The first point is that cultures
have outlived a point where conformity to clear and simple ideas is
helpful. There might have been a time, probably somewhere before
Plato wrote The Republic, where relatively stable city states could do
well with universality over the flux around it. But now in our
culture clashing, hyper-saturated world not even parent and child share
simple commonality. A better response is to turn to the inherent
complexity of meaning first and foster commonalities within that are
specific and unencumbered with any old, lame, legitimizing schemes.
This approach doesn't leave us vulnerable as holding on desperately to our
various conceptual hopes which are all of a kind in being many scales of
magnitude simpler than the complexity of meaning around us. And the
claim is not against any simple claim itself or even that simple ideals
are not needed; it is only that each of our simple belief systems must
share a place with a recognition of the vast trans-human meaning
complexity in the environment. And living amidst acknowledged
complexity with our respective simplicities provides the only thorough
method to continue to meld and grow cultures.
Many of you will be aware of the
illogical problem of dualism in our philosophical heritage where mind and
matter supposedly form one universe from two disconnected substances.
If so you can imagine that not only theoretical benefits would follow from
finding ways to bridge this fundamental gap in our understanding.
Maybe it is premature to suggest that society philosophy does this, but
the recognition that knowledge grows a bond between subject and object,
two societies, into the formation of a new society would certainly speak
of a unity. That all knowledge is specific and connected to local
relevant parties also makes a strong suggestion that subject and object
are "doing something" with each other that is not through some mysterious
cosmic wormhole. If knowledge as growing alliances proves
acceptable, then it would seem to be a step to healing the dualistic gap.
Lastly the claim is that society
philosophy could have important effects in a number of fields.
Points 11 through 17 in this outline address various cultural fields and
how society philosophy could and probably would improve. Although
this point addresses the healthy effects of adapting a
different vision of knowledge, the arguments presented in this outline run
in both directions--the effects in communication, for example, highlight
the suppositions about knowledge.
Quotes
"The view we advocate here is
reflected by a growing body of research in cognitive science. In areas as
diverse as the theory of situated cognition (Suchman 1987), studies of
real-world-robotics (Beer 1989), dynamical approaches to child development
(Thelen and Smith 1994), and research on the cognitive properties of
collectives of agents (Hutchins 1995), cognition is often taken to be
continuous with processes in the environment." Clark, Andy & Chalmers,
David. "The Extended Mind." Analysis 58.1 January 1998. p. 10.
"In the Gestalt theory of perception this is known as the figure/ground
relationship. This theory asserts, in brief, that no figure is ever
perceived except in relation to a background....
"Man aspires to govern nature, but the more one studies ecology, the more
absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism, or of an
organism/environment field, as governing or ruling others. Once upon a
time the mouth, the hands, and the feet said to each other, 'We do all
this work gathering food and chewing it up, but that lazy fellow, the
stomach, does nothing. It's high time he did some work too, so let's go on
strike!' Whereupon they went many days without working, but soon found
themselves feeling weaker and weaker until at last each of them realized
that the stomach was their stomach, and that they would have to go back to
work to remain alive. But even in physiological textbooks, we speak of the
brain, or the nervous system, as 'governing' the heart or the digestive
tract, smuggling bad politics into science, as if the heart belonged to
the brain rather than the brain to the heart or the stomach. Yet it is as
true, or false, to say that the brain 'feeds itself' through the stomach
as that the stomach 'evolves' a brain at its upper entrance to get more
food.
"As soon as one sees that separate things are fictions, it becomes obvious
that nonexistent things cannot 'perform' actions....
"Our whole knowledge of the world is, in one sense, self-knowledge. For
knowing is a translation of external events into bodily processes, and
especially into states of the nervous system and the brain: we know the
world in terms of the body, and in accordance with its structure."
Watts, Alan. The Book. Collier. 1966. pp. 82, 86-7, 92.
Examples
Statement of Point
The usefulness of reality as a
society of societies results from: 1) its reversing the
simplicity priority of Western-derived philosophical
traditions to acknowledge the initial condition of multiplicity as well as
to acknowledge the accomplishment of culture to extract simplicity; 2) its
bridging mind-matter dualism by positing subjects and objects as
subject-object societies; and 3) its reconfiguring of many human
institutions such as communication, economics and psychology by valuating
indeterminate wholes rather than by endlessly chasing, arguing over and
getting lost in factors of determinacy.
Bibliography
Further
Considerations