[lit-ideas] Re: 4 Grandkids
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:57:58 -0700 (PDT)
--- On Sun, 25/4/10, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Ursula's observation that you can only find what is already in you, smacks of
>>Gnosticism to me -- Gnosticism as I interpret it and agree with.
This"observation" can be viewed as trite or false, depending how it is
interpreted.
False if construed to assert that a person can only ever find (at some point in
the future) what "is already" present within them: this is false in respect of
some of the many things that evolve or develop e.g. sexual desire, awareness of
others' sensibilities and feelings, and a wide range of character-traits [which
must develop from what is _not_ "already" present, unless we deny there any
such thing as character building or development].
It is true, but quite trite, if interpreted to assert merely that we cannot
find within us anything that does not exist "already" within us as a
disposition or propensity. All behaviour, whether of persons or objects, can be
said to be possible only because of prior, or "already" existing, dispositions
or propensities. For example, the cd I just cracked placing it in the player,
could only crack because it had "already" a disposition or propensity to so
crack - one activated by my action.
Put another way:- nothing can happen without there being some prior disposition
or propensity for it to happen.
While this point is trite it may still be the basis for a powerful and
explanatory 'metaphysical' and even 'scientific' research programmme, a per the
view Popper outlines in the last volume of the Postscript to LdF, where he
defends a metaphysic of reality as "changing propensities for change". The
powerful explanations arise from predictive and probabilistic (in a propensity,
non-inductive sense of probability) explanations which posit _specific_
dispositions and propensities.
To take a simple example from evolution (where these kinds of explanation are
often used; see "The Selfish Gene" for an excellent account of some): in a
drought a mammal may well be provoked to 'activate' its disposition or
propensity to move in search of water by walking; a tree cannot uproot itself
and walk but may well be provoked to 'activate' its disposition or propensity
to move in search of water by extending its roots downwards - it may hit an
underground water-table that ensures its survival.
But "changing propensities for change" also points up the sense in
which "propensities" are not simply there "already" - except in the vacuous
sense that to come into play propensities must be logically possible, and
therefore exist "already" as logical possibilities. But to say that anything
that exists, or potentially exists as a matter of disposition or propensity,
must be something that can exist as a matter of logical possibility, is not to
offer much in the way of concrete explanation. Logical possibility does not
really explain what exists; rather logical impossibility rules out the
existence of, say, contradictory states of affairs.
> How ideas or values or appreciations get inside us to begin with, I don't
>know.
There are many ways, at least as many as there are forms of cultural
transmission. And if we abandon a Lockean definition of "ideas" in terms of
consciously held contents of the mind, we are born with many "ideas" - for
example, to respond to a smile, to suckle, to cry if in discomfort.
>There's not much of that kind of knowledge in me to work with.
_Pace_ Mike, in one his last essays Popper asserts (without offering any clear
empirical or testable basis) that in his view 99% of "knowledge" is inbuilt in
us and other organisms by way of dispositions and propensities. By "knowledge"
he does not mean merely consciously held thoughts, but also the "knowledge" of
the tree to push its roots deeper in a drought, or the "knowledge" of a dog to
salivate in anticipation of eating [in P's view the conditioned reflex of
Pavlov's dog _does not exist_ and is merely a mistaken, and metaphysical,
interpretation of the observable experiments; the dog salivates not because of
Lockean associationist psychology holding true but because it has
evolutionarily-prepared traits, here to salivate in anticipation of eating, as
per Darwin (a point obscured by Tooby _et al_ who have tried to Lockeanise
Darwinism).
Donal
Yr Friendly Neighbourhood Popperian
England
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