As William Doll comments, the categorical separation between the external
and the personal is part of Descartes legacy to modernism but, given the
assumptions of his time (e.g., a clockwork universe) it was not unreasonable
and the scientific methodologies it in part generated remain among the most
powerful problem solving tools extant (even as some of us are increasingly
forced to acknowledge the problems those tools themselves can create). In a
"post-modern" (I use the term broadly here) universe however, the kinds of
classical (either/or) categories it demands create some serious problems for
model builders dealing with self-organizing systems even when such
categories are amended via "fuzzy" approaches (e.g., Kosko). Add life,
society, semiotics and, lord help us, consciousness to the mix and it would
seem that the potential for serious category error becomes enormous.
I think it may have been Paul Davies who said that the mind/body dualism was
akin to comparing apples and Wednesdays; i.e., it represented a major
category error considering the two "exist" at completely different levels
(mind, as traditionally defined, is an abstraction). In a similar vein,
Gerald Edelman states that comparing the brain with a computer is a
category error since, among other things, it conflates procedural logic
(data processing) with thinking.
A question that occurs to me is: Even as we may recognize that current
categories no longer provide fresh insight for action and model building how
much can we really change, re-weight, and/or reconnect them? How embedded are
they in our language? If deeply embedded then it would seem, as Wittgenstein
suggests, that they form a frame we can not escape. If, as I think more
likely, they are not necessarily fundamental then what kinds of insight do
the alternatives offer?
Rolfe
PS: Jay--what conference are you referring to? It sounds interesting.
Rolfe Windward
UCLA GSE&IS
ibalwin who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu
"The difference between people and ideas is ...
only superficial." -Richard Rorty