Dear Organlearners.
John Gunkler <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> writes:
>I have seldom seen a better, more concise summary of pragmatism
>than your description of why apartheid failed:
>>Apartheid hit the dust with little bloodshed because enough people
>>got the common sense in their heads that apartheid did not work,
>>does not work and will not work.
Greetings John,
I agree that should one read that single sentence out of context, it
appears to be highly pragmatic.
But the context is important. For example, should someone train a parrot
to say "it works", it does not mean that the parrot is a pragmatist. By
noting that it is a parrot who speaks, we delve into the context of the
words "it works".
One possible context of the sentence to which you have refered, is the
order relation
/_\F < W
of Gibbs for anything to happen. (I make a careful distinction between
work as an ordered flow of energy and work as an actual happening.)
This is the context in which you should have viewed the sentence,
especially since I have wriiten so much on this relation recently.
A system changes spontaneously when /_\F<0, i.e when its free energy
will decrease. Some of that free energy may then be converted into
work so that the system can deliver work. In this case W<0. For the
Gibbs expression to remain true, the system cannot deliver more work
as its change in free energy.
A system changes non-spontaneously when /_\F>0, i.e when its free energy
will increase. Such a non-spontaneous change will never happen when no
work is involved, i.e W=0. The reason is that the Gibbs expression will
become false. Such a change can also not deliver any work, i.e W<0. The
reason is again that the Gibbs expression will become false. The only
possibility for such a change to happen, is when work is done ON the
system, provided more work is done than the increase in free energy. Then
the Gibbs expression will become true again.
Let us now bring in the second meaning of work, namely happen, to describe
a non-spontaneous change in a system. It becomes "A non-spontaneous change
in a system will only work when work is done on the system." Can you spot
the inconsistency here?
But let us use the word "happen" in the sentence which yiu refered to. It
becomes "Apartheid hit the dust with little bloodshed because enough
people got the common sense in their heads that apartheid did not happen,
does not happen and will not happen." Again we have a glaring
inconsistency here. Why? Apartheid did at least happened at some extend.
It does not happen now (except as neo-apartheid, something equally bad).
And we cannot say for sure that it will not happen again.
To avoid this glaring inconsistency, I had to make use the paraphrasing of
pragmatism. This one way of doing it.
Another way is to understand that to change South Africa (from 1948 to
1992) in a formal apartheid system, is a highly non-spontaneous process.
In other words, it requires massive inflow of work to happen. The white
people tried to provide such work, even by making use of the majority of
non-white (brown, black, ..), but it was still not enough work. Maybe, if
all people from the rest of the world also provided work, the
transformation to full partheid may have happened. But as you know, most
people of the rest of the world was against apartheid. In other words,
too little work (organised flow of energy) was available to force the
system of apartheid to work (happen as it should). Too little is available
now and too little will be avialble in future.
I know of no work on pragmatism which can be used as a context for the
above pargraph. Yet this paragraph is a short description of the context
that the sentence to which you have refered, should be viewed.
>Thus, I find it difficult to understand what you mean when you vilify
>"pragmatism."
John, I did not vilify pragmatism. With respect to pragmatism itself, I
said that many years ago (29 years to be exact) I was indoctrinated that
pragmatism (like communism) is a vile philosphy deadly to apartheid. This
indoctrination cannot ever be equated to my understanding of pragmatism
and how I am positioned to it. Of course, unless it is assumed that this
indoctrination was completely successful in which case I would have barked
as my masters have trained me to do. I have written more than enough on
irreversible self-learning to witness that this indoctrination had rather
the opposite effect, namely to make me sensitive to irreversible
self-learning.
Furthermore, when I say that I am not a ###-ist who embraces ###-ism
(which includes pragamatISM), I do not vilify anybody else, except perhaps
me. When I exclude myself from labeling or stereotyping, I do not judge
anybody ###-ist in terms of his/her ###-ism. I simply say -- do not count
me in. But it does not say that I have vilified any ###-ism. Neither does
it say that I will not have anything to do with a ###-ism. Let me explain.
I make a careful distinction between reality and complexity. For me
complexity is all the perceptions of all the people all over the world
through all the ages. Written records is but the meagre image of most of
these perceptions which I have to work with. Philosophical percpetions
worked into a system, namely ###-isms, is but a minor aspect of these
written records. Yet, as well ordered perceptions, they are just as
important to me as, for example, great novels. When I find the time to
study an ###-ism as far as that time allows me to, that study does not
entail that I am embracing that ###-ism.
>Pragmatism, the philosophy of Dewey and, before him,
>William James, was fundamentally a philosophy of "What
>is true is what works." Thus, to reject a policy because it
>does not work is a very pragmatic viewpoint.
I asked specifically that I would appreciate any dialogue on the concept
of "worklyhood" as one of the ways in viewing reality. For example, I
would be very interested to know what philosophies (and not merely
pragmatism) developed from this viewpoint. I would also be interested in
how much the Gibbs order relation (but in a tacit sense because most
pragmatists would not even have heard of it) influenced the philosophy of
pragmatism. Furthermore, how much has the desire for technology have to do
with reality as "worklyhood".
I never rejected the policy of apartheid on the grounds of pragmatism.
But I have often described my main reason for rejecting this policy. It
is that apartheid impairs all seven essentialities of creativity and thus
all emergences which depend on the seven essentialities. I have seen how
apartheid destroyed people's learning, believing and loving. Our beloved
country is still staggering because of the destructive immergences and the
workings which they lead to like killing, raping, stealling, lying,
swearing, etc.
John, I have tried to made myself clear. Thank you for including the word
"difficult" in your phrase "I find it difficult to understand". Maybe you
will find my attempt to make myself clear also difficult. In that case,
point out the difficulties and I will try to make myself clear again.
Best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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