that humans are unique, it is just that: a belief, just like a belief in a Star Trek universe teeming with bipeds. We simply don\’t know how abundant intelligent life is, and won\’t know until we sample many other planets with life. Which leaves plenty of time for speculation…
Your post is very thought provoking. It is at a higher level than I was looking at. What I\’d settle for is a heuristic that allows me to have some idea of what is going on in people\’s heads so as to be able to predict behaviour and reactions.
A quibble: \”It is the observer that infers personality traits in the subject. But only the subject knows his/her own probabilites, based on precedent and past experience. And, within the framework of values, cultural norms, prohibition and taboo, only the subject can decide what possibilities to entertain.\”
I take your point that what a person does is partly culturally determined, but I would disagree about the subject knowing \”his/her own probabilites\”. This surely cannot be true of people suffering from e.g. schizophrenia. The picture you paint seems to suggest that a person is always in control of him/herself.
Here\’s a suggestion. If your interest in personality theory is prompted by a desire to predict, then you might be better off studying motivation.
This is a wide-ranging area of psychology, covering basic drives and needs as well as higher-order cognitive processes like attitudes, and psycho-social processes like belief. It is also fascinating.
It seems that like Richard Dawkins, you believe that human behaviour is inherently predictable. He has written that it should be one day possible to construct a matrix that will allow for accurate prediction, based on the analysis of variance between known/observed behaviours. (AOV is a statistical tool, widely used to investigate psychological phenomena involving multiple variables. But you may already know this.)
You\’re in good company,then. But I happen to believe you are both wrong. Behaviour is virtually impossible to predict on an individual basis. That is psychology\’s greatest problem. As well as its central thesis. You see, we can\’t read minds. (At least I can\’t.)
Here\’s a suggestion. If your interest in personality theory is prompted by a desire to predict, then you might be better off studying motivation.
This is a wide-ranging area of psychology, covering basic drives and needs as well as higher-order cognitive processes like attitudes, and psycho-social processes like belief. It is also fascinating.
It seems that like Richard Dawkins, you believe that human behaviour is inherently predictable. He has written that it should be one day possible to construct a matrix that will allow for accurate prediction, based on the analysis of variance between known/observed behaviours. (AOV is a statistical tool, widely used to investigate psychological phenomena involving multiple variables. But you may already know this.)
You\’re in good company,then. But I happen to believe you are both wrong. Behaviour is virtually impossible to predict on an individual basis. That is psychology\’s greatest problem. As well as its central thesis. You see, we can\’t read minds. (At least I can\’t.)
\”We seem to be convinced that the control we exert over nature is destroying it. However, we don’t realize that protecting or reconstructing it is another way of exerting that power. Human beings have always been controlling their environment. Finding increasingly sophisticated ways to do so has been the key to our survival and success.\”
Yes, yes, but the state of \’nature\’ as it is up to now, is the state that has spawned our existence, and controlling small, and therefore isolated from far reaching effect, areas of nature is far different from upseting the apparently precarious balance the gives rise to conditions favourable for our survival.
This thinking that we have always benefited from controlling nature is a gross generalization, and a logical fallacy. What worked in the past does not automatically hold true for all futures, and the situation and scope of control we wield now is not compareable to 99.99 percent of human history. The same rules do not apply, and it is becoming apparent that our survival depends on the preservation of a suitably diverse ecology and a limited amount of change.
Further more, there is an implicit assumption that mans creativity and invention knows no bounds and is up to task for any situation, yet we continue to be taken by surprise at the unpredicted consequences of our actions, including ever more threatening disease.
The only thing that is seemingly unbridled, is natures creativity, which is still poorly understood.
Nature is by default \’good\’ because we are a product of it, and rely upon for not just material survival, but psychological well being and sense of identity.
Any lack of value placed on nature, whether or not cosmologically it just is without innate value, is by extension a lack of value for the part of nature that is us.
In his article about banning the Muslim veil, Kamguian states that, \”The importance of rational thought, critical thinking, and the scientific method is enormous, and theocratic worldviews are harmful.\” But the cornerstone of Critical Thinking is to not simply dismiss other views as \”harmful\” whether they be theocratic or otherwise. It is to engage with others in order to discover what false assumptions we and others may have regarding our beliefs. This sounds like something Kamguian desperately needs to try.
I found this argument unconvincing. Psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic, not a science and it draws on a psychosexual theory of human behaviour that is predicated on bio-physiological phenomena that badly need updating. Late nineteenth century ideas of brain-function still appear to inform much of Freud\’s basic assumptions of personality development. As far as I can tell, it has not incorporated genetic knowledge into its basic paradigm. Nor has it dealt with new knowledge emerging from neuroscience about how the brain actually works. (Still largely unknown, despite advances.)
Psychosexual theory has historically been severely compromised by its failure to account for sex-differences. Or, more accurately, for its mistaken assumptions. When it comes up with conclusive cross-cuturally invariant principles, then, and only then, will |I buy it as a science.
Brilliant interview with rebecca Goldstein. Check also Kelly Ross\’s excellent critique of Roger Penrose\’s The Emperor\’s New Mind @friesan.com (Para.3) Deriving from Goedl, he proves that formal systems cannot be explained in syntactic terms alone. If not, then at they must have intrinsic \’meaning\’.
Nevermind those crazy old (and not so old) creationists. Has anyone considered the implications of mathematical logic for the notion of \’intelligent design\’?
In response to Barney McLelland\’s article \”Old News You Can Use: the denaturing of history\”
As part of my course of study, and as a personal interest, I am doing research on the problems of history and public memory. I agree with the arguments of Mr. McLelland\’s article. But I find the choice of words in the Santayana quote at the end a bit ill-advised: \”when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual\”, \”the condition of…barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience\” – it\’s one thing to talk about a childish or undeveloped state, but to use the words \”savages\” and \”barbarians\” like this, as if entire cultures are made up of children, or people of even sub-animal intelligence (animals certainly learn from experience) is dangerous because it starts to sound like the old Enlightenment-era Heroic Model of History and the Superiority of Western Civilization, etc. Somehow I don\’t think that\’s the position that Mr. McLelland is trying to defend.
Pre-literate cultures, for example, have in the past been called \”savage\”, as if the lack of writing meant that people had no memory at all. The problem in the United States now isn\’t that literacy is simply being put aside in favor of a return to orality – that wouldn\’t be nearly so much of a problem. The real problem is that even oral tradition is being eroded – partly by electronic media, but even more so by the commercial motives behind its current uses, as Mr. McLelland\’s article convincingly shows.
Charles Stanford, archival student, University of Pittsburgh
Bader\’s \’Sleep of Reason\’ raised a smile, albeit a weary one. I suggest using mathematical, or a leaast, arithmetic analogies to deliver the case for humanism.
For example, the Left has traditionally tended to downplay/exclude sex differences on the grounds that they promote a culture of inequality, focussing instead on the notion of \’gender\’ as a socio-politico-ultural \’construction.\’
But recognition of differences promotes no such thing. It is how a culture treats of them that does. There ARE basic anato-biological differences, and it is DENIAL of them that promotes inequities. I have seen arguments justifying porn on the grounds that woman are paid as much if not more than men, while ignoring the fact that producers and users are largely, if not exclusively men. (And female users and producers tend to have more money – or come from backgrounds that do – than the female performers.) It denies also the fact that the experience of being impregnated is very different, and carries greater bio-anatomical risks.
And all of this ignores its global relationship to trafficking and sexual violence.
If differences were placed on the Left agenda it might begin to find its bearings. The body is an objective material fact and sex differences are a logical extension of that fact. In the equation \’1+4=2+3\’ the parts on either side are different, but they sum up to an equal VALUE. It is the notion of \’value\’ that the Left-humanist argument must define more clearly, and it will only do so only by ackowledging basic, inalienable, bio-anatomical truths.
Bader\’s \’Sleep of Reason\’ raised a smile, albeit a weary one. I suggest using mathematical, or a leaast, arithmetic analogies to deliver the case for humanism.
For example, the Left has traditionally tended to downplay/exclude sex differences on the grounds that they promote a culture of inequality, focussing instead on the notion of \’gender\’ as a socio-politico-ultural \’construction.\’
But recognition of differences promotes no such thing. It is how a culture treats of them that does. There ARE basic anato-biological differences, and it is DENIAL of them that promotes inequities. I have seen arguments justifying porn on the grounds that woman are paid as much if not more than men, while ignoring the fact that producers and users are largely, if not exclusively men. (And female users and producers tend to have more money – or come from backgrounds that do – than the female performers.) It denies also the fact that the experience of being impregnated is very different, and carries greater bio-anatomical risks.
And all of this ignores its global relationship to trafficking and sexual violence.
PaulP, you won\’t find what you\’re looking for, sadly. The key problem is the very notion of personality itself.
Some researchers have given up on even entertaining the concept, looking instead to the notion of character. The former is distinguished from personality as a function of values, while the latter is considered a function of desires and current energies. The former arguably results in a more stable conceptualisation than the latter. Some like Hollander, have bypassed definition and elected to simply describe, using models.
Language does not merely describe, it interprets. Hardly news. But the implications for personality theory appear to have been missed.
Central to the debate is what distingushes emotions from feelings. Words like \’anger\’ and \’aggression\’ are used interchangably by lazy minds. The former is an emotion – \’put into motion \’ by a cause,by a reason. The latter is separable from thought and can be provoked by anything at all. It is displaced anger, the \’feeling\’ of anger shorn of its original \’reason\’.
Examples of such mistaken synonyms are multiple. (I\’m assuming English as a first language here.)
In addition, since behaviour is a dynamic between nature and nurture, it is fundamentally protean. Therefore the notion of personality,as a phenomenon distinct from context -familial/environmental and cultural – and separable from condition – mental/physical health – is impractical, to say the least.
It is the observer that infers personality traits in the subject. But only the subject knows his/her own probabilites, based on precedent and past experience. And, within the framework of values, cultural norms, prohibition and taboo, only the subject can decide what possibilities to entertain.
You might consider a re-conceptualising of personality itself as the more appropriate goal for psychology.
Bourges-Waldegg\’s scepticism about extraterrestrial intelligence (\”A Curious Accident in Space-Time\”) is well-placed.
There is, however, another explanation for the apparent rarity of civilised life on Earth, other than the evolutionary lottery, and that is that _Homo sapiens_ has killed off, or is killing off, the other contenders.
Civilisation is a relatively recent phenomenon in our history, a result of mostly cultural rather than biological evolution. Competition between sibling species, and other organisms sharing the same ecological niche, can be fierce, and probably contributed to the extinction of other _Homo_ species, not to mention other intelligent animals from whose ranks civilised life might have arisen given enough time. Given the way human civilisations have treated each other in the past, it would be surprising if civilisations of different species could co-exist peacefully for any length of time. It seems more likely that the first species to \”civilise\” on any planet would ensure that it remained the only one — for as long as it lasted at any rate.
So while you can certainly believe that humans are unique, it is just that: a belief, just like a belief in a Star Trek universe teeming with bipeds. We simply don\’t know how abundant intelligent life is, and won\’t know until we sample many other planets with life. Which leaves plenty of time for speculation…
Dear Dee of the sweet surname:
Your post is very thought provoking. It is at a higher level than I was looking at. What I\’d settle for is a heuristic that allows me to have some idea of what is going on in people\’s heads so as to be able to predict behaviour and reactions.
A quibble: \”It is the observer that infers personality traits in the subject. But only the subject knows his/her own probabilites, based on precedent and past experience. And, within the framework of values, cultural norms, prohibition and taboo, only the subject can decide what possibilities to entertain.\”
I take your point that what a person does is partly culturally determined, but I would disagree about the subject knowing \”his/her own probabilites\”. This surely cannot be true of people suffering from e.g. schizophrenia. The picture you paint seems to suggest that a person is always in control of him/herself.
BTW: Carbh as tu?
PaulP
Sorry I haven\’t been much help.
Here\’s a suggestion. If your interest in personality theory is prompted by a desire to predict, then you might be better off studying motivation.
This is a wide-ranging area of psychology, covering basic drives and needs as well as higher-order cognitive processes like attitudes, and psycho-social processes like belief. It is also fascinating.
It seems that like Richard Dawkins, you believe that human behaviour is inherently predictable. He has written that it should be one day possible to construct a matrix that will allow for accurate prediction, based on the analysis of variance between known/observed behaviours. (AOV is a statistical tool, widely used to investigate psychological phenomena involving multiple variables. But you may already know this.)
You\’re in good company,then. But I happen to believe you are both wrong. Behaviour is virtually impossible to predict on an individual basis. That is psychology\’s greatest problem. As well as its central thesis. You see, we can\’t read minds. (At least I can\’t.)
Me, I happen to relish the fact.
PS. Is as Eire me, ta fhios agat go maith!
Slan.
Me, I happen
PaulP
Sorry I haven\’t been much help.
Here\’s a suggestion. If your interest in personality theory is prompted by a desire to predict, then you might be better off studying motivation.
This is a wide-ranging area of psychology, covering basic drives and needs as well as higher-order cognitive processes like attitudes, and psycho-social processes like belief. It is also fascinating.
It seems that like Richard Dawkins, you believe that human behaviour is inherently predictable. He has written that it should be one day possible to construct a matrix that will allow for accurate prediction, based on the analysis of variance between known/observed behaviours. (AOV is a statistical tool, widely used to investigate psychological phenomena involving multiple variables. But you may already know this.)
You\’re in good company,then. But I happen to believe you are both wrong. Behaviour is virtually impossible to predict on an individual basis. That is psychology\’s greatest problem. As well as its central thesis. You see, we can\’t read minds. (At least I can\’t.)
Me, I happen to relish the fact.
PS. Is as Eire me, ta fhios agat go maith!
Slan.
Me, I happen
\”We seem to be convinced that the control we exert over nature is destroying it. However, we don’t realize that protecting or reconstructing it is another way of exerting that power. Human beings have always been controlling their environment. Finding increasingly sophisticated ways to do so has been the key to our survival and success.\”
Yes, yes, but the state of \’nature\’ as it is up to now, is the state that has spawned our existence, and controlling small, and therefore isolated from far reaching effect, areas of nature is far different from upseting the apparently precarious balance the gives rise to conditions favourable for our survival.
This thinking that we have always benefited from controlling nature is a gross generalization, and a logical fallacy. What worked in the past does not automatically hold true for all futures, and the situation and scope of control we wield now is not compareable to 99.99 percent of human history. The same rules do not apply, and it is becoming apparent that our survival depends on the preservation of a suitably diverse ecology and a limited amount of change.
Further more, there is an implicit assumption that mans creativity and invention knows no bounds and is up to task for any situation, yet we continue to be taken by surprise at the unpredicted consequences of our actions, including ever more threatening disease.
The only thing that is seemingly unbridled, is natures creativity, which is still poorly understood.
Nature is by default \’good\’ because we are a product of it, and rely upon for not just material survival, but psychological well being and sense of identity.
Any lack of value placed on nature, whether or not cosmologically it just is without innate value, is by extension a lack of value for the part of nature that is us.
In his article about banning the Muslim veil, Kamguian states that, \”The importance of rational thought, critical thinking, and the scientific method is enormous, and theocratic worldviews are harmful.\” But the cornerstone of Critical Thinking is to not simply dismiss other views as \”harmful\” whether they be theocratic or otherwise. It is to engage with others in order to discover what false assumptions we and others may have regarding our beliefs. This sounds like something Kamguian desperately needs to try.
Norman Holland: Psychoanalysis as Science
I found this argument unconvincing. Psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic, not a science and it draws on a psychosexual theory of human behaviour that is predicated on bio-physiological phenomena that badly need updating. Late nineteenth century ideas of brain-function still appear to inform much of Freud\’s basic assumptions of personality development. As far as I can tell, it has not incorporated genetic knowledge into its basic paradigm. Nor has it dealt with new knowledge emerging from neuroscience about how the brain actually works. (Still largely unknown, despite advances.)
Psychosexual theory has historically been severely compromised by its failure to account for sex-differences. Or, more accurately, for its mistaken assumptions. When it comes up with conclusive cross-cuturally invariant principles, then, and only then, will |I buy it as a science.
Brilliant interview with rebecca Goldstein. Check also Kelly Ross\’s excellent critique of Roger Penrose\’s The Emperor\’s New Mind @friesan.com (Para.3) Deriving from Goedl, he proves that formal systems cannot be explained in syntactic terms alone. If not, then at they must have intrinsic \’meaning\’.
Nevermind those crazy old (and not so old) creationists. Has anyone considered the implications of mathematical logic for the notion of \’intelligent design\’?