[MD] Idealistic static value patterns

[mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net]

Hi Matt! =)


>
> Matt said:
> You might have a thicker notion of "rationality" in mind than the one
> I do.  If rationality is "the game of giving and asking for reasons,"
> then it is inherently social because it requires the possibility of other
> people.  (I say "possibility" to avoid saying people can't reason by
> themselves in private.  But following Wittgenstein, there's no such
> thing as a "private language," understood as a language game that
> you and you alone _could_ play.)
>
> I'm not sure what you precisely mean by "metatheoretic approach to
> social entities" (I'm not to hip to a lot of current theoretical
> vocabularies), but I'm not sure what the difficulty would be.  Coming
> up with a vocabulary to talk about an object (and I mean that in a
> grammatical sense) creates a language-game about that object.  If
> you then want to talk about that vocabulary, you kick it up one level
> of abstraction and have a meta-vocabulary about the vocabulary
> about that object (this is essentially just what Socratic reflection is:
> using a vocabulary to talk about the assumptions in the
> object-vocabulary).  But the meta-vocabulary is just, on the other
> hand, another language-game.  (Which then, of course, could be
> talked about--one can add as many metas as one likes, only at the
> cost of lost efficacy.)

Tuukka:
I don't think we actually have a problem here. But you said: "you're  
actually _practically_ wrong because you are implicitly already doing  
it, participating in the game."

I think that's funny. I perceive myself more like an animal who  
follows his instincts. Now you tell me I'm playing a game. I guess  
that's true enough. But I'm not interested of the game. I'm interested  
of my instinct and I do not perceive my instinct as obviously related  
to the theoretical construct of a game you are talking about.

I'm saying this because at some times in my life I have intended to be  
clever and to manipulate people with consciously used skills without  
informing them I am trying to affect them in order to have them do  
certain things. Now I'm not doing this - I'm not setting a goal and  
using static quality to reach that goal. At least I'm not doing that  
if said goal is social.

I mean, I used to be really popular, or rather, somehow appreciated,  
in certain circles when I was a teenager. I never tried to be such a  
person. I was just this completely uncalculating "fool" who blurted  
out the first thing that came into his mind, unless, maybe, it was  
completely stupid. So I just happened to be able to do that kind of  
things. But if people would have known how little I calculate, and  
they had never heard the things I say but could only examine the  
thought process that preceded me saying them - and if they could only  
see the conscious part of that thought process, like I can, but no  
unconscious parts. Then they would perhaps have some difficulty making  
the difference between me and a fool.

And a similar thought process wrote what you're reading now.

To be sure, the math stuff I'm doing right now... well... it sure  
doesn't work out like that! :D I have to reduce the formulae to tree  
structures to understand what they are about in the first place, and I  
don't, at least not yet, do that completely intuitively.

If you're a math geek, you'll like this:

http://www.moq.fi/?p=242

=)

I already posted something about it yesterday, but the article of  
today is a lot better.

>
> Tuukka said:
> World War 2 was not a metatheoretical approach to war. It was a
> war. Both sides had armies, and both armies fought on the
> conceptually same level. So that was social. But when rationality
> dictates social affairs, rationality resides as a different level than the
> social gaming. And if a Nazi deserts on grounds that there is no
> rational reason to expect Germany to win Soviet Union, he's no
> longer fighting the same war as most of his countrymen.
>
> Matt:
> This is where my sense that you have a stronger notion of rationality
> at work than I do comes out.  It is fundamental to the Sellarsian
> approach to understanding language and reason that we understand
> that "rationality" does not dictate anything.  Only people do that.
> Rationality does not have a language with which to speak, and thus
> dictate.

Tuukka:
Well, I don't understand this. I mean, I do understand it in the  
tradition of thought where the scientist is some sort of an "observer"  
who does not participate in his subject matter. But what does it mean  
to decisively state that rationality does not dictate, and that people  
do?

I mean, Hitler, as a lump of flesh and bone, did he dictate something?  
If he did, why isn't every living piece of flesh as influential as  
hitler? Sure, all flesh can dictate, but it was a social construct  
that made Hitler able to be a dictator of so many people.

How about rationality? How does rationality not dictate, when someone  
named Rescher who _wrote_the_darm_book_ about Rationality (1989), says  
rationality is equivalent to virtuousness. So... is that statment a  
social level construct? Hardly, because it does not dictate any single  
kind of behavior. Rather, it dictates a frame of reference according  
to which behavior can be judged as virtous or unvirtuous, or, good or  
evil. Of course the frame of reference is wrong to anyone who  
understands DQ, and rationally wrong to anyone who does so on rational  
level, but that's not just gaming, with pieces on the board, a glass  
of wine in the hand of each player and a merry way of spending the  
evening. That's someone stepping up to tell you what you can and can't  
do. Just a game? I don't understand why that would be just a game,  
unless all of static quality is just a game.


Matt:
> It is, rather on this approach, a game that speakers play.
> (Actually, quite exactly like breathing, in your earlier ingenious
> riposte that I've omitted, which I think was right on.)  The game can
> tell people what a correct move would be, given the game they are
> playing, but it can't tell them to _keep playing the game_.

Tuukka:
You could have a point here. If the game can't conceptualize itself,  
it cannot logically tell you to keep playing. But... what Rescher  
does, is he invades a concept (virtuousness), assigns it a specific  
meaning, and says someone is wrong or nonsensical if he uses it in a  
different meaning. Rescher discourages us from believing "rationality"  
could mean anything else than virtuousness. Still not a game? But what  
if you want to participate into another game, which is that of  
publishing in a peer-reviewed journal? If people like Rescher say  
you're a bad person, and others believe them, then... well... you'll  
have a hard time publishing in any prestigious journal. So it's not  
like people like Rescher would necessarily tell me to keep playing a  
game I've already beaten. But they can tell others that: "I will  
introduce you a game. It's the best game and even though you can win  
within the game, you can't win the game itself." So I'll have a hard  
time finding company if he does that. Suppose philosophy was the only  
thing I cared about. I could even suicide because of that! Thank God I  
do care about other things. But some others might not take it well,  
and I wouldn't say Pirsig took that kind of thinking well.

Matt:
> When the
> Nazi deserts, he's reasoned, played out the moves in the game he's
> playing, and decided on a course of action (rather than changing the
> game he's playing, and keep fighting for the Third Reich).  All this, I
> take it, you agree with.  The trouble I'm having is seeing how war as
> a social game is a disanalogy to "rationality as a social game."
> Rationality is a different social game than war-making, I can grant.
> In fact, it is something like a meta-game to our nonlinguistic actions.

Tuukka:
That's what I was saying, I recall...

Matt:
> The game of giving and asking for reasons allows us to remove
> ourselves from all _other_ kinds of action to take the action of talking
> about acting.  It is in this sense that the pragmatists were right that
> the practical precedes the theoretical, know-how to knowing-that.

Tuukka:
But this I was not saying. Rationality does not allow us to remove  
ourselves from all else. I don't even know what that means. I mean, if  
you desert an army on rational grounds, it will affect _everything_  
you do after that. And it will be rationality, which dictates you to  
leave your comrades behind. Not peer pressure. Not your military oath.  
Not biological urges of defecating and having sex.


> Matt:
> It kind of seems as though you wish for their to be a non-game at
> some point.  I think there are non-games (e.g., rocks are not games),
> but to understand the point of view of reasoning creatures, the line
> of thought I'm articulating requires us to say that for reasoning
> creatures, everything is _treatable_ as a game (e.g., how physics
> treats rocks).  (And you need to so treat it to reason about it.)  If I
> knew more about your metaphilosophical position, I'd say it looks like
> you want what Plato called a land "beyond hypotheses."  But I don't
> know.

Tuukka:
Everything static is treatable as a game, if the notion of "game" is  
static. And I'd like to keep that static. DQ is not a game, however.



>
> Matt:
> Yah, you're certainly right about Bo.  And that punches up the
> difficulty of negotiating different view points and trying to get on the
> same page.  And you're right, we will assume, for the most part, that
> we are playing the same game until it becomes apparent to someone
> that that is possibly a wrong assumption.  And then you talk about
> what game y'all are playing.  It's not that Bo had bad manners.  I think
> nearly everyone I've seen traverse the MD has displayed bad manners
> at some point.  It's that in the game that counted, Bo didn't quite seem
> to know how to play it in a legitimate fashion.

Tuukka:
Okay, but if Bo lost in that game due to his incompetence, and if  
there's another game according to which it's nice to have another  
active member (me) on this forum, then Bo won in a game of turning  
disenchanted members into active. So I guess Bo doesn't need to be  
here. It's fine he's on LS - at least to me. To be sure, maybe it  
would be even more fun to have him here. Maybe Horse lost the game by  
kicking Bo out. But then again, maybe Bo could have been nicer in the  
way he did things. I don't know anything about this!

Basically, I guess the only thing I want to say about this is that I  
don't know whether Bo tried and failed but made the best of it, or  
whether he didn't even try to play the game you are talking about.  
Maybe he came here with the assumption that these people are playing  
his game, and if they aren't, then he doesn't necessarily care what  
game they are playing, and he'll keep doing things his way  
indefinitely unless he is thrown out. So that's no failure to play a  
game legitimately. Isn't it quite legitimate for a person to behave  
like that and then, quite simply and also potentially legitimately, be  
banned for doing so?

Like I said earlier, I consider it funny that Bo is thrown out from MD  
for doing to the MOQ the same thing Pirsig did to Cartesian dualism.  
And I guess you could also say that the academy "threw Pirsig out".

I'm fine with MD banning Bo but I'm not fine with him being considered  
a failure by people who just as conceivably could be failures  
themselves. Bear in mind that I didn't accuse anyone of being a  
failure. And that's precisely what I meant by saying you could as well  
have failed instead of Bo. And that's another thing why I don't like  
the game metaphor. People easily use it to simplify people into  
winners and losers in situations where they could have actually been  
seen even to cooperate to some extent. People easily forget not  
everyone plays the same game.

Frankly, I don't think Bo ever wanted to play that game you think he  
didn't understand. He could have well understood the game and still  
not want to play it. And it's not like he would have necessarily said:  
"Let's change the rules of the game." Maybe he wanted the rules to  
change organically, as a part of a "natural process" with him simply  
showing the example and not telling others what to do, but having  
others follow his example because his example was good. He's an  
artist, after all. I'm one too, and I can tell you artists like social  
phenomena to grow organically without "boss men" telling everyone to  
do things rigidly and in a certain way. Artists want you to do things  
because you want to do them, and they'd just prefer to make you  
understand why you want to do that instead of resorting to personal  
authority. Not that Pirsig would have resorted to personal authority  
either. But then again, maybe he, too, is some sort of an artists as a  
writer. I mean, his writing is indeed very artful.

> Matt: He was making (what
> finally had to be called) illegal inferential moves that emitted in claims
> that looked intelligible but were (what finally had to be called)
> baseless.  (I'm one of a minority that think there were a few
> interesting, plausible, and useful claims to be differentiated in the
> tangle of his philosophical output.  The problem was that he played
> an all-or-nothing game.

Tuukka:
Well, that's exactly what Pirsig did with Cartesian dualism and with  
SOM, even though he couldn't even define the latter properly. I mean,  
the platypus definition is ridiculous. People suspected that the  
stuffed specimens of platypi were made by sticking together bits of  
different animals, and Pirsig says SOM made them do that. So what to  
make of that? That SOM makes people suspect fraud in a situation where  
fraud is quite possible?

Langan did a better job of defining SOM as a doctrine according to  
which there is only determinism or nondeterminism, but no  
self-determinism. I'd say SOM is the philosophical equivalent of a  
finite-state machine. So Pirsig had a point in that and a point in  
many other things too, but he didn't express himself well from a  
logical point of view. Well, it's the same thing with Skutvik. I think  
his philosophical thoughts were metaphorically good but turn out to be  
structurally different from what they first appear like, if put in  
logical analysis. But now we're beginning to talk about SOL. That  
warrants a ban, doesn't it? Shouldn't we stop now? Does Horse warn  
before he kicks? He probably does, but I'm not comfortable doing this,  
because I don't want to be kicked out because of something I do not  
consider essential.

And if we talk enough about Bo, then we will end up talking about SOL,  
because it's not like those things wouldn't have anything to do with  
each other. I mean, Bo said I don't even understand SOL. At least he  
said that some time ago... I don't know what he thinks now. I do think  
I understand what he tried to say, but there's some dispute and Bo is  
suspicious of my logical approach.

Back to the point. Pirsig accused the entire academy of being a bunch  
of SOM-drones. He didn't mention Wheeler's reality theory. He didn't  
mention Quine's confirmation holism. He didn't mention Gödel's  
incompleteness theorems. So here at MD we say one Shaman (Pirsig) who  
doesn't care about misrepresenting other people is good, and another  
Shaman (Skutvik) who does the same thing is bad. Well that's funny. I  
mean, it's absurd and it doesn't really bother me, so I just laugh at  
it. Ecspecially since Pirsig is fine with Skutvik despite not even  
understanding what the latter is doing.

> Matt: It's like he was always one inferential move
> away from an outrageous absurdity, and required other game players
> to acknowledge the necessity of taking the absurd claim as a
> consequence of the plausible one.  That makes a person
> inconversable. Inconversability will certainly not get you kicked out,
> but dogmatically asserting falsities about what Pirsig thinks will.)

Tuukka:
So how can Skutvik be one inferential move _away_ from absurdity, and  
at the same time urge others to go there? What is he, like the young  
man the Indians use for hunting buffalo? The one who goes in the  
middle of the buffalo herd wearing buffalo skin, and then directs all  
the other buffalo down a cliff, thus killing them, but hiding himself  
into a crevice in the cliff and surviving? Is that what you mean? If  
not, what is it? I mean, how can he tell others to go to absurdity  
without himself going there?

>
> Matt: Are _we_ two playing a different game?  The game we've just been
> playing is the game of "giving an account of what rationality is."  And
> on that score, maybe, but I don't think so.  But certainly we are both
> giving and asking for reasons.  And this particular game we
> embarked on a post-cycle or two ago doesn't necessarily have
> anything to do with your attempt to model the MoQ in different ways
> with your graphs and theoretical apparatus.  It might.  But I wouldn't
> be sure where.

Tuukka:
No it doesn't. I've just thought if I hang around here, I might  
acquire social status and serve other people. I mean, don't ever  
message me unless you actually want to. Don't do that to prove a point  
or something silly like that. You don't prove your points to me. I  
don't care about your damn points. I care about helping you. And since  
this MOQ community is currently the only thing that even resembles an  
academy, with some loyal but fierce guardian (Horse) dictating  
mainstream conversation, and "freaky" dissidents (Skutvik) hanging  
around in their own circles, and a nearly unreachable "demigod-man"  
(Pirsig) somewhere up there with papal powers, well, I think this is a  
social circle where I could be seen to belong, even though I belong to  
a lot of other social circles too, being a rather social person. I  
mean, I think I belong here because I've devoted an unusual amount of  
time and work to the MOQ and related things. So I'm not having a  
certain goal here. I just thought it's somehow fitting of me to -be-  
here. But one can't "be" on a mailing list if one doesn't say anything  
at all. Just subscribing doesn't mean anything. So I'm currenlty  
"being" here, and I don't know what game you could conceivably believe  
me to play. So if you want to say something to me, say it. If you want  
to win me, I will laugh at your face because I'm not playing. :D

But apart from that, I'm now annoyed that I've written so much to you  
and you were possibly just playing a game. It's not fun to play games  
with me, okay? As a teenager, I played a lot of Counter-Strike with my  
friends. Everybody hated me for being unfair and only focusing on  
statistics, and sacrificing any kind of _fun_ gaming could have  
involved for obtaining better statistics. And I had the best  
statistics of anyone there. But when we reminisce those times now, we  
mostly just end up reminiscing what a pain in the ass I was despite  
winning. If that's your idea of fun... go fuck yourself. :D It's not  
really fun. :D

No offense intended. ;)

-Tuukka