Thanks a lot, Andy, for such deep and detailed reply. Your political example
and analysis made me think that formal thinking is based on oppression,
alienation, manipulation, and privilege - in other words on certain social
relations.
On the other hand, it may be that people do not think formally in the exact
sense of this term at all but rather they think in some other alienated ways
that are much broader and richer than "formal thinking" and "formal logic"
described by philosophers and mathematicians. Jim Gee in his 1996 book on
literacy describes ideological colonization (probably Marx did it before
him) when one class uncritically uses ideology of another class. For
example, working class people in the study described by Jim Gee believed
that people fail (economically) because they do not put enough efforts. This
ideology of choice - to put or not put efforts - is characterized as middle
class by Gee. This ideology can be rather functional for middle class folks
however it does not work well for working class people. In the study,
participants made exceptions for themselves and people whom they knew very
well from the principle they believe by showing in specific detailed
examples why putting a lot of efforts does not move them ahead. But they
still refuse to generalize this explanation for (working class) people whom
they do not know and use the middle-class judgment instead (i.e., that
people who are not economically successful are not successful because they
are lazy).
I wonder if focus on alienated thinking is better than on formal thinking to
capture the phenomenon of alienated life, so nicely described by Andy,
"Every question is detached from the form of life in which it arises and
treated abstractly. People's knowledge is not a knowledge from their own
life, with consequences from their own actions, but a stream of arbitrarily
assembled news-bytes and images, fabricated in studios." The formal
thinking with all its syllogisms and rigid rules seems to be rarely a part
of everyday thinking of people even in Western societies. I doubt you can
convince people in Western societies using formal logic very often. On the
other hand, as Mike's and Sylvia Scribner's and Luria's research shows
Western people are very familiar with the formal logic and strongly believe
that it is the Logic..
What do you think?
Eugene
_____
From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 1:32 AM
To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
Subject: RE: timescale question
Andy wrote, A whole politics of "getting the numbers" then flows from this
which is not only based on a conception of human society as little coloured
dots in a Venn Diagram, but actually creates such a type of society. In
other words, we live in a society which is actually structured as a formal
logical conception.
Eugene wrote: I wonder what you mean by creates such a type of society.Do
you mean that through the election practice people start thinking formally?
Do you mean that this practice makes people believe that they think formally
while actually they do not (i.e., creates a certain false ideology)? Or do
you mean that this practice makes people prioritize formal logic as the
logic? I agree with you that something related to formal logic "hooks on"
the existing practice of the Western election process guided by the formal
logic (as if the formal logic is correct). The question for me is what
exactly is this "something"?
Very broadly, ways of thinking and ways of living mutually create and
sustain one another, don't they. Of course, in this relation, living and
acting has a position of primacy over thinking, captured in aphorisms such
as "One must eat before one can paint" or "One must have something to talk
about before one can talk". But the relation is two-way noetheless.
It is of course not just parliamentary democracy which creates and sustains
a culture of formal thinking, it is also the ubiquitous practice of
exchanging products of labour under contract rather than actually
cooperating with other people. Commercial TV has a lot to answer for as
well.
Specifically, what I am saying about the practice of voting for governments
in large geographical electorates would be like this. (i) The job or career
of deciding how we should live we give to an institution remote from our own
lives, so we externalise our selves and put our ethical powers into an alien
body which then rules us; (ii) because our vote is just one vote among
100,000 votes of other people with whom we have no relation at all, we are
aware that the will created in the form of a powerful state is not our will,
but that of an external, alien force (why bother to vote?); (iii) thus when
pondering on the meaning of our lives and how we should live we have already
externalised out selves from ourselves. This is the first pre-requisite for
formal thinking, external relation-to-self. Then, a public political life is
conducted on our behalf in which any question can be carried if 50.1% of the
population can be persuaded to vote "Yes" (although plebiscite is not the
normal way of deciding, the system approximates to plebiscite); this means
that a political actor has to redefine a question so as to assemble the
50.1% under "yes" and people are reduced to carriers of external
characteristics of being for or against on the various isolated aspects of
the issue. This produces what people call "politicians with no vision" and
"thinking which only goes as far as the next election". It is the difference
between the General and the Universal. For example, when there was a
plebiscite in Australia over getting rid of the monarchy and having a
republic, the question was so posed that when you added the number of
monarchists to those who wanted a popularly elected head of state, they
outnumbered those who were willing to accept as a second-best a head of
state nominated by parliament (note the fact that people wanted an
Individual directly responsible to the people, not a creature of the
politicians). The two diametrically opposite camps both voted "no" and we
are stuck with a monarchy, which had the support of only a small minority.
Thus politicians treat people not as citizens and actors within a community,
but as carriers of "opinions" or "attributes". They address themselves not
to citizens but to opinions.
TV and other forms of mass media funded by advertising are not only one-way
forms of communication, but are also designed to address the 50.1% or to
target "audiences". Thus again people are atomised and reduced to passive
receivers possessed of preferences and opinions, not as human beings. Every
question is detached from the form of life in which it arises and treated
abstractly. People's knowledge is not a knowledge from their own life, with
consequences from their own actions, but a stream of arbitrarily assembled
news-bytes and images, fabricated in studios.
These institutions which promote and sustain formal thinking are not 100% of
human life in modernity; real life is complex and multifaceted, and people
think mostly formally, but not entirely and not uniformly. But capitalist
democracy and formal thinking mutually reinforce and sustain one another.
Andy
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