[MD] Social Imposition ?

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> Maybe the distinction between words and direct experience isn't
> important, but for some reason I think it is. In any event, the
> relationship is endlessly fascinating.
> 
> [Arlo]
> I, too, think it is important. We have our "immediate esthetic
> experiences", or our "pre-intellectual experience", or "Zen moments", or
> what will you, but as soon as we get into logos or mythos we are (and I
> know you HATE this word) mediated by language. As I just quoted to Ian,
> "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived"
> (LILA). This quote continues, "Nature tells us only what our culture
> predisposes us to hear. The selection of which inorganic patterns to
> observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of social patterns of
> value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological patterns of value."
> (LILA)

I pretty much buy that. Our attention is certainly influenced by the  
culture which we depend on for survival although I could do without the
filling of mental space with the antics of Britney Spears and company.

As for the rest of your post, I beg to be excused for total lack of 
familiarity with the vocabulary, thus rendering understanding next to 
nil. In other words, what you are saying about structuration , agency, 
actor-network theory and the like is way over my head. It sounds
erudite, but for all I know it could be complete and utter bull. 
However, I have enough respect for your intellectual integrity to cast 
out any doubts about the authenticity of what you say and only wish
I had the background to more fully comprehend it and thus be able to 
engage in an exchange of ideas. As it is, I have nothing to contribute 
which is probably from your standpoint a blessing. :-)    

> Our words, our language, our "symbol system", this mediates our
> interaction with nature. And this relationship, like you, I find
> fascinating. There are two ways to look at this, I suppose, as
> "restricting" or "enabling". Some (the thinkers I like) banter about
> something called "structuration". That is, it is BOTH restricting and
> enabling. (Giddens, not to oversimplify, used the language "agency" for
> enabling and "structure" for restriction).
> 
> In a passage the resonates in many ways with my reading of Pirsig,
> Wikipedia says this. 
> 
> "Structuration theory aims to avoid extremes of structural or agent
> determinism. The balancing of agency and structure is referred to as the
> duality of structure.
> 
> For Giddens, structures are rules and resources (sets of transformation
> relations) organized as properties of social systems. The theory employs
> a recursive notion of actions constrained and enabled by structures
> which are produced and reproduced by that action. Consequently, this
> theory has been adopted by those with structuralist inclinations, but
> who wish to situate such structures in human practice rather than reify
> them as an ideal type or material property. (This is different, for
> example, from Actor-network theory which grants a certain autonomy to
> technical artifacts.) Additionally, the theory of structuration
> distinguishes between discursive and practical knowledge, recognizes
> actors as knowledgeable, such knowledge is reflexive and situated, and
> that habitual use becomes institutionalized."
> 
> Interestingly, the distiction between discursive and practical knowledge
> is given by Jones and Karsten as "practical consciousness embodied in
> what actors know "about how to 'go on' in the multiplicity of contexts
> of social life" (Giddens, 1983) and at the discursive level, at which
> they are able to provide explanations for them". Now tell me that does
> not map pretty neatly as "social level-practical knowledge, intellectual
> level-discursive knowledge".
> 
> The authors also provide this quote from Giddens, which I want to
> emphasize as a fairly good phrasing of "collectivism". "[T]he production
> or constitution of society is a skilled accomplishment of its members,
> but one that does not take place under conditions that are either wholly
> intended or wholly comprehended by them." I think this goes very well
> with Pirsig's sentiment, "The metaphysics of substance makes it
> difficult to see the Giant. It makes it customary to think of a city
> like New York as a "work of man," but what man invented it? What group
> of men invented it? Who sat around and thought up how it should all go
> together?"