[From Chad Green (2011.09.28.1413 EDT)]
Bill, well said overall. I found the following statement most salient: "There can be no contradictions or paradoxes."
What if we replaced the word "no" with "only"? This change would reflect what I observe on a daily basis: that people in general have been conditioned to believe that information (i.e., the certainties of their creations) drives their engagement with the world rather than the other way around. Put another way, mankind has become "subdued by his instruments" as Emerson observed over 150 years ago (The American Scholar, 1837).
Another statement of yours also caught my attention: "There's no question of which statements are 'correct' -- there's only cause and effect."
I do not think in terms of correctness at all. Rather, I think in accordance with this incomplete phrase: "I can connect....
Chad
Chad Green, PMP
Program Analyst
Loudoun County Public Schools
21000 Education Court
Ashburn, VA 20148
Voice: 571-252-1486
Fax: 571-252-1633
Bill Powers <powers_w@FRONTIER.NET> 9/28/2011 8:55 AM >>>
[From Bill Powers (2011.09.28.0530 MDT)]
Martin Lewitt 2011 Sep 28 0003 MDT
Just dipping briefly into this conversation ...
ML: Religious upbringing and military training, both seem successful
at getting a large amount of buy-in or internalization of the ethics
that they inculcate. Markets may also train by rewarding quality,
a trustworthy reputation and customer service. Perhaps the ethics
isn't truly internalized and people are just controlling, but I
doubt that because humans are also are capable of detecting and
punishing deception and appreciating sincerity and honesty.
There are people that turn in found money, they may be just
controlling for their ethics, but I doubt they were just born
different. I suspect their ethics came from training, perhaps the
example of mentors they admire or the expectation of parents and not
necessarily formal training.
BP: I wonder to what extent this system concept is behind many of the
disagreements between conservative and liberals, or "scientific"
cause-effect psychologists and PCTers. The subject is the principle
of determinism: is anything a human being does the result of anything
but external influences and genetic makeup? Training, rewards (and
presumably punishments), mentoring, examples, markets, upbringing --
stimuli from outside. Throw in God's Will and Evolution. An inherited
capacity, or God-given capacity, to know right from wrong.
In short, is there any actual person in this meat-and-bone machine?
Or is that question I just asked the inevitable outcome of all the
forces, natural and supernatural, that have acted on me in my past
however far back you choose to trace the past?
If the latter is the case, then nothing we're saying matters. We're
just saying these things because our inherited nature made or is
making us say them, or perhaps market forces have given saying these
things more influence than saying other things has done, or something
reinforced the behaviors that produce these audible or visible words.
If you say the environment determines my behavior, that is not
because the environment actually determines my behavior, but because
environmental forces add up to your saying that. Is that a
self-contradiction? An irrelevant question. There can be no
contradictions or paradoxes. Other forces might have made you or me
vocalize or type differently. "It is what it is." There's no question
of which statements are "correct" -- there's only cause and effect.
Any statement is as "good" as another. Whatever we say, God knew and
intended that we say it, for reasons beyond our comprehension. And I
just said all that because it was inevitable that I say it. Am I
right or wrong? And what made me ask that?
If there is no Actor, no Observer, nothing capable of intending or
preferring or wishing, then this is all just empty neuromotor
activity, self-negating and purposeless. It just happens, and then
stops happening. So what?
···
===========================================================================
In traveling the path that led to PCT I have found ways to think
about myself that lead me to comprehend that inside me is an Observer
and Actor, and that it is I. The real I. The comprehension is one of
the things my brain does, while I observe it happening. I have taught
my brain how to think about the existence of this Observer, how to
construct a model that has the properties necessary to embody
intention and purpose. My "teaching" is, of course, a metaphor, one
of Bruce Gregory's "stories", that attempts to capture the
relationship between the Observer and the Observed in terms
comprehensible by a brain, or at least by this brain through which I
interact with everything else. I do this partly just for the
satisfaction of seeing understanding grow inside of me, and partly
because I sense that there are others like me who are also
experiencing this situation and looking for ways to comprehend it and
model it. Only rarely do I meet anyone who seems to lack this
Observer-thingamajig.
Even those who seem to lack it, I am pretty sure now, have it or are
it. But for their own highly-varied reasons they prefer not to take
the responsibility for controlling their experiences in the way they
do. In some cases, they do things that both they and other people
might feel ashamed to do. But they can avoid the shame by finding
external reasons for their own deeds -- market forces, for example,
or God's Will, or Logic, or Evolution, or a history of
reinforcements, or persecution by others. If my behavior is simply a
result of laws of nature like self-preservation, or the effect of
vast, mysterious forces beyond my control, or the only logical
behavior, how can I be blamed for anything that circumstances force
me to do? The bully says "I can't be blamed for beating you up -- if
I didn't, you'd just go on irritating me."
I could go on but I think the point has been sufficiently elaborated.
Best,
Bill P.