Reviews for World peace and the human family

The average rating for World peace and the human family based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-19 00:00:00 John Wilkins Bloor uses Wittgenstein, sometimes as exposition and sometimes critically, to sketch a theory of knowledge. In my first section, I summarize Bloor's 7 components of Wittgenstein's system. Section II summarizes some of Bloor's theoretical arguments. I. Bloor’s seven components of Wittgenstein's theoretical apparatus [49] 1. functional diversity By reminding us of the variety of objects in a tool-box, the hammers, saws, screwdrivers, glue and glue-pot, ruler and plumb-line, he drives home the theme of functional diversity (PI, 11, 12). The point is that a theory that postulates a single, unique relationship between language and the world will never come to terms with the subtle involvement of language and life. It will produce abstract and uninformative generalities -like trying to describe the use of all the different tools by a single formula. [23] 2. finitism This is the thesis that the established meaning of a word does not determine its future applications. The development of a language-game is not determined by its past verbal form. Meaning is created by acts of use... Use determines meaning; meaning does not determine use. The label 'finitism' is appropriate because we are to think of meaning extending as far as, but no further than, the finite range of circumstances in which a word is used. Beyond these current precedents, meaning, application and reference are not yet determined. [25-6] 3. training Introducing a child to an existing language-game involves shaping spontaneous behaviour by examples, rewards and punishments. It involves training… The success or failure of the enterprise depends on the child's instinctive tendencies to react… The relative uniformity of the responses that children make to training provides the foundation for all language-games. [26] Training and instinct, then, provide the starting point of all our explanations, and the terminus of all our justifications. Explanation is only possible, insists Wittgenstein, after training has been successful (Z, 419) [27] Treating a child as if it spoke a language already, simply a different one hides the role of finitism since use isn’t determined by already existing “meanings” in its head. That is, “words are ultimately connected to the world by training, not by translation.” [28]. Bloor relies on Skinner’s “reinforcement schedule” [63-4] for how training works. 4. the rejection of extensions If the semantics of finitism is to be taken seriously the rival view must be attacked directly. At the heart of the rival view is the idea that predicates have associated with them a 'reference class' or 'extension'. The extension of a word is the class of all things of which it may be truly predicated… These theories suppose that we can come to know that diverse things share a common ingredient, or a common property, and this explains our grouping them together under the same heading… Their common property is the result of their being assigned to the same class, not the cause. [28-31] 5. family resemblances If our groupings were, indeed, purely the result of our fluctuating sense of similarity, then there probably would be no order in them. But Wittgenstein's theory is not just a resemblance theory: it is a family-resemblance theory... This means that as well as resemblance there should be some other factors which play the role of ancestral connections. Something must link the resemblances through time, and differentiate 'within-family' from 'cross-family' resemblances. There are in fact two things in the account that do this. First, judgements of resemblance are focused around accepted paradigm cases. These are the 'objects of comparison' referred to in the comment on Spengler. Second, resemblances are always judged in the context of a particular language-game. These provide a horizon and a sense of relevance that reinforces some, but not other, similarities. The words 'knife' and 'fork' have a use that is integrated into the rituals of eating… So ancestral links are tacitly present in the precedents and purposes built into specific language-games. We must not forget the matrix of non-linguistic action. [32] Wittgenstein won't even allow to the traditional theory the idea that the relation of 'similarity' is a unitary, homogeneous thing that might have a determinate essence [39] 6. the interaction of criteria and symptoms Pain behaviour provides a criterion for imputing pain, but learning to operate with this criterion also means learning when to say that someone isn't really in pain - because they are cheating or rehearsing their part in a play. It is in this way that our greatest certainties co-exist with uncertainties. We feel no conflict because we do not average our degrees of belief; we parcel them out, contextualise them, and cope with particular problems in an ad hoc way. In learning to live with the fact that our certainty-giving criteria can, on occasion, be defeated, we even allow that new, unpredictable reasons for disqualification may appear. 'No one thought of that case' - we may say (Z, 118). These problems can never be repaired, and yet we do not experience them as problems. The absence of doubt, said Wittgenstein, is of the essence of a language-game (DC, 370). [44] 7. Needs What Wittgenstein was referring to by 'needs' were the very things that sociologists refer to under the heading of social interests. Needs are not individual appetites but are best construed as collective phenomena. When we detect a change in a language-game we must look for a shift in the goals and purposes of its players which is sufficiently widespread and sufficiently uniform to yield that change. Confronted by competing usages we should look for rival groups and track down the causes of the rivalry; if we see language-games merging with one another we must look for, and try to explain, the continuities and alliances between their players. [48-9] II. Theoretical arguments -On meaning What, though, are we going to say about all the subjective feelings, images and states of consciousness that attend the meaningful use of words and gestures?... Wittgenstein's answer was that they are mere by-products. They are not the causes of our ability to use words or signs, they are the effects of that ability… The primary thing, therefore, is the systematic pattern of usage. This is something public and shared, not something that is private. [19] There can no longer be any excuse for offering the meaning of an actor's beliefs as an explanation of his behaviour, or of his future beliefs. Verbalised principles, rules and values must be seen as endlessly problematic in their interpretation, and in the implications that are imputed to them. They are the phenomena to be explained. They are dependent, not independent, variables. The independent variable is the substratum of conventional behaviour that underlies meaning and implication. As Wittgenstein put it: 'What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - ’forms of life' (PI,II,xi). [137] -Similar to Collins’ “distance lends enchantment” and Latour’s blackboxing Certainty and simplicity, says Fleck, increase with distance from the reality of scientific practice. So when we come across concepts that do not possess the characteristic family-resemblance structure we must not assume that, at last, a conventional classification has given way to a concept that reflects the natural division of things, or corresponds to their 'natural ground'. All concepts could easily come to assume a family-resemblance structure, and a further study of their instances will often reveal, quite readily, the criss-crossing of similarities and differences to which Wittgenstein drew our attention. [37] -Notice how habit and routine = social order = epistemic order The point could, perhaps, be expressed like this: until they become protected by habit and routine, the concepts that pick out common properties have to be actively sustained in the face of complexity. The work that maintains this cognitive order is, of course, the very same work that maintains social order. This is because common-property concepts are as dependent on convention as family-resemblance concepts; they too have no life other than that given to them by the language-game. [37] -Bloor denies that we need to deny the existence of essences, but claims it’s useful methodologically suppose that nature provided no anchor-points and no natural divisions. Then we would have to see all boundaries as artefacts and wonder how we contrived to keep them in place. We would always expect counter-examples and be puzzled if people managed to keep them at bay. This is a 'faith' very different from the one that was said, rightly or wrongly, to underlie our science. All essences would then be the result of convention, and we might be tempted to say that the natural state of all concepts would be that of a family-resemblance grouping. …Fortunately we are not obliged to reach any decision on the truth of these metaphysical faiths. We can, though, assess them for their methodological significance. One useful consequence of Wittgenstein's stance is that it provides a way of distancing ourselves from any set of knowledge claims; it robs them of their self-evidence and finality, and this can often help to make their social components more visible. This, of course, does not mean that it is true. Perhaps reality is rigidly law-like and structured by essences, but it might be so complicated that, for many purposes, the deductions from Wittgenstein's view turn out to be correct. Such a stance certainly seems to make sense of the history of science. [37-38] -Looks at informal and formal proofs in math to argue for finitism, and how they end up seeming inevitable The claim is that the belief in mathematical essences is a reified perception of social processes. The conventional aspects of our techniques become transmuted in our consciousness into something mysterious. How can we explain the inherent activity, the action at a distance, that seems to reside in mathematical structures, making them appear fundamentally different from empirical happenings? Wittgenstein's reply is that it is the form taken in our consciousness by the social discipline imposed upon their use. It is as if the work that society puts into sustaining a technique returns to its users in the phenomenological form of an essence. [93] -On “decisions” Treating conventions as unverbalised habits is a better and deeper idea. This follows from the fact that the use of a rule is itself conventional, but cannot (in the last analysis) be governed by verbally formulated rules. That Wittgenstein's conventionalism is of this non-verbal kind is clear from the fact that he always stresses the consensus of action rather than the consensus of opinion or belief as the basis of knowledge. [119-120] the preferred category is not that of 'decision', with its overtones of explicitness and self-consciousness, but 'practice' with its suggestion of routine and lack of questioning. [121] Habit and practice remove the need for express decisions at every point. [123] -Using Mary Douglas’ work, Bloor claims there are only 4 possible reactions to anomalies - indifference, exclusion, accommodation and opportunism [139]. Various group (ie, inter-group boundries separating outsiders) and grid (ie., intra-group boundaries that separate roles, ranks, stations and duties) dynamics [140-5] lead to the viability of certain responses to anomalies. I have not presented a typology of language-games (or responses to anomaly) and a typology of forms of life and then postulated an arbitrary correlation between them. Nor have I appealed to their structural characteristics and assumed that social patterns will be passively reflected on the cognitive plane. The thesis is much more specific and the mechanism joining the social and the cognitive much more intelligible. The point is that a given response to anomaly can only be sustained if the conditions are right for mobilising support for it… Naturally, every position in the space of social structures will find people voicing sentiments, and trying to encourage responses to anomaly, that do not belong there according to the theory… The theory is not, however, about the responses that will be voiced; it is about the responses that will be viable. Because people are active creatures there will always be those who are trying to push or pull the social pattern in a direction that they believe will be more favourable to them. Those who have risen to the top of a competitive ladder will see the virtues of securing a monopoly. Those who are trapped by others in a grid of obligations, traditions, rules and precedents will reach out for the benefits of a more open, competitive structure, or yearn for the warmth of a small enclosed community. But the theory does not try to predict what an individual will think, nor how the pattern of collective life may change, carrying its members from one part of social space to another. What it illuminates are the conditions under which a given kind of language-game will in fact mediate the activity of an organised group of people, and have a genuine not a fantasy function in the organisation of their behaviour. [146] - superposition of language-games a language-game may serve more than one purpose at once. Two, or perhaps more, needs may be satisfied by a single move. Two, or more, purposes may be furthered simultaneously. I shall call this the principle of the superposition of language-games. [110] Based on the Cheyenne belief that only killing a member of a fellow tribe brings punishment: Cultural mechanisms of this kind have been called 'social uses of nature'. They represent the most important instances of the general principle that a language-game can serve more than one need at once. The world is understood in such a way that it becomes a resource for upholding the social order. It is this social use that explains why some beliefs have a privileged and fixed status within a system of empirical knowledge. Social life itself revolves around them and holds them in place. Obviously the same mechanism can work in reverse: nature can be understood in such a way that it can be used to criticise the accepted social order. Rival groups will construct rival conceptions of reality; nature is open to both a radical and a conservative employment. [148] -Implications for professionalised science [157-8]

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-25 00:00:00 Bhone Maw I have not yet read another book as well structured and clearly written as this. All introductory (and not so introductory) students should read this book.