At the end of a message summarising two previous messages Fred Nicholls
writes:
>If a husband and wife do something, it is the husband and wife who do it,
>not "the team" or "the marriage" or "the family." These are shorthand
>descriptions for groups of people and it is the members of the group who do
>things, not the group, whether the group consists of two or 20 or 200 or
>2000 or 200,000,000.
Dear Fred,
Forgive me for my temerity, but it sounds to me that you believe if you
repeat a statement often enough, and with enough convinction, it becomes
true. Have you evidence to support this assertion?
Do you really mean that there is no such thing as a collective human
entity which is not more than the sum total of its parts (or at least
diferent from the some total of its parts), or am I unfairly paraphrasing
you? If so, why do sports teams of all sorts train together as a team
rather than as individuals and just get together for the match?
And even if human beings do, at some level (probably unconsciously in the
case of mob behaviour), make a "decision" to partake in group or
collective behaviour, how can you justify either theoretically or
empirically your assertion below that groups are "abstract?" ie have no
actual existence:
>My point was and is that abstract entities don't engage in action;
>people do.
This sounds like classic dualism to me. That is, a heirachy of reality.
How then do you distinguish between "real" individuals acting in a group,
and an "abstract" group consisting, I suppose, of "real" individuals?"
Can't groups be non-abstract AND at the same time be composed of "real"
individuals?
Best regards,
Philip
Philip Pogson
Leadership Development Strategy Consultant
Staff Development Branch
University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007
+61 2 9514 2934
mobile: 0412 459156
"Men stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing happened."
Winston Churchill
--Philip Pogson <ppogson@uts.edu.au>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>