Incommensurable systems exist when there is no common measure. Human beings with different genetic makeup, different databases and different histories are to a significant degree incommensurable systems. Yet we communicate. We participate in markets. How is this done?
There are two parts to this phenomenon - coincidence and value calculi. When two incommensurable systems coincide they 'agree' on some aspect of existence. Such coincidence is the precondition for the generation of brokered values, the marketplace, and the creation of an accepted value calculus which represents the values so generated on a relative scale.
Language is a value calculus. So is money. They exist not as common measures but as the representation of values brokered in marketplaces, whether the university or Wall street.
These values are generated in transactions between incommensurable systems which have achieved significant ad hoc coincidence. These transactions describe a market which the value calculus orders.
These concepts are simple yet powerful in their comprehensive scope, in their coherent structure and their universal utility.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Instrumentalism and Postmodernism
J.M. here. The single question dividing postmodernism and postmodernist philosophy from the rest of creation is that of instrumentalism.
Instrumentalists believe, in a vast oversimplification, that we do not know reality. We only know our perceptions of it. Taken to the Nth degree, this fairly undeniable fact, tempered with inherited cognitive predispositions, gives rise to the radical position that human thought and reality are incommensurable in the terms of Thomas S. Kuhn. Given his explanation of and exceptions to incommensurability such a position is tenable with only one constraint, probability.
Is a construct a model or a flight of fancy? Is it possible to say something about reality when that reality is disjunct from human thought? The history of observable fact is a picaresque journal of events exhibiting probability constraints. The narrative of thought conserving these observations is punctuated by moments of extreme re-invention of systems of thought. It is not a grand narrative, as documented by Kuhn himself, but, in his words, an evolution and speciation. Any attempt at convergence across disciplines results in that one constraint, probability.
Any attempt at thought in terms of explanation and/or prediction, which is why we think large thoughts, must, in order to conserve the events of our individual lives, reference probability.
Can the occult constructions common to postmodernism and the bizarre constructions of paranoid minds have validity in philosophical argument? Only if they exist as an exception to an expectation of probability within the laws of probability.
'Tunneling', the well known phenomenon predicted by the probabilities of quantum mechanics has been described as 'spooky' by sober physicists. That is case enough to argue that reality really is disjunct from human thought and we cannot 'know' reality and that truth is a probability variable and the occult, as explanation, is simply a reflection of these facts.
Any system of thought that has a significant degree of coincidence with observable facts is explanatory and predictive of that incommensurable reality. If it references probability even as exception then it has validity in postmodern philosophy. We are not talking about Truth as the end result of a Grand Narrative. We are talking, to continue Kuhn's metaphor, of adaptive versus maladaptive behavior. It is not for us to 'say' what is true. It is for us to 'do' what is true.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
Instrumentalists believe, in a vast oversimplification, that we do not know reality. We only know our perceptions of it. Taken to the Nth degree, this fairly undeniable fact, tempered with inherited cognitive predispositions, gives rise to the radical position that human thought and reality are incommensurable in the terms of Thomas S. Kuhn. Given his explanation of and exceptions to incommensurability such a position is tenable with only one constraint, probability.
Is a construct a model or a flight of fancy? Is it possible to say something about reality when that reality is disjunct from human thought? The history of observable fact is a picaresque journal of events exhibiting probability constraints. The narrative of thought conserving these observations is punctuated by moments of extreme re-invention of systems of thought. It is not a grand narrative, as documented by Kuhn himself, but, in his words, an evolution and speciation. Any attempt at convergence across disciplines results in that one constraint, probability.
Any attempt at thought in terms of explanation and/or prediction, which is why we think large thoughts, must, in order to conserve the events of our individual lives, reference probability.
Can the occult constructions common to postmodernism and the bizarre constructions of paranoid minds have validity in philosophical argument? Only if they exist as an exception to an expectation of probability within the laws of probability.
'Tunneling', the well known phenomenon predicted by the probabilities of quantum mechanics has been described as 'spooky' by sober physicists. That is case enough to argue that reality really is disjunct from human thought and we cannot 'know' reality and that truth is a probability variable and the occult, as explanation, is simply a reflection of these facts.
Any system of thought that has a significant degree of coincidence with observable facts is explanatory and predictive of that incommensurable reality. If it references probability even as exception then it has validity in postmodern philosophy. We are not talking about Truth as the end result of a Grand Narrative. We are talking, to continue Kuhn's metaphor, of adaptive versus maladaptive behavior. It is not for us to 'say' what is true. It is for us to 'do' what is true.
Do well and be well.
'Chances Basil Brylcreem' on http://www.amazon.com/books
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