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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3300 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm going through Dewey's The Public and its Problems. Still on McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary. Thoughts below.

In The Public and its Problems, Dewey argues that government is the outgrowth of people observing each other and noticing the consequences of their actions. Officials arise when people try to indirectly control consequences of behaviour which go beyond the immediate people involved. This is in contrast to "original impulses" claimed to be found in people, like some mystic force which drives us towards an ideal form of government. There's something about this book which makes one pause.

Even yet, however, toleration in matters of judgment and belief is largely a negative matter. We agree to leave one another alone (within limits) more from recognition of evil consequences which have resulted from the opposite course rather than from any profound belief in its positive social beneficence. As long as the latter consequence is not widely perceived, the so-called natural right to private judgment will remain a somewhat precarious rationalization of the moderate amount of toleration which has come into being. Such phenomena as the Ku Klux and legislative activity to regulate science show that the belief in liberty of thought is still superficial.

Now, when I read Kant saying Sapere aude! I wonder how his words might seem if viewed in Dewey's framework. I'm not sure that the world needs more disillusionment, but a more realistic appreciation of principles, or rather the origin of arguments which seem principled, might do us some good in evaluating those who argue that they had no choice but to use heavy-handed means to control people. One must become familiar with his tools if he is to use them effectively. And perhaps the people who we hate are sometimes not so different in all their thought processes from the people who we revere.

The Master and his Emissary continues. In McGilchrist's framework, the left hemisphere is more explicit, the right more implicit, and this sometimes manifests in the terms "verbal" and "non-verbal." However, these words themselves seem inadequate, because metaphor, which is ultimately verbal, is in his account the right hemisphere's domain. McGilchrist might say (I can't remember if he did) that our thinking in these terms is itself a left-brain phenomena. In other words, our very idea of "non-verbal" interaction might be subtly misleading us from something profound.

Being myself, I naturally try to shortcut the investigation of this profundity, and have begun to wonder if the internet needs a passive-aggressive quip system. Imagine a smaller italics label on posts, something like a flair on the bottom, one which says EdenicFaithful did not find it necessary to respond to this commenter.

Do we need more room to praise or display aggression in less direct means? We normally think of this in terms of "body language," but this too might be missing the mark.

Of course my first suggestion seems likely to pour gasoline on the fire, but maybe there's a recognizable format which would allow more implicit expression using the mediums available to the internet, including text. Likes and dislikes are, after all, black-and-white, which is in McGilchrist's account a left hemisphere phenomena. Something obvious may be eluding us.

I've been thinking of Dewey's point as The Riddle of the Flute Children. Its applies quite generally. Cutting and pasting the riddle:

Amartya Sen starts his book The Idea of Justice with a parable about three children and a flute. Who gets the flute? The child who can play it? The child who made it? The child who has nothing else?

The response that gets to the heart of the matter is

Kill the person who asked the question. Once the idea of redistributing flutes takes hold, ambitious men will fight to be Lord High Distributor of Flutes. The fighting will escalate. The flute will be broken and the child who made it will die.

Asking who deserves the flute is self-defeating because the question sets off violence that leaves us without a flute.

Turning aside from political philosophy and turning back to the reading of old books, I notice that Dewey has priority. He made my point in 1927, 96 years before me. But his point and his once popular book have faded and I was unaware of them.

It seems obvious to me that my violent and strident phrasing of the Riddle of the Flute Children is a mistake. The idea gets masked by peoples reaction against the over-the-top expression. I would do better to phrase it in a mild and temperate way. Perhaps

recognition of evil consequences which have resulted from the opposite course

Whoops! That doesn't work either. Only a dark wizard of Ravenclaw would pick up on the profundity of the point being made. How is one supposed to expressive this difficult idea?

🙄 🤓.

EdenicFaithful laughs without comment.

Oh god. I parsed that as one of Pillars of Eternity II's companion reactions.

If you haven't played the game, they're short lines which pop up when a companion has strong opinions about your dialogue choices. Each of them has a variety of things they care about, and there's some randomness, so it does a good bit to liven up the interactions. Most of them are sensible. Others are hilarious.

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