> Replying to LO256 --
>
> Jim, I'm very interesting in pursuing what I think you're saying. If I'm
> listening, the following is attempting to use ordinary language which is
> still capable of "operational definitions" for experiment and logical
> development (thought experiments). Using "name" is to use a word which is
> ordinary, empirical and adds nothing not needed. This usefulness becomes
> clearer when you develop "proposition" a similarly ordinary word with
> similar possibilities.
>
> It may be a "huge and poetic" extension but poetry and such use of
> language is available also in ordinary language useage.
Yes, this is what I'm trying to do, and have been for some time.
>
> >
> > Trying to translate your terms into those I habitually use to address
> > these kinds of issues, I find a strong tendency to map your
> > "epistemes/paradigms" into my "names/propositions".
>
> The deconstruction of "paradigm" that follows reveals the ordinary
> language operations that can use to get back to simple sources.
Yes. It's been near axiomatic in my own thinking that if my jargon ever
loses its relationship to common language, then I've probably gone too
far. Every attempt to understand human things has to begin from common
sense - not because common sense is infallible, since it obviously isn't -
but simply because it's common. If I'm going to question or flatout
contradict some component of this common sense, I have to at least be able
to identify for my auditors what that component is. If I have an
observation that tends to put some commonly believed proposition in doubt,
or - to raise the stakes a little - if I want to offer a metaphysical
argument that All Is One, I still have to begin _from_ our common world in
which it's possible to "pass the salt and pepper". And I have to offer
some account of how, if in fact All Is One, we could collectively be so
confused as to imagine that we and our salt and pepper shakers are all
different people and things.
I also assume that human experience is common. This is a working
assumption, not an ontological commitment; it allows me to rummage
endlessly underneath different terminologies and verbal expressions for
what might be common experiences. One might think that such a principle
would stultify; on the contrary, it renders the world colorful and
mysterious. It makes it possible, for example, to ask whether the
difference between a Learning Organization and -?- (the other kind of Org,
whatever we choose to name it) might have been visible in - say - the
medieval church, or in classical Greece.
That principle is critical, I believe, to the Art and Practice that
Senge's book claims to be about. The book's subtitle says, in effect,
"this is not a book of theory."
So if we have on the one hand the belief that there _must_ be common
elements of human experience, we have on the other an enormous variety of
ways to talk about this experience. Enough variety in fact to make it
extraordinarily difficult, in many practical situations (such as this
group) to figure out when two people are or are not referring to the same
kind of experience or phenomena or concepts.
That's what Kent and I were doing when you dropped in.
> >
> > I think the basis for my second observation,
> > associating "paradigm" with "proposition", is that a paradigm (in your
> > usage as well as that of this group generally, myself included) is a kind
> > of model, or an image functioning metaphorically to represent the
> > structure of some complex system. The paradigm is simpler than what it
> > represents -- that's what it's for -- but it's _NOT_ logically primitive.
> > It has "parts". If we try to analyse the paradigm, whether for the
> > purpose of questioning it, rejecting it, understanding or changing it, we
> > wind up dealing with it in some set of propositions.
Imagine conducting some intense daylong seminar or discussion of some sort
in which the participants become aware of their individual and group
models or metaphors. By the end of the day each model is fully
articulated and everybody is comfortable discussion his or her model.
Now imagine the same process in reverse. A concept or set of concepts is
introduced, discussed, becomes a model, begins to affect conduct, group
dynamics, and is eventually wholly assimilated AND IS NO LONGER TALKED
ABOUT. If I try to imagine this reversal in full lifelike detail, I am
led to the almost paradoxical conclusion that at the very moment when the
model becomes most effective and pervasive, it ceases to have a name.
> Now we are dealing with "a set of propositions" that can be shared,
> manipulated, experimented with and not something exclusive to a domain of
> experts. We can bring "paradigm" into the operational world or everyday
> affairs.
>
> If this is what's being developed, I would like to extend the
> conversation. I'd also like (from Kent?) to be aware of what might be
> done to the integrity of the ideas and what the cost is likely to be if we
> continue to develop this approach in action.
> >
This whole thread is becoming, for me, extraordinarily provocative.
Regards
jamzen@world.std.com
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- - - - There are far fewer things in heaven and earth, Horatio, - - - -
- - - - - than are dreamt of in your philosophy... - - - - -