[From Kent McClelland (920621)]
Rick Marken (920620)
Although I agree with and indeed applaud your sentiments favoring cooperation
over competition, I wonder whether you're making the choice sound a little
too simple. An interesting book by Michael Billig and associates
(Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking. London:
Sage, 1988) has convinced me that such things are not a matter of either/or,
at least not in our usual modes of thinking. Billig et al. trace the history
of Enlightenment thought and show how contradictory values are built into the
public discourse on such issues. Racists, for instance, will typically
preface their biased remarks with a disclaimer to the effect that they
themselves aren't prejudiced against blacks but you really can't get away
from the fact that . . . etc., etc. I have no doubt that Bush and Quayle
could come up with many heart-warming remarks about the value of community
and not see any contradiction at all between that sort of rhetoric and their
views on competition.
From an HPCT point of view, I think the question is how stable system
concepts can come to be constructed from an amalgamation of values or
principles that are often contradictory in practice. But maybe such mental
and moral flexibility is necessary for us to maintain the perception that the
world we observe is consistent with our preferred system concepts. As I
believe Rick pointed out in the discussion of values on the net a few weeks
ago, a control system that was stuck with a single reference signal for a
principle like honesty (or cooperation!) would be unable to vary its outputs
to maintain control of perceptions of the next higher level, just like an
arbitrary restriction to a single setting for arm position would cripple your
physical control of bodily movements.
Kent
PS to Rick: You asked sometime recently for confirmations on whether people
had received copies of your revised Elephant paper. I got it. Thanks.
Sorry I didn't confirm at the time.
Kent McClelland Office: 515-269-3134
Assoc. Prof. of Sociology Home: 515-236-7002
Grinnell College Bitnet: mcclel@grin1
Grinnell, IA 50112-0810 Internet: mcclel@ac.grin.edu