Dear Rick,
In your long post, the excerpts below from one paragraph seems to me to
summarise the issues.
>But, there's also a question about people on the street:
Are we all not "people in the street?" Howard Gardner argues in "Leading
Minds" that even "sophisticated professionals" have a mental age of 8-10
years outside their key area of expertise. Why then should it surprise us
that all people at all times do not understand all things equally well?
>As a successful species, why do we human beings appear so inconsistent in
>what we believe and how we form beliefs?
On what basis do you assert we are a successful species? We are the
dominant species on the planet, sure, but if we continue destroying other
species and undermining our own habitat with pollution and
overdevelopment, our period of success might be short lived on a planetary
timescale! The dominant species post-human might then be a bacteria or
the cockroach! In these terms, cannot the sentence I have quoted above be
seen as inconsistent in terms of the beliefs (ie success of humankind)
that it expresses?
>Why such lack of rigor? Lack of reflection.
Although you may not have meant it this way, it seems to me that the whole
debate around James and Pearce has an air of externalising the blame for
for not understanding onto others. In everyday terms, James and Pearce
are seen to have the "understanding the world" thing all sewn up, but the
mug punters "out there" have not jumped on the bandwagon and seen how
logical it all is.
For example you quote from a previous post: [John Gunkler's ..Host]
>Frankly, I have never found a better set of principles. As to why these
>principles haven't reconciled "spiritualists, philosophers, scientists, and
>public thinkers troubled by the tension between (1) and (2)" I have
>several speculations:
And:
>There are still those who choose not to accept your basic premise
>that we cannot contact objective reality
The reasons given for this lack of reconciliation include self interest
etc on the part of "others".
In the most pragmatic of terms, my reason for not "following" James et al
is that when I read him I did not find his reasoning interesting or
convincing. James created a narrative through which he articulated a
meaning structure that did not resonate with me, and as a result I simply
do not "believe" or accept his narrative as "true".
I thought he was very much the product of US culture of the time, and his
philoshopy of Pragmatism as much legitimised US culture through the
articulation of a formal philoshopical framework, as create unarguable
eternal truths that I should believe. Perhaps this explains why
Pragmatism has never had a big impact on the Continent, for example, let
alone in the East. This does not mean that I think James is uninteresting
to others or not worthwhile reading, especially as it seems to me that
pragmatism, with a small "p" is one of the most powerful beliefs driving
the success and expansion of US industry and commerce.
Hegel and Marx and all other philosophers are also products of their time
and culture...we can potentially learn something from them all but there
seems to me to be no point in shifting the burden on to others for not
sharing our particuar interest in a particular philoshopher and/or
philosophy.
Philip
Philip Pogson
Leadership Development Strategy Consultant
Staff Development Branch
University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007
Australia
ph: +61 2 9514 2934(w)
fax: +61 2 9514 2930(w)
ph/fax: +61 2 9809 5185 (h)
mobile: +61 0412 459156
"The new heresy for the organisational renewal movement to espouse is that
when we build organisations that act upon this world we must not do so with
the intent to exploit, pollute and plunder but to renew the life of the
planet and ourselves."
-Dexter Dunphy
--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>