Whereas in time ignorant can become knowing, — unenlightened
unenlightened :up: Yes, as I said, changes, even absent anyone to observe them, are news "at least potentially". — Janus
You did, but I think you are not quite right in a small but important way. The potentiality is in the observer, not the changes. — unenlightened
I noticed this, that seemed related to the topic. — unenlightened
I see the potentiality as being in both, and the actuality as being in the interaction. — Janus
What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticlsrn will then be possible.
My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect.
I warned some pages back that we would encounter emptiness, and indeed it is so. Mind is empty; it is nothing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again, no-things. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other. — Introduction
The "claw" in that quote may refer to a cooked crab's claw, which Bergson used as an object lesson for the difference between living matter and dead matter. He didn't use the term in this case, but I think the "pattern that connects" is what we now call Holism. :smile:My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect.
I warned some pages back that we would encounter emptiness, and indeed it is so. Mind is empty; it is nothing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again, no-things. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other. — Introduction — Janus
. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other. — Introduction
information about depth is created. In more formal language, the difference between the information provided by the one retina and that provided by the other is itself information of a diferf ent logical type. From this new sort of information, the seer adds an extra dimension to seeing.
In Figure 4, let A represent the class or set of components of the aggregate of information obtained from some first source (e.g. , the right eye) , and let B represent the class of components of the information ob tained from some second source (e.g. , the left eye). Then AB will represent the class of components referred to by information from both eyes.
AB must either contain members or be empty.
If there exist real members of AB, then the information from the second source has imposed a sub-classification upon A that was previously impossible (ie , has provided , in combination with A , a logical type of information of which the first source alone was incapable). — P70.
Finally , all that comparing of comparisons was built up to pre pare author and reader for thought about problems of Natural Mind. There, too, we shall encounter creative comparison. It is the Platonic thesis of the book that epistemology is an indivisible, integrated meta science whose subject matter is the world of evolution, thought , adapta tion , embryology , and genetics-the science of mind in the widest sense ofthe word.*
The comparing of these phenomena (comparing thought with evolution and epigenesis with both) is the manner ofsearch of the science called "epistemology."
Or, in the phrasing of this chapter, we may say that epistemology is the bonus from combining insights from all these separate genetic sciences.
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. — P.87
Sorry for the very long quote. Bateson does here what the behaviourist refuses to do, which is to consider the dog's view of things. By comparing the empathically analysed and imagined dog's description of the experiment, to the experimenter's description, the double description gives us a new understanding. The induction of neurosis in the dog is shown to be a complex relationship of mutual learning and meta-learning that places the dog in a bind that he cannot resolve, and this understanding feeds into Trauma theory which I have discussed elsewhere. Punishment is worse than pain because it it is understood to be intentional, just as reward is understood to be. These are communications between beings, not mere events.The Pavlovian case is very famous, but my interpretation of it is different from the standard interpretation, and this difference consists precisely in my insistence on the relevance of context to meaning, which relevance is an example of one set of messages meta-communicative to another. The paradigm for experimental neurosis is as follows: A dog (commonly a male) is trained to respond differentially to two alternative "conditioned stimuli," for instance, a circle or an ellipse. In response to X, he is to do A; in response to Y, he is to do B. Ifin his responses, the dog exhibits this differentiation, he is said to discriminate between the two stimuli and he is positively reinforced or, in Pavlovian language, given an "unconditioned stimulus" offood. When the dog is able to discriminate, the task is made somewhat more difficult by the experimenter, who will either make the ellipse somewhat fatter or make the circle somewhat flatter so that the contrast between the two stimulus ob jects becomes less. At this point, the dog will have to put out extra effort to discriminate between them. But when the dog succeeds in doing this, the experimenter will again make things more difficult by a similar change. By such a series of steps, the dog is led to a situation in which finally he cannot discriminate between the objects. At this point, if the experiment has been performed with sufficient rigor, the dog will exhibit various symptoms. He may bite his keeper, he may refuse food, he may become disobedient, he may become comatose, and so on. Which set of symptoms the dog exhibits depends, it is claimed, upon the "temperament" of the dog, excitable dogs choosing one set of symptoms and lethargic dogs choosing another.
Now, from the point of view of the present chapter, we have to examine the difference between two verbal forms contained in the ortho dox explanation of this sequence. One verbal form is "the dog discrimi nates between the two stimuli"; the other is "the dog's discrimination breaks down." In this jump, the scientist has moved from a statement about a particular incident or incidents which can be seen to a generalization that is hooked up to an abstraction-"discrimination"-located beyond vision perhaps inside the dog. It is this jump in logical type that is the theorist's error. I can, in a sense, see the dog discriminate. but I can not possibly see his "discrimination. " There is a jump here from particular to general, from member to class. It seems to me that a better way of saying it would depend upon asking: "What has the dog learned in his training that makes him unable toaccept failure at the end?" And the answer to this question would seem to be: The dog has learned that this is a context/or discrimination . That is , that he " should" look for two stimuli and "should" look for the possibility of acting on a difference between them.
For the dog, this is the "task" which has been set-the context in which success will be rewarded.'*'
Obviously, a context in which there is no perceptible difference between the two stimuli is not one for discrimination. I am sure the ex perimenter could induce neurosis by using a single object repeatedly and tossing a coin each time to decide whether this single object should be interpreted as an X or as a Y. In other words, an appropriate response for the dog would be to take out a coin, toss it, and use the fall of the coin to decide his action. Unfortunately, the dog has no pocket in which to carry coins and has been very carefully trained in what has now become a lie; that is, the dog has been trained to expect a context for discrimination. He now imposes this interpretation on a context that is not a context for discrimination. He has been taught not to discriminate between two classes of contexts. He is in that state from which the experimenter started: unable to distinguish contexts.
From the dog's point of view (consciously or unconsciously), to learn context is different from learning what to do when X is presented and what to do when Y is presented. There is a discontinuous jump from the one sort of learning to the other.
In passing, the reader may be interested to know some of the supporting data that would favor the interpretation I am offering.
First, the dog did not show psychotic or neurotic behavior at the beginning of the experiment when he did not know how to discrimi nate, did not discriminate, and made frequent errors. This did not "break down his discrimination" because he had none, JUSt as at the end the discrimination could not be "broken down" because discrimination was not in fact being asked for.
Second, a naive dog, offered repeated situations in which some X sometimes means that he is to exhibit behavior A and at other times means that he should exhibit behavior B , will settle down to guessing. The naive dog has not been taught not to guess; that is, he has not been taught that the contexts of life are such that guessing is inappropriate. Such a dog will settle down to reflecting the approximate frequencies of appropriate response. That is, if the stimulus object in 30 percent of cases means A and in 70 percent means B, then the dog will settle down o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks, after all, are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is supported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks , after all , are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is sup ported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers . — P.118
How do we learn those learnings or wisdoms (or follies) by which "we ourselves"-our ideas about self-seem to be changed?
I began to think about such matters a long time ago, and here are two notions that I developed before World War II, when I was working out what I called the "dynamics" or "mechanics" of Iatmul cul ture on the Sepik River in New Guinea.
One notion was that the unit of interaction and the unit of characterological learning (not just acquiring the so-called "response" when the buzzer sounds, but the becoming ready for such automatisms) are the same. Learning the contexts of life is a matter that has to be discussed, not internally, but as a matter of the external relationship between two creatures. And relationship is always a product of double description .
It is correct (and a great improvement) to begin to think of the two parties to the interaction as two eyes, each giving a monocular view of what goes on and, together, giving a binocular view in depth. This double view is the relationship.
Relationship is not internal to the single person. It is nonsense to talk about "dependency" or "aggressiveness" or "pride," and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in some something-or-other inside a person.
No doubt there is a learning in the more particular sense. There are changes in A and changes in B which correspond to the dependency succorance of the relationship. But the relationship comes first; it pre cedes .
Only if you hold on tight to the primacy and priority of relationship can you avoid dormitive explanations. The opium does not contain a dormitive principle, and the man does not contain an aggressive instinct.
The New Guinea material and much that has come later, taught me that I will get nowhere by explaining prideful behavior, for example, by referring to an individual's "pride." Nor can you explain aggression by referring to instinctive (or even learned) "aggressiveness."* Such an explanation, which shifts attention from the interpersonal field to a facti tious inner tendency, principle, instinct, or whatnot, is, I suggest, very great nonsense which only hides the real questions.
If you want to talk about, say, "pride," you must talk about two persons or two groups and what happens between them. A is admired by B; B's admiration is conditional and may turn to contempt. And so on. You can then define a particular species of pride by reference to a particular pattern of interaction. — P.133
You only exist in relationship. — J. Krishnamurti
that there is a learning of context, a learning that is different from what the experimenters see. And that this l earning of context springs out of a species of double description which goes with rela tionship and interaction. Moreover, like all themes of contextual learning , these themes of relationship are self-validating . Pride feeds on admiration. But because the admiration is conditional-and the proud man fears the contempt of the other-it follows that there is nothing which the other can do to diminish the pride. If he shows contempt, he equally reinforces the pride.
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