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Re: [xmca] Progress: Reality or Illusion?
okay Andy, I give; your argument is preferable to mine.
-greg
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> Well I guess that would be a tautology, because "I like ..." is
> unashyamedly subjective. But if you try to be objective and say "... is
> preferable to .." then you need criteria.
> Andy
>
> Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>> Andy,
>> I like apples better than oranges.
>> Seems like a tautology to say that "liking" is quantitative. What matters
>> here is the practice of choosing apple over orange when presented with both
>> options (and under certain conditions, e.g. when my body does not have a
>> deficiency of Vitamin C...).
>>
>> David Ki,
>>
>> Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, used to say that we
>> need to get beyond our tendency to two-valued orientations that rely on the
>> Aristotelian Law of the excluded middle that says that a thing is either A
>> or not A. Korzybski says that the tendency that we have to think in terms
>> of two-valued orientation leads to very serious problems when we encounter
>> the world. Instead he proposes a many-valued orientation. (and one of his
>> favorite examples was the classic hot-cold water example, but introducing a
>> third bucket of luke warm and into which the child places his hands after
>> putting one in hot and one in cold and at which point he cannot say whether
>> the luke warm water is hot or cold). So David Ki, you suggest two is better
>> than one, but why stop at two? And why not recognize that all of these
>> quantities are only as they appear "to me," and, at best, "to us"?
>>
>> -greg
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 6:56 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, and in fact if we were to introduce vector quantities into
>> the discussion we see that Quantity, in the strict Hegelian sense,
>> is not limited to integers or even numbers. Quantity is something
>> abstracted from a perceptual field which may vary without the
>> object from which it is abstracted becoming something different.
>> (The old thing about transformation of quantity into quality and
>> vice versa).
>>
>> So it is fine to compare two entities by means of a bundle of
>> numbers. But of course if you do that you don't get to "more" or
>> "less". So the notion of "progress" does imply a single attribute
>> type of abstraction. Characterising a complex entity like an
>> entire form of life by a single attribute is as far from concrete
>> thinking as it is possible to get. I'll go for concrete thinking I
>> think.
>>
>> Andy
>> (Why don't elephants drive a Porsche?)
>>
>>
>> David H Kirshner wrote:
>>
>> The literature on understanding of integers notes a developmental
>> difference between a "two-attribute" and "single-attribute"
>> interpretation of negative number. Consider a child who places
>> one hand
>> in a bucket of ice cold water and the other in a bucket of hot
>> water,
>> and is asked "which bucket has warmer water?" The "two-attribute"
>> approach is characterized by dichotomous thinking, as in the
>> bewildered
>> response, "This water isn't warm at all, it's cold!" As a
>> later stage of
>> development hot and cold are realized as poles of a single
>> dimension.
>> Seems like both of these perceptual frames are
>> phenomenologically valid.
>> Maybe you're arguing from different frames.
>> David
>>
>> Davis, R. B. & Maher, C. A. (1993). The reality of negative
>> numbers. In
>> R. B. Davis & C. A. Maher (Eds.), Schools, mathematics, and
>> the world of
>> reality (pp. 51-60). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
>> Department of Communication
>> University of California, San Diego
>>
>>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>
>
--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
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