Hi All,
Many thanks for the all stimulating exchanges about IS and OUGHT. Lee, I liked your “simple” formulation.
Mike, I very much appreciate your comment about “there is no negative in nature” and reference to Burke. [I strongly recommend Greg’s blog that he shared]. I will offer one caveat, which is that I would say that there is “no explicit negative in nature”. An implicit negative does arrive in the deliberations of “higher” animals. For example, rats will simulate outcomes at a choice point in a maze. That suggests they have the capacity to wonder if the food reward is or is not there, down the left or right side of the T-maze. This is because the neo-cortex allows for simulation of possible paths of behavioral investment.
However, as you note, only humans can make this simulation of counterfactuals explicit, and they do so by uttering justifications. The nature of propositional language makes presence and absence present. Consider how Albert Murray opens his book, the Omni-Americans:
In a general sense perhaps all statements are also counter-statements. Even the simplest pronouncements, for example, of measurable fact or of a point of view, are also assertions to contradict something assumed to be otherwise. Perhaps even the most objective description, definitions and formalizations (as well as being implicit protestations against subjectivity, imprecision, and fantasy) are in effect counter-action against the void of the undefined, unformulated and confusing.
I came to see this very point in the context of formulating JUST and recognizing Question/Answer dynamics. Andrea, I define justifications as propositions in lived context. The context is the influence and investment context of human beings. Meaning that justifications are actions of investment and reside in the context of social influence and larger systems of justification. Justifications presence certain things while absenting others. Moreover, the question is the cognitive-linguistic gadget<https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Gadgets-Cultural-Evolution-Thinking/dp/0674980158> that allows for the negative space to be identified. And thus, human Q & A dynamics did indeed give rise to the idea of explicit notions of what is and what ought to be.
Via our self-conscious awakening, unlike other animals, we have eaten off of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Best,
Gregg
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Greg Thomas
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2020 3:38 PM
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Subject: Re: The Is-Ought Distinction
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Thanks, Michael, for bringing up insights by Kenneth Burke. He was a favorite of two of my key intellectual and cultural influences, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray.
Here's a post-election essay in which I refer to Burke also:
https://www.tuneintoleadership.com/blog/election-reflections-and-the-blues-idiom<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.tuneintoleadership.com_blog_election-2Dreflections-2Dand-2Dthe-2Dblues-2Didiom&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=QscKv3YjvxhGbrSz5LurOMaJrmEROKMKND9yQAlFo3Q&s=S9KxYbM6riQ0w4B1o0JJuKz510kDBH4L0rgFqNUlbKk&e=>
Greg Thomas
On Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 12:56 PM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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Nick and All:
Nick: I read your Is-Ought Fallacy essay with interest.
I will focus only on the central point as it relates to the is-ought fallacy. You write:
There only IS, there is no ought. There can’t be an ought outside of an idea, which is a conclusion subjectively derived either mentally or biologically to perpetuate a belief system or evolutionary process, respectively and very generally speaking in a mind and matter dialectic.
In his famous "definition of man" [sic], Kenneth Burke, building on Spinoza, remarked that “there is no negative in nature”. That is, there is only “there” in nature — there is no “not there”. The “not there” is provided by symbol using animals. With the capacity to build symbols, humans (and some other animals) are capable of inventing the negative — the “no — the “not there”. And with the “not there” — this wonderful invention of symbol using (and mis-using) animals, comes the capacity for morality — that is, the sense of what is “not there” but should or ought to be there.
In this way, I would suggest that Nick is right that there is no ought in the natural world — no reason why the tiger ought not to eat the lamb. However, there are oughts in the human world — in the human world of shared symbolically-mediated experience. Oughts are forms of evaluation (what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls “strong evaluations”) . They are brought into existence through the human capacity for symbolization as it occurs within intersubjective exchanges with others. That is to say that the “ideas” of which “oughts” are a part are not simply subjective constructions; ideas are not private experiences that are encased within individual persons. Ideas have their basis in the human capacity for symbolic and intersubjective (that is “inter-experiential) engagement with each other. Oughts are created in the very process of our intersubjective engagement with each other: I take the bread out of your mouth; you resist, cry, strike out; I feel empathy, fear or the like. We now have the task of figuring out how we ought coordinate our needs. This brings us to the oughts of morality.
And so, I suggest that oughts exist — not the the natural world, but in the intersubjective world of human relations. Although the intersubjective world is constructed, it is as real as the material world. It just exists in our human experience.
All my very best,
Mike
Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
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Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
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On Nov 28, 2020, at 12:24 PM, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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Well Gregg, that does appear to be the question doesn't it? I imagine the 1st-person perspective equivalent to what you're describing as me being able to see in all directions, and based on what is perceived make attempts to look at itself by those same perceptual processes. Like the hole in a donut trying to see itself as the donut and the hole simultaneously. Although you may not be satisfied with my answer, which of course comes from a nondual perspective, I hope you can see the value of the position I take in finding an answer from the position you take, I believe therein lies the key, a sort of nondual empiricism.
But I think we'd agree that the situation you've described is our current state of affairs (i.e, literally all of your work to systematize knowledge and more). I think that this kind of barrier is in our definition of ourselves. "We" can't get that view as individual human beings or forms of life. The systems, ecological and otherwise, that allow life to exist also can't get that view. They are two sides of the same coin, and we are that coin. We are that unknown knower. I am this (a human, secondarily identified as "Nik") so that I can know that (apparently external reality), and I am that (the reality) so that I can know/be this (the apparently separate individual human identified as "Nik"). To define my existence according to only what I am conscious of or can be made conscious of (our existing knowledge systems) doesn't appreciate the limitations of the human organism, nor does it give credence to the omnipotence of existence itself.
I was free writing about this earlier in thinking about Is-Ought, I figure I'll format into an essay but I've attached it below. It may better address your question if I am understanding it correctly. Quite a thought-provoking discussion!
Regards,
Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 9:54 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Thanks, Nik. As you know, I am a big fan.
Here is my question:
What if the object you are looking at is an evolving 7 dimensional set of nested cones that we are both inside of but trying to get an outside view of?
(To get seven plus the inside/out, there are three space, one time in Matter, which is four, then there the superimposed Life, Mind, and Culture dimensions, then there is the scientist that is from the inside trying to be on the outside, the there is the Imaginary Garden perspective that factors the scientific knower perspective in then out which then collapses into wisdom energy)
Hope folks have a good break 😄✌️.
G
Sent from my iPad
On Nov 28, 2020, at 10:18 AM, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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Greetings all!
I hope everyone was able to enjoy some sort of festivities with loved ones in recent days.
Given the complex nature of the varied listserv discussions and community presentations over the past few months in particular, I thought I'd share this short (7min) bit of wisdom spoken by the brilliant Daniel Schmachtenberger. Enjoy!!
https://youtu.be/ZNcyc_sEtpU<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_ZNcyc-5FsEtpU&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=zPCtsvHTO1_srLNBYxiLq3MphYKIqpWTRXplqU9H_fQ&s=vFydBqoN6IlVrdLwkI3llciIB4XYhpFzJYGOo2OUlDQ&e=>
Regards,
Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
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<The Is-Ought Fallacy_Free Writing1.pdf>
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